Ninety-two-year-old poet/sleuth Victoria Trumbull discovers a neighbor's body in the home of one of the three town assessors, who have been skimming off tax money from wealthy landowners and stashing it in their own retirement funds. then the private pilot of the spouse of one of these landowners is found dead, floating in him employer's pond. When Victoria finds the body of the long-missing assessors' clerk, it's time to team up with her old friend and rival Emery Meyer to tie all the threads together and solve the murders.