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The Distillery Ledger

Eleven barrels left the Kessler yard. Ten came off the truck. The bookkeeper who could count them is gone — and everybody in Bay City is telling you a different lie about the same night.

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In development — plays in your browser, winter 2026. No dice, no maps, no mercy.

Case № VO-48-11 · Bay City · November 1948

Ten barrels where eleven should be.

Kessler & Sons has survived Prohibition, the war, and the union. On the night of the fourteenth, a truck leaves the yard carrying eleven barrels of twelve-year rye and arrives at the Kettle Club carrying ten. By morning the yard bookkeeper — Elias Crane, twenty-two years of neat columns — is gone, and page 41 of the distillery ledger is gone with him.

You are the investigator Pacific Coast Indemnity sends to price the loss. The policy says a barrel of rye is worth $312. Then a harbor patrolman fishes Crane's hat out of the water off Pier 9, and $312 stops being the number that matters.

In Bay City everyone talks. The trick is that they all lie in different directions.

Nov 14: the night of the shortage
$312: insured value of one barrel
P. 41: the page missing from the ledger
7: nights before Indemnity closes the file

Exhibits A through F

The board keeps what people won't say.

Everything below is in the game, and none of it means what it seems to. Move the lamp across the board.

Grainy black-and-white night photograph of the distillery yard in pouring rain, one window lit — EXHIBIT A — the yard (the old Slaughter & Dye works), night of the 14th. One window lit. Ask whose.

BAY CITY P.D. — TELETYPE
11-15-48 0640

TO ALL UNITS: KESSLER & SONS REPORTS SHORTAGE ONE (1) BBL RYE WHISKEY. YARD BOOKKEEPER E. CRANE ABSENT FROM RESIDENCE. NO FORCED ENTRY. HAT RECOVERED PIER 9. REFER INDEMNITY MAN WHEN HE COMES ASKING. HE WILL.

Black-and-white evidence photograph of a leather accounting ledger open on a desk, one page torn out — EXHIBIT C — the ledger, open to where page 41 isn't.

THE
KETTLE
CLUB

CLOSE COVER BEFORE STRIKING

EXHIBIT D — Quinn doesn't smoke.

BAY CITY TRANSIT · NIGHT OWL LINE

11-14-48 — 1:52 AM

FARE 10¢ · PIER DISTRICT · NOT TRANSFERABLE

EXHIBIT E — who rides the Night Owl in the rain?

Vera — if the columns don't balance, it isn't arithmetic. Look at what the truck weighed, not what it carried. — E.C.

EXHIBIT F — found folded into a hymnal.

EXHIBIT B is being withheld pending the events of Night Four.

Play a moment from Night Two

She asks first.

INT. THE KETTLE CLUB, BACK OFFICE — 2:14 A.M.

The widow doesn't look up from her solitaire. "Crane kept two sets of books, mister. Before I say another word — which one did Indemnity send you for: the one that balances, or the one that's true?"

Every reply is a lever. In the full game she remembers — for all seven nights.

Persons of interest

Three people. Six alibis.

Vera Kessler

The Widow

Age: 34
Occupation: Proprietor, the Kettle Club
Last seen: Front of house, counting the register twice
Note: Inherited the distillery and the debt in the same envelope.

1948 booking photograph of Marlon Quinn, a broad-shouldered foreman with a boxer's nose

Marlon “Match” Quinn

The Foreman

Age: 47
Occupation: Yard foreman, Kessler & Sons
Last seen: The loading dock, 11:40 p.m.
Note: Loaded eleven barrels. Signed for eleven. Swears he counted ten twice.

MISSING

Elias Crane

The Bookkeeper

Age: 51
Occupation: Bookkeeper, twenty-two years
Last seen: Pier 9 — if you believe the hat
Note: Never missed a column in his life. Missed one on the fourteenth.

The mechanics, plainly

No dice. No maps. People.

The ledger is the interface.

Everything you learn becomes a line in your own ledger. When two entries can't both be true, the page tells you — in red.

Interrogation, not inventory.

There are no locked doors, only people who haven't decided about you yet. Dialogue is the whole machine; every reply opens one door and quietly shuts another.

The city runs on a timetable.

Scenes happen on the clock whether you're in the room or not. 2:14 a.m. at the Kettle Club only happens once.

Seven endings. One truth.

The truth never changes. What you can prove — and who pays for it — does.

Plays in your browserA six-hour caseText with teethWinter 2026

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