Tippy Toe Murder (Lucy Stone Mysteries, No. 2)

Fresh from her sleuthing triumph in Mail-Order Murder, Lucy Stone of Tinker's Cove is taking time off from work to organize her three children and get ready for a fourth. But besides shuttling the kids to school, baseball practice, and Madame Tatiana's ballet studio, Lucy finds herself on the trail of Caro - Caroline Hutton - a retired dance teacher who has mysteriously disappeared. And to make the summer really murder, the irascible local hardware merchant, Morrill Slack, takes a deathblow to the head with a video camera, and Franny Small - the hapless salesgirl with the perfect motive - has no alibi for how she spent the afternoon of the murder. When Lucy's not eating peanut butter-and-fluffernutter sandwiches (which the newest member of the Stone family seems to crave incessantly), she's busy hitting up police detective Barney Culpepper for everything he knows. With a little research and a few trips to the library (between sewing tutus and broiling burgers), Lucy tries to discover just what happened to Caro - and whom she was protecting when she vanished. Racing against the clock to save her neighbor's life - and get her own seven-year-old prima ballerina on stage - Lucy wraps up the Big Case just in time for a visit from the stork.