When a lost painting turns up ten years after the murder/suicide of the artist and his model, a gallery owner wants the case re-opened, to find out the truth...

Brush and Bevel owner Ginny Brent has more reason than most to doubt the police. She was artist Jerry Berger's mentor and agent. When a customer walks into her shop with a previously unknown work by the artist, renewed grief impels her to seek answers. She knows Jerry didn't kill himself or Abby Bingham, the model pictured among the trees in Jerry's painting. Can she discover who did?

Ginny's loyal staffers, Sue Bradley and Elsie Kimball, employ their own methods to help find the truth. Elsie follows her exuberant young bird-dog into the forest, through frog-infested puddles, and discovers a pile of glacial boulders that might be the actual setting for the painting. Sue cleans years of smoke and grease from the painting's canvas and puzzles over strange markings revealed under the gunk. What could they mean?