The Sherlock Society

Officers Sanchez and Del Castillo transport the trio to the Marine Patrol headquarters located at the police marina. During the 15-minute boat ride, Officer Del Castillo watches them closely while Grandpa lies on a bench. At headquarters, Grandpa calls their lawyer—who is also Alex and Zoe’s mother, Melinda Lassiter. During the heated phone call, she cycles through shock, worry, and fury before instructing the children to say nothing without her present.

The three are placed in a locked break room to wait. Grandpa reassures them that their mother, known as the “Lawyer of Lost Causes” for winning difficult cases, will handle the police. However, he predicts she will ground them severely, especially since their father—a laid-back marine biologist currently in Honduras—cannot intervene.

After a two-hour wait, Melinda arrives. Before they can explain, Special Agent Dale Tyree of the Secret Service enters, introducing himself as an investigator from Washington who has questions about Morris Kane, the yacht’s millionaire owner. Melinda demands blanket immunity for her children and father before they cooperate. After Tyree leaves to arrange it, Melinda realizes he must already have been investigating in Miami. Zoe then demands immunity from parental punishment in exchange for the full story. Melinda reluctantly agrees, and Alex begins by explaining that it started when he was locked in the school library.

The narrative flashes back three weeks to the second-to-last day of school. Alex attends a year-end celebration with the Sherlock Society, a three-member mystery club he founded with his best friend Yadier (“Yadi”) and Lina, a quiet but bold new student with electric-blue hair who recently moved from Wyoming. The club meets in the library, where librarian Ms. Campos has created an escape room game for them.

Zoe unexpectedly enters, searching for Alex’s house key so she can leave early. She is upset because her parents refused to let her attend a Maine summer camp with her two best friends, Brooke and Chelsea. When Alex falsely claims the library doors are locked as part of the game, Zoe reluctantly stays to play. The club recites its motto about knowing what others do not and begins solving riddles.

The first clue is the title of a book none of the children have ever heard of. Its author is given as “Anna Graham.” After realizing “Anna Graham” is a clue to look for an “anagram,” Zoe quickly rearranges the letters in the book’s title into A Wrinkle in Time. Inside this book, the group finds a hidden note. The second clue requires stacking five mystery novels so their first letters spell “CHIEF,” pointing to a portrait of Chief Osceola. Before checking behind it, Alex confesses the doors were never locked. Zoe storms out angrily but soon returns, wordlessly rejoining the game.

Zoe fully commits to the escape room, even plunging her hand into the aquarium to retrieve the final clue from a treasure chest. Titled “The Final Problem”—a reference to the Sherlock Holmes story where the detective dies—the riddle states: “you can’t take a bow if the case is closed.” With only three minutes remaining, the group realizes the clue contains double meanings.

Lina determines that “bow” is pronounced like “snow” rather than “wow,” referring to a violin bow. Alex connects this to Sherlock Holmes playing the violin, and Lina deduces that “case” means an instrument case, not a mystery. They race to the music room and find the key tied to a bow inside the second violin case with 37 seconds to spare. Ms. Campos celebrates by offering the children some cake.

After the game, Zoe becomes moody again. During the car ride home, she is curt with their mother, Melinda, who has been quietly trying to coexist with Zoe after weeks of conflict over the camp issue. At home, Melinda offers to bake cookies with the children, but Zoe declines, claiming she has a project. Alex tells his mother that during the escape room, the old Zoe briefly returned.

On the last day of school, Zoe surprises Alex by sitting at his cafeteria table with Yadi and Lina—something she has never done before. She announces she has a big idea for the Sherlock Society and invites everyone to their house at 4:30 p.m. After she leaves, Yadi theorizes this is an elaborate revenge prank for the escape room lie.

That afternoon, the three cautiously enter Alex’s house but find Zoe has prepared snacks instead of a prank. She reveals her plan: start the Sherlock Society Detective Agency for the summer. Inspired by TED Talks about standing out rather than fitting in, she argues this will give them financial independence and be more exciting than traditional jobs like babysitting or lawn mowing. She shows them a flyer she designed promising reasonable rates, rapid results, and confidentiality.

Alex protests that they cannot legally operate as detectives, but Lina calls the idea genius. Zoe reveals she has designed business cards and plans to use Alex’s $57 in savings to print five sets—one for each of them and one for their grandfather, whom she wants as their driver. When Grandpa enters and learns of the plan, he agrees only if given the title “Director of Transportation and Logistics,” officially launching the agency.

