When a reclusive billionaire is gunned down under a fake name at a small Southern college, two jaded big-city private eyes dig into a half-century-old campus secret.
Quentain Tillerman was a self-made billionaire who didn't drink, didn't smoke and hardly ever left his office. So why did he fly coach under a fake name to a sleepy Southern college town, only to be shot dead with a shotgun in the library parking lot one rainy night with $50,000 in cash in his coat?
After a political scandal back home, the National Detective Agency sends the agents it will miss least: Dave Roche and Bug Wallis, two divorce-case photographers who would rather be eating barbecue on per diem. They have a cigar-chomping police chief, a university cop who wishes the body had turned up anywhere else, and a trail that runs back nearly fifty years. The boys get one last shot at proving they can still play in the big leagues before the home office calls them back and the town's old secrets stay buried for good.