The Hidden Provenance: Secrets Cast in Oak and Iron. A Claire Dalton Mystery

Five dollars bought seven feet of waterlogged oak. It also bought a century of hidden crimes. Claire Dalton doesn't buy sentiment. As an estate liquidator who learned the hard way that caring too much about dead inventory can ruin you, she buys potential. So when a battered, water-damaged 19th-century apothecary cabinet is dumped at a rural auction tagged as firewood, Claire sees past the rotted finish to the tight, quarter-sawn white oak beneath. She takes it straight to Gabe Hayes-a master craftsman who works the way she thinks: no shortcuts, no excuses, layer by layer. But when Gabe uncovers a hidden cedar drawer locked behind a spring-loaded mechanism, they find more than antique joinery. Tucked inside is a long-buried 1920s county surveyor's notebook detailing original property boundaries, unrecorded land trusts, and a century-old fraud committed by the town's most powerful founding family: the Ashworths. Now, Theron Ashworth wants the cabinet-and the truth-buried for good. As mysterious "appraisers," anonymous online smear campaigns, and late-night break-ins threaten Gabe's workshop and Claire's business, the duo must stand their ground. To protect their livelihoods and bring a century of theft to light, they'll have to use the very thing the Ashworths are trying to destroy: the undeniable physical evidence built into the wood itself.