Five days after the Loma Prieta earthquake strikes San Francisco, Emily Bryson, a young,  everything-to-live-for lesbian SFSU student/part-time exotic dancer, is dead, her body washed up on a beach south of the Golden Gate Bridge. The medical examiner rules it a suicide, and the police close the missing person case filed by Emily’s lover, K. M. “Stone” McStone.

Stone, the university’s graduate admissions officer, doesn’t believe it’s a suicide. The Emily she knew had too much going for her to take her own life. Through a series of fortunate circumstances, Stone is introduced to Zoe Martinelli, office manager of Coppola Investigations, amateur sleuth, and student psychic. Stone and Zoe team up to find out what really happened to Emily. Their investigation takes them into the private lives of San Francisco’s exotic dancers and into Emily’s dark past where they discover that some secrets can be deadly.

Was it suicide, as everyone assumes? Or murder? Or something else?