THE GRANDMOTHER PLOT

Freddy Bell is a stoner and a burnout who never amounted to anything. At least that's the opinion of his three older sisters, who always have one excuse or another for not being more involved with the family. When their mother dies unexpectedly, it falls to Freddy to move to her sleepy Connecticut suburb and care for their elderly grandmother, who suffers from dementia and is staying in a memory care facility.

The move is convenient for another reason. Freddy is an expert glassblower whose public-facing business is making glass beads and selling them at exhibitions around the country. His less legitimate, but far more lucrative, profession is creating custom glass pipes. In the months prior to his mother's death, Freddy's skill attracted the attention of two dangerous drug dealers who convinced Freddy to let them use his bead business as a front for laundering their drug money. Now he wants out—but the two men won't agree to end their deal, and threaten violence. The house in small-town Connecticut seems like the perfect place to hide out for a few months. In that time Freddy forges a close, touching bond with his grandmother.

Eventually the two men track him down - and days later, another elderly patient at the center is found dead, the victim of a shocking murder. Coincidence? Or could Freddy's shady connections to the world of glass pipes be to blame? Freddy teams up with musician Laura "Mapes" Maple, who also has a loved one at the same facility, to investigate.