The Clue in the Clay — Dolores Hitchens

A San Francisco police detective becomes obsessed with a sculptress's apparent suicide -- and hounds his new wife into helping him solve the case . . .
 
When Officer Charles confronts a man acting erratically early in the morning on a quiet residential street in San Francisco, he presumes it's a case of public intoxication -- until the man blurts out that Mabel Edwards has hanged herself. The sculptress, who'd been working on a menacing-looking Druid statue, is indeed dead. And when the shaken officer briefly leaves the scene, his only witness disappears.
 
When Det. Lt. Stephen Mayhew, on his honeymoon in San Francisco, hears about the death from his old pal Charles, he's not convinced it was suicide -- especially after he hears the nasty comments made by Mabel's elderly neighbors. To his new bride's dismay, he's soon obsessed with his hunch, peppering everyone with questions and asking poor Sara to help him re-create the crime scene. How can she say no? That's what she gets for marrying a policeman . . .
 
Previously published under the name D.B. Olsen