When Louise Braniff discreetly hands Barbara Holloway a large retainer and asks for complete anonymity, the attorney is both intrigued and suspicious. The woman, a respected music professor, also spearheads a group that sponsors worthy causes. And the group wants Barbara to defend Carol Fredricks, a gifted young pianist who stands accused of murder.
Barbara has heard Carol play, and that's enough to convince her to take the case. But now the questions are coming faster than the answers.
Carol's straightforward version of what happened the night piano bar manager Joe Wenzel was murdered clashes with the incriminating evidence against her. And how can Barbara explain the oddly incomplete picture she gets of the young woman herself?
Carol has no memory of learning to play the piano, her recollections begin the day she woke up in hospital, aged eight, to learn that her parents were dead. And now she is having haunting nightmares about a woman named Carolyn Frye.
Soon Barbara is convinced that her client is not only innocent, but that she is being framed. However, proving the case and keeping her client safe will require every ounce of Barbara's notoriously fierce determination to get at the truth. And as she unravels the stunning trail of deception, hatred and remarkably deep and abiding love that holds the key to the mystery of Carol Fredricks, Barbara discovers that the unbidden truth may just damn them both.
