When Lalla and her dad take a trip to Arizona to inspect her new property, Dad disappears. Panicked that he's lost in the desert, Lalla enlists the help of a local tracker and finds him unharmed−in the bottom of a mine pit along with a very dead local police chief.

Oddly, a young artist from an art colony up the road will be found strangled in her bed. What're the chances that these two murders are going to be related? Well, if you're Lalla Bains, you don't guess, you start looking for the killer!