In a quiet college town in New Jersey five million dollars in cashiers' checks were hidden in the dead man's house, and whoever finds the checks gets to keep it all. Two brothers of the deceased, his sister, and the son of another brother have four weeks before the house and its contents become the property of a small college. Two deaths by drowning in the past and another clear case of murder in the present tend to complicate matters. It takes the combined skills of a superbly-trained homicide detective, Charlie, and those of an equally well-trained psychologist, Constance, to unravel the mystery of the Bainbridge curse, and expose a killer.