Spring has come to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and spring
fever to the tiny town of Crozet. As the annual Dogwood
Festival approaches, romantic maneuvers are rampant. Even
equable postmistress Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen
inadvertently snatches a blind date from under the nose of
manhunter Lottie Pearson, the university fundraiser.
As for Mrs. Murphy, her interest in the exploding bird
population is intensified by Pewter’s discovery of a dead
rare woodpecker near the back porch. Feline intuition
tells her more mysteries lie ahead. And they do.
A case of stolen hubcaps seems relatively straightforward
until the truck that transported them to the unsuspecting
O’Bannon brothers’ upscale salvage yard turns out to be
completely untraceable. And while everybody deplores the
tipsy, raunchy behavior of young mechanic Roger O’Bannon,
nobody is sure it accounts for his sudden death over a
sobering cup of coffee. But when his brother Sean will not
authorize an autopsy and presses on with preparations for
the Wrecker’s Ball, the climax of the season’s junketing,
people start to whisper.
Then, as violent thunderstorms sweep in from the west to
shadow spring festivities, another death occurs–could it
be murder? Harry ponders whether the two deaths are
connected. And as she and her furry cohorts–the cats Mrs.
Murphy and Pewter and corgi Tee Tucker–get mud on their
boots and paws mapping local terrain and relationships and
sniffing out telltale scents of villainy, someone is
watching their every move.
When a shooting leads to the discovery of a half-million
crisp, clean dollar bills that look to be very dirty,
Harry’s blood is really up. But by the time she’s close to
fingering a cold-blooded murderer, Mrs. Murphy already
knows who it is–and who’s next in line. She also knows
that Harry, curious as a cat, does not have nine lives.
And the one she does have is hanging by the thinnest of
threads.
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