Verity Ames, small town restaurateur, is involved in a passionate affair with Jonas Quarrel, Renaissance scholar turned dishwasher. Feeling that Jonas is underutilized, Verity signs him up to authenticate a sixteenth-century Italian villa on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest. Why pass on the opportunity to investigate the past and include a romantic getaway. On the island, passions flare and events turn deadly. Someone does not want Verity and Jonas to discover the truth.