Retired piano professor Biodina d’Angelo has observed that she has a new neighbor in the cabin next to hers on Filucy Bay. She observes him walking around his newly-acquired property, measuring a dilapidated patio, rubbing his chin as he looks at the bog between their properties, and cursing under his breath as he views the uneven and lumpy driveway from the top of his two-acre property down to the shoreline.
Shortly after he settles in, workers start appearing on the property, and Biodina buys a pair of binoculars so she can watch birds in the trees, as well as the contractor and his workers. As a pretext to working on her own property, she begins laboriously digging up old pasture grass and yanking out trailing blackberry vines from a former garden, long overgrown. She has discovered a deer path between the adjoining cabin and hers, and she meanders frequently to the new owner’s property with yummy homemade breads and goodies, hoping to learn more about her neighbor. She is rebuffed by the mean-spirited curmudgeon, who not only wants nothing to do with her, but who belittles his workers, finding fault in all of them, engendering a hatred for him.
While digging up the old garden grass, she finds a beautifully-engraved copper piece. After cleaning the piece, she contacts her police officer friend, Stevie, who suggests she reach out to the native American tribes in the area to determine if she must return the piece or be able to keep it. It leads Biodina to meet with the Key Peninsula Historical Society to learn of the history of the bay, the tribes that fished and traded with early traders along the shoreline, and the uprisings that occurred as the tribal members were pushed off their land.
Her neighbor Dickie Simmons has purchased a small excavator and he decides to dig out the mucky bog on his property to design a koi pond. While removing the bluish clay, he unearths a skeleton of an ancient native American in a preserved cedar cape. County inspectors are brought in, along with the state archaeologist’s team, stopping all activities on his property.
Biodina’s research and tribal connections become an asset to Dickie, who grudgingly allows his curious and nosy neighbor into his life, as he needs her help with the local tribes to push forward his project of building a garage before the annual rainy season starts. Each tribe has its own culture around a skeleton found on a residential property, and Dickie needs to know which tribe will claim the remains, and whether the skeleton will be reinterred on his property or removed.
The workers continue to be berated by the owner, and one worker resorts to stealing from the owner, while another almost accidentally on purpose plows into him with a backhoe. A third worker has served time in prison and still has anger issues, building up a deep-seated resentment towards the owner.
Dickie is murdered. The authorities believe it was committed by one of the workers. Biodina helps solve the murder by her keen observations and understanding of the motivations of each of the workers.
She also discovers the story behind the skeleton of the chieftain’s son of the Puyallup tribe. He was murdered for an expensive breastplate of copper made by the artisans of the Salish.
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