 Valleyview, a convalescent and nursing care home, has an excellent reputation. Then Howard Phillips dies of a blood clot - a heart attack - and his nephew drops $362 on Quincy s desk. That is the county s fee for an autopsy, which is the young man s right, so Quincy performs the examination - and discovers the elder Phillips  heart was in fine shape, with no evidence of a clot. A second patient succumbs to the same mysterious disorder, and shortly after that staff nurse Grayson. All come to Quincy s table; none reveals the secret. Asten pressures Quincy to step lightly around Valleyview s reputation lest the good work it does be destroyed forever. But until Quincy can determine the cause of death, he cannot dismiss any possibility - including the most damning one of all, that Valleyview might have an Angel of Death among its staff...