“It’s a Birkin,” Savilla clarified again, obviously not grasping quite what mattered in this moment.
The deputy shook her head slightly. “Do you know for sure to whom this Birkin belongs?”
“I thought it belonged to Bella,” I said, trying to remember when I’d first seen her carrying it. Something vague she’d said crept into the edges of my mind. “But,” I continued slowly, “Bella did say something strange when I found her here on Friday night: even as she asked me to give her the bag, she said it wasn’t hers.”
“Have you seen anyone else with it this weekend?” Charlie asked.
My eyes lit up. I had seen someone else with it.
At the Morning Brew in the late hours of the bachelorette party, Charlotte had slung it across her shoulder and patted it affectionately, almost as if she had her own baby inside. And then I suddenly saw the image of her when I’d first met her before the bachelorette party on Friday night.
She’d taken yellow-tinted glasses from her hair and placed them in the bag.
This bag was hers, and those glasses weren’t for reading or for driving or for keeping the sun out of her eyes; in fact, those glasses wouldn’t even be comfortable in the daytime. They were for nighttime,for the minute that she needed to see clearly in the dark to take deadly aim.
“It has to belong to Char—” As I started to say the cousin’s name, it was as if a light bulb went off in my head. Her name could’ve been turned so easily into a nickname by family and friends.
I let out a soft gasp as understanding dawned and I muttered, “Blame Charlie.” I was stunned as I turned to Charlie. “That note wasn’t talking about you at all.”
Charlie studied me, trying to follow my reasoning.
“Big Mike is a nickname, so is Charlie, which means Charlie has to be…” I bit my lip, running the details through my mind at lightning speed to ensure they made sense. It did. It had to. “Charlie is Charlotte Swanson.”
Jill looked at me puzzled, so Charlie explained the notes. “That could be it,” she mused when he finished.
I started to hand the bag to Jill, but as I did so, I noticed that it was still heavy, with some kind of weight moving in the bottom of it. I reached my hand inside, but nothing was there. Still, I was sure this bag wasn’t empty.
I flipped open the box cutter and reached inside to cut open the fabric in the bottom.
“Don’t,” Savilla said, with a gasp and an outstretched hand.
I gave her a gentle smile. “This is evidence, Savilla. Not just a pricey bag.”
“It’s not just a bag,” Savilla said, “and it’s a work of art.”
“But not worth a man’s life,” Jill said, taking the bag from me and quickly cutting into the bottom. Her eyes widened as she reached inside and pulled out a gun.
Charlie studied it, knowing in an instant the make and model. “This has to be the gun that killed Todd Anderson.”
THIRTY-TWO
The Primrose Ballroom had been transformed into its own winter wonderland, but an indoor one. The chandeliers still hung from above, but they were turned off, the lighting replaced by old-fashioned incandescent bulbs that let off a soft glow as if moonlight had been bottled up for this very occasion. Wisteria hung from white trellises suspended from the ceiling, and a plush white carpet now extended down an aisle created by the seating, and across the front of the room, where Anton waited with Joe Larson and Will Hurt—who seemed just as antsy as the last time I’d seen him.
The ballroom was filled with about four hundred guests, about half of whom had driven the fifteen minutes or so from Aubergine proper. Others had either checked into The Rose last night or were staying in the nearest big towns.
In the front row were Anton’s parents—Patty and Michael. I hadn’t gotten a good look at Michael since his conversation with me and Charlie on Friday night. According to the note I’d found, Todd was supposed to make a delivery to the man during this very ceremony, which certainly cast the groom’s father in a whole new light. What had the Swansons planned? Some kind of art handoff during the ceremony?
The marriedcouple sat side by side as if they belonged together. As I watched them, Michael put an arm around his estranged wife, who seemed to be more than willing to accept his affection in this time of grief over her much younger, much deader boyfriend. Relationships were certainly complicated.
“Can I see the feed?” I asked Deputy Wright, who’d had just enough time for her team to set up four black-and-white cameras around the periphery of the room. One was at the front, focused on the groom’s side.
Jill passed me the iPad streaming the camera feeds, and I let my eyes roam over the images, searching for anything out of place as well as the people that we were watching closely.
“Those are Anton’s parents, and that’s Charlotte Swanson,” I said, pointing to the far left of the third row. “Right next to…”
I was about to say right next to her cousin, Myrtis, but then I noticed that they were sitting several feet apart, with something between them.
“What is that?” I asked, trying to enlarge the feed unsuccessfully.
