Elderly Undersheriff Bill Gastner, in Posadas County, New Mexico, is about to lose his vaulable deputy when she goes to Minnesota with her doctor husband. But his life becomes far more complicated than the loss of Estelle when his boss, the sheriff, dies in a private plane crash piloted by his brother-in-law. Questions about why the men were flying (the sheriff hated to fly) in bad weather are overshadowed when the coroner finds that the pilot was killed by gun shots from the ground through the bottom of the plane, and the sheriff could not pilot it down safely.