It was just after 5 a.m. on January 28, 2008, when a neighbor saw John Glasgow’s dark gray Volvo sport-utility vehicle pulling away from his house. Although it was three hours earlier than Glasgow usually left for work, nothing seemed amiss. As he did every weekday morning, Glasgow drove east in the predawn darkness, down his tree-lined street in the prosperous Hillcrest section of Little Rock, Arkansas. The commute to his office at CDI Contractors LLC, the prominent Arkansas construction firm where Glasgow was chief financial officer, took about four minutes. But Glasgow never arrived at work that Monday.

His Volvo was found the following afternoon by Arkansas park rangers, 71 miles north of Little Rock on Petit Jean Mountain, in front of Mather Lodge, a popular inn near the mountaintop. Glasgow’s sunglasses were lodged between the dashboard and the stick shift, and his personal debit card was in the glove compartment. On the backseat, neatly bundled together in a black computer bag, were all of his executive belongings—his company laptop and cell phone, his corporate Visa and gas cards, and his electronic office key. The car was immaculate.

And there was no trace of Glasgow. For a week, more than 100 search-and-rescue workers would comb the surrounding 1,500 acres, rappelling down cliff faces; dragging the nearby Petit Jean River; flying helicopters below the tree line and up the mountainside in 50-mile-per-hour winds. But their search turned up nothing—no footprints, traces of blood, or other forensic evidence. Even more “bizarre,” says George Stowe-Rains, the Arkansas Forestry Commission search specialist who led the effort, five of the state’s best tracking dogs were able to pick up Glasgow’s scent only where his car was parked. Investigators were baffled. Except for Glasgow’s car, says Stowe-Rains, “there was nothing leading us to believe that he was ever on the mountain.” Glasgow, the CFO of a multimillion-dollar corporation, had simply vanished.

He was 45 years old. He had no debts; according to his family, he had no history of depression. Four weeks before he disappeared, he had gotten a $300,000 bonus, which he left in his bank account. It was the largest one Glasgow had ever received, but CDI, where he had worked for 18 years, had just completed its most profitable year, turning in 2007 revenues of $580 million. Everything seemed to be going well, personally and professionally. Indeed, Glasgow was on the threshold of what appeared to be a lucrative business opportunity—taking an ownership stake in CDI as part of a stock redistribution plan that had recently been proposed by the chairman of Dillard’s Department Stores, the Little Rock-based retailer that owned 50 percent of CDI.

Glasgow was, as one friend puts it, “a guy with his hand on the brass ring.” His disappearance was a complete mystery. The police could find no evidence to explain what had happened to him. But in Little Rock, there was much speculation, most of it whispered, about Dillard’s—controlled by one of the richest and most powerful families in Arkansas—and CDI, best known for having built the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, and the role that Glasgow had played in the relationship between the two companies.

Despite outward appearances, what soon became clear was that something had been troubling Glasgow. In anxious conversations with a close friend and with his wife, Melinda, Glasgow had spoken of a meeting with Dillard’s chairman, Bill Dillard, that upset him almost to the point of tears, and of a conversation with the retailer’s CFO, James Freeman, that alarmed him so much he put a tap on his office phone. He spoke repeatedly of a battle over an accounting issue, insisting that he had been threatened. He seemed embroiled in a conflict with Dillard’s, but no one close to him understood what it was about.

After his disappearance, there were rumors that Glasgow had embezzled money, but Dillard’s and CDI soon issued a joint statement saying there was no evidence Glasgow had misappropriated any funds, and CDI told his family that a forensic accountant’s examination of his computers had “turned up clean as a hound’s tooth.” Glasgow’s body was never found; the police investigation tapered off; Glasgow’s family hoped he would reappear and continued its grim watch as the headlines faded.

Then, late last year, the mystery was heightened when two hedge funds, Barington Capital Group LP and Clinton Group Inc., suddenly began asking questions about CDI. In a widely publicized letter, the funds—which, after threatening a proxy fight, had won four seats on the company’s board—demanded access to internal Dillard’s documents pertaining to its ties with CDI. They wanted “all books and records” going back 10 years. The funds also asked for information about a restatement of Dillard’s earnings related to CDI that occurred shortly after Glasgow disappeared—all of which had Little Rock business insiders wondering yet again just what secrets Glasgow could reveal if he were around to tell.