Jolie moves to Great Aunt Madge’s B&B at the Jersey shore, taking her cat Jazz, and joining Madge's pair of prune-eating dogs. Jolie does not view this as a retreat from her embezzling ex-husband, just a smart change. She had no idea her life was about to get even more complicated. Jolie finds work as a real estate appraiser, but a low-life named Joe Pedone demands that Jolie repay her husband’s gambling debts and she runs into Michael Riordan, her high school crush. She's not sure which one is more trouble. Jolie appraises his mother's house and finds his mother dead in bed. Soon the mundane work of appraising real estate and dodging suggestions to attend the ten-year high school reunion is mixed with calls from reporters, scary suggestions from Pedone, and requests that she help the local busybody with First Presbyterian's social services work. Jolie balances her fear of Pedone, belief that Michael is innocent, and sometimes uneasy friendship with long-ago friend Scoobie. Her list of murder suspects includes Michael's soon-to-be-ex wife and a couple other beneficiaries of Mrs. Riordan's will. Those suspicions don't include Scoobie, but he makes it to the police department's list. Jolie wants to prove both friends innocent. But will Pedone's plans leave her alive to find the truth?