Sequestered with the Murderers

When Brightness Tours' bus driver, Duffy Radley, fails to return to the bus after a rest stop at the Jefferson Springtop rest area on Interstate 81, the passengers are sequestered on the bus until he is found. The state police are called, and a massive hunt around the rest area ensues. He is located inside the locked maintenance room, murdered, and shot seven times in the chest. How did he get there? And why was he shot seven times; what's the significance?

After the state police release the sequestered passengers, the director of bus services drives them to their drop-off place. Unlicensed private detective Vett Brayborn is one of the passengers. The next day she is contacted by the president of Brightness Tours, Jackson Stevens, and hired to find Duffy's murderer before the police do. Why the rush? What is Brightness Tours hiding? Jackson tells Vett that the quicker she can get a handle on the murder and bring it to a conclusion, the faster he can quell any negative talk that would put Brightness in an unfavorable position.

Vett learns Duffy is associated with the ten-year-old Lacecap Hydrangea Murders, where an owner of a brothel, Ms. Lacecap, and her niece, Diantha, were murdered six months apart. Ms. Lacecap was stabbed to death. The homicide detectives think the incident was a robbery gone bad since her house was ransacked. The niece was found in the park; death was due to blunt force trauma to the back of her head. Duffy was married to Ms. Lacecap's daughter, Sybil, and was arrested for both murderers because of his attempts to seduce Diantha and his association with known criminals. Because his case was based on circumstantial evidence, he was acquitted of all wrongdoing. However, Ms. Lacecap's family and the community think he got away with murder. Did he? Did the family and community know something the police didn't? Did they exact revenge?

Though Vett distrusts Jackson's "mitigating damage to the company" reason for the rush to find Duffy's murderer before the police, she plunges full speed ahead. She uncovers the powerful driving force behind Duffy's execution-style murder and a long-ago secret behind the Lacecap Hydrangea Murders. This secret was ripe to be told.