Everybody loved easygoing Ham Brocato, producer of the famed New Orleans JazzFest. So how did he end up stabbed to death on his kitchen floor? New Orleans Homicide Detective Skip Langdon just happens to be on hand when Ham's body is discovered in the middle of his own party the evening before the Fest. To complicate the already murky case, the victim's sixteen-year-old blues musician sister has disappeared, and Skip suspects that if the young woman isn't the murderer, she's in mortal danger from the person who is. So Task One is finding Melody, ambitious, unhappy at home, and determined to break from her family. As she probes the victim's tangled relationships, Skip finds a Southern family to rival any in Tennessee Williams, including Ham's live-in lover, feisty and swiftly rising star Ti-Belle Thiebaud; his father George, enmeshed with family members in a bitter disagreement over the