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“How did you know I didn’t want the library to open?” Cameron asked Tempest. “I’m a librarian, after all. And this wonderful house is my inheritance.”

“You’re also someone with your own free will,” said Tempest, “who didn’t want your whole life dictated for you. Harold thought you would love the tiny apartment he built into the attic for you to live above the library, since you were always looking at tiny houses.”

“Only because I’m a young librarian in California in the 2020s!” Cameron shouted. “How else was I supposed to afford a home? When I was looking into building a tiny house, I was trying to make the best of a bad situation. It’s not like most people would choose a tiny house with no privacy and a bed on a loft like that of a child. It’s not freedom when we have no other choice.”

“He forced you and Enid to go along with his library plans.”

“Enid isn’t even a librarian.” Cameron laughed without humor. “Did you know that? She’s a woman who loves books, so she built her own library and hired skilled librarians, but she’s not one herself. But Harold still thought he knew best that she was the right person to oversee his vision of a community library.”

“A benevolent dictator,” Tempest said. “Did you know Enid didn’t want to be roped into this either?”

“She didn’t?” Cameron looked like a helpless little boy. Or at least he would have if he hadn’t been pointing a shotgun at her.

“Enid wanted to find a way out, too.”

Cameron laughed as a tear rolled down his cheek. “Harold thought he was being so generous, but do you know what he really was? Controlling. Yes, I loved the old guy. I wasn’t reading to him because I thought I’d get his house. I’m not that coldhearted. I was the only one of his relatives he liked. And I felt the same way about him. It was a wild surprise when he started hinting that I’d inherit the house, but it made sense. Felt right. Most of my family are extroverts who’d rather be on a Jet Ski or playing volleyball on a beach than reading. I was the outcast. Just like Harold in his generation. I thought it was going to be so perfect, one bibliophile passing down his home of books to another…”

“Until you found out there were strings attached.” Tempest squirmed in the sticky tape pulling at the skin on her wrists.

“That’s an understatement. I get to live in a tiny, modern, cramped apartment with sloped ceilings without enough headroom to stand up in many places, but downstairs, there are two floors of beautiful architectural details filled with amazing books—none of which are mine and all of them need to be shared with people. People who Harold would have hated sharing his space with during his lifetime! It was all spelled out so clearly in the trust… I didn’t see a way out.”

“So you turned to murder?” Ivy glared at him.

“No! That was never planned. You have to believe me. I was honestly trying to give Harold’s plan a go. I was grateful for inheriting the house. But the more I looked into the conditions required for me to benefit from the trust he set up, the more I resented how controlling he was. Did you know I’m not allowed to shelve any modern authors’ books in the library? Harold never wanted me to read new authors to him at his bedside. Which is fine. But to prohibit the library from stocking them?” Cameron shook his head. “Classic mysteries are fantastic, and I adore them. But it’s not like they’re better than the books being written now.”

Cameron’s voice shook, but he carried on. “Harold thought he was being so forward-thinking for giving me a ‘tiny house’ like the ones he saw me reading about. But did you know he didn’t even give me a choice about how to build it? When he knew he didn’t have a long time left, he simply made his own plans to convert the attic into what he thought it should be. At least he hired Secret Staircase Construction. That was the one good thing that came of this—that I met Ivy because of it.” He shrank back as he glanced at her and saw the hatred in her eyes.

“You killed someone , Cameron,” Ivy said.

“I didn’t mean to do it. I swear I didn’t plan for it to happen. He was gathering those signatures to save the library. That morning, when no one else was here, he showed up and said he’d come by to make sure everything at the house looked just right—because he wanted to film the dress rehearsal. He’d been giving teasers to his social media followers about his latest production, so he thought at least one of the videos from our rehearsal would go viral and show overwhelming support for the library before the city council vote.”

Ivy gaped at him. “You killed him over a social media post?”

“It wasn’t like that! I never meant to hurt him. He was just so arrogant. I didn’t mean to do it.” He winced at Ivy’s cold stare before turning to Gideon. “Hurry up with that tape.”

“Already done,” said Gideon.

“Oh. Right.” The gun was as unsteady as Cameron’s voice. “Then hand the tape to Sanjay to bind your hands behind your back. And let me see him do it.”

Sanjay took the roll of blue tape with his bound hands and awkwardly wrapped the tape around Gideon’s wrists and hands.

“You can do better than that, Houdini,” Cameron said. “You could shuffle a deck of cards with your hands tied behind your back.”

