A ten-hour car trip with your eighty-year-old grandmother is never much fun, especially if you're seven months pregnant. But when Torie O'Shea's longtime family friend Clarissa Hart Campbell insists that she and Grandma Gert come for a visit at her West Virginia boarding house, they just can't say no to the 101-year-old dynamo.
Upon their arrival, Torie and Gert find Clarissa has called together her entire family for the reading of her new will. But everything's happening too fast, even for Clari: the next morning, she's found murdered in bed. The new will stands, and her lawyer follows through on the old woman's wishes to settle an eighty-year-old debt to Torie's great-grandmother: The Panther Run Boarding House now belongs to Torie. Mystified, Torie must put her genealogy skills to work to determine what secrets worth killing for may be hiding in the dilapidated boarding house and the Campbell family story-before it's too late.
