Kinsey Millhone is a private detective in California. One day Beverly Danzinger comes to her asking her to help find her sister named Eliane Boldt because she has some legal documents that needs signed. The documents has to do with some closing of an estate from the uncle who passed away. They have to have every persons signature on it to receive the three-thousand dollars. She pays Kinsey seven-hundred dollars to go and find her and make her sign the documents. She told her about her house in California and also her vacation home in Florida. She first goes to her residence in California to see if maybe she was there but the looks of the apartment she hasn't been there for awhile now. So now she is on her way to Florida to see about there but the only person there was her so called friend Ruth. Ruth has been staying there for months without even seeing Eliane. She said the last time she saw her was when she dropped her off there and went on her way to Sarasota.
After Kinsey left Florida with no leads as to where Elaine could be she goes back to California to get back to Beverly about what she has found out. She tells Beverly that they should maybe turn a missing persons report for Elaine so they could have a bigger search and maybe she would turn up. Beverly didn't like that idea and she just told Kinsey to forget about the search right now and just send her a report so Kinsey had to. Later that night she got a call for Tillie's apartment and for some reason something weird happened to where a woman was standing at her door hissing and tearing everything up, They think its Elaine.
After the mishap in Tillie's apartment she goes and runs into another detective. He is working on the Grice case where a women was killed in her home and burned to death. Kinsey thinks Elaine had something to do with it or saw something and left before getting questioned by the cops because Elaine's apartment window looked over the Grice's house. She goes and talks to the neighbors about it and they tell her what insurance company Lenorad Grice has. She interviews him while acting like an insurance advisor to see if there where any money coming in. Afterwards she goes back to his burnt house and looked in his shed for any leads and she finds drugs there and his little cousin was the one hiding them. So she doesn't tell on him he gives her more information on the murder where he saw the light on in the basement and the door cracked open with somebody's bloody hand hanging out of a rug. He thinks it was his Aunt Marty.