Art history professor Sweeney St. George is preparing an exhibit on her specialty, the art of death, for the university museum when she makes an unusual discovery: A valuable piece of Egyptian funerary jewellery in the museum's collection is missing. Searching for answers, Sweeney learns of a young woman - a student named Karen Philips - who died of an apparent suicide soon after being the last to check out the piece more than twenty-five years ago.The show must go on without the intricately beaded Egyptian collar, but Sweeney just can't let the mystery drop once she discovers that Karen was working at the museum the night it was robbed that same year. Then a murder brings the museum under the scrutiny of Cambridge, Mass. Detective Tim Quinn. Together they go after a killer, trying to resolve questions of the past...before a clear and present danger catches up with them both.