As an early summer heat wave beats down on Alpine, Emma Lord and her staff at the Alphne Advocate are treading lightly. For unfathomable reasons, House & Home editor Vida Runkel refuses to speark to anyone. So when a peculiar young woman walks in claiming her parents have been murdered and she's in mortal danger, it fits right in with the craziness. When Vida vanishes without a word and a male body, dead too long to identify, surfaces at the town dump.