Could she trust Ted Pulaski? Pretty Tania Harding was prepared to trust no one when she arrived at her great-aunts' Victorian mansion in Cincinnati on her grim mission. Tania's expressive brown eyes were haunted by sadness, and she often reflected that her entire family seemed star-crossed, fated for tragedy.

Her mother had killed herself when Tania had been just a baby. A year before, her beloved grandmother, who had raised her, had been murdered in the mansion across the street, Tania's childhood home. In a grotesque whirlwind of events, Tania's father had been accused and then convicted--of murdering his own mother!

Heartbroken by her father's imprisonment, Tania was determined to act the sleuth and hunt down the real killer, sparing not even her two great-aunts and her cousin from her list of suspects. But she had not bargained for Ted, the young artist with dark hair and moustache who had rented the cottage on her great-aunts' grounds. He was a newcomer and surely thus could be eliminated from her list of suspects...Yet something in Ted's manner told her that he knew more about her grandmother's murder than he let on, and more about Tania herself than she would care to confide even to a friend.

As she determinedly pursued the criminal, Tania realized that there had been one eyewitness to the murder. Only Samantha, her grandmother's cat--the silent watcher--knew the truth that Tania so desperately sought.