A treasure chest buried by a priest in 1846 links John Quincannon, a private investigator in the San Francisco of the gaudy 1890s, to the cozy career, nearly a century later, of Elena Oliverez, director of Santa Barbara's Museum of Mexican Art. For all his daring and ingenuity, Quincannon ultimately fails in his quiest to uncover the priceless artifacts of the old Velasquez family, but in 1986, long after his death, his notes on the case lead his unlikely collaborator Oliverez to the site of the lost fortune- and into the arms of murderous peril.