The Society Secret

Newlyweds Celie Dupree and Dr. Rhys Thorne are finally enjoying their married life and the success of the fully restored Bayou Bouffant. Their peace is shattered when the local Historical Society is robbed. The thief bypasses the modern safe and instead steals a non-descript, uncatalogued ledger that Celie and Rhys know holds the coded log for Elias Calloway's Confederate gold and silver coins. The lead suspect is "Skip" Breaux, a disgruntled former history student of Rhys's and a distant descendant of Calloway. Skip, driven by professional jealousy and a belief in reclaiming his family's lost wealth, begins a vicious campaign to discredit Celie and Rhys, claiming they faked the Emerald discovery and are now stealing history for profit. Isolated and fighting a community turning against her, Celie finds help in her newest ghost, Jean-Pierre, a secretive 19th-century ferryman tied to the old dock. As the ghosts work to expose Skip's libelous rumors, Celie and Rhys must race to decode the stolen ledger and find the Civil War-era coin cache before Skip can use his family claim to hijack the town's history and permanently destroy their hard-won reputation.