“I appreciate you meeting with me,” he said. “After our first phone conversation, I thought you were turning me down.”

“I’m here,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean I’m going to take the job, Mr. Weston. You’ve got some of the finest cops in the city working on this, and from what I hear, even the FBI is helping.”

“Helping to dick around and waste time!” he roared.

“I don’t think they’re wasting any time, sir.”

“No? Then where the hell are some results? Those damn cops come over here every damn day and tell me what they’ve produced. You know what they’ve produced? Jack shit, boy. In five days, they’ve done nothing.” He stuck out his lower lip and exhaled a cloud of smoke forcefully over his face.

“It takes some time to make headway in an investigation of this magnitude, sir.”

“Look,” he said, trying to contain his anger, “this is my son we’re talking about. My son and his family. I’ve got to do something, but I’m smart enough to realize I can’t do it alone. I need someone working for me. Someone who can pursue this as aggressively as it needs to be pursued.”

I sighed. John Weston was convinced his son had been murdered, although none of the police investigators seemed to agree. The prevailing media theory, courtesy of an “unnamed police source,” was that Wayne Weston had killed his family before offing himself. No bodies had been found, and there was little evidence to explain their disappearance. There had been no signs of violent intruders at the house; everything appeared normal except for Wayne Weston’s corpse.

“Why us, Mr. Weston?” I asked. “Why do you think we need to be involved, when you have the police doing everything they can?”

“You knew my son.”

I held up a cautioning hand. “I’d met your son.”

“Whatever. You knew him, and he knew you and respected you. He told me he thought you and your partner were going to be very good when you started your business.”

I’d met Wayne Weston at a private investigators conference in Dayton two months before. It was one of those two-day events featuring seminars on various business issues during the day and sessions of too much food, drink, and loud laughter in the hotel restaurant at night. Joe had decided we should go because it offered a chance to network with other local investigators, making contacts, and possibly attracting some business.

Wayne Weston had sat at the same table as me for dinner one night. He was a flashy guy, wearing expensive suits and driving a fancy car, but he was friendly and charismatic. And, from what I’d heard, a hell of an investigator. He’d been with the Pinkertons for a few years before returning to Cleveland to open his own firm, and he was apparently making good money at it. I hadn’t talked to him individually for more than an exchange of names, and I was surprised to hear he’d said anything about Joe and me to his father.

“My son didn’t kill himself or hurt his family,” Weston said. “That’s the most absurd and offensive bullshit I’ve ever heard. They came on the news talking about that yesterday, and I damn near drove down there and kicked some ass. I want to know what did happen to my daughter-in-law and granddaughter, so I can quit this damn worrying, and so those television people can shut their mouths.”

His eyes flashed with anger as he spoke, and he tried to extinguish it with a tremendous drag on the cigarette. For a minute I thought he’d polish the whole thing off in that one ferocious inhalation.

“What exactly is it that you want Joe and me to do?” I asked. “Determine whether your son was murdered, or find his wife and daughter?”

“Both,” he said, blowing out a cloud of smoke that made my eyes sting. “It seems to me one would be pretty well intertwined with the other.”

That was a fair point. I still didn’t like it, though. The cops would resent our presence, and I definitely didn’t want to get caught up in the media frenzy.

“Look, I’ve got plenty of money,” Weston said. “I’ve got a good retirement plan, I’ve got a savings account. I can afford to pay whatever it is you want.”

“It’s not about the money, Mr. Weston,” I said.

“No? Then what the hell is it?”

“The police have a lot of investigators working on this case,” I said. “They have resources and access that we don’t, and they’ve also got a week’s head start on it. I’d advise you to wait on the police, and see what they can do with it. If they haven’t made any progress in a few weeks, give us a call again, and maybe we’ll reconsider.” I had no plans to reconsider, but I hoped the offer would placate the old man.

“You know why I showed you those paintings?” he asked. “Why I told you what happened to my hand?”

“No, sir.”

He ground his cigarette out in an ashtray on the table and stared at me with contempt. Then he shook his head.

“Wayne was one of your own,” he said. “Same city, same business, and that’s a business without many people involved. That used to mean something to people. When I was in the war, we fought for the men with us. Before battle, during the preparation, it was all about patriotism and saving the world and protecting the freedom of our families back home. But you know what? When it came down to the firefight, that wasn’t in your mind anymore. You were fighting for the boys next to you, fighting for your buddies, protecting your own.” He looked at me sadly. “Maybe my generation was the last one that had that kind of loyalty, that kind of brotherhood.”

It was a hell of a pitch. I didn’t answer right away, but it resonated with me as he had hoped it would. I hadn’t known Wayne Weston well, and we were in the same business, not in the same war, but somehow, sitting here in front of this man with his World War II paintings, gnarled hand, dead son, and missing family members, that line of reasoning seemed hollow.

“Why do you do it?” he asked. “Why are you even in this business? You want to get rich chasing cheating husbands? You think it impresses women to say you’re a PI? Huh?”

I looked at the floor, trying not to snap at him. “Nope,” I said evenly. “None of those, sir.”

“Really? Then what the hell do you do it for?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Well?” he said. “You gonna give me an answer, son?”

I raised my head and looked at him. “I do it,” I said, “because I’m awfully damn good at it.”

“You think you’re awfully damn good at it, eh?”

“I don’t think I am, sir. I am. And so is my partner.”

He smiled without amusement or pleasure. “Then prove it.”

I met his eyes and held his gaze for a while, then gave one, short nod.

“All right,” I said. “We will.”

“WELL, THAT’S the last time I let you meet a prospective client unattended,” Joe Pritchard said. “I thought we’d agreed not to get involved in this mess.”

We were sitting in the office the next morning. Joe had just finished a five-mile run, and he was still breathing heavily, soaked with sweat. I thought that was the best time to break the news to him, hoping he’d be too tired to care. No luck, though; it took a lot more than a five-mile run in the cold to fatigue Joe.

“Why not give it a shot, Joe? We’re not making much money, so why turn down the offers we do get?”

“Because the cash isn’t worth the hassle.” He sighed and wiped his face with a towel. He was wearing running shoes, sweatpants, and a nylon jacket, and if you’d asked ten strangers to guess his age, all of them would have undershot it by a decade. “I just don’t like the idea of having to tag along with CPD, Lincoln.”

I understood that. Joe had retired only six months earlier, and I knew working on an active police investigation from the outside would feel strange to him. It was too late now; I’d made the agreement with Weston, and I had a two-thousand-dollar retainer check in my pocket to seal the deal.