Malice, Beeswax, and a Moss Agate: The Magic Rockhound Mysteries

Someone has been tampering with Delia Crowe's beehives. The damage is precise, deliberate, and far too knowledgeable to be random vandalism. Queens are missing. Comb has been cut away. Strange residue clings to the frames. And when Delia brings Rowena Kestrel a block of beeswax marked by her late friend Harold Mercer, the situation turns darker. Harold, a retired county extension agent and amateur rockhound, died in what was ruled an accidental fall in his greenhouse. But before his death, he had been quietly investigating unexplained bee losses, suspicious pesticide use, and altered agricultural records. He had also begun hiding evidence in numbered blocks of beeswax. Then his favorite moss agate disappears. As Rowena follows the trail Harold left behind, she finds herself untangling poisoned fields, damaged hives, hidden samples, land deals, and a growing list of people who had reasons to want Harold to stop asking questions. With Mister, her snow Bengal cat, nearby and a little quiet magic occasionally pointing her in the right direction, Rowena must rely on observation, records, contradictions, and the things people reveal when they think no one is paying attention. Because Harold Mercer was looking at more than bees. And someone was willing to kill to keep what he found buried. Malice, Beeswax, and Moss Agate is a warm, lightly magical cozy mystery filled with small-town secrets, rockhounding, folk magic, beekeeping, and one very determined amateur sleuth.