Three friends purchase a historic hotel in Marietta, Ohio, and learn it was a stop on the Underground Railroad. When strange things begin happening at the inn, an old journal written by former slave and Underground Railroad "conductor", Prudence Willard, may offer shed light on the present-day mysteries at the inn.

Beth McKenzie's attempt to turn an old Southern mansion into a Bed and Breakfast called The Dixie Dew is thwarted when her first guest is found dead in bed. Murdered, it turns out. Three days later a young priest who looks better in tennis whites than clerick black, is found strangled in his chapel. The whole town of Littleboro is abuzz, and Ossie Delbardo, the town cop whose job heretofore mainly involved controlling football traffic on Friday nights,...