Sanjay gave up the pretense and wrapped the tape in five smooth circles around Gideon’s wrists.

“Happy?” Sanjay asked as he kicked the tape over to Cameron.

“Of course not.” Cameron’s voice broke. “You have to understand. Harold forced my hand, and then Lucas did. Lucas loved attention and wanted to be the hero who saved the library.”

“So Lucas had to die before he could do that?” Tempest said.

“I think I’m going to be sick.” Ivy leaned into Tempest’s shoulder.

“Don’t you see? He would have unfairly influenced the city council,” Cameron insisted. “I wasn’t doing anything underhanded to stop the library. I hoped, at first, they’d do the right thing and not approve a library in this residential area. But Lucas took away all hope of that. Not only that, but Lucas didn’t care about the library at all. He was only doing it to look like a savior and gain followers.”

“You pretended this whole time how much you wanted to save the library and have the city approve it,” said Ivy, “but that was all a lie. Everything was a lie.”

“Not everything.” Cameron took a hesitant step toward Ivy.

“Don’t touch me,” Ivy snarled.

Cameron looked deflated. “I know I’ve ruined everything, but you have to believe me—I never planned to kill anyone. When Lucas told me about his plans to save the library, I just… I snapped.”

“You picked up the missing ice pick,” said Tempest.

Cameron nodded. “I didn’t realize what I’d done until the ice pick was already in his chest. There was no way to save him. He died instantly.”

“You took his cell phone to make plans to cover it up,” Tempest said.

Cameron nodded again. His face was even paler. “The worst part was that even though I knew exactly how I could hide the truth of what had happened, his phone needed his face to unlock it. So I had to look at him one more time and see what I’d done. I almost couldn’t move forward with my idea to text Sanjay to spin him a story about wanting to win over Kira with a trick. But Sanjay was so eager to help that he dropped off his trunk on the porch right away, and it was so easy to set the stage for the deception. I thought that way Lucas could be found in a mysterious way that pointed away from me—and that having a murder at the library would shut it down.”

“Only Kira wanted to save the library so badly that she moved the body.” Tempest gave up on subtly wriggling her wrists. She was only bunching the tape and making her left hand go numb. “She thought if she could delay finding the body and the city council approved the library, that you’d hire her for the one additional position Harold funded.”

“Kira?” Cameron said. “ That’s what happened? How did this go so off the rails? I never meant for this to—”

“Just stop!” Ivy shouted.

“I’m sorry,” Cameron croaked. He looked forlornly at Ivy. “I did it for you. I knew you were special from the moment I met you, Ivy. If the library was rejected by the city council, at least I could provide a nice house for the two of us. Something we could never buy on two librarians’ salaries.”

“We were barely dating!”

“But I could tell how special you were. I knew that you—”

“You. Don’t. Know. Anything. About. Me,” Ivy growled. “If you did, you’d know that I don’t care about a big, beautiful house. I mean, maybe a little, but all I really want is to have my loved ones and books in my life. I was starting to think you were special, too. But I was wrong.”

“But I did it for you,” Cameron whispered.

“Don’t put this on her,” Tempest snapped. “You don’t care about anyone besides yourself. You sliced Ivy’s hand open with a razor blade!”

“That wasn’t supposed to be Ivy. I tried to stop her from rushing to the book. There was never any poison, but I didn’t want Ivy to get hurt, even with a small cut.”

Ivy squirmed in her restraints. “Your disappointments aren’t my responsibility, Cameron. Harold was paternalistic, but not a bad man. You didn’t have to accept his inheritance at all. I was falling for the man you could have been . Not this man you’ve turned into.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Cameron whispered.

“Why are you still here?” Ivy asked. “We’re restrained.”

Their bound hands kept them from stopping Cameron while he had a gun trained on them, but as soon as he left, they’d be able to free themselves. Cameron wouldn’t have time to truly get away. He must have realized that escaping meant more than getting out of that house. And desperate people do desperate things…

“I don’t know what to do,” Cameron whispered.

A faint noise sounded, but Tempest had long ago given up on thinking the police would arrive to take the futon as evidence. They didn’t know there was any urgency.

“I don’t know if I can let you—” Cameron began, but with a thunk he dropped to the floor.

Behind him, Mrs. Hudson stood holding her massive binoculars raised above her head.

“I’ve seen that done in movies with a rolling pin or a cast-iron skillet,” she said, looking down at the unconscious Cameron. “I’ve never been much of a baker or a cook, but I started bird-watching when my husband was sick. Oh, dear… You don’t think I’ve killed him, do you?”