The Clockmaker's Silenced Note — A Bellweather Mystery, Book 2

Some notes are lost to time. This one was silenced on purpose.

In the quiet town of Bellweather, Dorothy Hayes has spent nearly thirty years learning to listen. First as a librarian, and now as the sole proprietor of Bellweather Clockworks, she coaxes forgotten mechanisms back to life the way other people keep journals — patiently, methodically, one careful turn of the screw at a time. Her uncle Elias taught her the trade before he passed, and his voice still lives in every worn tool and blue-ink notebook he left behind: Let the clock tell you what it needs before you decide what to give it.

So when Claire Henshaw, curator of the Bellweather Historical Museum, asks Dorothy to examine a rare Whitcomb musical clock from the 1840s, Dorothy expects nothing more than a delicate repair. The Whitcombs were master clockmakers, their pieces prized across the county, and their finest surviving work now sits behind glass in the museum's restoration room. It plays a short melody on the hour — eight notes, clear and true.

For months, the seventh note has been failing.

But the closer Dorothy looks, the clearer it becomes: the note wasn't worn down by age or slackened by a tired spring. It was silenced. Deliberately. Precisely. By a hand that knew exactly what it was doing — and exactly what it was hiding. A clock built by the Whitcombs did not leave a note out of its melody by accident. If the seventh note was missing, it was missing because someone meant it to be.

Then a man is found dead inside the museum, and the institution's carefully guarded reputation begins to crack. The board wants discretion. The curator wants answers. And Dorothy, who came only to mend a mechanism, finds herself the one person in Bellweather who can read what the clock has been trying to say. Buried in a basement ledger dated 1938, she uncovers an accession record that was quietly altered — three entries changed, a private sale hidden in plain sight. Behind the collection's polished cabinets waits a Whitcomb family secret three generations deep. And woven into the clock's missing melody is a truth someone has spent decades — and now a life — trying to keep from ever chiming again.

With her ginger cat Pendulum watching from the counter and Detective Helen Marsh circling the same questions from a different direction, Dorothy follows the mechanism where it leads: through the museum's restoration room, its forgotten archives, and the long shadow the Whitcomb name still casts over the town. She works the way she always has — never forcing a part that doesn't want to move, trusting that the truth is always inside if you know how to look. Because a clock always tells you what's wrong, if you're patient enough to listen. And this one has been waiting a very long time to be heard.

The Clockmaker's Silenced Note is the second book in the Bellweather Mystery series — a warm, unhurried whodunit set among antique clocks, small-town secrets, and the quiet craftspeople who understand that the past is never entirely past.

You'll love this series if you enjoy:

• A patient, intelligent amateur sleuth with a trade all her own
• Cozy small-town settings rich with history and character
• A clever, fair-play puzzle that ticks steadily toward the truth — no gore, no gratuitous violence
• A loyal shop cat, a beloved late mentor, and a heroine who solves crimes the same way she restores clocks: carefully, and without ever forcing a part that doesn't want to move

Wind the mainspring. Listen for the missing note. And let Dorothy Hayes show you what time has been trying to say.

Book 2 of The Bellweather Mysteries.