Ex-FBI agent Jeff Talbot is now an antique picker. When he begins work on his latest acquisition, the contents of the house of a deceased hoarder, he finds a suspicious bloodstain suggesting that the her death was not an accident as thought. The story, a cozy mystery, is set in Seattle and helped along by the antique trade background and his home life with an agoraphobic wife, a zany sister-in-law, and an inherited mansion complete with butler. ( )