Synopsis
Running Maid for a Day keeps Charlotte La Rue plenty busy. But her latest job involves more than dusting and mopping. She's got to contend with a feuding gardening club--and things certainly aren't coming up roses. . .
The summer's off to a sweltering start, and one of her best clients has just up and moved--leaving a big chunk of free time in Charlotte's normally hectic schedule. But the empty spot on Charlotte's client list is soon filled by gardening enthusiast Mimi Adams. Mimi's planning to host the next meeting of the tony Horticultural Heritage Society--and she wants Charlotte to be there.
Charlotte's not sure what to expect. Some gardening chat, sure; lots of good gossip, definitely--but these ladies have their claws out. There's talk of extra-marital affairs (did Mimi really sleep with her friend Rita's husband?) and a bitter argument over the club's presidential election (Mimi won--but was it rigged?) A few days later, Mimi's dead. The doctor says she was poisoned. But who planted it, and where? Was it in the bitter brownies Mimi munched at the meeting? Or in the red wine she sipped later? From Mimi's resentful "friends" and neighbors to her scheming husband, Charlotte has a whole plot full of suspects to weed through. . .so she'd better start digging. . .
Publishers Weekly
Cleaning-service professional Charlotte LaRue enters the elite New Orleans garden-club world in Barbara Colley's Wiped Out: A Charlotte LaRue Mystery, the middling fourth outing (after 2004's Polished Off) for the amateur sleuth with an uncanny knack for attracting murder-here the poisoning of Mimi Adams, the much-gossiped-about president of the Horticultural Heritage Society. A wealth of verbal sniping makes up for a shortage of gardening detail. Agent, Evan Marshall. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.