The Creemee Stand

It was supposed to be a quiet summer in Quarry Hollow, Vermont. Retired intelligence officer Julian Fenwick has traded espionage for alpaca yoga and correspondence chess, while Tansy Beaudry finally runs the town's beloved Creemee Stand on her own terms—with her first summer hire, easygoing Cole Merrick, behind the register. Then the till vanishes, the soft-serve machine is sabotaged, and Cole is found dead behind the local fiber co-op, killed by a single precise blow. Sheriff Dana Voss and her new deputy, Ray Boudreau, need Julian's particular skill set again as uneasy memories surface: Cole asked pointed questions about land ownership, took notes on old mineral claims, and mentioned a name—Sedley—that means nothing to anyone until it means everything. When a mysterious young woman is seen watching Cole from a distance and flees town, Deputy Boudreau builds a confident case. But the evidence won't fit: the timing, the absence of struggle, and an unrelated act of cruelty against a family dog weeks before Cole ever started the job. As Julian and Dana walk the theory back, the true shape of the case emerges—Cole was placed at the stand deliberately, an unwitting asset in a real estate operator's quiet campaign to buy up undervalued parcels across the valley. In this tense small-town mystery, loyalties shift, old sins resurface, and the person who seems most guilty may be the only one trying to stop a killer. Some secrets don't stay buried. Some of them come looking.