Connie Haydn and Shrug Speaker, retired from their successful careers as a professor and a stockbroker, take on new challenges as informal private investigators. When they accept a woman's entreaty to solve the two-decades-old mysterious disappearance of her daughter, Joan, conflicting leads pull them far from their rural hometown of Humboldt, Ohio. Intriguing suspects include a concert violinist and a sheisty evangelist when Connie and Shrug-self-dubbed the Second-Best Club-collect evidence and puzzle-out theories in their War Room.