A woman Marc Kadella has known since junior high school has returned to the Twin Cities after a 20-year absence. Unknown to Marc, she has left a trail of dead husbands and destroyed families in her wake. Wealthy, successful families that she has left almost impoverished while using her charms on the older husbands to inherit everything upon their deaths. Her most recent conquest was the founder of a well-known, successful, St. Paul based grocery store chain, Sutherland's.

The book starts out with the funeral of the husband and Mackenzie, Marc's high school friend, reminiscing about her prior dead husbands. Like her three previous dead husbands, William Sutherland has died from a sudden, massive heart attack. At the reading of the Will, his three grown, mostly useless, children find out they have been all but disinherited, just like the others. Only this time the family has a good friend who is a St Paul detective who will eventually dig up, literally, enough evidence to have her indicted.

Marc Kadella meets up with Mackenzie at a high school reunion. After confessing the fact that they each had a crush on the other while in school together, feelings they never acted on, they begin a personal relationship. When she is indicted for William Sutherland's death, Marc will take her case and defend her.