Sky Taylor is a professional housecleaner and part-time freelance writer for a small-circulation paper. She is six years widowed and uncompromisingly clean. One of Sky's cleaning jobs is for Marge Millwood, who is the owner of the Millwood B&B, a quaint New England Inn.

Abel Monahan is a regular guest at the Millwood B&B. "Old Abe", as he was affectionately called by the residents of Pigeon Cove, visited five or six times a year and was a guest at the B&B now for the Memorial Day Weekend. He was one of Sky's favorite people and they had become close friends over the years. Sky is exercising her persnickety habits of cleanliness when she notices a smudge on the wall outside of Old Abe's room. Thinking it's strawberry ice cream Sky "dabs" it up. She then enters Old Abe's room and finds that he's been murdered.

After Old Abe's murder Sky begins to find out not everyone held Old Abe in as high esteem as she did. In fact he had a way of antagonizing people and was disliked by more than one resident in town.

After cleaning Old Abe's room and packing up his personal possessions, Sky takes them to a storehouse where Abe rented a space for storing his treasured book finds. When she enters the room everything is in disarray. The room has been ransacked. Taken apart completely. But why? Then her car, containing his personal possessions, is stolen. As she finds out more and more about Old Abe she finds he wasn't the person she thought he was.