If Grace Cassidy had known she was going to find a naked corpse in her hotel bed, lose every penny she had in the world, and encounter zany characters straight from the Mad Hatter's tea party, she might have kept her usual poise when she spotted husband Charlie's mistress at their business convention in San Francisco. She wouldn't have left in a temper to drive up the northern California coast. She certainly wouldn't have stopped at an obscure bed and breakfast called Wimberly Place-or become the prime suspect in a murder investigation.

Former society wife Grace Cassidy is learning to live on the minimum wage she earns as a bed & breakfast innsitter. When Grace finds her cat's bloody paw prints leading away from a bathtub and wants to run for her life. But she can't: her 19-year-old son is accused of pushing his pregnant girlfriend down a flight of concrete steps, and she won't abandon him.