Vermilion Blew, retired librarian and English teacher, has moved on from her mother's house, so she thinks, and has acquired a new home. She also gets a new cat she names Cleopatra. She has a new set of friends at Five Points, one of Bakersfield's newest retirement communities. But when Very's new acquaintances keep moving on to the marble forest, she begins to doubt that her move was a wise one. When she finds a body floating in the hot tub after the annual pool party, she now has concrete reasons to question her precipitous flight from the safety of the old neighborhood. Was the hot tub death just another older man on his last legs, or was it homicide? Very holds tight to her new circle of friends, but reaches out to her PI partner and her oldest friend, whose husband is a deputy sheriff, to solve the latest mystery.