Zoe Busiek: Wild Card

Zoe gives up her job as a blackjack dealer so she can raise her nieces and nephew after their mother dies in a car accident. Sophia Mason and Dan Lennox, special fraud investigators, tell her the family is denied any financial settlement because they think her sister was responsible for her own death. Zoe decides to go on her own investigation to prove her sister wasn't at fault while trying to find a new job. Also, Zoe runs into an old flame and Taylor disappears.

Zoe investigates her first case

Zoe finds out her partner Dan used to be engaged and used to be a thief. Meanwhile Dan's ex-fiance comes to town. Marco's ask Zoe out on an date but she turns him down the first time. Sophia and her boyfriend try to find a house but have difference of tastes in a place to live. Dan discovers he has feeling for Zoe and goes to tell her, but when he does he see's Zoe and Marco's kissing on the porch.

Zoe and Sophia investigate a case of a drunken college student who trespasses at the local zoo and ends up in a coma after being mauled by a lion. With Sophia’s expertise and Zoe’s imaginative tactics, they look into the suspicious circumstances. Was it really a case of sorority pledging that landed the college co-ed in a coma?

Professionally, Zoe and her co-workers try to find out who sabotaged a wedding at an exclusive country club by making the lawn sprinklers turn on at an inappropriate time. Personally, Zoe has to deal with the sudden re-appearance of her nieces' and nephew's deadbeat dad after a 7-year absence.

Though fearful of a forthcoming performance evaluation by her boss, Zoe must unravel the life of a man just found dead of a heart attack, who was supposed to have died three years earlier in a boating accident.