Floodwater, Footprints, and Murder: A Small-Town Mystery

About Floodwater, Footprints, and Murder: A Small-Town Mystery

In Ashford Springs, the rain doesn’t stop. It turns sidewalks into streams, the riverwalk into a threat, and the resort’s wellness glow into a damp, nervous performance. Cureleaf Books & Tea becomes a refuge, which means Ivy Sloane hears everything.

Fear makes people talk. So does the smell of hot tea and warm pastries when the town feels like it’s sliding downhill. When the river finally overflows, the flood doesn’t just damage property.

It exposes history. As the water pulls back, it reveals a long-sealed access point near the bathhouse annex, a door that should have stayed hidden if certain people had their way. Not long after, a local artisan is found dead, and the town tries to package it as storm tragedy.

Accident. Bad luck. No need to ask questions.

But Ivy sees what the official story wants her to ignore: muddy footprints that look deliberate, not random. A timeline that doesn’t match. A “cleanup” that happens too fast.

Marlow, Ivy’s retired scent-detection basset hound, becomes more than a cozy mascot when he tracks where the floodwater ends and human intent begins. The Book Cure Society digs in. Mae finds altered records and gaps where the paper trail should be.

Keisha breaks down the injury logic in plain terms that cut through wishful thinking. Cora hears who’s paying contractors to move quickly and quietly. Deputy Nolan Price tries to help, but pressure from above turns every step into a balancing act.

As Ivy follows the footprints, she uncovers a motive bigger than one death: long-running theft disguised as redevelopment, property manipulation hidden behind “community benefit,” and a power structure that treats the town’s history like something to be bought, scrubbed, and rewritten.