“Not yours?” Holmes asked. “Do you mean otherpeople own these devices as well?”
“Almost everyone.”
His gaze shot up to the ceiling momentarilyand then he shrugged again. “If it is not yours, to whom does itbelong?” He answered his own question. “The murderer?”
My thoughts returned to that moment in thekitchen of the flat in Kostich’s building. I’d been returningthings to the backpack when the landlord burst in and took it fromme. Since I held the cell phone in my hand, I simply dropped itinto my large purse. But which cell phone? Mine, with which I’dbeen taking pictures, or the one I’d found? In other words I took apicture of a cell phone with my cell phone.
“Do you mean,” Holmes asked, “you have lostall the photographs you say you took of the contents of theknapsack?”
I rose from my seat and, having retraced mymovements in my thoughts, hurried into the hall and pushed my handsinto the pocket of my poncho. My fingers curled around my missingphone. When Kostich approached me, I had apparently simply droppedmine into my pocket and then, in the confusion, put the murderer’sinto my purse.
“Here it is,” I said. “I have thepictures.”
“Let me see them.”
I turned to him. “But what about this otherphone?”
“Let us not get ahead of ourselves. Themurderer is gone and we have plenty of time to examine his devicelater.”
I decided he was probably right, and, anyway,I wanted to do things his way in order to learn how his mindworked.
Before I resumed my seat next to him, I tookthe magnifying glass out of my detective kit and brought it withme. Using my own phone, one by one I scrolled through the shots I’dtaken and explained what they were.
“This is the outside of the backpack. It’sdark gray and has one large interior space, and a small pocket onthe side.”
The next shot showed the small photograph I’dfound inside, a photo of a pretty young woman. I handed themagnifying glass to Holmes and he used it to scrutinize the picturebut made no comment.
I scrolled to the next. “And here is a shotof the newspaper clipping. It’s beginning to fray along the folds,but I managed to read enough to recognize it as an article about abody found in an abandoned well.”
Holmes focused the glass on that as well.“Man or woman?”
“Woman. As I said earlier, I think it mighthave been the woman in the photograph.”
“And the location of this well?”
“It doesn’t say specifically. It names asmall town which apparently the newspaper’s readers wouldrecognize.”
Tessa spoke up. “What a shame. That old wellcould be almost anywhere in the country.”
Holmes frowned briefly. “Let us not give upso soon. What was the name of the newspaper? Was the clipping yousaw large enough to include the upper edge of the page?”
I saw where this led. “You mean mostnewspapers contain the name of the city in their title.”
Holmes smiled. “Very good. I see you are atleast somewhat observant.”
I resented his inference, but read off thename from the top of the page. “The Chicago Tribune.”
“Excellent, but do continue. What else?”
“A flyer announcing ‘A Mystery and MagicWorkshop’ to be held here in the city. The date and place werecircled in red, as if Mr. Andrews or his murderer, or both,attended.”
“That is significant, I believe.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Because our victim arrived with a suitcaseand, according to the building landlord’s report, the man didn’tlive in the city. Perhaps he came to town specifically to attendthe workshop.”
“Do you think he might have been amagician?”
“Perhaps. However, let us carry on. Whatother objects did you find?”
I scrolled quickly through several shots ofscraps of paper. “I’m afraid these may not be useful. They’re onlyreceipts from purchases the man made and places he’d been to.”
Holmes wanted to see them anyway, and spentseveral minutes with the magnifying glass on one in particular. “Isee a company name and some numbers. What does that mean?”
I retrieved the phone and magnifying glass toscrutinize the shot more closely. “It appears to be a credit cardreceipt. That means...“
”A credit card?”
“Oh, you don‘t know about credit cards, doyou? They didn’t exist in your day.”
Tessa obviously wanted to participate eventhough she couldn’t see what we looked at. “Credit cards let peoplebuy things and pay for them later, usually at the end of the month.They’re mostly issued by banks.”
“I have a banking account.” Holmes’s lookturned into a frown. “That is, I had one, but it’s probably gone bynow.”
“As I started to say, this is more importantthan anything else. It’s from a hotel here in the city, one hemight have stayed in overnight. It might give us the man’sname.”
“Do you mean the murderer’s name is on thisscrap of paper?”
I stared at it again. “Whoops, I’m afraidnot. The paper appears to have been torn and the portion that wouldhave had his name and credit card number is missing.”
“Look at the rest of those scraps youphotographed. Perhaps the remainder is among them.”
I scanned everything but didn’t find thepiece I wanted. “I see receipts from restaurants and half a ticketfrom that Magician’s Conference, but that’s all.”
Holmes leaned against the sofa back andclosed his eyes. After a few seconds, he opened them again. “Wemust take this search in a different direction. We have the man’stelephone device. If these things are as clever as you seem tothink, perhaps it will supply the name for us.”
“That’s a good idea.” I picked up the othercell phone and turned it on. “It might not be too difficult, sincehe doesn’t seem to have installed a password.”
“A password? How does one use a password on atelephone?”
“Someone wanting to use the phone must typein a special series of letters and numbers beforehand.”
“Like a secret code?”
“Exactly.”
“And you don’t know how to do that?”
“I know how it works, but if he installed apassword, I wouldn’t know the special letters and numbers heused.”
Tessa chimed in again. “Watson would.” Shebeamed.
“Doctor Watson knows the password in thetelephone?” Holmes asked.
I grinned. “As I said before, our Doc Watsonmaintains these old Victorians, and, although he can fix almostanything that goes wrong in them, I don’t think he can pull acomputer password out of his tool belt.
