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The last time I saw Elvis, not the Elvis, mind you, he was sitting on the dock in Key West waiting to see me off. He’d had one of his dreams, and although he knew I was a skeptic, he felt it was his duty to bring me the news. “Wes, your grandfather’s dead.”

It was a cool, sunny February day and I was stowing gear, preparing to take my sailboat, Rough Draft, over to the Bahamas for a couple of months before the hurricane season hit. I thought I’d misheard him. I stopped what I was doing and stepped off the boat and onto the dock.

Elvis was a couple of inches taller than me and much thinner. His head was shaved and polished, and he had a Van Dyke style beard. Elvis wore a dark blue pinstriped suit and white gloves.

He’d brought along a small cooler filled with beer and was sitting next to it on a blanket with his feet hanging over the side of the dock. As I helped myself to a Miller Lite, Elvis took off his jacket, folded it with exaggerated care, and set it on the blanket. He moved it an inch to the right, two inches to the left, a smidgeon up, until it was in just the proper place to satisfy his sensibilities. Obsessive-compulsive disorder will do that to a person. I popped the cap on my beer and sat down next to him.

“Your dream’s a little old,” I said. “My grandfather died seven years ago. The big 'C'. He smoked all his life.”

Elvis was watching a pelican, a big bird with the grace of a slapstick comic and the eyesight of a dive-bomber. As the bird hit the water with an awkward splash, Elvis turned his attention to me. “Not that grandfather. Your father’s father.”

According to my mother, I was a result of a wild weekend in Acapulco with a Vietnam vet she met at a club. I didn’t know my father’s name. I didn’t know where he was from. I didn’t even know if he was alive or dead. At this stage in my life I didn’t really care.

“Never knew him,” I said. “Or anyone else on that side of the family.”

“Maybe it’s time,” Elvis said.

“For what?”

“To get to know your family.”

I looked at Elvis, but he was staring down at the water, avoiding my gaze. “You know I don’t believe in that psychic shit, or ghosts and UFOs for that matter.”

“I thought that after what happened last month, you’d believe me.”

He was referring to a nighttime visit he’d had from the ghost of Celine Stewart, a girl whose death convinced me I no longer wanted to be a P.I. I wasn’t ready to admit that I believed he had real psychic abilities or that he’d spoken to Celine’s ghost, but the information he provided did aid the police in locating her body.

“Elvis, you and I both know there’s no such thing as psychics.”

“How do you explain Celine?” he asked.

“You offered to hire me,” I reminded him. “I suspect you have other detectives working for you. One of your investigators must have stumbled upon something the cops missed.”

Elvis turned to me. “I don’t have any investigators working for me. No bullshit, Wes. I spoke with your grandfather.”

I set my empty bottle next to Elvis and jumped up. “I don’t have time for this, Elvis. I’m going to the Bahamas.”

“He said you need to go to Mobile.”

“Alabama?”

Elvis got to his feet. “He says he can’t rest until the book is found and returned to its rightful owner.”

“I’m not a librarian.”

Elvis shrugged. “I’m just the messenger.”

“What book?” I asked, regretting it as soon as the words left my mouth.

“He didn’t say.”

“Of course not. And who is the rightful owner—wait, let me guess, he didn’t say.”

Elvis shrugged. “I don’t choose who visits my dreams, and I don’t ask them questions. They tell me what they want me to know.”

“Why me?”

“You’re a detective.”

“Was a detective,” I reminded him. Elvis knew I used to work for my family’s detective agency. He also knew I hated the work.

DDA Security was founded in 1876 by my great-great-great-grandfather, Aaron ‘Dusty’ Darling. Dusty had been a Pinkerton detective, a Wells Fargo shotgun driver, and he even knew Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. When he was forty-five he left the Wild West, moved to Detroit, and started the firm. Back then it was called The Darling Detective Agency. Now my mother ran the agency and my quitting was a major bone of contention between us.

“Your grandfather thinks you can help.”

“I can’t. I’m not a detective anymore.”

“Like I said, Wes. I’m just the messenger.”

I swore and spun away from Elvis and climbed back on board Rough Draft.

When I was young, I’d dreamed of meeting my father. For years I begged my mother for information. She’d always denied knowing anything about him other than that he was a Vietnam vet and that they’d spent one wonderful weekend together in Mexico. She refused to tell me his name.

Somewhere in my middle teens I’d come to accept the fact that I was never going to know my father. Eventually it stopped mattering. At least that’s what I told myself as I picked up the phone and called my mother.

“Yes,” she admitted when I wouldn’t let the subject rest. “Your father was from Mobile.”

“Is he alive?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What about the rest of his family?” I asked.

“I don’t know anything about them.”

I didn’t believe her, but I knew my mother well enough to know I wasn’t going to get anything else from her. If I wanted to know about my father or his side of my family, I was going to have to find out for myself. I hung up the phone, plotted a new course, and finished preparing to leave Key West.