There’s never a good time to find a body, especially Christmas Eve when the victim lies dead cold on scaffolding outside a bank. Police Detective Bass could quickly tie in the victim to a recent apartment fire, but not to the bank and the conflicting stories between the bank president and the branch manager concerning stolen money.

A sweet, elderly lady offers the detective cookies, another lady he puts in a cab.

The victim was killed by a .38 revolver. Detective Bass didn’t know it was stolen until it was pointed at him.

This is one in a series of Detective Bass Mystery novellas centering around Detective Gilbert Bass, a middle-aged, desk-prone police detective solving the low-profile cases of a Midwest city.