Wedding Ring Blues

When a vintage wedding quilt reveals a fifty-year-old murder, one quilter must decode deadly family secrets before history repeats itself. Emma Hargrove thought restoring Margaret Campbell's Double Wedding Ring quilt would be a simple anniversary project for Maple Creek's Golden Wedding Festival. But when Emma discovers irregular stitching patterns that don't match traditional techniques, she realizes the elderly widow has hidden a desperate message in the fabric—one that points to a long-buried murder. As Emma investigates with Detective Mick Bryant, she uncovers a conspiracy that reaches back to 1974, when Margaret's first husband Robert died under suspicious circumstances. The official ruling was accidental drowning, but the coded rings in Margaret's quilt tell a different story: one of drug money, political corruption, and a cover-up that has shaped Maple Creek's founding families for decades. When Emma's research threatens powerful people who have spent fifty years protecting their secrets, the attacks begin. A genealogist is hospitalized, evidence is stolen, and Emma realizes that Mayor Douglas Hartwell—descendant of the original conspirators—will do anything to keep the truth buried, even if it means destroying the entire town. Because in Maple Creek, some family patterns run deeper than anyone suspected, and the most dangerous threads are the ones that connect past murders to present-day power. Book 4 in The Quilting Club Mysteries.