Meredith Morehouse, curator of the eclectic Imogene Museum, is suddenly short-staffed. Her favorite (and only) graduate student intern, Greg, is missing—without leaving behind so much as an empty pizza box, to say nothing of a note.

Plus, a prowler has been rearranging the museum's brand new chamber pot exhibit. When Meredith's nighttime vigil to flush out the intruder results in witnessing a murder, she calls in Sheriff Marge Stettler.

Soon nearly all the inhabitants of the small town of Platts Landing, Washington (including hunky tugboat captain Pete Sills) are in on the hunt—for the killers and a body that's drifting down the Columbia River.

Is the dead man her intern or somebody else? And if it's somebody else, where on earth is Greg?