The Foxglove Cup: A Tidal Cove Tea Shop Mystery

The Foxglove Cup: A Tidal Cove Tea Shop Mystery Leaving a finalized divorce for an Oregon coast tea shop gave Thea Graves exactly what she craved. A quiet schedule. She spends her dawns weighing white peony leaves, smelling the damp salt air, and catering to a deeply cynical British Shorthair cat named Earl Gray. He provides excellent judgment and zero customer service. That quiet schedule ends when she discovers Desmond Hale dead on a teak bench. Desmond operated the Tidal Cove art gallery with absolute cruelty. He underpaid the ceramicists. He canceled the landscape painters' exhibitions. He covertly purchased the commercial buildings on Driftwood Lane. When the police classify his death as a sudden heart attack, Thea leans close to the empty teacup beside his body. She trusts her professional palate. She detects a sharp, vegetal scent masked beneath the earthy pu-erh tea. Foxglove. Someone poisoned the gallery owner using a custom blend from The Steep. Chief Pryce immediately interrogates the loudest suspects. He targets Pilar, a ceramicist who cultivates toxic flowers in her front yard. He questions Tom, a painter harboring a chemistry background. Both artists despised Desmond. Neither possessed the invisible patience required to execute a meticulous poisoning. "You are the one with the palate," a local bookseller tells her. "Trust what you taste." Thea refuses to watch the police arrest an innocent person. She begins cataloging the specific details the authorities ignore. A torn botanical shipping label discarded in a trash bin. A late-night exit through a side door. An unassuming gallery assistant carrying an unmarked amber jar. The actual killer understands exactly how to avoid attention. When someone breaks into her locked tea shop to rearrange her porcelain cups into a warning, Thea feels genuine terror. She is tracking a person who treats murder as a calculated science. She needs to expose the truth before she drinks from the wrong cup.