Dickie makes the mistake of remembering his affair with Joyce as an amusing lark, and ends up on the floor of his office with Stephanie's hands around his throat, before her friends Connie and Lula pry her away.

Later that evening, Stephanie's on-again/off-again boyfriend, detective Joe Morelli, is told that Dickie has disappeared, and there are signs that he has been abducted or murdered from his house.

While snooping through Joyce's house, Stephanie finds handwritten notes that lead her to an account in Dickie's name with Smith Barney that was recently emptied of $40 million.

Joyce, convinced that Stephanie knows where Dickie or the $40 million is, follows her around, inveigling herself into a family dinner at the Plum home, and even saves her from a musclebound thug trying to kidnap her.

When she drops by Morelli's house to borrow some DVDs for Lula, Stephanie finds Dickie, alive and well, living there under protective custody.

Dickie explains that he was recruited by the other three partners of the law firm - Roland Petiak, Victor Gorvich, and Peter Smullen - to be the "token real lawyer" in the firm, which was being used as a front for a sort of modern triangle trade: Petiak's men stole guns from military depots and Smullen traded the guns to several South American drug cartels, in exchange for drugs being sold on the streets of Trenton.

Surprised, Stephanie remembers that she left the desk clock in her rundown Crown Victoria after it broke down, and Ranger had it towed to a salvage yard.

Morelli regretfully reports that, since there is no evidence of criminal activity in the firm's records, and Dickie appears to be guilty of nothing more than "being stupid and devious", he will likely end up as sole owner of the office property and the $40 million.