At night the zoo is a magical place: grasshopper mice whisper their cutting little secrets, bats practice their syntax, and penguins dream of Patagonia. Caitlin is a young woman in peril. While studying and drawing the animals at the zoo, she realizes that she is being stalked by a strange person who mimics the behavior of jungle cats. Tom, her new true love is of no help and may even be married with children. When a keeper is murdered Caitlin engages the help of a zoo security guard to be her bodyguard. Eddie, an ex-cop and murder suspect, is a man with a shady past. He devises a plan to trap the "Beast" in the zoo-using Caitlin as bait.

The "Red Rose Girls"--Violet Oakley, Jessie Willcox Smith, and Elizabeth Shippen Green--were not the only female artists to live at Cogslea. Caitlin, an artist, is housesitting at Cogslea when she finds herself on a quest to unlock secrets from the past. Eager to help in the adventure are Toby, an imaginative twelve year old; Maggie, the cleaning woman who talks to ghosts; and Caitlin's African wild dog, Malindi, who dreams in parables. But Caitlin will tell no one, not even her husband, Sam, of the radical method she will use to step through the portal of time to solve a three hundred year old mystery.