The coffee is overpriced, the font is offensive, and someone just turned up unconscious surrounded by burner phones.
When Grounds for Suspicion — the sleekest, most aggressively trendy café in town — opens two blocks from Sunset Manor Retirement Community, Violet Hartwell has thoughts. Specifically about the menu typography, the concept of a "flat white," and the prices, which she considers a second crime. But when café owner Sienna Alcott is found unconscious in the back office, surrounded by seven burner phones and a shoebox of coded receipts, Violet's notebook comes out and her opinions about oat milk take a back seat.
The Sunset Manor Investigation Society is on the case. Frank Morrison and his souped-up mobility scooter establish a surveillance partnership with the world's most cooperative barista. Agnes Pemberton decodes the café's loyalty program receipts with the focused intensity of a wartime codebreaker. Dolores Martinez claims she invented latte foam art in Reno and is deeply relevant to this investigation. And Detective Ray Cromwell — retired, meticulous, and armed with a professional-grade evidence kit — attempts to run a legitimate operation while his teammates conduct loud interrogations and bribe witnesses with baked goods.
At the center of it all: a lifestyle influencer with 400,000 followers, a ring light, and a blackmail network humming quietly beneath the café's charming surface. Someone has been collecting secrets in this neighborhood. Someone has been very good at it. And they have no idea that the table of retirees ordering their fourth round of cortados are anything other than regular customers.
They're about to find out. Live. In front of all 400,000 followers.
