[1]At his uncle's newspaper where Larry Elliot works as a reporter specializing in chess, he is known to miss out on bigger stories to cover more trivial events of minor interest.

Confronted with an ultimatum if he wants to keep his job, Larry is assigned to cover a big harvest festival held at a winery in Grape City.

Accidents rarely come alone, and the man sitting next to Larry on the bus is found murdered, holding a chess piece in his hand when the police find him.

Before he arrives, Sally finds a set of antique chess pieces she wants to acquire, and involves Larry in her quest to buy them.

The prime suspect is convicted murderer Deacon Markham, who first sold the antique chess set to the Waldeck brothers, after stealing it from its rightful owner.

Soon after, another guest, Flo Rosson, also enters the room and reveals that she is an insurance agent tracking Markham's gang to retrieve the chess set.

Ann Savage's biographers Lisa Morton and Kent Adamson relegated Scared Stiff to merely "lackluster" and "forgettable".

[7] Due to copyright problems, Scared Stiff fell into public domain; recently it was released in Mill Creek's Fabulous Forties box set.