TREASURE STATE

Private eye Cassie Dewell pursues two very different cases that take her far from Bozeman.

The morning after someone breaks into her office, Cassie gets a call from Candyce Fly, a widow in Boca Grande, Florida, who wants her to track down J.D. Spengler, the PI she’d hired to find Marc Daly, the charmer who’d charmed her out of her life’s savings. After following Daly’s trail all over the country and linking him to three other women similarly swindled, Spengler had sent Candyce encouraging words from Montana a day before going AWOL himself. Though Cassie agrees to look for him, she’s more teased by her other case, which also hinges on a phone call. Ever since someone inscribed a poem oracularly hinting at the location of “Sir Scott’s Treasure” on the whiteboard at a local bar, everyone around has wondered who hid the treasure and where it can be found, and several intrepid hunters have died in the course of their search. Cassie’s caller, who tells her that he’s the one who’s hidden the treasure and written the poem, offers her $2,000 to test his security by attempting to find him; if, against all odds, she does track him down, he’ll pay her a bonus of $25,000. Box’s early revelation of who’s behind Spengler’s disappearance turns that mystery into a duel of wits between Cassie and the bad guys. But Kyle Westergaard, a teenager she once rescued from a dangerous kidnapper, keeps sparking her interest in Sir Scott’s Treasure, whose location and mastermind provide a nifty pair of final surprises.

All this and Montana, too. Talk about treasure.