While on a summer history research trip in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1976, William Dick is befriended by Jack Falstaff. Bull-scat Jack, as he is known, gets Bill a room at the Alvermay, a seedy hotel run by Fripp, a black man raised on Fripp Island. Bull-scat Jack tells Bill and Fripp a story about how Benjamin Franklin arranged for Bill's ancestors from Edinburgh Scotland to send a fortune over to Charleston in the 1770s to help the patriots win the Revolutionary War against the British. Jack then pulls a stunt that gets Bill in trouble with the law. Fripp hides Bill at the Blue Dolphin Inn on Fripp Island. Spending days in Beaufort, South Carolina, Bill meets an eclectic group of characters who, together with Fripp and Bull-scat Jack, search out the treasure they believe to be hidden in and around Charleston. The clues that they follow are from stories that Bill's ancestors have passed down. A double cross leads to a double murder in Sumter County that remains unsolved to this day. Bill's granddaughter, Carli Owens, picks up the search for the treasure where her grandfather left off.