On the eve of his recall vote, Aspen Sheriff Kurt Muller is summoned to the home of an old acquaintance, the beautiful, reclusive heiress Nicole Bauer. Someone, she says, is sending her hate mail and threatening to kill her. She's convinced it's her old lover, the 60s blues idol Rocky Rhodes, but Kurt is wary, for good reason: Twenty years earlier, Rocky's body was found on the grounds of Nicole's mansion, and Nicole herself was charged with his murder.. "But Kurt's doubts are shaken when Nicole is found dead the next morning, only hours after he left her. Against his deputy's advice, he pursues his own investigation, which leads him back to the decadent counterculture of the 70s, and reveals the shaded pasts of his contemporaries - the doctors, lawyers, land barons, and aspiring politicians of Aspen's social elite. Kurt soon uncovers a host of high-placed suspects, each with deeply buried secrets that Nicole alone had the power to expose.