Wally Sample-John Bekker's overzealous and often confused friend, and heir to the Sample Iced Tea Company-returns to ask for Bekker's help one more time?At a company bachelor part, Wally meets and falls in love with a stripper named Barbara 'Bubbles' Bouchette. Wally and Bubbles set up house together and plan on marrying until, one day, she vanishes. Then a ransom note arrives. Wally being Wally, he turns to Bekker for help.Bekker agrees to deliver the ransom money, and seeks the help of his old friend and FBI Agent, Paul Lawrence. They deliver the ransom money-a sum of fifteen million dollars-to an abandoned motel where Bubbles is supposedly being held captive. But instead of an alive Bubbles, they find a female corpse missing a head and hands, making the body unidentifiable.There is nothing left to do but take Wally home to his condo, where the FBI is scouring the place for clues.

What others miss, Bekker doesn't, and he finds an old book that Bubbles had been reading, an old novel called The Case of the Missing Fan Dancer, a crime story from the 1930s-and the plot of the old novel strangely mirrors the case of the missing Bubbles?.