Checkout Time
A Cozy Lakeside Mystery

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice.
Checkout at the Larkspur Inn is at eleven o'clock sharp. Innkeeper Win Pruitt has said so for thirty years, and she is not about to bend the rule for a storm, a washed-out bridge or a houseful of wedding guests with their suitcases piled in the front hall.

But on the last Sunday of August, one guest does not come down. Gordon Ashcombe, the wealthiest man at the rehearsal weekend and the money behind the groom's family restaurants, is found in the boathouse, and the only road out of town is under a brown, roaring brook until nightfall.

With the deputy and the doctor stranded on the far side, Win has until dark. She has a fourteen-year-old grandniece who talks in numbered facts and notices everything, a formal old cook who refuses to use contractions, and a retired deputy turned handyman who counts to three before he answers. Between them they have a guest registry, a laundry tub, a key log, a pantry full of wedding cake, and a dozen guests and staff who are each hiding something small.

Who wanted him gone? Who knew which cake was safe to eat? And who is sitting at the supper table, passing the bread?

Warm, funny and full of good food, this is a fair-play puzzle for listeners who love a close-knit small-town cast, a lantern-lit lake and a kind ending.

A cozy mystery with an amateur sleuth, a closed circle and a wedding.