Prudence leaves her job in a California art gallery to marry a young army captain on the way home from Vietnam. She settles into the life of a country housewife at the old Abernathy plantation in Mason County—Virginia, that is, until her husband is disbarred from practicing law. Prudence pitches in to keep the family finances afloat, first by selling off antiques from the plantation house, and then by welding funky furniture out of cast-off farm tractors and combines. She sells the furniture to the commuters who are moving into the northern end of the county from the Washington, DC, area.

 When one of her heavy tractor sofas crashes through the parlor floor of the old Abernathy house, a secret compartment exposes a skeleton in a Confederate Lieutenant's uniform. While dusting for prints in the compartment, the police forensic team also finds an expensive bracelet that was stolen the previous year from the house of the rich Yankee who hosted the Confederate Memorial Day Ball. It's possible that the person in Confederate uniform was involved in the theft during ball and hid there after he was mortally wounded by an accomplice who didn't want to share the loot. But it is also possible that the theft was done before the ball. Unfortunately, the local sheriff decides that Prudence had the means, since the safe containing the jewelry was opened with a welder's cutting torch, and the motive, since the Abernathys are chronically broke.