“Years and years ago. I was too damn dumb to know a good thing when I had it.” He ran a hand through his thinning gray hair. “Geez, I haven’t thought about Frannie in years. Funny, I just realized, your dad and me, we’ve been together longer than any of our marriages.”

“What’s the secret?”

“To the partnership? We don’t sleep with each other.” He laughed at his own joke. “Your old man knows how to make things happen. Always has. That’s the secret to his success.”

“And what’s the secret to yours?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Always sweat the small shit. The nitpicky details. Ask the extra questions. Make that last phone call. And that’s why Brice and me work so well together. He’s the big-picture guy. Always had a vision of what success looks like. Like going to law school. He was only a beat cop for maybe five or six years, and he already knew he wanted something bigger. Then he was in a general practice with old man Coxe for a few years, until he figured out personal injury was where the big paydays were. He went looking for those cases, and eventually, when he started getting big settlements, I went ahead and retired from the force and came to work for him as an investigator. That’s been, what? Twelve years? I lose track.”

Drue studied her father’s friend’s profile. He was jowly, with ruddy skin that already showed five-o’clock shadow. “Dad said he never made detective when he was on the force. But you did, right?”

“Sure. I retired as a captain.”

“Did you ever work on the case involving that missing woman? Colleen Boardman Hicks?”

Zee’s jaws worked furiously at the gum but he kept his eyes on the road. “What makes you ask about her? You weren’t even born when all that happened.”

“When I was moving into the cottage on Sunset Beach, I found some old newspaper clippings about the case, in a box of my mom’s things,” Drue said, carefully omitting the fact that she’d actually found what looked like the official Colleen Hicks police file.

“It was a big mystery, back in the day,” Zee said. “On the news every night.”

“Dad told me he went to high school with Colleen Boardman Hicks,” Drue said. “Did you know that?”

“Yeah, now that you say it, I do remember they went to school together. But I don’t think they were really friends.”

“Since you were a detective back then, did you work on the investigation?”

“It wasn’t my case, but I did some legwork. That’s been more than forty years ago.”

“Did you have a theory back then about what happened to Colleen Hicks?”

The truck stopped at a traffic light. Zee turned in his seat and stared.

“Why do you care?”