A childhood friend has been charged with the murder of a local nightclub owner, but in his heart, Hitch knows she didn't do it. Problem is, the friend has gone into hiding and she's taken his ever-vivacious ex-wife Julia with her. Enlisting the help of a lovably rumpled private eye who is in the midst of a mid-life crisis, Hitch's search for his friends and for the real killer takes him from smoky jazz joints to the world of illegal sports gambling to the beach (in his hearse, natch) and, as usual, to a few too many of Baltimore's colorful bars and saloons. Who holds the clue to the real killer's identity? The sultry chanteuse? The felonious painter? The sexy slip-of-a-thing who wraps men around her finger?