creepy roland metz is the funeral director of the cedar lawn mortuary. young women seem to have a habit of turning up dead after attending a funeral at his establishment. jack lattiger is a young, ambitious attorney who has just been ditched by his girlfriend and his law firm. he's seeking a safe landing place with a competitor when his new boss hands him a probate file to administer. the deceased's name sarah ann rings a bell - jack jogs by her gravestone on his morning run through the cedar lawn cemetery, and he's curious about the young woman's early death. now he has the chance to look deeper, and his morbid fascination with a dead girl he never knew grows into a romantic fascination and a full-bloom crusade to find her killer. mr. metz is not just an odd fish living a celibate life in a flashback to gloria swanson's digs in sunset boulevard. he has a fetish for luring victims to his web on the pretext of settling relatives' funeral arrangements, drugging them and acting out his perverted fantasies in the basement of the funeral parlor. when jack lattiger digs into the death of sarah ann, he discovers an ugly trail of serial homicide leading to metz.