In the third of the Frank Cole mystery novels, Frank is given an assignment from none other than the Exile chief of police, Denny Dannon. The Exile town bank is getting audited, and Dannon wants Frank to help the bank's manager track down the owners of some outdated accounts. It seems like a simple job, and Frank enlists the aid of his chess-playing buddy Gray Toliver. They make good progress until Frank visits one of the newly-located account-holders and discovers that she died only a few days earlier. Reporting this to the bank, Frank learns that someone accessed the dead woman's safe deposit box that very morning. That's when the simple job becomes a not-so-simple murder investigation involving land fraud, a safe deposit box that may or may not have been empty, and a map that seemingly leads to nowhere.
