Mike and Mary: The Piper’s Demise

In December 1961, Tony Duvardo, a high school football star is murdered behind Harrison Bowl. Evidence indicates a drug deal gone bad. Three weeks later Harrison Bowl burns down, killing the proprietor, Don Harrison. Insurance investigators determine that a faulty extension cord caused the fire.
Life goes on for Tony’s teammate, Mike Harrison, and his girlfriend, Mary Bryant. After college, they marry. She takes a job as a journalist ninety miles from his job as a high school teacher and football coach. The arrangement seems to be working until Mary is assigned to follow Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign on the West Coast. She invites Mike to ‘tag along’. Trouble begins when Mike visits an old high school flame, Norma West, in Los Angeles and escalates on the eve of Kennedy’s assassination when Norma is viciously assaulted.
Six months later, Mike’s step-grandmother, Sophie, is murdered. Enraged and unhappy with the Sheriff’s investigation, Mike goes on a quest for justice, deciding to investigate the murders on his own.
Initially, the four separate incidents--two murders, a deadly fire, and an assault-- seem unrelated. But, everything changes when Mike spots a fat man driving a white Oldsmobile with a crooked front bumper. Aware of his inexperience after stumbling through his investigation, he hires a private investigator, Robert Bowman. The investigation takes them to Michigan, Maryland, California, and back home to southern Ohio. In his effort to protect Norma, Mike plays cat-and-mouse with the sheriff’s department as his marriage to Mary slowly disintegrates.