After the trial and conviction of Helen Strathmore, the question "where's Helen?" preoccupies only a few people like the complainant, Robin Sympass and not for long. She is too taken up with the toll that her husband Jim's psychiatric hospitalization has taken on her son and household. A small support group of Sympass friends forms and meets for lunch/brunch/dinner. On one of these occasions a new member is introduced, Dalene Kimball a deaconess at Mrs. Pettigrew's church. She is expected to 'help' with the Sympass family situation and it is her good doings that gives the lives of all connected an unusual and even supernatural turn. Greg Ryan, Helen Strathmore's former detective is the only one intent on finding her and he investigates under cover as Darlene's assistant. But that strategy finds him struggling in the web of legal, personal and family conflicts that Miss Kimball has spun. The unraveling violently takes a few select lives on its path to final revelation.