Young Willow Adams arrives in Sea Harbor, Ma in the middle of the night. A beautiful little kitten was curled up in the window of the local Knitting and Yarn shop. Willow was so taken by the scene that she went around back to find a way into the shop. She went up to the window and curled up with the kitten in the middle of the yarn and promptly went to sleep. Later that morning the baker spotted the girl lying in the window and reported a dead body in the yarn shop to the police.
Of course Izzy Chambers, the shop owner and her lady friends became excited. Willow was not dead but she sure got everyone’s attention. She had come to Sea Harbor looking for her long lost father who it turns out was one of the artists in this little cozy community.
But Willow did not have much of a chance to get to know him. He was found dead in his garden a couple of days after Willow’s arrival. At first it looked like a heart attack or stroke or something but it turned out he had been given a “Mickey Finn”. He was murdered. Since Willow was the beneficiary in his will she was the prominent suspected killer.
Izzy and the other knitting ladies of the local Yarn Shop had taken to Willow from the start and became determined to clear her by finding out who the real killer was. When another in this artist community was murdered and a threatening note was delivered to the yarn shop warning the ladies to mind their own business or there might be a third murder Willow was cleared as a suspect but the stress of having a killer in this small community was greatly increased.
Izzy finds that almost everyone in the town has secrets. She can’t get all the secrets but knows that at least some of them must shine a light on these killings. Things begin to come together when they find that the supposed newly found watercolors by a famous deceased artist were really fakes perpetrated by one of their own. The identity of the murderer is a surprise as Izzy and her friends reveal all the puzzle pieces and fit the solution together in the end.
“Patterns in the sand…. Just like our lives, crossing over one another. Changing. Altered by the tide’s ebb and flow…. Maybe it’s because we’re knitters that we see patterns everywhere. Even in the sand.” Figuring out the patterns and solving the mystery earns this one a 7 of 10 on the Weaver meter.
