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Tempest led the way as they took their picnic lunch to the edge of the town square park.

“Where do you want to begin?” Ivy asked.

“With the rest of that cucumber-cumin sandwich.” Sanjay reached into the basket and found his baguette.

“You seem surprisingly blasé for someone who was almost murdered two days ago,” Gideon said.

Sanjay blinked at him. “The three of you are protecting me.”

“Gideon is right,” Tempest said. “I should have insisted we go back to Fiddler’s Folly.”

“It’s such a beautiful sunny day out here,” said Ivy. “And we’re far apart from everyone else. We’ll see if anyone comes near us.”

Tempest raised an eyebrow. “You hate the sun. You’d much rather be curled up inside with a book with it pouring rain outside.”

Ivy pursed her lips. “That was before I thought we might have a ghost on our hands.”

“Not you, too.”

“What? Both Enid and Mrs. Hudson believe it’s Harold,” Ivy said. “They’re perfectly sensible people.”

“I don’t know about Mrs. Hudson,” Sanjay said. “But, Ivy… Truly, it’s a trick. Not a ghost. I don’t know how they did it yet, but I promise you it’s a trick. Hey, did Ash include dessert in the picnic basket?”

Tempest tossed him a chocolate chip brownie. “We’re missing something, and we just have to figure out what it is. Let’s go over everything we know one more time.”

“This brownie is heavenly,” Sanjay said. “What kind of chocolate chips are these? How are they still gooey?”

Tempest rolled her eyes. “Probably because it’s summer and they were in the truck.” She would have said magic if she’d been in a better mood, but she was itching to figure out the last bits of missing information that would make everything make sense.

Ivy moved her heavy tote bag into the center of the picnic blanket. The canvas bag was designed to look like an oversize library card. She reached inside and drew out half a dozen books.

Sanjay peeked over the edge. “It’s like a reverse magic trick. You only pulled out six books, but there are at least a dozen more inside here.”

“We start with these,” Ivy said. “These six mystery novels are all impossible crimes with specific parallels to our situation this week. I checked them out from the Locked Room Library while I was there earlier today. I thought they might help us shake loose some ideas.”

“ And Then There Were None. ” Tempest held up the paperback book. It was so well loved that the edges of the cover were frayed, and a chunk of the lower-right corner was missing. “You usually make selections that are obscurer.”

“It’s true it’s Agatha Christie’s most famous novel,” Ivy said, “but that’s not why I picked it. It’s at the top of my list because it’s both a locked-room mystery and a closed-circle mystery—a combination we’re dealing with. Not only is it impossible for Lucas to have vanished like he did—especially once we learned he was killed the first night—but the house was being watched. That means one of the people there had a hand in what happened to Lucas.”

“Meaning it could have been one of the people inside the house,” said Gideon, “or Mrs. Hudson herself if she was lying about what happened the first night.”

“But the video recording of the following night didn’t lie,” said Tempest. “Whoever moved Lucas’s body from its hiding spot onto the living room floor was either inside or directly outside of the house. Besides the four of us, that’s Mrs. Hudson, Cameron, Kira, and Milton.”

They all stared at the book cover of And Then There Were None , as if it would give them answers. It must have been at least the hundredth book cover design of Christie’s famous book about ten strangers who all receive an invitation to a secluded island cut off from the mainland. Once there, the strangers realize their pasts are catching up with them. But who among them is a killer seeking vengeance? And how is the culprit getting away with it?

“I’ve got nothin’,” said Sanjay. “I’ve only seen the movie, but I’m pretty sure the plot of that book isn’t what’s going on here. It’s been two days, and only Lucas is dead.”

“ Harumph .” Ivy held up the next book cover. “Moving on, The Man Who Could Not Shudder . A Dr. Fell novel by John Dickson Carr.”

“Dr. Fell is a detective who likes to say Harumph ,” Tempest stage-whispered to Sanjay.

“I got it,” he stage-whispered back.

“It takes place at a supposedly haunted house,” Ivy said, “where—”

“Next,” said Sanjay. “None of us are seriously entertaining the notion that Harold Gray’s ghost is haunting his old house, are we? Good. Then we can move on to—”

“Hold up,” said Gideon. “Just because we agree a ghost didn’t kill Lucas or turn the fun escape room into a horror chamber, someone is trying to make it seem like there’s a ghost. Ivy, there’s not a real ghost in that novel, is there?”

“No,” Ivy said. “The book has a rational explanation, just like I know we’ll find here. But Enid and Mrs. Hudson believe it’s Harold’s ghost we’re dealing with.”

