Portland police think Lewis was the fence who sold the jewels, and that he was killed after double-crossing the thieves-but Messina doesn’t believe the story. Vivian takes the diamond to Detective Tony Messina, who identifies it as part of a jewelry heist in Portland a month earlier. It’s a diamond, hidden away in a crevice in the clock. Unable to keep from doing a bit of sleuthing, Vivian hunts down the replica in a local thrift shop, noticing that the base is missing, rendering it worthless, but just as Vivian is about to throw it in the trash, a sparkle catches her eye. Who could have given the replica to Lewis?

Vivian is sure she sold the clock a week before in her shop. The photo accompanying the article shows Lewis’s cluttered living room, and on the shelf is a replica of Big Ben. But the newspaper article piques the interest of Vivian Wainwright, owner of the British-style Misty Bay Tearoom. It seemed like a simple case: the murder of Lewis Trenton, a beachcomber who lived alone in a cabin in the Oregon hills. The peace and tranquility of the Misty Bay Tearoom are rocked by murder and a long-buried secret hidden in a most unlikely place in bestselling author Kate Kingsbury’s second charming book for fans of Cleo Coyle and Laura Childs.

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