the notebook between them. Carmichael’s meticulous list took up half the page. Pearl earrings, drops. Jade bracelet. Silver hammered cuff.
“Wait.” Dini brought her finger to touch the page. “Green stone amulet. This could be it. Maybe she didn’t know it was a peridot?”
“Or my great-great-grandpa didn’t know how to spell it.”
“And it might have been worn on a string at one time.” She held her hand up close between them. “Or a thin chain. See? Between the little prongs in the crown. It could easily have been turned into a brooch the same as I turned it into a ring.”
“And she wouldn’t have called it a ‘witch’s heart,’ right? Not that evening, when she was already trying to explain how she was blaming the whole thing on a ghost.”
“Weird enough to use the term amulet.”
“I dunno.” Quin took her hand and studied the ring. “Rattled as she was, she was still in full-on flirt mode. Amulet sounds interesting—more interesting than …”
“Pendant,” Dini said, finding his lost word. “And it makes sense that the Sallie White thief would have kept it, especially if she knew its legend. Even today as an antique, the jeweler I took it to valued it at around two hundred dollars. It’s a cool piece to keep, not an advantageous sale.”
“One of your ancestors might have bought it in some pawn shop.”
“I don’t think so.” She couldn’t explain it, the way this newly opened door seemed to corral the story into closer confines.
“Do you ever wonder who she was?”
He was looking off and away, maybe studying the series of vintage River Walk photographs on the wall behind her, which was a good thing, because that meant he didn’t see Dini roll her eyes. A sarcastic remark sat on the tip of her tongue. Nope. Never even crossed my mind. But she knew Quin was musing out loud, his question purely rhetorical, so she came back to it from another angle.
“There’s never been any way to know.”
“Why do you think she didn’t just come out and say it? Give up the woman’s name and clear her own? All those people who thought she was crazy or that she lied.”
“All those people?”
He sighed. “You think she was writing to an audience of one? He died before the book came out.”
“But he was still known to be connected to the case. The Christmas picture was mailed to him from someone who didn’t know he’d left the city.”
“She might have obtained a second copy and mailed it to the police station, knowing they would forward it. The message written on the back is pretty much what she says to Sallie when she confronts her.”
“No, the message is what Sallie says to her.” Dini was already reaching for the envelope and tipping it to drop the photograph into her hand. She studied it, feeling the same chill as she did every time she read about it in the book—a chill that ran deeper and colder than seeing the photo itself, because she felt its impact through Hedda’s eyes. She turned it over and read the faded note.
This night began my ruin.
Something—some new, explosive knowledge—began to crackle at the base of Dini’s brain. “Hedda didn’t write this.”
“How can you be sure?”
“First, Hedda wasn’t ruined from the picture. If we believe what she wrote, and there’s no reason not to, nobody even knew about the photo for sure except for the photographer and the woman posing as Sallie.”
“Maybe Sylvan?”
“Maybe, but he didn’t send it either, and we couldn’t have been completely sure without this.” She traded the photograph for the detective’s notebook and turned to the page with the three questions. “It’s not her handwriting. Look at the T in This and Tennessee. Not even close.”
“So,” Quin said, “this tells us, maybe, that the Sallie actress sent the picture—”
“—or, the photographer.”
“Yes, but I lean toward Sallie, since this is marked”—he held the envelope close—“January…something…1925.”
“A month before that final meeting between she and Hedda.” Dini stood and began pacing the limited length of her living room, hoping the action might mitigate the near explosive pressure in her head. All of this now felt like a giant, fuzzy knot, and she need only find the perfect place to pick it all apart. “And both of these—mailing the photo and the meeting—are like confessions of sort. To the investigator and the victim. Almost, but not quite, turning herself in.”