Vera Moonachie is writing a mystery with criminal lawyer Fulton Yee.

He won''t tell her the murderer, so she won''t drop hints. Abruptly, Fulton disappears. Now caught in a murder investigation, Vera goes to the storied Sacramento Delta to unravel the tangled skein of a bloody murder planned to resolve an old Sacramento Delta land dispute. Vera is drawn into the bizarre lives of an aging actor, a chef, and the hornet''s nest of Fulton''s feuding trio of lovers. As she walks a knife''s edge between brutal rivals in an authorship dispute, Vera must find Fulton; find out why he disappeared; and find out who is the murderer in her own novel.

And then, against an approaching book deadline, someone tries to kill Vera. Old agreements can be murder.