Famous for its yearly Elizabethan Festival and annual Arabian Horseshow, Empty Creek, Arizona, would truly be nowhere without a visit from a semi-professional baseball team. Barely out of the dugout, trying to break a hot losing streak, the Coyotes are hoping to star in the minor leagues. But before the first note of the National Anthem is sung, somebody uses the owner's head for a baseball and scores a deadly hit.A corpse before morning coffee is not her usual style, but Penelope Warren knows that the free-spirited denizens of Empty Creek depend on her and Mycroft, her twenty-five-pound Abyssinian cat, to keep them safe from killers in their midst. The ex-Marine, Peace Corps veteran and sometime sandlot shortstop, Penelope is also the proprietress of the town's most distinguished mystery bookstore. She has a reputation to sustain and a taste for sleuthing that no amount of success can satisfy.Management squabbles, money troubles, marital mayhem, and an ex-major leaguer struggling to make a comeback don't make it any easier to understand why the murder weapon bears a very small set of fingerprints; what the strange file found in the team office means; or whether the victim has been concealing a secret lover. From the female Fury in charge of the Coyotes' fitness training to the team's not-so-silent partner, from a computer nerd to an ex-Vegas showgirl, Penelope and Mycroft find themselves stranded in the outfield with a full team of suspects - enough to fill a ballpark - and threatened by a clever killer ready to risk the whole game to get away with murder and steal home. Read Less