Closing Time

One body. Five killers. Five true solutions. You name the killer.

Gino's Pizzeria, a tired strip mall off a state highway, closing time on an ordinary Friday. The last pizza goes out at 11:47. The gate comes down. The five-person night crew runs the close-out - and the till won't balance, because the cashier who never makes mistakes is four hundred dollars short and not answering when they call her name.

She is in the walk-in cooler, between the mozzarella and the tomato buckets, wrists cold, apron bunched under her hip, a single mark at her temple. The phone line is cut. The front gate is padlocked from inside, and the only key belongs to one of the five people standing in the dining room with you.

You are Iris Kerr, Detective Inspector, off duty, eating a cold slice alone at the counter because you couldn't sleep - present for the discovery, trapped for the night, the only person in the room who has ever stood over a body and known what to do with it. You have until the owner arrives at 8 a.m. Eight hours. Five people with reasons. No warrant, no team, no lock on the door that will hold if someone decides to run.

Pull the mallet thread: A rubber tool missing from its clip on the dough bench, wiped clean, hiding what the seam could not.

Pull the almond-milk thread: An unlabelled bottle in the dry store, and a sister who knew exactly what it would do to her.

Pull the pizza thread: A last slice made with too much care, a note that isn't quite the hand that signed it, and a chef with three pills unaccounted for.

Pull the wire thread: A compressor junction spliced live, a wet floor, and a dishwasher who was only ever trying to scare her.

Pull the bag thread: A knot tied the way a man ties his tie every morning of his life, and a set of books that were never going to balance.

Five threads. Five true endings - each one completely deducible from the clues on your path. Read again, pull a different thread, and convict someone new. The cold in the walk-in is the same cold that keeps every story honest, and the door does not open until you decide whose name goes on it.

Closing Time is the tenth (and last) book in the Iris Kerr Interactive Series - closed-circle murder mysteries where the culprit genuinely changes with the path, and fair play is never broken.