Them Bones

There are two things that Rushmore McKenzie hates to turn down—a request from a friend and a challenge. Both of them show up in his wife's nightclub in the person of Angela Bjork, who has come to request McKenzie's help.

McKenzie, once a homicide detective, is now, through a series of unlikely events, a retired millionaire. But occasionally, for friends, he will do some unofficial private detective work. Over the years, he's hunted down a stolen Stradivarius, the hoard of a 1930's gangster, and recovered a stolen, apparently cursed, artefact. However, McKenzie never imagined a case like this: an exceedingly rare dinosaur skull has been stolen.

Angela, a doctoral candidate, was out on a dig site in Southeastern Montana when she found a skeleton of an Ankylosaurus. No sooner had the skull been removed and placed on a truck than they were attacked, and the truck and skull were stolen. Worried that nothing is being done to find the stolen skull, she turns to McKenzie.

Worth millions on the black market, the chance to recover it becomes fainter by the day. The people behind the theft are likely willing to do anything, to anyone, to hold onto it.