Rubbed Out — Barbara Block

Robin Light has had better days. Business at her pet store is painfully slow. Syracuse has had twenty-three consecutive days of snow. And she's trying to quit smoking...again. So when ex-cop Paul Santini calls, offering a cakewalk of a job finding some rich lawyer's runaway wife, Robin takes the case -- without getting all the facts. She gets her first clue that something isn't right during a visit to the worried husband, Walter Wilcox. His story -- that his wife's therapist is to blame for her disappearance -- doesn't ring true, either. It isn't long before Wilcox is singing a different tune, one that includes his eighteen-year-old mistress, expensive trinkets, and Janet Wilcox taking off with a good chunk of their money.

Only it isn't really Wilcox's money. It belongs to his employers, a couple of Russian wiseguys who don't take kindly to being swindled -- and before Robin can tell Walter that she's found his wife in New York City, she finds him tortured to death. It's too bad for Walter... and even worse for Robin. Apparently, lawyers talk a lot under extreme pressure. They even mention names, like that of a certain part-time P.I. Now, with the Russian mob convinced she knows where the money is, Robin is on the run, desperate to find Janet, recover the stolen goods, and keep everyone she knows from becoming landfill...