“Six-thirty.”
She closed the door and watched him drive away, a smile still playing on her lips.
Chapter Fifteen
Sam had eaten a sandwichand a handful of nuts for lunch when her phone rang.She saw it was Charlotte.“Hi there.How’s everything going?”
“Oh, it’s okay.Sorry, are you busy right now?Am I interrupting your lunch?”
Sam said, “Not at all.I’ve just finished.”
“Good.I’m at the shop, of course, and I just found Margaret’s tote bag.She’d left it here after the meeting.I wasn’t sure whose bag it was, so I started going through it to see if I could figure it out.Anyway, do you mind coming by?I wanted to run something past you.”
“Sure,” said Sam.She frowned.“Why wouldn’t the police have taken that as evidence?I thought the whole bookstore was treated like a crime scene.”
“That’s the truth,” said Charlotte wryly.“But there’s no name on the outside or anything.The police would have looked in the bag and just noticed a bunch of papers related to book club.They probably thought it was mine and left it behind.”
“I’ll be right there,” Sam said, hanging up.She gave Arlo a rueful look.“I’m going to have to give you a walk and some cuddles later to make up for being gone so much today.”She let him out to use the bathroom, gave him a treat, and headed off for the bookshop.
She was glad to see Charlotte had opened the shop at last.It must have been a tough balance between wanting to respect Margaret’s loss of life and the financial considerations involved in having the shop open.
“Thanks for coming,” Charlotte said with a smile.
“Of course!I see you’ve opened back up.”
“I have, but it’s still quiet now.Let’s head back to the back room.”
Once back there, Charlotte pointed out a canvas bag before walking over to pick it up.“So, it’s full of book club stuff, of course.There’s a couple of book selections from past months with Margaret’s notes in them.”
Sam hesitated.“I mean, should we wear gloves or anything?I guess it doesn’t have evidence on it, though, probably.It’s just Margaret’s belongings.”
Charlotte popped herself on the forehead.“Wow, I didn’t even think about that, even after I realized it must be Margaret’s bag.Now my prints are all over it.How about I just pull out some plastic gloves for you, just in case.We can tell the cops about this bag after we take another look.”
Sam felt a little better about going through the materials with the latex gloves on.She opened one of the book club selections, which looked like a fantasy.Margaret’s marginalia was very critical of the book.It was interesting to see how critical she could be even when she was writing personal notes to herself.There was a red folder in the bag, too, that said ‘book club’ on it.
Sam opened up the folder.It looked like membership lists, meeting schedules, and then, oddly, printed emails.
