Willibald Adrian Metzger restores old furniture, the beauty of which he admires with a good glass of red wine. The amiable loner visits his customers by bicycle because he does not have a driver's license. Usually he only pays attention to old cupboards and chests of drawers, but this time something else piques his interest: a beautiful woman bathing in a lonely mountain lake. The sight promptly knocks him out of the saddle - especially since it is his unfulfilled childhood love Danjela Djurkovic. She doesn't seem to recognize him anymore, because she is only interested in the macabre find at the place where they meet again: a severed finger that is stolen by a bird of prey in the next instant. Is that a dream Willibald and Danjela have a common goal, the Hotel "Sonnenhof" - from whose pool the corpse of a guest has just been fished. The police assume an accident. But before Willibald knows it, the curious Danjela has taken a farewell letter and the dead man's cell phone.

For 25 years, restorer Willibald Adrian Metzger has heard nothing from his former schoolmates. Then he suddenly stumbles - quite literally - over the corpse of a former classmate who had bullied him in a cruel way in his school days. When Metzger arrives at the scene with the police, he can't believe his eyes: the body is gone. Against his nature and spurred on by Danjela's curiosity, the former eccentric organizes a class reunion to uncover the cover-up of the bloody deed. His former classmates are astounded by the eloquence of the actually shy outsider, who uses his sharp mind and great powers of deduction to twist their words around in their mouths...

The time has come: Willibald Metzger is marrying the woman of his dreams, Danjela Djurkovic! But everything changes at the altar. Instead of saying "I do," Danjela leaves Willibald frozen in shock at the altar and disappears with a stranger. The inconsolable Metzger, almost drowning in alcohol, and his best friend, caretaker Petar Wollnar, try to get to the bottom of the situation. Because something isn't quite right.

Willibald Adrian Metzger is supposed to restore the interior of a dance theater in Graz. But then the lead actress and, shortly thereafter, the understudy of the current production suddenly die. Metzger isn't the only one who finds this strange.