In the summer of 1970, a possible insurance scam takes Houston PI Ted Stephens to Losgrove, Miss., where he meets Mississippi Vivian, a waitress at the Magnolia Cafe, the town's nerve center. A corporate client, the National Insurance Company, is skeptical of 12 suspicious claims originating from Losgrove. Ted asks Mississippi for her help, but the possibly self-inflicted shooting death of one of the claimants, Perce Segal, at the house of another claimant, Wade Dickie, complicates his mission. What should be a simple case of insurance fraud becomes increasingly more sticky when Wade turns up dead only a couple of hours after Ted had a fight with Wade.