Penny Summers, a thirty-something ex-Navy public affairs officer, is dumbfounded to learn that her first major landscape design client has died while she was studying classical gardens in North Carolina. As her great-aunt would say, she's doubly bumfuzzled to discover that her client's wife, whom she had never met, is her long-estranged mother and probably caused his death. When she hears whispers from her late lamented Grandpa Jack, her suspects multiply. With forensic help from her 12-year-old CSI-wannabe "niece," Kalea, and Irish shenanigans from her client's sainted brother Brendan, on loan from Broadway, Penny's focus tightens. But she has no proof and no hope of finding any.