Spring arrives in northern Virginia, and as the ground thaws and the peonies begin to bloom a bright magenta, the women of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church prepare for a Homecoming celebration like no other. In honor of the day, Harry, Susan Tucker, and their friends decide to remodel the gardens of the church based on the plants that would have grown in the time St. Luke’s was built, and plan to visit the historically accurate gardens of Montpelier to find inspiration in Dolley Madison’s climbing roses.
But the gardens have been visited by catastrophe—a patch near the back is torn up in the night, completely destroyed. Is this the work of a random vandal? Or was someone looking for something growing in that garden?
When Jeannie Cordle drops dead at a charity auction, poisoned by a fatal weed slipped into her drink, Harry’s worst suspicions are confirmed: a killer lurks in their midst, one with a keen understanding of poisonous plants. Although she can’t yet prove it, Harry believes the murder is related to the eighteenth-century skeleton discovered last year in the church graveyard, wearing an expensive necklace of diamonds and pearls. The identity of the skeleton remains unidentified, but the necklace is undoubtedly worth killing for.
With help from her feline sidekicks, Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, as well as Tee Tucker the corgi and sweet puppy Pirate, Harry sets out to find the weed in St. Luke’s garden—and stop a killer before they can strike again.