It's winter in the cozy Blue Ridge Mountain community of Crozet, Virginia, and Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen is starting to build a new work shed designed by her dear friend, local architect Gary Gardner. But in this 27th outing (after A Hiss Before Dying), the natural serenity is shattered when Gary is shot to death by a masked motorcyclist. Outraged, Harry begins to burrow into her friend's past—and unearths a pattern of destructive greed reaching far back into Virginia's post-Revolutionary history. When the killer strikes again, Harry and her crime-solving cats Mrs. Murphy and Pewter look for a link between Gary's death and murders from decades ago—and ancient secrets that underlie everything.