John Brown and Company makes furniture and has been a solid business for years. But young Harold Skinner wants to shake things up and make modern furniture. John Brown will have none of it. Soon Harold meets John Brown's wife, an attractive woman in her 30s, who married for money -- though she denies it. Unlike her husband, she's excited about Skinner's modern ideas and wants to help him. Especially after the two of them become lovers. Harold comes up with a "wonderful horrible idea" to get John Brown out of the way: convince him he's losing his mind.

Eileen Maloney, a hostess at a strip joint, has woken up to find her two children are missing. Lieutenant Bramm suspects that she killed them herself. He questions her for days about her lifestyle, her children, her ex-husband, men and women, and life in general. He forces her to re-enact her last moments in the children's room hoping to shock her into giving more information. The lieutenant's infatuation is not merely professional, however, and soon they are reversing roles.