Partial heir to the immense family fortune, Sylvester Beal, reclusive, alcoholic, and profoundly greedy, employs Rudy Clarke to travel to East Bentley New Hampshire and there murder his sister in order to have the entire inheritance to himself. Clarke takes on a partner, Johnny Kelso and together they determine that Beal can pay much more than he bargained for and while they all wait for the estate to be settled, Aaron Perkins of the East Bentley police department slowly closes in on the killers. For his scheme to succeed, Beal must find a way to eliminate Clarke and Kelso and deflect police suspicions. In a desperate move he travels to Cape Cod where he learns that Clarke is entangled in ways that Beal determines to make profitable.