April 2006. Cleveland, Ohio.
Contractor Bob Kitts has been hired to tear out an old bathroom in a house on Edgewater Drive, near Lake Erie. The house was built in 1923.
As he pries off the plaster below the medicine cabinet, he finds a box. It is wrapped in a newspaper dated September 13, 1939.
Inside are yellowed envelopes. Probably kids' toys, Kitts tells himself. He tears the edge off one.
He sees the corner of a $50 bill.
The room starts to go gray. Kitts sits down on the edge of the bathtub to catch his breath.
There is more behind the tub. When it is all counted, it comes to about $182,000 in Depression-era cash. On the envelopes is a name: P. Dunne.
Who was P. Dunne? And now that the money had been found, whose was it?
Finding it, it turned out, was the easy part.