Back in her den, Vera locks her door and settles in to read Otto’s eight journals, taking notes on anything relevant. After several hours, she spots a folded note slipped under her door. The message, written in a disguised hand, threatens her to abandon the von Beaverpelt case and warns that the next boulder will not miss.

Examining the paper under a lantern, Vera notices a faint watermark: a sycamore tree. She recognizes it immediately—it matches the paper used for Reginald’s wake invitation, written by Edith. Vera suspects the note came from the mansion and that Edith, who recently warned Vera that people who get in her way come to regret it, is the killer, trying to frighten her off.

Undeterred, Vera searches the journals again for anything pointing to Edith, but she finds that the most relevant passages are written in a foreign language or in code—a habit that may stem from Otto’s past as a spy. She gathers the two latest journals and walks through the dark woods to Heidegger’s home. Heidegger agrees to study the journals but warns it will require time. He assures Vera that no code has ever defeated him.

The next morning at the newspaper office, a rabbit delivers an anonymous note to Vera that contains the code word “cranberry,” instructing Vera to appear outside Joe’s Mug at midnight and come alone. Vera correctly interprets this as Rhonda arranging a meeting with Lefty and tells Lenore her plan. Lenore agrees to shadow the meeting from the air rather than involving Orville.

At midnight, Rhonda leads Vera deep into the woods to a small settlement called Elm Grove, where Lefty is hiding at Rhonda’s river cottage. He is nervous but relieved when Vera tells him she believes he is innocent.

Vera questions him about the paw print. Lefty confirms he was casing the mansion about a month earlier but fled before getting far and has not returned since. He also lets slip that he recently worked a job buying jewels with cash for an unnamed client. Pressed, Lefty also admits he was paid to leave a bottle by the pond but insists he had no idea it was poisoned. He refuses to name his employer out of fear for his life.

Vera urges Lefty to return to Shady Hollow as a witness, arguing that Orville will protect him. Rhonda supports this, warning that fleeing will permanently brand him a murderer. Lefty refuses, saying he simply wants to stay alive.

After sleeping until noon, Vera goes to the office but cannot produce a printable article—everything pointing to Edith remains circumstantial. She heads home, where Heidegger is waiting with his findings.

The first journal contains nothing beyond Otto’s daily meals and complaints. The second is far more significant: It reveals that Otto and Ruby Ewing were close friends who commiserated as mutual outcasts. Ruby confided in Otto that she had been having an affair with Reginald von Beaverpelt and that after he ended things to preserve his marriage and his wife’s money, she began blackmailing him. Vera immediately connects this to unexplained payments to “B. S.” that Howard found in the sawmill’s books: Blackmailing Sheep.

Heidegger also notes a passage in which Ruby told Otto she had an insurance policy hidden in a hollow log in the woods. After he departs, Vera deciphers the hint: Ruby converted the blackmail payments into rubies—her own namesake—stored in the log. She concludes that Ruby hired Lefty to purchase the gems discreetly.

With a storm rolling in, Vera races into the woods to find the hollow birch log, hoping to use the stash to pressure Ruby into revealing what she knows about Edith. She finds the log and reaches inside—and then hears a twig snap behind her. A familiar voice tells her she should have heeded the warning note. Vera turns to face Ruby Ewing.

Ruby is armed with a knife. She forces Vera to walk through the storm-battered woods to a remote clifftop cottage on High Cliff, where she and Reginald once met in secret. Ruby plans to leave Vera locked inside while she retrieves her rubies and flees town permanently.

Inside the barred cottage, Ruby confesses the full sequence of events. She loved Reginald, but he refused to abandon his wife’s wealth, so she blackmailed him. When he threatened to expose her, she decided to poison him. She hired Lefty to leave a bottle of poisoned plum wine beside Reginald’s usual path to the mill, but Lefty placed it in the wrong spot, and Otto found and drank it instead.

Arriving too late to retrieve the bottle, Ruby discovered Otto dead and stabbed his body to disguise the poisoning—a mistake, as Vera points out, since it brought in an examiner who found the poison, whereas an accidental drowning would have gone uninvestigated. Ruby then used a key from her old meetings with Reginald to sneak into his office and poison his personal coffeepot, but he did not consume enough. Knowing he was about to tell Vera everything, Ruby lured him from his mansion with a forged note. She tried to convince him to run away with her, but he refused. She pushed him into the millpond in his weakened state and then pushed the body down to delay its discovery. She also confirms she sent the threatening note and rolled the boulder at Vera in the woods.

Ruby announces she intends to kill Vera. The two fight across the cottage floor; Vera knocks over the lantern and, in total darkness, hurls herself through the window, landing outside, badly cut. She spots a group of townspeople with lanterns moving through the trees below. Ruby charges out and wounds Vera’s paw with the knife. On the slick, rain-soaked grass near the cliff edge, Vera dodges a final lunge. Ruby cannot stop her momentum and skids over the side. Vera makes a grab for her, but Ruby purposely kicks herself free and falls to the river far below. Vera loses consciousness on the clifftop.

A group of Shady Hollow residents, Orville among them, reach the top of High Cliff and find Vera barely conscious and covered in cuts. Sun Li assures the crowd she will survive. Vera tells them Ruby went over the edge. Lenore, Gladys, and Heidegger fly down to the rocks below and find Ruby’s body. Orville carries Vera back to town.

Vera wakes in her den with her wounds cleaned and bandaged by Sun Li, who gently scolds her for working alone. When Vera next wakes, Lenore is at her bedside and explains how the rescue happened: Heidegger, flying over the woods after leaving her den, had spotted Vera being led by Ruby, sensed something was wrong, and flew to Joe’s Mug to raise the alarm.

The following day, Orville enters Vera’s home with a bouquet of daisies. Vera gives him her full official account—the watermarked paper trail, the ruby stash, Ruby’s confession, and the struggle on the cliff—and hands over Otto’s journals as evidence. Orville mentions that he has been studying police procedure and is considering running for chief when Meade retires. He asks Vera to dinner once she has recovered. She accepts.

Vera recovers quickly and writes up the case for a special edition of the Herald. Shortly after, Esme escorts Vera to the sawmill, where Edith is waiting. Vera asks about the watermarked paper used in the threatening note. Edith explains that she donated a ream of that paper to the secondhand shop some months earlier, where Ruby worked and could easily have taken it—pure chance, not evidence of Edith’s guilt.

Edith summons Howard and, with Vera present to record the moment, promotes him to sawmill director. Edith will retain financial control as chair of the board, but Howard will manage daily operations. Vera considers it a welcome development for the town after weeks of tragedy.

The next day, Vera reads the special edition: Her exposé on Ruby’s crimes runs above the fold alongside a piece on Howard’s promotion. Ready to return to ordinary life, she claims the upcoming spelling bee as her next assignment. When the rabbit at reception announces that Orville has arrived for their “interview,” Vera—wearing a new outfit—warns both rabbits not to breathe a word to Gladys and heads downstairs to meet him. The moment she is gone, the two rabbits race each other to Gladys’s desk.