Meg is taking charge of locking up the church at night and looking after the toucan in the pastor Robyn Smith's office. Robyn has been babysitting the toucan for a parishioner who is in the Navy and away on a tour of duty. Meg and the church have been taking over Robyn's duties since she is pregnant and on bedrest. There are those against this, but these are the same people against having a female pastor or females on the vestry council, who made decisions about the church.
One of those people, Mr. Hagley, Meg finds dead in the crypt where the cremated remains are found one night when she is locking up and she hears noises outside that lead her there and his body. She notices a crowbar as though someone was trying to remove someone from the crypt. In the process, several of the ashes of different graves were disturbed as well as some of the plaques. Also found was a gorgeous ruby ring that may or may not be real.
Mr. Hagley had been having financial difficulties and wanted to have his wife's ashes removed from the crypt in order to sell the expensive plot to someone else, but the process was taking some time and he might have decided to take matters into his own hands it seems which is why he was in the crypt that night. Then someone else came along perhaps looking to unearth the Van der Lynden jewels that went missing during the heist back in the 1980s. It was said that Mrs. Van der Lynden faked a jewel robbery at a New Year's Eve party complete with thieves hired by her son, Archie. But things went wrong and two of the thieves were shot dead and the rest were eventually captured, but the jewels were never recovered leaving some to believe that Mrs. Van der Lynden had hidden them somewhere. She had been hoping to get the insurance money but she never did. She died six years later pretty much broke. Her son Archie was sent to prison for his part in the robbery, but he denied that his mother had anything to do with it. He said that he was going to sell her jewels because he needed the money.
When Meg goes to check out the church by doing a drive-by, she notices a flashlight bobbing up and down in the rooms and so she stops and calls the cops. Then she finds her car window being shot out by a gun. She hightails it out of there, but circles back once the police have arrived at the church. Someone thinks that the toucan is a parrot and can identify them and wants to take out the bird. Only Meg took the bird home with her the night of the murder. Toucan's, by the way, cannot talk. Meg takes the bird to the zoo for safekeeping.
Meg's dad wants to do a reenactment of the robbery and Meg's for that if it will keep him out of Chief Burke's hair about the murder. Problem is he wants her to be involved with it and she's quite busy with her own stuff and with following up on leads in the investigation herself. She's supposed to be asking the families affected by the break-in how they would like things handled. If they would still like to remain at the church and if so if they would like to have a ceremony when their ashes are replaced. Could this be placing Meg in contact with a killer who hid the jewels in the crypt inside their relative's ashes, since everyone whose ashes were disturbed has something to do with the robbery? Mr. Hagley was not well liked and won't be missed by really anyone. But there's a larger mystery here to be solved. I really loved this book. The characters were great, such as Dr. Womble, the retired priest who could wander off on different topics and we got to see an old fan favorite Ragnor again and his wild house since this was the house that the robbery took place at. The plot is fun to read too. I give it four out of five stars.
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