A Dismal Harvest

2022 | Mystery

It's autumn on the Sonoma Coast, and Claudia Simcoe is sure that the gourmet harvest dinner being held at her artisan marketplace will wipe away any memories of the unpleasantness last summer. But then the newly installed video surveillance system shows local lawyer Clark Gowan removing something from a hidden compartment in the marketplace walls . . . and Claudia's visit to his office the next day reveals that he's dead, shot with one of his own vintage guns.

The town's new no-nonsense police chief wants to know about the compartment, but she's more interested in the fact that Julie Muller, famed cheesemaker and one of Claudia's tenants, broke in to Gowan's office the night before he was killed. Concerned for her friend, and also about the revelation that Gowan, who was involved in the sale of the marketplace building, was not entirely on the up and up, Claudia is determined to learn more.

The building's Prohibition-era history offers some clues, and the victim's illegal legal work turns out to have affected a number of people in town, from Julie to the farm museum he cheated out of a significant amount of land. Meanwhile, Claudia still has a marketplace to run, and she is more confused than anyone when it comes to her relationship, or lack-thereof, with her craft-beer-making neighbor.

Still, Claudia thinks she's getting a hand on this investigating thing, until another gruesome death, secrets from her building's past, and a low-speed tractor chase make her wonder if she's really ready to reap what she's sown.

Daisy Bateman (Author)