I am Cassidy Jamison, and I am over the moon. I signed a new contract for an exciting project for Celebrations at Ivy Springs, my event planning service and location destination in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I normally host parties, weddings, and business retreats, but I jumped at the chance when the alumni planning team at the high school approached me about having their big reunion at my place.

I moved back to Ivy Springs a couple of years ago when my grandmother passed away. I have a marketing background, so taking over her business was right up my alley. I may have bitten off more than I expected. I am so grateful that my grandmother’s friends, the Pearly Girls, stayed on to help me keep things running. The Pearly Girls are an amazing group of retired women: Ruthanne Carmichael, a former CPA and my accountant; Kate Carlson, a former nurse; Aileen Roberts, former elementary school teacher, and Roxie Mathews, former interior designer and the group’s cougar. They have been so helpful with keeping our events calendar organized and fabulous. They are so talented, even if they are always prying into my dating life and trying to fix me up with any eligible bachelor in a three-county radius.

I have been so busy with the business that I haven’t done a lot of reconnecting with folks in town, and I was hoping that the reunion would help me get a jump start on that. We have meet and greets, a redux of the Homecoming dance, goat yoga and meditation in my Zen garden, a sock hop, a concert, and a golf tournament planned for the two-weekend event.

Little did I know that the whole thing was going to make me flashback to high school. Some things never change, and the mean girls just got meaner. I spent most of my time with the planning team trying to calm tensions and solve over-dramatized problems. And then if things weren’t tense enough, two of the alumni ended up murdered on my property. The Pearly Girls and I had to jump in and help the sheriff’s office with the investigation in order to clear the name of an innocent suspect.

Normally my days are calm and serene, but circumstances recently have thrown us into the middle of some shocking murders, and we’ve used our resources and people skills to ferret out the killers and make sure that justice is served. And even with the “recent unpleasantness” as Ruthanne calls it, I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.

MURDER PLAYS SECOND FIDDLE
Series Name: A Pearly Girls Mystery, Book 2
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Release: January 2026
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link

The Pearly Girls return to solve a high school reunion murder in this sequel to Murder Strikes a Chord.

Event planner, Cassidy Jamison, and her sexagenarian staff of Roxie, Kate, Aileen, and Ruthanne are up to their elbows with a high school reunion committee’s constantly changing requirements for an event that must be the most elaborate and memorable at all costs.

When well-known reporter, Darcy Branch, and former cheerleader, Brittany Mahoney, are found dead on her property, Cassidy and the gang have to find the killer before the party’s over. And the more Cassidy and her Chihuahua Elvis dig for clues, the more deadly secrets they uncover, including one that changes everything she knew about her family’s history.

The Pearly Girls need to solve this fast before the Class of 2009 goes down in Ivy Springs history as the Deadliest Reunion.

About Heather Weidner
Through the years, Heather Weidner has been a cop’s kid, technical writer, editor, college professor, software tester, and IT manager. She writes the Pearly Girls Mysteries, the Delanie Fitzgerald Mysteries, The Jules Keene Glamping Mysteries, and The Mermaid Bay Christmas Shoppe Mysteries. She blogs regularly with the Writers Who Kill.

Her short stories appear in a variety of anthologies, and she has non-fiction pieces in Promophobia and The Secret Ingredient: A Mystery Writers’ Cookbook.

Originally from Virginia Beach, Heather has been a mystery fan since Scooby-Doo and Nancy Drew. She lives in Central Virginia with her husband and a crazy Mini Aussie Shepherd.