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“It didn’t weigh you?” Winston asked.

She waggled the piece of paper between her fingers and shook her head. “Oh, it weighed me, all right, but instead of confirming my weight on this paper, which I would have had to burn, it just says ‘three.’” She stepped off the scale and brought the paper to me.

I examined it. Sure enough, it had one number—three—and nothing else on either side.

Meanwhile, Mia hopped up on the scale. “Hey, it weighed me correctly, too, but I got a piece of paper that says ‘two.’ What does that mean?”

I thought for a moment. “Clarissa, can you get back on the scale again?”

She obliged, but nothing happened. “It weighed me correctly, but it isn’t giving me another piece of paper. How odd.”

I approached the scale and stood on it. The needle moved until it accurately displayed my weight. A small piece of paper popped out with the number six on it. Clearly, we were each being assigned a number, possibly by our weight. But why?

“Everyone, examine the puzzle tables more thoroughly,” I said. “Gio, come with me.” I walked over to the carnival panel and looked between it and the chairs.

“It’s a shooting gallery,” I said. “You sit in a chair and fire at targets that presumably appear from behind the doors. But there doesn’t appear to be any way to start the game.”

Gio removed one of the guns and gave the holster a closer look. “There’s a small slit next to the holster, but it is too thin for a coin, even if we had any, which we don’t.” He plopped into one of the chairs, holding the plastic gun in his hands. “You know, this kind of feels like one of those blasters you might find in a laser tag game.” He pointed it at the wall and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.

“We need to figure out how to start the game,” I said.

I surveyed the room again. Mia and Clarissa stood near the Scrabble board table, Winston had migrated to the chessboard, and Alessa examined the jigsaw puzzle.

“This is strange,” Winston said. “This chess game is already well underway. In fact, it’s nearly finished. Can you check this out, Slash?”

As I walked toward Winston, Mia reached out to touch one of the tiles on the Scrabble-like puzzle. Clarissa quickly rebuked her. “Don’t touch anything yet, Mia. As Slash cautioned us, we shouldn’t move things until we understand what we’re doing. Otherwise, we might lose a clue.”

Clarissa glanced at me for affirmation, and I nodded my head, tipping an imaginary hat to her. That garnered me a dazzling smile as I joined her husband, my father-in-law, at the chessboard.

“Look at this,” Winston said, pointing at the board. “The game is almost over. The setup resembles one of the typical chess puzzles such as white or black checkmates in a fixed number of moves.”

I studied it, agreeing with him. “Can you solve it?”

“Probably, with a little time. But it will be tricky not knowing whose move it is or what the puzzle-solving outcome is.”

“It’s white’s move,” I said. “The chess timer is pressed down on black’s side. That means white’s on the clock.”

My father-in-law looked up at me in surprise, or maybe grudging admiration. “That’s a pretty clever way of letting us know,” he said.

“It is. I think it’s time to solve these puzzles. Winston, see how many ways you can come to checkmate. Alessa, Mia, and Clarissa, I’d like the three of you to work on the jigsaw puzzle, since I have a hunch the chess game and the puzzle are related. Gio, you check out the scale, and I’m going to take another look at the shooting gallery. Let’s leave the Scrabble-style game alone for now. I suspect those remaining tiles are going to mean something to us at some point.”

“What about the balloons?” Mia asked, pointing to the ceiling.

“They’re too high to worry about right now,” I said. “We’ll have to deal with them later.”

I glanced at the clock, noting thirty minutes had already passed and we hadn’t solved a single puzzle. Still, it wasn’t time wasted. I’d already begun to get a feel for the style and patterns Mr. Zachetti enjoyed using. Understanding what we were working with before we started was an essential piece of solving the overall puzzle.

I went straight to the garish panel with the small doors, the carnival music already grating on my nerves. I tuned the music out and focused on the panel. The mini doors were closed tight and surrounded by small lightbulbs. No matter how hard I slid, pushed, or pulled on the doors, they wouldn’t budge. On closer inspection, I noticed a rectangular display bar beneath the panel that could light up or display a digital message. Next to that was a small slot about the size of a credit card.

Interesting.

I turned to focus on the six chairs. They appeared identical, with a metal attachment on the right side that holstered the gun. On closer inspection, I saw the tiny, thin slot next to the holster that Gio had mentioned. The slot was in a location where one would typically insert a coin to start the game. I ran my finger gently across the slot. Gio was right—a coin would never fit. If we needed to start the game by putting something in that slot, we’d have to find something extremely thin.

I now focused on the plastic gun. It was held to the chair by a cable that was about four feet long and attached to the butt of the pistol and the base of the chair.

I sat down in a chair and felt it sink slightly. Curious, I pulled out the pistol attached to the chair and pointed it at one of the doors. I pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. I tried sitting in each of the chairs and doing the same thing with zero results.

But I felt as if I was on the verge of something.