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After admitting her lingering fears after that traumatic childhood experience, Enid was spent. She asked for her drink to go, leaving Tempest alone in the café.

Tempest glanced at her phone. She’d missed a text message:

Time to cancel the mystery play and escape room game.

The message from Cameron Gray wasn’t surprising, but it was still like a punch in the gut. They’d put so much effort into Gray House and this weekend… She wrapped up her croissant that she hadn’t had time to eat. Sanjay had driven, so she’d have to walk home. She called Cameron from the sidewalk as she began walking.

“Don’t cancel yet,” Tempest said as soon as Cameron picked up. She couldn’t help glaring at the phone, even though nobody besides a dog-walker on the sidewalk, who looked disturbingly similar to his dog, could see her.

“It’s not like I have a choice. Detective Blackburn asked me to call off everything happening this weekend. Both the escape room game and mystery play. I guess we don’t get to be part of the summer stroll after all.”

“Did he ask you or tell you?”

“He told me he couldn’t guarantee when the house would be released,” Cameron said. “I was about to email everyone who booked a ticket that it’s canceled.”

“Where are you?”

“At my apartment.”

“Not at Gray House?”

“It’s a crime scene , Tempest. I’d already planned to take this week off from my job to be there, but obviously I can’t be now. Nobody’s allowed in.”

She kicked a pebble on the sidewalk. Right. A crime scene. “We have one more day. Tomorrow is just preview night for a few guests. Cancel tomorrow night. But give it one more day before you call off the opening on Friday night.”

He didn’t answer right away.

“Cameron? Did I lose you?” Sometimes reception cut out in the hills, but she hadn’t gotten far beyond the main square.

“No. I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t. You think you can do the impossible? You think you can solve Lucas’s murder in one more day?”

“I’m going to make sure we get your library approved to open as well. But you need to tell me everything you know about Mrs. Hudson and your uncle’s relationship.”

“Um, that was random.” Cameron lowered his voice to a whisper. “Wait. Does that mean… You think Mrs. Hudson is the killer?”

“Why are you whispering?”

“One of my roommates is in the other room.”

“He doesn’t know about the murder?”

“We’re not close.”

Which is why, Tempest remembered, he was very much looking forward to moving into the little apartment Harold had built for him on the top floor of Gray House. He lived with two other guys, one of whom was an old college acquaintance, but they shared the apartment for economic reasons rather than friendship.

“What can I tell you about Mrs. Hudson and Uncle Harold?” Cameron asked, his voice back to normal now that he wasn’t speaking of murder.

“There’s something more going on with Mrs. Hudson than we understand.”

“Whoa. Are you investigating ?”

“I assumed Ivy told you,” she said. Because she did. She wasn’t crossing Cameron off her suspect list, but it didn’t hurt to tell him something he already knew.

“She mentioned it. But I assumed she meant she’d use her knowledge of classic mysteries to think about motives and weird solutions to seemingly impossible crimes. Is that safe to—”

“It’s less safe to carry on before we know if Mrs. Hudson is a murderer. Lucas might have been killed because he was helping get the library approved.”

When Tempest had first learned of the idea of Harold Gray’s vision for his library to be a neighborhood gathering spot as well as a library where anyone was free to borrow books, she thought it sounded very much like something that would happen in a movie from the 1980s. Her dad loved those cheesy movies where the little guy wins against all odds. All it lacked was a rec center and an evil real estate developer—though she supposed Mrs. Hudson played an equivalent role.

Cameron swore. “Lucas said he wanted to help, but I didn’t know it was more than talk. You think Mrs. Hudson wanted to stop him? I don’t know if she’s capable of something like that.”

“We never know what someone else is capable of,” Tempest pointed out. “What can you tell me about her relationship to Harold and the library?”

“She envied my uncle.”

“Why?” When Tempest thought about Harold, she imagined the lonely old man with failing health who only had his grandnephew checking in on him. But that was only the man as he’d been in the last few months of his life.

“Harold filled his house with books and people.”

“He wasn’t a people person.”

“He wasn’t,” Cameron agreed. “You’ve met him, so you understand. But long before you met him, he used to throw literary-themed events at that house. He never participated, but he was the puppet master. That way, he could see other people enjoying books, but he didn’t have to make small talk or associate with people he didn’t like, both of which would have killed him.”

Tempest scowled at the phone, even though they weren’t on a video call. “Why didn’t he ever tell me this when I interviewed him? Why did he make it sound like only the start of an idea, so Ivy and I had to create everything from scratch?”

“How am I supposed to know why Harold did anything?” Cameron was nearly yelling. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. This whole week. It’s been a lot. And anyway, I never attended those parties. I was just a kid when he threw them. I probably wasn’t even born when he started them. He stopped a while ago.”

Which explained why Ash wouldn’t have known about the book-themed parties. He and Morag had only moved from Scotland into the tree house in-law unit at Fiddler’s Folly six years ago. Otherwise, Tempest was sure he would have known all about them.

“Did Mrs. Hudson wish Harold had left his book collection to her?” Tempest asked.

“I don’t think so. They aren’t worth much, and what would she have done with them? You’ve seen what the house looked like before you started renovations, stacked full of books. When I got the call that he’d died, my first thought was to wonder whether he’d been crushed by one of his towering stacks of books and died with an Agatha Christie novel in his hand and a smile on his face.” Cameron gave a sad laugh.

“Anyway,” he continued, “Mrs. Hudson loves Sherlock Holmes, but Harold didn’t have any rare Arthur Conan Doyle novels. Enid’s Locked Room Library inspired him and showed him how a small private library in Hidden Creek would be perfect, and then he was able to convince Enid to help him set up his own.”

“But then he passed away before it was completed.”

“You worked with him, so you know he put in a lot of the work up front.”

“We only came in after he’d done the initial planning. What did you do before Secret Staircase Construction came on board? Was Mrs. Hudson involved at all?”

“She wasn’t. Uncle Harold got the blessing of the local public library shortly before you were hired for the renovation. Harold asked them what they thought, since he never wanted to upset a local public library. They all supported the idea of a private library down the street as long as it would be open to the community free of charge—which was always the idea. Uncle Harold got advice from the staff of the library and from Enid. He also got a lawyer to set up a trust. That way, I’ll be able to live in the apartment at the top of the house and get both a salary and library expenses paid well into the future. The trust also pays the salary of a permanent library assistant, as well as Enid’s salary for two years, to compensate her for getting everything set up properly. She’ll make sure everything goes well, like it did with her library. But you already know all this, Tempest. The trust pays Secret Staircase Construction. I don’t know what else I can tell you that you don’t already know.”

“I just don’t see where Mrs. Hudson fits. Why she’s so angry. By the time I met her, after you and Harold hired Secret Staircase Construction, she was already opposed to the library. You really don’t know why?”

“When Harold knew he was dying, all he told me was that she was against it but that we didn’t need to worry about her. He said that he knew her past, and she’d come around.”

“Her past?” Tempest asked.

“Harold didn’t tell me what it was. I got the strongest sense from him that he and Mrs. Hudson used to be friends. Before something happened. He wouldn’t talk about it. But whenever I came to visit Harold, I’d see Mrs. Hudson watching us from across the street. It was creepy. Not saying hello. Just staring .”

Creepy, indeed. What were Harold and Mrs. Hudson hiding?