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.