For a Nevada wedding, the nuptials between Sharon McCone
and sexy fellow investigator Hy Ripinsky are downright
tasteful: no Elvis impersonators, no plastic flowers, no
embarrassing last-minute bailout by a bride well known for
her phobia to commitment. This time, McCone has displayed
the smarts she uses in her successful detective firm and
chosen a guy who respects her as a professional and shares
her passions. But living together in her beloved little
house on Church Street may be another matter entirely,
especially when Hy suggests they need a bigger place.
The looming crisis of who will compromise first is delayed
when Hy heads out of town on business and McCone dives
into one of her most baffling cases yet - the
disappearance of Laurel Greenwood, who vanished twenty-two
years before without a trace. Laurel's grown-up daughter
is desperately seeking closure and wants McCone to find
out the fate of the young mother and artist who never
returned from a day of landscape painting in a Central
California coastal town.
The case is cold, and the evidence McCone begins
uncovering is chilling. Secrets kept for two decades now
emerge to create a portrait of a woman who's perfect on
the surface and anything but a paragon beneath it. And
when someone takes potshots at McCone to scare her into
dropping her inquiries, the detective's resolve hardens.
She intends to uncover the truth - the whole truth - even
when it awakens her suspicions that the bonds of marriage
can easily become chains, and that escaping them may lead
to desperate acts...or murderous ones.