Laura is eager to join her friend and confidante, Helen Cochrane, at their beloved Wildfell Cottage for a much-needed rest. But business is bustling for Aardvark Investigations, the agency Laura runs with her partner and lover, Sonny Mendlowitz. A Cambridge divorcee needs Laura to track down a series of valuable paintings that have gone missing. And celebrated stage producer Thomas Butler has hired her to find out who's behind a rash of unnerving backstage thefts at rehearsals for Inside Sherwood Forest. When Laura calls at Butler's Kensington home, she accidentally leaves a cherished photograph with the young Filipina servant who answers the door. Upon her return Laura finds her photograph gone, and the girl vanished. She then receives a curt denial of the servant's very existence from Butler, whose easy West End manner hardens in the face of Laura's inquiries. Her anger and curiosity piqued, Laura begins putting together an intricate puzzle, a piece of which reveals the girl's name - Marilou Flores - and a harrowing story of her virtual house arrest with a wealthy, ruthless Qatari family who operate in London with impunity. When Marilou turns up dead, tossed into a trash heap beside a London theater, Laura has a body - and a case that's about to explode in a powder keg of violence.