A snowstorm strands private detective Harry Bittercress at the home of a reclusive widow. By firelight, she recounts a fifty-year-old mystery in her hometown. Back in 1921, an era of bootleggers, flappers, and jazz, a woman is found dead, her body covered in bee stings. The coroner calls it an accident, but the sheriff is not convinced. As the old woman’s story unfolds, Harry must decide whether he’s hearing a lonely woman’s imagined yarn, or a genuine unsolved murder.