Someone has broken into the Imogene Museum. Curator Meredith Morehouse finds an empty ornate frame, the still-life painting hurriedly sheared from its moorings, and calls in Sheriff Marge Stettler as she scrambles to identify the burglar. Not because his taste in art is questionable but because the thief’s intimate knowledge of the museum and its collections indicates much more is at stake.

Is the thief a friend or stranger? It doesn’t help that the population of Platts Landing, Washington, has just blossomed with the influx of Hollywood movie-types roaming the countryside in search of the perfect setting for their next documentary. Nor that Meredith’s boyfriend, Pete, has just spotted his ex-girlfriend among the production crew.

Can Meredith protect Sockeye County’s iconic cultural institution and her beloved employer, Rupert Hagg, from the thief’s sinister intent?

Jerusha Jones lives in a small town in the west end of the Columbia River Gorge. When she grows up, she fully intends to be a feisty old lady. In the meantime, she regularly maxes out her library's lending limit, has happily declared a truce with the clover in the lawn, but is fanatical about sealing up cracks in her old house, armed with a caulking gun. Due to the number of gaps she has yet to locate, however, she has also perfected her big spider shriek. Jerusha loves wool socks, Pink Lady apples with crunchy peanut butter, feather pillows, scenery of breathtaking grandeur, and weather just cool enough to require a sweater, all of which are plentiful in the Pacific Northwest. She is eternally grateful to have escaped the corporate world with its relentless, mind-numbing meetings and now writes (or doodles or fantasizes or cogitates or stares out the window or whatever you want to call it) full time.