Chicago, 1899. Amid the tireless work of the women's rights movement, a wealthy heiress suffragist's desire to escape an unhappy marriage draws detective Harriet Morrow into a whirlpool of deception, lies, and murder . . .

Chicago detective Harriet Morrow's new assignment is strictly confidential. Suffragette Helen Breitweiss entrusted her family jewels to her dashing piano teacher, Alan Phelps. The plan was for him to sell them so they could run off together with a hefty fortune. Phelps did run off—without Helen—only to fall to his death from the sixth-floor window of a luxury hotel. Harriet's job: recover the jewels as discreetly as possible before anyone on the mansion-lined south side, especially Helen's husband, gets wind of her desperate scheme.

Inquiries along Jewelers' Row yield nothing for Harriet, yet a visit to Phelps's hotel room does: a single diamond earring, questions about the true identity of the defenestrated swindler, and a growing list of suspects, including three of his other female students, all members of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association. Complicating matters further, Phelps's only known friend, a fellow English immigrant, has disappeared without a trace.

Unraveling the mystery of which of Phelps's students had reason to kill him takes Harriet to rowdy suffragist meetings, an exclusive haberdashery, dicey red-light district saloons, and the sinister inner circles of Chicago's underworld. Harriet needs to be at her sharpest if she is to reclaim Helen's jewelry and avoid the same fate as the charismatic piano teacher. Whoever he really was . . .