“Unless they’re faking their fear,” Gideon said.

“Enid’s not faking it,” said Tempest. “I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am. Also, she wasn’t there the second night. I know, I know, she could be working with Mrs. Hudson or anyone else.” Tempest twisted her hair around her fingertips and tugged, frustrated that she could feel they were so close to answers, but every step of the way seemed to bring only more confusion.

“I’ll keep going,” Ivy said. “Before we see if it’s worth going deeper into any of them, I first want to explain the general idea of why I picked each of them. They all offer insights into our lives right now. Next up is Through a Glass, Darkly by Helen McCloy. I selected it because it involves a doppelg?nger, which is what Lucas and Sanjay effectively were.”

“If we didn’t look so similar,” Sanjay said, “I’d be dead right now. So I’m in favor of doppelg?ngers.”

“We still don’t know why Lucas wanted to trade places with you that night,” Tempest pointed out. “For all we know, maybe there could be a sinister reason he wanted someone who looked so much like him.”

Sanjay made a choking sound.

“Moving right along,” said Ivy. “ The Crimson Fog by Paul Halter, because it includes an impossible crime that takes place behind a curtain during a magic show performance, which is what Sanjay and Lucas were up to during the murder mystery play. The book also involves a section about Jack the Ripper… So maybe for now let’s just finish up the last two books with different types of impossibilities. I’ve got Death from a Top Hat by Clayton Rawson, because our resident magician Sanjay is the intended victim. Two magicians are killed—”

“Next!” Sanjay croaked.

“She’s trying to help.” Tempest jabbed his side with her finger.

“It won’t help if I’ve had a heart attack from comparing my predicament to the horrible circumstances of the poor characters in these classic mysteries.”

“I’m sorry.” Ivy bit her lip. “But I really do think this will help. Especially this last one. Hear me out about the summary of this last book, and then I can stop. It’s another John Dickson Carr novel, since he was the master of the locked-room mystery. The Nine Wrong Answers. I selected it because there are so many false clues that Carr adds footnotes to the reader about how they’ve been led astray—and yet they haven’t .”

Before continuing, Ivy paused and looked at each of them in turn, making sure they were all giving her their full attention. “We’re on a similar path here. There’s so much going on. We’ve got Enid’s invisible intruder last week, a body vanishing before mysteriously reappearing, being wrong about when Lucas was killed, Cam’s new library being under threat, being trapped in our own escape room after a dead man lured us there, an angry neighbor spying on us, and not even knowing who the intended victim was. These things are related and can’t be mere coincidences. Assumptions are made because they were the logical things to presume, but you need to look more closely to see the truth.”

“You’re not kidding,” said Tempest. “We’ve all made so many assumptions, which is why we missed the truth about Sanjay being the intended victim for so long.” She turned to him. “Maybe you saw something you weren’t supposed to. When you were working with Lucas to plan your deception, where did you two meet up?”

“What? No. We never met up in person. We were texting.”

Tempest felt her breath catch. “Did you even talk with him?”

“Of course,” he said. “I just said we were… Oooooh. You mean talking like actually speaking verbally on the phone. Who even does that anymore?”

Tempest stared at her brilliant yet clueless friend. “People who want to make sure the person they’re talking to is actually who they say they are.”

Multiple gasps sounded around the picnic blanket.

“You don’t mean…” Sanjay scrambled backward on the blanket as if running away from the implication of her words. “I was helping his killer ?”

“When you let Lucas out of the trunk,” said Tempest, feeling her whole body buzzing, “are you certain he was alive?”

Ivy’s hands flew to her mouth.

“But my trunk has plenty of air holes,” Sanjay insisted.

“I know,” said Tempest. “I’m not saying your trunk suffocated him. But air holes wouldn’t help someone who was already dead .”

Sanjay’s face contorted with disbelief.

“How exactly did you let Lucas out of the trunk during that first rehearsal?” Tempest asked.

“I tilted it onto its side.” Sanjay clutched his bowler hat and looked imploringly at each of them. “That’s the easiest way out! I didn’t do anything wrong. I had to tip it… otherwise, the person inside would have to scramble out awkwardly. I mean, I can do it, but it’s not like there’s a lot of extra space for a full-grown man, and Lucas wasn’t practiced at stagecraft. So I dumped him… Oh God…”

“Lucas didn’t die that night during our rehearsal,” said Tempest. “He was already dead before someone else texted Sanjay earlier that afternoon.”