The brutal hit-skip death of a young woman is written off as an accident until 1940s private investigator Maggie Sullivan finds signs pointing to murder. Charlotte Littlefield, a girl with “a past” was about to marry into one of Dayton, Ohio’s, most prominent families and was staying with her future in-laws to get better acquainted and smooth her rough edges. Did someone in the household object to her upcoming union? A frightened, incoherent phone call made moments before she fled to her death suggests another possibility: Charlotte had seen — or heard — something she shouldn’t have.
Maggie picks her way through a mansion filled with suspects. One wing houses a laboratory where the head of the family and his staff work on a hush-hush project which the War Department eagerly awaits as the war in Europe nears its end. Upstairs, his once-vibrant wife languishes in the aftermath of polio. Their three grown children are a tangle of resentments, jealousy and anger.
A second murder raises the specter of someone targeting the family, or one of its members. Undeterred by a black eye from an attack, Maggie tracks down clues in high-class brothels, burlesque theaters, bars and ivy trellises. Before she can use her last bit of proof, she finds herself in a cat-and-mouse chase with a killer through surroundings where a misstep will snuff out dozens of lives.
When a man offers 1940s private investigator Maggie Sullivan twice her usual fee to look into a 'possible' jewelry theft from his hotel safe, she’s skeptical — until a maid’s body tumbles out of a trash can and a jeweler known for high quality fakes is murdered.
Does a hotel guest who vanished without a trace hold a piece of the puzzle in this fourth novel in the author's historical mystery series? Or does it have to do with the Polish count and his family fleeing the start of World War Two in Europe? Could the cops be right that it’s all a trick devised by Maggie's client?
More at ease in Dayton, Ohio’s, streets and alleyways than in the posh Hotel Canterbury, and chafing under the need to hide her true occupation, the scrappy detective threads her way through an unfamiliar array of suspects: Hollywood luminaries in town for a hush-hush project; an international Lothario whose shady local past she unearths; the count’s embittered valet.
Meanwhile, preparations for a visit by FDR preoccupy the city’s police. The Irish cop who long has wooed Maggie suddenly departs for Chicago. Alone and bruised, Maggie faces adversaries whose motives stun her... and a killer who will stop at nothing.
Tea with two spinsters thrusts 1940s private investigator Maggie Sullivan into an explosive mix of murder, political rivalries and family secrets. Pursuing their case means risking not only her life, but her detective license.
The Vanhorn sisters want her to learn the fate of their father, who vanished more than a quarter century earlier in Dayton, Ohio’s, catastrophic 1913 flood. They believe he was murdered. They think they know the killer. But before Maggie can question the suspect, he winds up dead.
With a nip of gin to cheer her and a Smith & Wesson for company, Maggie follows a trail all but obliterated by time. It leads her to a local politician with bigger ambitions — and possibly secrets to hide. It takes her into dime stores, cheap hotels, and a violent ambush by men wearing brass knuckles.
A determined cop wages a wily campaign to win her affections. A rag-tag newsboy pushes to be her assistant. As crimes of the past explode in the present, Maggie fights foes who must destroy her to destroy each other.
