The morning found her trying to convince a dead man to wake up.

He wasn’t dead when he had arrived that previous evening. Nor had he been dead through a good portion of the night. When he passed out she figured it was from exhaustion because she soon faded much the same way.

But she woke up and he didn’t.

She told me all of this and more shortly before noon after she had arrived at my office in tears.

She had started with her name, Miranda Short, though she was anything but. As tall as me and a hell of a lot better looking, she was a stunner even through her red eyes and flustered cheeks. And while her name didn’t ring any bells, the gentleman’s sure did and I knew this wasn’t going to be my run of the mill weepy dame.