The Clouded Title

By Deon Benito

A clouded title. A sealed room. A keeper who notices.

In Petoskey, keeper Ada Byrne is opening houses for spring - Eleanor Ames's house on Arlington Avenue and Grayling, her Bay View cottage, where title examiner Diana Sloane is untangling a fence dispute in the deed books.

In the Association's 1876 lot book, Diana finds a cloud: the terrace stands on part of an eighty-acre allotment granted to Jean-Baptiste Nadeau under the Treaty of Detroit in 1855 - patent never issued, sold for taxes for eleven dollars, unquestioned for a hundred and fifty years. Then Diana is found dead at the foot of Grayling's cellar stairs, ruled an accident. Ada doesn't believe it: the rug that always kicked lies straight, the laptop gone.

Behind a sealed wall in the old Merritt cellar, something is still hidden - and in Charlevoix, the Brandt trial awaits Ada's testimony. She does what keepers do: she notices, and she writes it down.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HNXSLWDR
• ISBN13: 9798953798006
• Release Date: October 2026
• Publisher: Benito Books
• Length: 268 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"