Bedridden while in the last two months of her pregnancy, Tess Monaghan watches a young woman in a green raincoat walk her dog in the park across the street, until one day she sees the dog running loose, and becomes convinced that harm has befallen the dog's owner.

A client named Ruthie--who seems to know Tess's father a little too well--asks the newspaperwoman-turned-p.i. to investigate a year-old "Jane Doe" murder and its grim aftermath. Ruthie's low-life brother, Henry, confessed to killing a teenager runaway over a bottle of glue--and, a month into his prison term, he met the same fate as his victim. Following a precious few tantalizing clues, Tess sets off on a path that is leading her from Baltimore's...

Mark Rubin's family is missing—and the police won't get involved because all the evidence indicates that his wife left willingly. So the successful Baltimore furrier turns to Tess Monaghan, hoping she can help him find his wife and three children. Tess doesn't quite know what to make of Rubin, who doles out vitally important information in grudging dribs and drabs. According to her client, he and his beautiful wife, Natalie, had a flawless, happy...

When the production of a Hollywood film in Baltimore brings mayhem and murder to the area, private investigator Tess Monaghan finds her job complicated by the acting skills of her numerous suspects.

On a searing August day, Melisandre Harris Dawes committed the unthinkable: she left her two-month-old daughter locked in a car while she sat nearby on the shores of the Patapsco River. Melisandre was found not guilty by reason of criminal insanity, although there was much skepticism about her mental state. Freed, she left the country, her husband and her two surviving children, determined to start over. But now Melisandre has returned Baltimore to...