Gilda lives in Detroit with her mother, and older brother, Stephen, as her father died of illness two years ago.

Thrilled at this opportunity for investigation into Melanie's death, Gilda quickly writes a letter to Mr. Splinter introducing herself and requesting that she be allowed to stay at his house for the summer.

Juliet, having come home from ballet class one day, was considering swallowing some of her father's sleeping pills when she seemed to see Aunt Melanie standing at the top of the staircase she was climbing, causing her to faint and fall down the stairs.

When Gilda arrives in San Francisco to find that the sunny, warm paradise she had pictured was covered with fog during the summer so the mansion she will be staying in is hardly a place of fun and that her only company of her age group will be Juliet Splinter, Mr. Splinter's petite, unsociable, sadistic daughter who is currently recovering from an "accident" which makes her enthusiasm dampen slightly.

But soon, through a little investigation, Gilda and Juliet become unlikely partners on their mission to uncover what really happened to Melanie Splinter.