Regina Colwell, a young provincial legislator, receives a summons from the city coroner to a shabby hotel where a teenage constituent, Norman Water, has been found dead in his bathtub. Regina does not know the boy but, for some reason. he had inked her name and phone number on his hand. On the walls of the bathroom were long columns of washed-out numbers, like hieroglyphics. Regina checks into the hotel to investigate this death that the police deem unsuspicious. But the young politician encounters resistance at every turn from the hotel staff. Digger Greenwood, the manager, a myopic accountant, doesn't want her to stay. Queenie, the assistant manager, warns her away from the hotel with thinly veiled threats. As Regina interviews employees about the dead boy, she finds that everybody had a grudge against Norman. Yet Regina struggles to figure out how or why he died.