The name's McKinney. Mickie McKinney. I'm a gumshoe, a private eye to those

who speak my lingo and a detective to those that don't. I'll find your cat or bust the monster under your bed, and I ain't afraid of the dark either. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I was sitting with my size six shoes propped up on the corner of my battered desk, watching the bubbles from my pipe floating toward the water-stained ceiling above my head, when a slender, feminine figure slipped in – her form a silhouette framed by the light of the hallway.

Blonde, blue-eyed, she was prettier than the soap bubbles over my head, but the tear in her eye said that she was a damsel in distress and needed my help.