Our October mystery game kicks off on October 4th! Each week a new mystery will be revealled on Monday at 2:00pm. Read the mystery, solve it, and send your solution to the library by private Facebook message. Or by playing in the library. 

Four mysteries to solve means four chances to win a prize! Winner will be chosen November 1st and announced that day. 

Since Facebook currently has an outage, you can send your answer via email: stubbslibrary@holstein.lib.ia.us

Mini-Mystery #1

It was once again October in Holstein and Officer Randall was investigating yet another murder. This time Richard Phillips was lying in his backyard face down, an ornate letter opener in his back. His neighbor, Sally Wheedle called it in at 9am. Forensics pinpointed the time of death to be 11pm. A quick tour of Richard’s home revealed that the man collected letter openers and stamps. Some of the collection was quite valuable. He also noted a number of photographs of Richard and a young blonde woman.

A note on Richard’s desk had three names on it, Mark Warren, Jesse Michaels and a Nancy Harris. Both men turned out to be interested buyers of the collection, but Nancy did not answer her phone. Officer Randall figured she too was a bidder. During the investigation, Richard’s niece Amelia Evans arrived at the police station. The dark-haired woman claimed her uncle had wanted her to have the collection. He had never mentioned anything to her about selling it. Yet, Sally, Mark, and Jesse had all stated the opposite, Sally even noting that Richard had spoken of it often the past two months. The men had told Officer Randall that they had seen an advertisement in the classifieds.

Officer Randall was confused. He became more confused when a blonde woman arrived at Richard’s house claiming to be Amelia. She too did not know anything about selling the collection but admitted that she had not spoken to Richard in a few months since she had just moved to a new town and had been settling in at a new job. She didn’t have her id on her, Sally had called her about the death and she had rushed out of the house without it. 

 Meanwhile, it was reported to Officer Randall the Amelia at the police station was insisting on taking the collection into her custody. Officer Randall left the second Amelia with an officer to give a fuller statement and went back into the house. He went back to the living room. He picked up a photograph and took a good look.     

Officer Randall knows which woman is the imposter and killer, do you?