Carol Montgomery and husband Lyle Parnassus, have just returned from Morocco. Carol was part of a team consisting of engineering specialists sent to assist the Moroccan government in rehabilitating ancient historical buildings damaged by a monumental earthquake, while Lyle got hooked up with a team of historians and ancient manuscript specialists looking for prayers written by Mohammed himself. With the help of an old Moroccan witch, they were able to find the parchment pages within a niche in a quake-damaged mosque. Although they were certain that the manuscript had been turned over to the Moroccan government, it had disappeared and Lyle is quickly accused of stealing it.
All the while, Carol is contracted in supervising the shoring up of a historic Las Cruces house. A graduate student doing a historic study of the house discovers that there may be a baby buried under the fireplace, the very place where children of the current and previous owners have reported seeing a man in a gray duster and hat standing before. Coincidentally, the new owner happens to be an immigrant from Morocco.
Finding themselves followed by strangers that look like CIA spooks, Lyle returns to Morocco to prove his innocence while Carol stays home to oversee the excavation of the fireplace, alongside the graduate student that discovers the story of the buried baby.