Little League, ballet slippers, and small-town charm are no match for murder in this neck of the Maine woods. But Lucy Stone certainly is.'
Fresh from her sleuthing triumph in Mail- Order Murder, Lucy Stone of Tinker's Cove is taking time off from work to organize her three children and get ready for a fourth. But besides shuttling the kids to school, baseball practice, and Madame Tatiana's ballet studio, Lucy finds herself on the trail of Caro-Caroline Hutton-a retired dance teacher who has mysteriously disappeared.
And to make the summer really murder, the irascible local hardware merchant, Morrill Slack, takes a deathblow to the head with a video camera, and Franny Small-the hapless salesgirl with the perfect motive-has no alibi for how she spent the afternoon of the murder. When Lucy's not eating peanut butter-and- fluffernutter sandwiches (which the newest member of the Stone family seems to crave incessantly), she's busy hitting up police detective Barney Culpepper for everything he knows.
With a little research and a few trips to the library (between sewing tutus and broiling burgers), Lucy tries to discover just what happened to Caro-and whom she was protecting when she vanished. Racing against the clock to save her neighbor's life-and get her own seven-year-old prima ballerina on stage-Lucy wraps up the Big Case just in time for a visit from the stork.