She's a hard-boiled Sacramento P.I. with a soft spot for the unlucky, the unloved, and one special cop named Hank. Her name is Kat Colorado, and in her business curiosity can be more than an occupational hazard -- it can be murder. It's hard to tell where the truth ends and the lies begin when Kat is hired to look into the death of a young woman in a historic California gold-country resort town. The police have closed the books on Deidre Durkin's murder; it was a tragic robbery-homicide. But could a clever murderer have created the illusion of a parking-lot theft gone bad? Was Deidre's loving husband as perfect as he seemed? The more Kat finds out about the victim, the less she's convinced that Deidre was the woman she appeared to be. But then Kat, in her undercover role as a bartender, isn't the person she pretends to be, either. And as Kat discovers, in this little town, even life and death are an illusion.