Patricia Stoltey
Sylvia Thorn, circuit court judge in Palm Beach County, Florida, takes an unexpected trip to Sangamon City, Illinois, when her older brother, Willie Grisseljon, is confined to a county hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. A Vietnam veteran with a few lingering side effects from the war, Willie was on vacation, exploring the countryside where he and Sylvia had grown up. There he found a body, and when he tried to report his discovery to a deputy sheriff, he was locked up as a vagrant with delusions.
Willie is released from the hospital when Sylvia arrives. She is reluctantly drawn into the mystery when Willie insists on revisiting the site where the body is hidden. When the two also discover a local businessman is missing, they make the connection and notify the sheriff.
Soon, the two discover clues about the murdered farm manager and his wife, a tenant farmer, concealed Indian artifacts, and uprooted prairie grass plots that may help the sheriff solve the crime. But Sylvia runs into trouble when she's caught nosing around the old homestead. She hides, but overhears a second murder take place.
She escapes one gun-toting suspect, only to join up with Willie and confront another. Relieved when the sheriff releases them to return to Florida, Sylvia doesn't realize at first that she and her brother are still in danger. A mysterious new neighbor with a menacing bodyguard, and new information Sylvia finds in her legal system database, provide her with the incentive to pursue a search for the truth. Sylvia must use her contacts with the Illinois sheriff and Florida security personnel, as well as Willie's intuitive skills, to remove the threat to herself and her family and provide the missing links to state and federal authorities.