He went with her.

This time, instead of sitting on the floor, he took the other side of the bed. As she burrowed under the covers, ostentatiously turning her back to him, she did her level best not to think about his big body stretched out beside her, except on top of the bedspread. His purpose, of course, was to keep a watch out for Holly.

Hers was to sleep. Not that she expected to, with him taking up way more than his fair share of the bed.

But by then it was close to four a.m.—and despite everything, she was so exhausted that sleep she did, almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.

If she had any dreams, she didn’t remember them. According to Garland, she didn’t do anything more exciting than switch positions once or twice. And Holly didn’t show.

But Charlie did wake up knowing what Holly had meant.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

By early afternoon of the next day, Charlie was back in her own house in Big Stone Gap. Situated a little way down the mountain from the prison on the top of the ridge, Big Stone Gap was a coal mining town of about five thousand residents that had been devastated by a rash of recent layoffs from the coal company that, along with the prison, was the area’s primary employer. Despite the hard times, Big Stone Gap was as friendly as the prison was forbidding, and she loved it. Her house, which she rented from her next-door neighbors, was a classic two-story white clapboard farmhouse with an old-fashioned front porch and lots of gingerbread trim. It sat on a quiet street near the edge of town, with the wooded mountainside sloping up behind it and an acre backyard complete with a sunflower patch that was a constant draw for the aforesaid neighbor’s chickens. Not that Charlie minded, really. She had spent many an early morning before heading in to work sipping coffee at her kitchen table at the back of the house and watching through the window as the birds scratched around in her flowers for seeds and bugs. Watching them was both calming and amusing.

“Tell me this hasn’t been a total waste of time.” Kaminsky gave Charlie a disgusted look as Charlie sorted through the items she had laid out on the kitchen table one more time. At Kaminsky’s suggestion—Charlie was so focused on the need to find whatever it was that Holly had been referring to that she wouldn’t have thought of it—Charlie was wearing rubber gloves, so as not to taint the items just in case one of them should prove to be important. Dressed in her usual black pants and sleeveless blouse—today’s was a soft mint green—Charlie was at least comfortable. While Kaminsky in her power suit—today’s was black—and sky-high heels looked hot, cross, and way too sophisticated for the country-style kitchen. On Tony’s directive, Kaminsky had accompanied her on the short flight back to Big Stone Gap to recover whatever item significant to the investigation might be found in “the bag.” Feeling her time could be better spent in other ways, Kaminsky wasn’t too happy about it.

“No more so than following any other lead,” Charlie replied, frowning as she touched each item in turn. She had been sure that “the bag” Holly had been referring to could only have been the sealed plastic bag full of Charlie’s belongings that had been returned to her by the hospital, where she had stayed after Holly’s murder. But in going through it, Charlie was coming up empty-handed. A brown fluffy teddy bear the hospital had given her; a manila envelope stuffed with get-well cards, all of which she had looked over and none of which seemed to contain a clue; a never-opened dental care kit containing a new toothbrush and travel-sized toothpaste wrapped in plastic; a tube of chapstick; a bottle of pale pink nail polish; a hairbrush; and a scrunchie offered not the slightest insight into the murders, as far as she could tell. Some of her clothes were there, too. Just looking at the yellow T-shirt and the jeans and sandals, the pretty flowered bra and pink bikini panties, made her skin crawl.

They were the clothes she had been wearing the night the Palmers had been murdered. Although the hospital had given her the bag about ten days later, she had never once opened it. She had not looked at those clothes from that day to this.

Instead of getting sick every time she looked at them, she forced herself to ask, What am I missing here?

Something had to be of significance, but she had no idea what it was. However, since this was the only bag she possessed that had any connection at all to the murders, this almost certainly had to be the bag Holly had been talking about—assuming that Garland had correctly reported what Holly had said. Having had no permanent home in the last fifteen years, Charlie had carted the bag around with her, stuffed into a blue steamer trunk with a few other longtime possessions that she didn’t know what to do with but couldn’t quite bear to dispose of.

She would have thrown the bag out long ago, except she’d always felt it was kind of a last connection with Holly. A way of not letting her friend go.

Apparently Holly had known.

“The only thing to do is pack these things up and take them back with us. Maybe there’s microscopic blood splatter on the clothes or something,” Kaminsky said impatiently. “Turn the stuff over to the lab, and let them sort it out.”

Since Charlie couldn’t think of a better idea, she shrugged and started to put everything back into the bag. The only saving grace was, she didn’t have to actually touch them. The gloves were useful for more than avoiding fingerprints.

When the items were packed up again and thus safely out of sight, Charlie felt better. Even though she hadn’t touched anything, after she stripped off the rubber gloves she washed her hands in the kitchen sink. And that made her feel better, too.

“Nice house, Doc.”

Charlie didn’t even jump as Garland strolled into her kitchen. Since replying was out of the question, she flicked him a look and kept on with what she was doing, finishing up by drying her hands on the nearby paper towels. She hadn’t realized he was with them, hadn’t set eyes on him since she’d woken up to find him in the living room and he’d informed her that his Holly-watching had been a waste of time. He’d been terse and unsmiling, but she’d been in such a hurry to get downstairs to inform Tony that she needed to make a quick trip back home, she had barely noticed. She didn’t know why she was surprised to see him now, but she was. She was also, she was slightly chagrined to discover, glad.

“Is there anything else you want to bring? I’ll go grab it.” Kaminsky had made no secret of the fact that she was chomping at the bit to get back to the investigation. Imagining the other woman’s reaction if she had any inkling that the hot blond naked guy she’d been chasing the other night was right there in the kitchen with them, albeit fully clothed, Charlie smiled. Trying not to watch as Garland took in the view out the wide kitchen window, Charlie said, “I already put everything else I need in a carry-on in the hall.”

“Everything else” being a few extra clothes and some toiletries.

“So are we ready?”

“Let me do a quick walk-through, and then yes.”

Kaminsky stayed in the kitchen as Charlie checked her spotless living and dining rooms, then went upstairs to her bedroom to look rather wistfully around. I miss this place. Like the rest of the house, her bedroom was very simply decorated, with polished wood floors and a lot of neutral colors, which she found peaceful. The centerpiece of the room was a big brass bed dressed in layers of white. A lot of light poured through two tall windows that looked out onto the backyard and the mountain. A fireplace with a painting of a waterfall in a woody glen hanging above it was positioned between the windows. The adjoining bathroom was made special by the big, claw-footed tub that took pride of place. Charlie was normally a shower person, but she loved taking a bath in that tub.