With Peaceful Repose Cemetery, Drew Slocombe is determined to revolutionize the entire death industry and make cheap, ecologically sound burials a popular choice. Unfortunately, Drew's gravedigger has just discovered that their cemetery has one too many corpses. The body of an elderly woman has been occupying the field for months before Drew opened for business. The police don't appear to be particularly concerned by the death, and seem to think that the body is that of a vagrant. But for Drew, things don't add up: even if the woman died a natural death, someone was obviously responsible for burying her.

The mystery deepens when Genevieve Slater turns up at Drew's door. Drew has always fought an illicit attraction to Genevieve-an attraction that hasn't faded with time. But it's Drew's reputation for amateur detective work that Genevieve is now interested in. With reasons of her own for not wanting to contact the police, she wants to hire Drew to prove that the body is that of her missing mother. Drew realizes helping her might get him in trouble with the law, but, for a man looking to escape both money worries and marriage problems. Genevieve proves impossible to resist.