Margaret Lennox sold her home in Washington, D.C. and moved to Marfa, Texas, hoping to escape the insanity, the crime, and the traffic of our nation's capital. Marfa was a place that welcomed artists, and Margaret hoped to find a quiet life there.

But the Marfa Lights were not the only mysterious thing to worry about in this small Texas town. As soon as she moved into her renovated cottage on Austin Street, the bodies began to pile up. A mysterious woman was murdered and thrown from a train behind Margaret's house. She discovered one of the woman's shoes in the brush, and the shoe was full of money. Her neighbors and a neighbor's cat were poisoned. What was happening in this sleepy, remote place that was supposed to be her respite from crime and stress? Margaret's curiosity moved her to investigate, with the help of her friend Augustus Gemini, the disturbing events that were occurring in Marfa. The Texas Rangers did not appreciate Margaret's involvement.

Meanwhile, Darnell Jackson, formerly known as Zeus Noonday Miracle, decides that finding Fountain, a long-lost piece of sculpture from 1917, is the key to making him a rich man. He sets out on a quest to track down this famous and long-lost work of art by Marcel Duchamp. As his search for the illusive Fountain becomes more frustrating, his vagabond life deteriorates, and he becomes desperate enough to kill.

Possession of the most influential work of art of the twentieth century remains just out of Darnell's grasp as he hunts down his prey in Marfa.