Jane Whitefield helps people in trouble to disappear. Her client in Dance for the Dead is a brave and endearing young boy named Timmy. His parents are dead, and his adoptive parents, along with his governess and her boyfriend, have been brutally murdered by someone trying to acquire the enormous fortune that Timmy is due to inherit. But Jane also has another client, one she doesn't want, but is forced to help: Mary Perkins, suspected of stealing $50 million from S&L's during the eighties. The two cases become excitingly intertwined.