Jessie returns to Sage Bluff, Montana, accompanied by Jack, her huge orange tomcat, to house sit for her dad and judge an art competition. With her easel set up in the family field and painting the morning light on the golden haystack, she absentmindedly brushes a note of turquoise onto the canvas-echoing a spot of color she sees .

Curious about the lovely spot of blue, the artist walks over to discover a shoe. The mate is still on the foot of a dying Native American girl crammed between the hay bales. She whispers to Jessie that her attacker was a cop. The story becomes personal when old flame, Sheriff Russell Bonham, reveals that the girl had been attacked while on her way to speak to Jessie's family about two missing Thomas Moran masterpieces worth millions. The paintings disappeared nearly a hundred years ago from St.

Benedict's Mission School. Right after the unsolved murder of Jessie's great aunt Kate. Jessie teams up with Arvid Abrahmsen, a huge Norwegian cop, and FBI art theft agent, Grant Kennedy, to search for the lost artwork and solve the murders, both the past and the present.