“Baker was in charge of figuring out exactly who claimed the body,” she tells Ed. “And who performed the cremation. He had some trouble. It’s apparently very hard to get a body back from another country, and it was over the holidays. The regular people were on vacation.”

“I’m not going to lie to you, Irene,” Ed says. “My experience with this is limited. But you’re saying you didn’t get a death certificate while you were down there?”

“We didn’t,” Irene says. “Baker called the Brits, who directed him to the Americans, who sent him back to the Brits. Todd Croft had someone go down and identify the body—that was before we arrived—and he ordered the cremation without even asking me.”

“What?” Ed says.

Irene has opened the proverbial can of worms now; she may as well keep going. “Todd Croft has, essentially, vanished. I can’t reach him or his secretary, and the Ascension web page is down.”

“Jeez, Irene,” Ed says. “This is like something out of a movie.”

“Ed,” Irene says. “You didn’t know anything about Russ’s owning property in the Caribbean, did you?”

“In the Caribbean?” Ed says. “Heck no!”

“How much did you understand about his job?” Irene asks. “Did the two of you ever discuss it?”

“He worked for Croft’s hedge fund, right?” Ed says. “He was the front man?”

“Right,” Irene says. She relaxes a little. The way Russ had described it to her, the Ascension clients were investing such large amounts of money in such a high-risk environment, they needed a dedicated person just to put them at ease, and that person was Russ. Up until this very second, Irene wondered if maybe Ed Sorley was in on the whole mess, but now it’s clear from his earnest tone that he’s just as bewildered as she is. Ed wears sweater-vests. He handles wills, trusts, real estate closings, and the occasional dispute over property lines for the farmers of Johnson County. Russ and Irene hired him for their legal matters because he’s their longtime friend. Irene realizes Russ must have had a second lawyer, one provided for him by Ascension.

Real estate, though.

“I’ll call our bank, obviously,” Irene says. They used to keep a checking and savings account at First Iowa Savings and Loan, where their friend Jerry Kinsey was the president. But shortly after Russ started working at Ascension, they switched to the behemoth Federal Republic Bank because Russ insisted that that bank was better equipped to handle Russ and Irene’s “change of circumstance.” Irene recalls pushing back on this. Just because Russ had a shiny new job didn’t mean they had to change their small-town ways, did it?