With Grandpa as their driver, the Sherlock Society travels Miami in his mint-condition 1964 aquamarine Cadillac convertible named Roberta. During rides, Grandpa draws on his experience as a former Miami Herald reporter to teach them about detective work, starting with a lesson on Miami’s nickname, “Magic City.” He explains that in 1897, developers conspired to trick northerners into buying Florida swampland sight unseen, establishing Miami’s foundation on deception. He cautions that Miami’s sunny image masks many shady dealings.

Using Alex’s $57 and $12 from Grandpa, they print business cards and 27 turquoise flyers, posting them throughout Coconut Grove. After four days with zero responses, they hold a strategy meeting at the Coconut Grove Branch Library. Lina proposes they pursue missing-pet cases with cash rewards, which would both earn money and create social media buzz.

Just as they discuss this backup plan, Zoe receives a text from someone calling himself “Desperate Dan,” claiming he needs help finding a missing person and requesting an immediate meeting. They arrange to meet at Esperanza’s, a Cuban ventanita café, where they can stand outside without ordering food and remain in a public, safe location.

The group bikes to Esperanza’s Coin Laundry, which also operates a Cuban café through a window counter. Following the strategy of Sherlock Holmes’s Baker Street Irregulars, they position Yadi and Lina as lookouts while Alex and Zoe wait outside to meet Desperate Dan. However, before the client arrives, their mother pulls up for coffee. After a failed attempt to hide under the laundromat’s folding counter, the children are discovered.

Melinda reveals she was Desperate Dan, having found one of their flyers. In front of the others, she initially confronts Zoe for what she calls a colossally bad idea, but Lina intervenes, claiming the detective agency was her idea to make friends. This defuses Melinda’s anger. Over lunch at the ventanita, Melinda explains the legal barriers preventing them from operating: they would need articles of incorporation, liability insurance, and private investigator licenses—all impossible for minors.

Alex agrees to take down the flyers that afternoon. Though disappointed, the children do not reveal Grandpa’s involvement in the scheme when Melinda expresses surprise he was not part of it.

After removing the flyers, the group returns home feeling defeated. Grandpa offers to pay them twenty dollars to wash his immaculate Cadillac, Roberta. While washing the car with special supplies, Lina asks about the car’s significance. Grandpa explains he bought the rust-damaged convertible in the 1960s to stand out as a young Herald reporter, not blend in like his colleagues with their economy cars. However, his editor initially only saw him as a chauffeur, offering to pay him to drive her son to prom.

This inspired Grandpa to pursue an interview with singer Roberta Flack by posing as her chauffeur at Miami International Airport. He greeted multiple flights from New York in a black suit and cap before successfully meeting Flack. During the drive to Miami Beach, he revealed his true identity and asked for an interview. She agreed, and the resulting front-page article launched his career. He named the car after her.

Grandpa then takes them to South Florida Self Storage, unit 221—chosen for its connection to Sherlock Holmes’s address at 221B Baker Street. Inside his spotless storage unit, he reveals seven file cabinets containing forty-six years of journalism materials. The last two cabinets hold his unpublished stories—mysteries he could never solve.

The group decides to select one of Grandpa’s unsolved cases. Each member takes a file home and creates a presentation, gathering the next day in Alex’s room. Lina goes first, presenting the story of Jack “Murf the Surf” Murphy, a 1960s Miami beach burglar who graduated to waterfront mansion robberies before his gang stole millions in gems from New York’s Museum of Natural History. Though most jewels were recovered, the sixteen-carat Eagle Diamond remains missing, with a substantial reward still offered.

Yadi presents the 1945 disappearance of five Navy planes known as the Lost Patrol, linking it to the Bermuda Triangle legend. While the Navy claimed they crashed in the Atlantic, three Seminole tribe members reported hearing explosions in the Everglades. Yadi proposes using his drone to search the Big Cypress Reservation. Zoe describes a decades-long art forgery ring that uses hurricane evacuations to swap masterpieces with fakes at high-tech storage facilities, though victims have been reluctant to report thefts.

Alex presents Al Capone’s rumored buried fortune of one million dollars somewhere in South Florida, based on two sources interviewed by Grandpa: a former estate gardener and a restaurant waiter. The group unanimously chooses to pursue Capone’s money, and Alex declares that the hunt is on.