No peace for Ivan Pavlovich—he now has a teenage daughter. And now Podushkin must get the girl dressed and shod, entertain her, and deal with all the new worries that have fallen on the detective. But Sashа turned out not to be a burden but an excellent helper—together they unraveled another complicated case.
Angelika Zubova comes to the office of his detective agency. She asks him to find her brother, Robert. Allegedly, Robert killed their father when Angelika was still a child. Robert was convicted, served his sentence, got out, and then disappeared. Zubova says that relatives told her different versions of what happened, and now she wants to figure everything out herself. Podushkin takes the case and realizes he understands nothing. According to one set of information Robert is alive; according to another he is dead. There’s a grave—but there’s nobody in it! His head is spinning. And yet Ivan Pavlovich does find Robert—where neither ever, not even in a nightmare, would anyone dare imagine he could be.