mystery · Interactive Fiction

The Last Song of Ruby Delacroix

Chicago, 1927.

No account needed · Inside a story in 10 seconds

About this story

Chicago, 1927. Ruby Delacroix is dead. She sang at The Garnet Room, a speakeasy on South State Street that served bathtub gin to aldermen and gun oil to bootleggers. The police found her in the alley behind the club at four in the morning, ruled it suicide before the coroner finished his cigarette. Case closed. Nobody investigated. Nobody asked why a woman planning to leave town would kill herself the night before her train. You used to be somebody. Staff journalist at the Tribune, until you refused to kill a story about police payrolls that ran through Sal Moretti's books. They fired you. Moretti sent flowers. Now you freelance, and Ruby's family -- her mother in Louisiana, her cousin in Bronzeville -- have scraped together enough to hire you to find the truth. The truth is expensive in this city. Everybody you need to talk to has a reason to lie. The speakeasy owner loved Ruby or owned her, depending on who you ask. Her best friend is scared silent. The detective who closed the case won't meet your eye. The pianist who shared Ruby's bed is a Black man in a city that would use that against him before it would use it to find justice. And the society matron who came to the club every Thursday has connections that reach higher than a South Side speakeasy should allow. Ruby sang her last song on a Wednesday night. Someone in that room knows why she never made it to Thursday.

Meet the cast

Sal Moretti

Owner of The Garnet Room / Connected Man

Charm as infrastructure.

Billie Hayes

Singer / Ruby's Best Friend

Watchful, careful, holding herself together with visible effort.

Detective Hank Doyle

Chicago PD Homicide / The Detective Who Closed the Case

Loud, physical, aggressive in the way of a man who learned early that filling a room with noise keeps people from thinking clearly.

Marcus Bell

Jazz Pianist / Ruby's Lover

Measures every word before it leaves his mouth.

Mrs. Adelaide Crane

Society Matron / Patron of the Arts

Speaks in paragraphs that sound like generosity and reveal nothing.

What you'll explore

mysterynoirinvestigationmurder1920sprohibitionchicagojazzcharacter-drivenconsequence-heavymature-themesrelationship-buildingtrust-progressionmultiple-npcsevidence-trackingreputation-system

Content notes: violence, racism (period-accurate), corruption, death, alcohol/drug references, mature themes

How it begins

The password is 'gardenia.' Ruby's cousin told you that, along with the address -- 1847 South State Street, the door with no sign between a tailor shop and a vacant lot. You say the word to a face behind a sliding panel and the door opens onto a staircase that drops below street level.