When Peter Bartholomew and his ward, Lucy, inadvertently find a skull while digging in the sand one day strange things begin to happen. A forensic team from the state police arrive and excavates, uncovering not one but two skeletons, the uppermost one newer by some fifty years.
It is determined the older one was Manny Rose a local fisherman who died by a gunshot to the head. The new one was Susan Jameson, a former employee of Factotum who supposedly left the island fourteen years before. Could these two murders be connected? Why would anyone want these people dead? These questions haunt Peter, who knew and dated Susan fourteen years ago. But there are few people left who have any answers.
