viii.

I woke up as the day lingered between night and sunrise. It looked as if the sun was struggling to decide if it should make the effort to push through the haze. Just like I was.

I’d been wrong the night before, I now realized. Half wrong.

Rosalyn had told us why it was necessary to burn the book, yet now that I’d gotten some sleep, I realized a fundamental problem with what I’d accepted at the time was a confession. The hotel’s owner was the only person who couldn’t have burned the book. We were all watching her at the window, which was far from the fireplace. Why had she walked to the window as she spoke, when there was nothing to see outside in the darkness?

I found Kenny in the kitchen.

“Kenny, you said you knew about poisons from your research for Simon. What could have still been active after seventy years?”

“It would have to be one of the heavy metals, like arsenic or antimony.”

Which didn’t cause hallucinations and couldn’t have compelled Mr. Underhill to kill himself. And that type of poison wasn’t what had killed Simon.

“Coffee or cranberry scones?” Kenny asked. “The storm is over, but I think it’ll still be a while before they reach us.”

“I’ll be back.” I left the kitchen and knocked on one of the bedroom doors.

History was repeating itself. As had happened seventy years before, the library ghost was enacting poetic justice again.

Ivy opened the door. Her auburn curls were askew, and dark shadows made her face appear sunken. I doubted she’d slept.

“It wasn’t an accident, was it?” I said.

She smiled sadly and shook her head. “No. It wasn’t an accident. It was justice. It was the least I could do. You see, it was my fault he went free.”

“He lived here in Denver before moving after the trial,” I said. “You were here then, too.”

She nodded. “I wanted to be a NASCAR driver back then. But I screwed up. I was young. I’d stolen a car to go for a joyride. That night, I saw Simon. He was in the park where he strangled his girlfriend. That park had a great big lot where I thought I could practice my Rockford Spin with the car. I thought it would be empty since the park officially closes at midnight, but when I drove in my headlights shone on the park bench…He never saw my face, only the blinding lights of the stolen car. Simon lied about his alibi. He used his charm to get his friends to back up his story—for all I knew they were probably too drunk to realize they were even lying—and I was too scared to say anything. Confessing to stealing the car would have ruined my life. I didn’t get caught that night. But it didn’t matter in the end. My nerves were shot after that.”

“So when you saw him at the airport today—”

“He’s impossible to miss. I turned down other fares so I could ‘accidentally’ bump into Simon and tell him I had an unoccupied taxi and knew of a hotel.”

“But you left after you dropped us off.”

Ivy shook her head and laughed ruefully. “I chickened out. But when the storm got so bad I nearly ran off the precarious road, I knew it was fate for me to come back. But you have to understand, I was going to kill myself. Not Simon. That’s why I had the poison. I’ve carried it with me for the past year, ever since Simon’s last book came out to critical acclaim. And I didn’t use it on Simon tonight. Not exactly.”

“Then how—?”

“I know Rosalyn,” Ivy said. “I’ve been driving tourists to her inn for years, so we got to know each other well. Nobody else makes the drive to Tanglewood Inn during storms as bad as this one. I called Rosalyn from the airport to let her know I was bringing some people to the hotel and it would be better if my passengers didn’t think I’d made the dangerous drive to bring them to a far-away hotel because I was friends with the owner.”

“Which is why we didn’t think you two knew each other.”

Ivy nodded. “I didn’t want her to get in trouble if I was caught. I knew where she kept her keys, so I knew how to unlock the book. I didn’t tell her what I was going to do, though. I know she tried to cover for me last night when she realized what I must have done, since she’s always known I believed Simon Quinn was guilty. I never confided in her what I’d seen a decade ago, but she knew I felt passionately about his guilt, since it consumed me. But I wouldn’t have let Rosalyn take the fall for me. That was never a question.”

“Even if you originally got the poison for yourself,” I said, “you still killed him.”

“I poisoned the edges of the pages of the book,” Ivy said, “but I didn’t put the book in Simon’s hands. I knocked on the door to his room after we all went to bed last night. I told him I had evidence of his guilt, and that it was inside the Agatha Christie book, hidden in between some of the pages that were stuck together. If he dared face the library’s avenging ghost, he could get the evidence that proved his guilt and destroy it. If he was innocent, Jaya, why would he go looking for evidence that didn’t exist?”

“He wouldn’t,” I said.

As I thought of Simon creeping into the library, bolting the door behind him, and searching for evidence, I knew Ivy was right. Simon’s actions were those of a guilty man. Once he felt the poison taking hold, he wouldn’t have immediately gone for help because he needed to first find the evidence so people wouldn’t learn of his guilt. That explained why he hadn’t left the library for help.

“I’m ready to turn myself in,” Ivy said. “My conscience is clear. I’ll accept my fate. It was Simon Quinn’s own guilt that killed him.”