Pariah — Thomas Zigal

In Aspen, ex-hippies drive Volvos, ski bums cut million-dollar deals, and Sheriff Kurt Muller is the law: a single father with a checkered past and the notion that right and wrong still matter. But one evening, against his better judgment, Muller spends the night comforting an old flame, a reclusive heiress named Nicole Bauer who's convinced her ex-lover, the 60s blues idol Rocky Rhodes, is threatening to kill her. Kurt doesn't believe her story, for good reason: twenty years earlier, Rocky's body was found on the grounds of the Bauer mansion, and Nicole was charged with his murder.

But the next morning Nicole is found dead, and Kurt is a prime suspect. To clear his name and find her killer, he begins his own investigation, digging through the shady profiles of Nicole's jet-set contemporaries, and the mystery of Rocky's death. Amid the sin, sorrow, and secrets of the living, Kurt stumbles across a mysterious woman once called Pariah--who hides her past, a butterfly tattoo, and the key to Nicole's final hours.