Mike and Molly are married on Christmas Day in 1967, but upon leaving the Reno chapel a stray bullet strikes Molly in the head. As desperate weeks and months pass with Molly in a coma, Mike cannot go south to find the shooter. Sanity forces him to take on a routine insurance fraud case, reported stolen jewelry by a mysterious redhead. Her connections throw Mike into the world of international drug cartels, ice pick murders, and even an apparition in Tonopah, Arizona, where Mike searches for a missing FBI secretary, also a redhead. He tangles with the Cali drug cartel in an abandoned airplane hangar from WWII, then hides out in a Tonopah motel with the irresistible wholesome secretary he rescued. The two redheads in this episode couldn't be more different. Mike struggles to find boundaries between Platonic friendship, seduction, and fidelity to Molly.

The case also involves Mike interviewing a dismemberment killer on Nevada's death row in Carson City, and falling into Latino gang dangers in Sacramento. #9 in the series of stand alone complex mysteries. Adult language and sexual situations.