Showing Miss Zukas and the Stroke of Death by Jo Dereske

Librarian Miss Helma Zukas reluctantly agrees to employ her long dormant canoeing skills in the service of the Bellehaven Library relay race team in the famous Snow to Surf Race. But first she has a more pressing obligation - namely keeping her flaky artist friend, Ruth Winthrop, off Death Row. After Ruth rejects the advances of a dirty old man in a local bar, he inconveniently turns up dead outside her studio. By asking too many questions about one unsavory dead man, Miss Zukas is paddling in dangerous waters.