Connie Miller's bumper brushes a corpse and her stale retirement explodes. Algin Carstairs had a brilliant future. He died a disreputable bum dumped against a garbage pickup. Maud Tosh inveigles Connie into opening a typing service on the town square as a subterfuge to discover who murdered the Carstairs' prodigal son. Five women wanted him dead: his wife, mistress, a rejected love, his sister, and one who works in the shadows. Connie cannot accept that one of her favored former students is capable of murder through the meager evidence collected by Sheriff Dan Sommers points to one of them. Jordan Ames opens the office door with a request for her to type a property deed. The claim he intends to stake is to her future. The taboos of a lifetime assault Connie as she battles against the power of a forbidden love. Connie pushes her personal desires aside when the battered body of Paula Hamilton, Algin's mistress, is pulled from the lake. She realizes that Jordan is more than the small town lawyer he is working hard to become, but is he capable of killing a not-so-innocent woman? Who in close-knit Ono County will stop at nothing to hide their past and present atrocities? Connie must find both a killer and her own heart before she becomes the next victim.