The Second Encore
- A case in 10 chapters
- Free to play
- Large print
- Read in order
How the case begins
The Blue Room burned in 1951 and stayed a scar on Delancey Street for ten years. Tonight it reopens: new velvet, new kitchen, the old sign relit, and a supper crowd thick with everyone who ever claimed they were there in the great days. The house band is half veterans, half young blood, and the night's showpiece is a number the papers have already written about, an arrangement from the old Blue Room that the young trumpet star found, so the program says, in a pawned songbook. Minutes before the second set, Lonnie Vale opens his trumpet case backstage and finds the horn dead: valves seized solid, and not by accident. The reopening stumbles in front of the press, the owner starts calculating what a ruined night costs, and somewhere between the cloakroom and the bandstand walks a person who wanted that number silenced. The question that matters is not who had the chance. Half the club had the chance. The question is why the one number everyone came to hear was the one worth stopping.
Each chapter is a short scene and a puzzle, and every puzzle leaves you one clue. Keep all nine. The finale needs them. Your clues keep themselves on this device.
- 1Reopening Night
- 2A Desk Man's Work
- 3The Margins
- 4Shelf Nineteen
- 5The Running Order
- 6What Burned
- 7The Old Ritual
- 8Alma's Country
- 9Arranged By
- 10The Second Encorebring your clues
The people of the case
- Cy Marsh. The band's arranger, old Blue Room and new. Wrote charts for the great days and copies them out still, in a hand like engraving.
- Lonnie Vale. The young trumpet star, gifted and in a hurry. Found the night's showpiece, so the program says, in a pawnshop songbook.
- Dinah Brooks. The new singer, hired for the reopening. Knows nobody, owes nobody, and keeps being looked at anyway.
- Mort Fingers. The owner, then and now. Spent ten years getting the Blue Room back and will not discuss the fire, the insurance, or the great days.
- Alma Reyes. Runs the cloakroom and the case room behind the bandstand. Sees everyone's hands and everyone's business, and keeps both to herself.
- Ed Pruitt. The columnist who wrote the reopening up in advance. Came for a triumph, stayed for a better story.
Prefer pen and paper?
The whole case as one large-print booklet: every chapter and its puzzle, a clue ledger to fill in, and the ending sealed on the last page.