Six Killer Bodies by Stephanie Bond

that some stores had
    removed their charms from display in deference to the
    highly publicized rash of kil ings, while other stores had
    added them to take advantage of heightened interest, and
    it was difficult to tel which stores had been sel ing charms
    before the serial kil er had made the trinkets infamous.
    The police and the GBI were no doubt working those leads,
    but she suspected they were taking the angle of proving
    their prime suspect—Coop—guilty.
    As she moved through the mall, she kept looking over her
    shoulder for Michael, but she didn’t notice anything
    suspicious. After checking all the possibilities and coming
    up empty, she returned to the rental car, standing back in
    the parking lot and making sure no one else was around
    before she depressed the button on the keyless remote.
    When the doors unlocked with a chirp instead of an
    explosion, she sighed in relief. Jack said he was stil trying
    to find out who had put the bomb underneath her Monte
    Carlo, but with the device in so many pieces, his
    investigation to this point had yielded no leads.
    After she slid behind the wheel of the Civic, Carlotta
    reached into her bag for the notebook containing her
    notes and clippings about the murders. The Atlanta
    Journal-Constitution had featured profiles on each victim.
    The first victim, Shawna Whitt, had worked at a chain
    bookstore in midtown, which also doubled as a textbook
    store to nearby Georgia Tech. Carlotta drove the rental car
    there next.
    The bookstore was relatively empty due to the summer
    break. Carlotta walked around, jingling her charm bracelet
    loudly and feigning interest in it every time she got close
    to a female employee, giving them an opening to make
    conversation about The Charmed Kil er case. No one took
    the bait. Finally she bought a coffee at the café, allowing
    her charm bracelet to jangle noisily on the counter while
    she waited.
    “I like your bracelet,” the server commented. She wore a
    name tag that read “Monica.”
    Carlotta smiled. “Thank you. I stopped wearing it for a
    while when that serial kil er was on the loose.”
    The woman’s face clouded, then she leaned in and
    whispered. “A girl who used to work here, Shawna, was
    one of the victims.”
    Carlotta gasped. “How awful. Did you know her?”
    Monica nodded and handed over the coffee. “Shawna had
    a bracelet like that one.”
    Carlotta extended money for the drink and dropped a bil
    in the tip jar. “Do you know where she got it?”
    “She bought it as a birthday gift for herself.”
    “These bracelets are supposed to be unique. Do you
    remember the charms that were on your friend’s
    bracelet?”
    The woman squinted. “I remember a little phone, and a
    pair of hands that were locked, like a couple.”
    Shawna Whitt had mentioned the intertwined hands
    charm in an entry on The Charmers online community
    forum that Carlotta had come across after the murder. The
    site had since been taken down. “What other charms do
    you remember?”
    The woman stopped and looked Carlotta over. “Are you a
    cop or something?”
    “Heavens, no. I work at Neiman’s and we sold a lot of
    these bracelets.” She fingered the charms. “The rumor is
    that the charms tel a person’s future. I just wondered if
    there was anything on your friend’s bracelet that…I don’t
    know—spooked her?”
    The woman scratched behind her ear. “Let’s see, there
    was a bird of some kind—a chicken, I think.”
    Carlotta’s pulse leaped. The fact that the kil er had taken a
    charm from Shawna’s bracelet and put it in her mouth was
    huge. It proved Coop hadn’t added the charm to Shawna
    Whitt’s mouth when he arrived on the scene to move the
    body. It was all Carlotta could do not to whip out her
    phone and call Jack on the spot.
    “And there was a question-mark charm,” Monica
    continued, “which seemed to fit Shawna because she
    usually worked the information desk.” She snapped her
    fingers. “Wait. There was