A DEADLY BOUQUET

River City florist Bretta Solomon (Lilies That Fester, 2001, etc.) is stressed to the max. Not only is she supplying all the flowers for Nikki Montgomery’s gargantuan outdoor wedding, but the long-absent father who abandoned her as a child has arrived from Texas to make amends by moving lock, stock, and moderately wealthy barrel into the new home she’s renovating. Even worse, Bailey Monroe, the handsome ex–federal agent Bretta met at a florists’ conference in Branson just bought the cottage at the edge of her property—the cottage she had wanted to use as a wedding chapel when she converted the rest of the estate into a bed-and-breakfast. Nikki’s mother Evelyn is driving Bretta crazy with last-minute changes, even asking for the shrubs along the bridal path to be sprayed gold. And the other wedding professionals are no help at all. Coordinator Sonya Norris is efficient but brusque; chef Dana Olsen has never catered any event bigger than a children’s birthday party; photographer Kasey Vickers can’t figure out how to take the aerial photographs Evelyn wants; green-tressed hairdresser Claire Alexander is a total flake. But when Claire is killed—followed by Lydia Dearborne, the customer who was about to reveal some hot gossip—Bretta realizes that the three professionals are keeping a secret that goes back to their shared childhood, a secret likely to lead to their shared doom.

The complexities of her budding relationships with Bailey and her dad still don’t eclipse Bretta’s skills as a detective, or as a florist.