Wayfarers Inn finally opens, just in time for Marietta's biggest tourist draw, the Sternwheel Festival. But LuAnn, Janice, and Tess's excitement is tempered when the inn's ancient elevator breaks down--and handyman Tory Thornton goes missing, leaving a bloody rage behind. When LuAnn finds a valuable and long-missing bracelet in THorn's toolbox, suspicions mount--as do the suspects. Has Thorn run off with a treasure that had been hidden in the inn centuries before...or has an old enemy caught up with him? As LuAnn and her friends seek to learn more about the bracelet, and how it ended up at the inn, they uncover a tale of theft, betrayal, and sacrifice that dates to the Civil War.

As the clues pile up, both for and against Thorn, and hidden pieces of his past come to light, the friends find themselves asking the age-old question: How well do you ever really know someone? And how do you ever know what to believe about the people you think you know?