My name's Tice. That's TEE-chay. Not tice to rhyme with dice or lice or mice. Plenty of them around here. Mice that is. Not the classiest part of town where I have my office.

Solomon Samuel Tice. That's me. Named for my mother's two brothers. Never used the whole moniker though. Always went by Sol. See. Right there on my business card.

Anyway, I'd been sitting in my office all that late June morning. Just watching the sun make the shadow letters from my window slant and crawl. Just like Bogey. Only a gorgeous blonde never came through my door.

She was a redhead.

"Mr. Tice?" She rhymed it with ice. But I didn't care. Her voice ran warm over her baby-pout lips and into my ears like twenty-year old scotch.

"Uh, huh." I said brilliantly. And swung my feet down off the corner of my desk.

The details of the case don't really matter. They were the usual: blackmail and murder and the fake pearl necklace found in the box of face powder before she admitted that there never was a real one and the will with seven codicils and a gardener who turned out to be the long-lost son of a shipping magnate. I wrapped up the case nice and tidy with a big shiny bow and handcuffs at police headquarters.

The sun was just beginning to set when we walked out into the street. She smiled at me and I thought what a crying shame it was that the longest day was followed by the shortest night.