When Cressa Hannett is cut from the team on a space project in Texas, she comes home to Maple Creek, Michigan, determined to start all over again. Her new home on Victorian Row looks just like the house she grew up in years ago and Cressa feels ready to regroup, to find a new career in this seemingly idyllic place. Then her neighbor is found dead in her backyard fountain, drowned, and suddenly, what was once appealing becomes sinister to Cressa's eyes. It was no accident and the neighborhood is full of wild tales. The fountain's statue of a Satyr, reputedly haunted, becomes the main suspect in the death of the elderly piano teacher, but Cressa saw a cloaked figure slinking through Libby Dorset's garden before the eccentric little woman was found dead.