Phoebe Wycherly -- twenty-one, rich, and beautiful -- has been missing for two months when her father, Homer, hires private investigator Lew Archer to locate her. The girl was last seen leaving the San Francisco docks after seeing her father off on a cruise. When she disappeared, she left college and a lovesick boyfriend behind her. Archer's investigation leads him to Phoebe's mother, Catherine, who is divorced from Homer and acting very strangely. Then the bodies start piling up: a real estate agent in Catherine's Atherton home, a sound expert in San Mateo, and a naked woman in a Volkswagen at the bottom of San Francisco Bay. Archer eventually solves this case of missing persons, family secrets, blackmail, and murder.