Bowdre and his half-Hopi girlfriend find themselves at the Denver Museum's Desert Research Station, an outpost of gossiping, back-biting scientists. When a corpse turns up in Skeleton Canyon, Bowdre discovers that the murdered woman was not only a scientist but also a special FBI agent and the former girlfriend of an eccentric snake-keeper. The unraveling of the murder's secret uncovers an international network smuggling priceless Aztec artifacts out of Mexico. Bowdre lands neck-deep in a weird situation that just keeps getting weirder.