Page 156
Hazel stares at the ruined music box.
“He could have taken the prism this afternoon.”
“We don’t know that,” I tell her.
“We watched him destroy it.”
“But he didn’t pick up the pieces.”
“Maybe he removed the prism first.”
Thomas shakes his head.
“James wouldn’t have hidden it where breaking the box could destroy it.”
“You said the glass was inside our gifts,” Hazel reminds him.
“I was wrong.”
Everyone turns toward him.
Thomas looks from Hazel’s apartment to the evidence case containing my compass.
“The prisms weren’t hidden inside the gifts. They were attached to them.”
“What is the difference?” Keating asks.
“The gifts were the keys.”
Thomas points toward the open steamer trunk on the monitor.
“James gave Hazel the music box and the trunk together, didn’t he?”
Hazel nods slowly.
“He said they belonged together because they had both traveled across the ocean.”
“Your music box must open the false bottom.”
Hazel looks at the shattered pieces.
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Simon may have known,” Ben says.
“But he left the trunk intact,” I reply. “If he opened the false bottom, why close it again?”
“He may not have found it,” Thomas says.
Marquez contacts the officers inside the apartment.
“Do not move the trunk. Photograph the interior, hinges, lock and every piece of the music box.”
An evidence technician lifts a camera over the trunk.
The image appears on the monitor.