David Randall has a talent for finding things but works for a dead-end detective agency. When a music professor is murdered in his home, the only clue is a notebook full of odd musical notations. David wants in on the case but is warned off by police. A client, Melanie Gentry, hires David to prove her great-grandmother was killed by her lover, John Burrows Ashford, over authorship of the song "Patchwork Melodies." He sets out on the investigation, hoping also to find a clue to the professor's murder and to a third murder, this one connected to a documentary on early American music. David's investigations lead to a notebook that includes John Ashford's most famous song. But things get supernaturally complicated when John Ashford's spirit parks itself in David's friend, Cam, and refuses to leave until David proves Ashford's innocence.