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In this sequel to Shadow of Whimsy: A Cape Cod Love Story, Theresa Alston Crandall reflects on family secrets she has held for forty years. Her duplicity has created a life of uneven rewards as she begins to hear footsteps from the past sneaking up on her.

Is it too late to start over? Revealing the truth of her missteps would shatter the present and demand answers to painful questions. She has betrayed her husband and sons, causing them to be unsuspecting players in her orchestrated deception.

Theresa spends time at Whimsy Towers, the oceanfront home she inherited from a grandmother she never knew. Poetry, parties, good food, and gratitude fill the summer days, allowing Theresa to maintain a careful charade. Whimsy Towers holds her secrets, until her safety from exposure gradually unravels. The mysterious death of her son requires Theresa to confront a host of unresolved problems, a twisted accumulation of love and lies.

From Cape Cod to Alexandria, Virginia, and St. Michaels, Maryland, new relationships develop.

Deadly Arts

When the aging Nashville artist Bechman Warren Fitzwallington is discovered dead in his own bed, the question for detective Hardy Seltzer is simple: natural causes, or murder? Clues are scant, and an autopsy finds no signs of homicide, but no one is grieving. The number of strangely-acting suspects seems to be multiplying as rapidly as the artist’s florid late canvases.

Galleries in Nashville and New York are quickly fighting for the rights to sell any paintings that Fitzwallington left behind. But the dearly beloved himself was just as fervently hated by everyone who knew him, including his extensively tattooed daughter, who stands to inherit a fortune.

Hardy has avoided involving his friend, former detective Shane Hadley, in his cases since the Bonz Bagley murder. But now a national spotlight is shining on him, and he needs help. At the same time, Dr. Katya Karpov, Hadley’s wife, is directing a 20-year study of the aging brain. To her dismay, the confidential data in her possession turn out to reveal unsuspected relationships that will only complicate the mystery that her husband has been drawn into.

Hadley and Seltzer risk the ire of the city fathers, the police department, the medical establishment, and even organized crime to solve the last riddle of Bechman Fitzwallington. The solution that slowly comes into focus may mean that justice can never be done.