The sacred and the secular merge in Taos during Las Fiestas, and the charming bed-and-breakfast run by Christina Garcia y Grant is filled with celebration. While the festival's grim visage of La Doña Sebastiana — death — can be sobering to the uninitiated, true revelers understand that life is only worth living when death is watching.

Then, a young gallery assistant goes missing, while the body of an associate is found murdered among some rare artifacts. The curator, a newcomer who specializes in recovering local religious art, enlists Christina's help — but his motives become suspicious when she makes a connection to a string of antiquity thefts from museums along the Santa Fe Trail. Another body surfaces on the banks of the Rio Grande, proving once more that a land steeped in mystery and tradition can be quite deadly, as well.