Time and Tide

Bellhaven Point Light is supposed to be the kind of evening Penny Reed can be proud of-- a restored lighthouse, a town full of guests, and an antique mechanism turning exactly as it should. After weeks of work, Penny has the old lens sweeping across the water again, one flash every ten seconds, while the reopening party gathers below on the island lawn.Then, during the celebration, the beam stops. Only for three minutes. Long enough for the landward side of the gallery to fall into darkness. Long enough for a private conversation where no one on the lawn can see. When Nathaniel Burgman is found dead on the rocks below the tower, everyone wants to blame the obvious suspect: Wesley Keane, the angry grandson of the lighthouse keeper whose legacy Nathaniel had commercialized.Penny is not convinced. The machine is too honest to lie without help. A falling weight sits a finger higher than it should. A blue chalk line has been touched. A brake handle carries a smear that should not be there. And somewhere between the watch room, the darkened gallery, and the rising tide, someone used Penny's own explanation of the lighthouse mechanism to hide a murder in plain sight.With the causeway flooding, the police delayed, and suspects trapped on the point, Penny has to count flashes, question alibis, and follow a missing speech card into an old death that someone hoped would stay buried. Because at Bellhaven Point, the lighthouse keeps time as faithfully as any clock, and the truth is waiting in the seconds no one else thought to count.