"On a snowy Christmas morning in 1979, Gunther Fahnstiel, traveling with his wife, accidentally backed his RV over a stranger, killing him instantly. In the poor soul's car was a satchel containing plane tickets, a .22-caliber pistol, a bottle of Johnnie Walker, and more money than Gunther had ever seen in his life. For the debt-ridden old couple, it would indeed be a merry Christmas. But nobody can buy a happy ending. Especially not Gunther." "Ten years later, under the scorching summer sun, seventy-year-old Gunther walks away from his nursing home and sets off to find the hidden money. But he is not alone: hot on his trail are a former captain of the Wichita police, who is piecing together clues from two unsolved murders a two-timing, whore-loving local developer, who sees dollar signs if the coot is captured Gunther's stepson, a former bouncer turned businessman whose curiosity is peaked by his mother's creative accounting and that very same mother (aka Gunther's wife), who risks her husband's safety to keep their secret." As the journey unfolds and the mercury climbs, another story emerges of a U.S. soldier returning to Wichita in 1952 under an assumed name to seek vengeance on his estranged wife. The young patrolman out to protect her is none other than Gunther Fahnstiel, whose actions will reverberate in the lives of all involved nearly half a century later.