Page 25 of 4th Silence
“Well,” I say, “Christina, Mary’s daughter, wanted her to auction hers. Mary apparently didn’t agree. From what I heard, Mary got the bag as a gift. A Christmas gift. Thirty years ago.”
An eyebrow quirk. “Huh.”
Thoughts rattle around in my brain, trying to latch on to…something. I don’t know what it is, but my Spidey-Sense is on high alert. “Christina said something about how, given the circumstances, Mary should want to get rid of it. I’m assuming she means because she got it the Christmas Tiffany was killed. Could the bag be connected somehow?”
Charlie narrows her eyes. “Anything is possible. Particularly if Mary wants to keep it quiet.”
“Something is weird with this bag,” I say.
“When you were reading Mom’s files, did you see anything about a Sherman? I know a lot of the items, including the gifts, were taken into evidence that night. Most, if not all, were returned.”
“I don’t remember seeing anything about a purse. But I wasn’t necessarily looking for it.”
“Huh,” Charlie says again.
“What?”
She peers at me with blank eyes. “I don’t know. But the Sherman has me wondering. What if Tiffany wasn’t the target? Could the bag have something to do with someone else being the target?”
Yikes. “Could be, I suppose.”
“Ma’am?”
The male voice draws me from my raging thoughts. We both turn to where the valet stands beside Charlie’s car, holding up the key.
“Sorry,” she calls, then comes back to me. “We’re going back to the office.”
“Why?”
She steps around me. “Because Mom’s notes are there and we need to see if there’s anything about a Sherman bag.”
9
Charlie
* * *
Meg bursts into laughter as we enter the back door of Schock Investigations. “You actually told Mary and Alex that you’re coming for them?”
I drop my bag onto Haley’s desk as I flip on lights and turn up the heat. I’m freezing. I blame it on the cold night, but the realization of what’s going to happen when JJ finds out about me confronting Mary is the actual reason. “Not in so many words, but…sort of?”
“Charlie Schock, you are terrible. Good, but terrible.”
I follow her to her workroom. “Let’s find that evidence list.”
She slips out of her coat, points to the battered box. “There are dozens of pages of it in there.”
I haul it to the conference room, and we spread the documents across the table like a jigsaw puzzle: police photographs, witness statements, property inventory forms—each piece representing fragments of the terrible night that ended Tiffany’s life.
“Here’s the first list.” Meg flips through a stack of sheets and passes me a second stapled set. “I don’t remember seeing the purse, but if Mary received it as a gift that night, it should be here, correct?”
“Not necessarily.” I trace down a column of items. “We don’t know for sure that she received it then, or that the police confiscated it.”
After a minute, Meg sighs. “Not a single note about a Sherman bag in my list. Maybe you’re right—maybe she got it as a gift on a different Christmas. Or another night? I wish I’d gotten more info about it.”
My phone buzzes. I glance at the screen, and my stomach drops.
“JJ?” Meg asks, reading my expression.
