 The book is about an eleven-year-old girl, Jeanmarie Troxell, and a boy, Malcolm Soo, who bury dead animals in a "graveyard" they make out of an abandoned place with many trees behind their trailer park.One day they find a dog who they think deserves a very special plot in the "cemetery", so they find the exact center of the yard and start digging, but they suddenly fall down into a hole that leads to a dead woman, former movie star Tallulah, and her dog (the dead dog they found on the street).She sends them on missions for special people and things, especially her lost necklace, the Regina Stone, but always for a pack of cigarettes.