Give police detective Abel Shea two terminal points and a line connecting them, and he's off and running. But the wheelbarrow track he finds fails to lead him to whoever attacked Lydia Fairchild, one of the elderly ladies who lives on The Terrace, or to whoever killed the young man whose body is found anchored in Plume Lake. With trails leading in all directions -- peeping prowlers, nude photographs, bales of cannabis, suspicious nightclub owners, questionable publishers, missing newel posts, and superfluous fingerprints -- it's all too easy to run off in the wrong direction. In spite of his casual disregard for detail, however, Shea manages to solve the case before the killer creates even more trouble on The Terrace.