When a prominent Northern California winery family comes to San Miguel to check out additional properties, a disturbing conflict is already running deep beneath the surface. As they rent an upscale mansion for a month's stay, the head of the family is murdered on a stone staircase worthy of a coronation procession. With five family members and nine staff people in the house, there's a rich roster of possible killers. Layer by layer the mystery unfolds in this, the seventeenth Paul Zacher mystery.