When Hazel Marie's hotheaded private investigator husband, J.D., goes missing during a latest job, Miss Julia and Etta Mae struggle to free a man matching his description from a West Virginia jail, while Agnes Whitman returns to town with a following of misfits who might be members of a zealous cult.

When developers threaten to bulldoze the old courthouse to make way for condominiums, Miss Julia is dismayed. She enlists the help of Etta Mae Wiggins in a plot to scare off the money by exposing the town's many eccentric characters. --From publisher description.