Mystery Woman: Mystery Weekend

Samantha Kinsey is preparing a Mystery Weekend at her bookstore, complete with author signings, a Q and A, and a book-club-style celebration for local mystery fans. Her friend Cassie helps, Philby handles the behind-the-scenes logistics, and a new lawyer in town, Scott Teller, arrives after seeing the event flyer and immediately starts bantering with Samantha. Meanwhile, the weekend's star attraction, bestselling mystery writer Claire Beckman, is late, demanding, and surrounded by an assistant and fiancé who seem to orbit her every move. Claire finally makes a dramatic entrance at the cocktail party and announces that her current novel will be her last because she is retiring to a tiny island between Hawaii and Fiji. Right after the toast and photos, a gunshot rings out and Cassie is hit in the arm, while everyone assumes Claire was the intended target. Chief Connors locks down the store, interviews everyone, and discovers that the gun used in the attack is registered to Dorothy Bayer, one of Samantha's long-time customers and a devoted mystery reader. At the hospital and back at the shop, Samantha begins piecing together what happened. Claire later collapses during another event and dies, and the coroner determines that she was killed by bee venom, which had been hidden in the corsage delivered for the evening. Samantha also figures out that the first shooting was probably staged: Claire likely used fishing line and Dorothy's gun to manufacture a publicity stunt after her book sales started slipping. The investigation turns toward Dorothy, whose panic, lies, and secretive behavior make her look guilty. Samantha learns that Dorothy is actually a former prison guard from Canada who has been blackmailing Claire for years after recognizing her as Marcia McClean, one of two girls involved in a childhood murder in Halifax. Philby traces Dorothy's odd payments back to Canadian correctional services, and Samantha realizes the money is really a prison pension. Dorothy refuses to fully cooperate, but she does admit that Claire had been paying her to keep quiet. Samantha then realizes that the deeper secret involves Beth Temple, Claire's assistant, who is eventually exposed as Lily McIsaac, the other girl from that old crime. Beth and Claire were the real creative team behind the mystery novels, with Claire serving as the public face while Beth wrote the books and lived through her. When Claire decides to retire and take her work away, Beth panics, because the partnership, the money, and the identity she has built around it are all disappearing. Samantha confronts Beth, who confesses that she killed Claire and tried to frame Dorothy to protect the life she built around their shared past. In the end, Dorothy is arrested for blackmail and Beth is arrested for murder. Chief Connors reluctantly accepts Samantha's version of the case, Cassie recovers, and Scott Teller is revealed as a charming but incompetent hustler who has been playing the field and failing upward. Samantha sends him packing, and the weekend closes with the mystery solved and her bookstore intact.