An investigator, a sherlock, a detective. A private eye.

It was the case of the missing millionaire. Old Thurston must have been about 70 when he vanished without a trace. It wasn’t the first time. Thurston was a music lover and was known to disappear for days at a time, only to be found backstage after shows by Old 97’s or Digger. But he always came back. This time his board of directors wanted to know where he was. Or proof of his death.

The trail led to a marina in Hawaii. “Yeah, I remember old Thurston,” said a deck hand while he pulled a dolphin from the day’s tuna catch. “What a piece of work. While he was vacationing with his wife, he was keeping his movie star mistress in a hotel up the road.”

Movie star? Mistress? Thurston, you devil!

Seems the old man was quite the concert goer. Every night, he and his movie star girlfriend could be seen at a show. The Cash Brothers, Sparklehorse or Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, you name it, they were there.

Turned out the “movie star” wasn’t the only chicken in the henhouse for old Thurston. He was also seeing a farm girl from Kansas. “She was his backup date,” said the deck hand as he removed a hidden cache of jewels from the stern of a cabin cruiser that had sucessfully passed customs. “She liked the country acts, and he took her to Wynonna and Trisha Yearwood.”

The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. Thurston brought his wife, movie star mistress and farm girl girlfriend to the big island after a week on the mainland seeing shows by Richard Thompson, The Beta Band and Evan Dando. After arriving, he met up with a discredited science professor who promised him fake credentials and a new identity. Looks as if both Thurston and the professor were planning on doing a vanishing act, and not only was Thurston going to take his wife with him, but his two girlfriends as well.

They hired a boat skippered by a washed-up captain who used to run charters for Tom Jones and The Butchies. Then on one sunny afternoon the boat, crewed by the skipper’s half-witted first mate, pulled out of this tropic port and set sail for a three-hour cruise, never to be seen again.

Reports say the weather started getting rough. Was the tiny ship tossed? Or did they survive, only to wash up on an uncharted desert isle? Whatever happened to the first mate? The skipper, too? The millionaire and his wife? The movie star and the rest? Where did they go?

I guess we’ll never know.