Fire blazes around Sonya Brighton when she returns to Linnville, Kansas, to visit her uncle Alex and settle her father's estate. First the Brighton Warehouse, in which Sonya is a partner, burns. As she investigates, fire rages again--this time to cover up an attempted murder. And, to Sonya's dismay, her uncle has become estranged from his stepson, Dan Rathmell. Dan's mother died recently, and Alex, stricken with illness, hastily remarried an opportunist, who, with her sister and brother-in-law, has taken over the Rathmell house.

Sheriff Jeff McQuede finds Durmont's highly respected judge, Phil Grayson, bludgeoned to death in his study, a black executioner's hood shoved over his head. Behind him on walls and in display cases is his Old West outlaw collection that includes a death mask, a hangman's noose, and a Peacemaker. The judge has many enemies, one, Darin Keefe, just released from prison after serving seven years for a crime involving a city scandal. Judge Grayson's best friend, John Harwood, was believed to have taken a bribe from Keefe Construction and to have committed suicide rather than face conviction. Has...

While traveling on a local bus in Chinchero, Peru, Arla is approached by a mysterious female peddler who shows her a small, silver warrior. The statue is identical to those found only in rare Inca tombs located high in the Andes. Arla suspects this is a genuine artifact, perhaps stolen from the same Capacocha burial site her co-worker, Lance Hayden, is seeking. When the woman tells her she has many more items for sale, Arla follows her to an abandoned house. Too late, Arla realizes she has fallen into a trap Arla gets kidnapped by a group of ruthless thieves who are holding Lance Hayden...

While returning from Professor Dawson's lecture on haunted places, the last thing Sheriff Jeff McQuede and Dawson expect to encounter is a terrified woman clinging to the railing of Mirabella's Bridge, crying for her lost baby. It looks as if Rae Harris has thrown the infant over the bridge in a fit of despair, but she claims he has been stolen by a ghostly figure she calls Mirabella. Similar to the La Llorona legend Dawson just spoke about, Mirabella was a local pioneer woman who was rumored to have drowned her infant after being abandoned by a lover. At first McQuede believes Rae was driven...

Threatened victim, waiting grave...Sheriff McQuede is called to the cemetery by Ben Ward, a member of Durmont's Good Old Boys' Club. Ward's tombstone, where he plans someday to be buried with his first wife, is vandalized. A menacing date of death, fast approaching, has been drilled into the stone, and splotches of red paint drips over it like blood. Ben Ward and his four partners have sunk vast sums of money into a recreational community, Pleasant Valley Retreat, and this failing project has flamed anger among the investors. As the inscribed date of Ward's death draws nearer, a killer stalks...