Meet Peggy Lee: forensic botanist, detective’s widow, and owner of The Potting Shed, an urban gardener’s paradise in downtown Charlotte. While the summer heat is stifling her shop’s business, death is always in season.

While attending a funeral in nearby Badin, Peggy learns of more bad news: a diver is found dead while performing routine work on the local dam. Then, days later, a woman is recovered from the swimming pool of a Charlotte home. When the body surfaces, so do the clues—including an unusual plant wound in the victim’s hair. The police call forensic botanist Peggy Lee to the scene, but her findings only raise more questions. What do these two deaths have in common? And how did duckweed end up in a pool?

Peggy is happy to lend her green thumb to the investigation, but this may be the one time digging for a killer leaves her empty-handed.