The Photograph
The person who had sent the threat letter did indeed have an accomplice. Xia Yu tailed him as he fled in a blind panic to a private residence, found a way to climb inside, and eavesdropped on his conversation with another man. Once she confirmed there was no one else involved, she subdued the two of them.
Granted, her technique was perhaps a touch less restrained than it should have been — and combined with the way she rummaged through the place afterward gathering evidence, the two men came to believe she was a burglar and threatened to call the police.
Of course, after Xia Yu's friendly little "persuasion session," the pair wisely abandoned that idea, and when the officers arrived at the scene in response to Xia Yu's report, they couldn't wait to confess their crimes and repent on the spot.
Hearing that the culprits had been caught, Mouri Kogoro had been mentally prepared for it and showed no surprise at the news.
It was a shame he wouldn't be collecting the full fee for the commission, but with the matter resolved, everyone was in good spirits.
Through the phone call Xia Yu had just made, the group also learned from Charlotte the full story behind the threat letter.
Conan's earlier guess had been right: one of the culprits was an administrator at a high school, and he was the one who had prepared the threatening letter. He'd done it because Charlotte, during a previous visit to that school for an interview, had discovered he was taking kickbacks and manipulating which students received scholarship slots.
When he realized Charlotte knew what he'd been doing — and that she kept returning to the school to question students — he sent the threat letter to scare her into dropping the investigation.
As for the second culprit, the man who had delivered the letter and very nearly been caught red-handed by Charlotte, he was a subordinate who had been splitting the kickbacks with the school administrator while helping him cook the school's books...
Even with the culprits in custody, Kogoro and the others didn't leave right away.
Knowing that Xia Yu would come find Charlotte once she'd finished handling the matter, Mouri Ran wanted to stay a while longer at Charlotte's apartment and wait to see her.
It had been some time since Ran last saw Xia Yu, and since the chance had presented itself, she wanted to have a proper chat with her and with her new friend Charlotte.
Kogoro and Conan, unwilling to leave Ran behind on her own, stayed as well.
That left Takeuchi Kouichi feeling too awkward to excuse himself alone, so he had little choice but to stay too.
The group had been chatting for a while when they heard the sound of the apartment's front door opening.
Moments later, everyone watched Xia Yu walk into the living room.
Conan noticed something: Xia Yu had just let herself in without knocking or ringing — which meant she had a key to Charlotte's apartment.
Exactly how close was this reporter Charlotte with Xia Yu's sister, that she trusted her enough to hand over her own key?
Would ordinary friends really get along to that degree?
While Conan was mulling it over, Ran, Xia Yu, and Charlotte were already hitting it off spectacularly. Young women with a mutual friend in common, they had no trouble warming up to each other at all.
Kogoro and Takeuchi couldn't squeeze a word into the girls' conversation, so the two of them resigned themselves to drinking together and making small talk.
"You're saying there's a celebrity living in this building?" Ran asked, curiosity written across her face when Charlotte happened to mention the residents.
"There is." Charlotte nodded. "The security here is excellent, and the privacy is wonderful too, so it's popular with public figures. I've accidentally run into quite a few stars myself."
"Like who?" Ran asked, leaning in.
"Let's see... Mizuno Mina, Watanabe Jun..." Charlotte tapped her chin with one finger, racking her memory. Then something clicked. "Ah! I've run into Okino Yoko here too!"
"Miss Yoko!"
At the magic word, Kogoro instantly abandoned Editor Takeuchi, whom he'd been chatting with not ten seconds earlier, and planted himself in front of Charlotte, his face alive with excitement.
"You really saw Miss Yoko here?! That's impossible — this isn't where she lives. Did she move?!"
Charlotte shifted uncomfortably, holding both hands up against the body Kogoro had unconsciously leaned into her space. "D-Detective Mouri, could you please calm down a little...?"
"If Miss Yoko might be here, how could I possibly— huh?!"
Before Kogoro could finish, Ran stepped in with a dark expression, seized her father by the collar, and — paying no mind to how the fabric had turned his face red — hauled him all the way back to his seat before letting go. Then she turned to Charlotte and, with an apologetic air, offered her apologies for her father having frightened her.
Not once did she acknowledge the sound of Kogoro behind her, thumping his chest and coughing like a man who had narrowly escaped with his life.
Charlotte blinked, then shook her head in a daze. "N-no, it's fine."
"By the way — Charlotte, you were saying you'd seen Miss Yoko around here?"
Ran wasn't entirely pleased with her father's behavior just now, but she was curious herself as to why Okino Yoko would turn up in a place like this.
Hearing his daughter's question, Kogoro hastily smothered his coughing and cocked his ears toward Charlotte's answer.
Watching all of this, Conan rolled his eyes in silent exasperation. He had absolutely no interest in celebrity gossip, and bored, he got up to wander around the living room.
The others paid his wandering no mind. Only Ran found a spare moment to remind him, "Don't go running off anywhere," before diving back into the conversation.
Conan gave the living room a casual once-over and found nothing out of the ordinary — at most, the trappings of Charlotte's profession: some camera parts laid out, a few stacks of newspapers piled on the floor, that sort of thing.
Then he came to the shelf and noticed several photographs arranged on it.
Out of curiosity, he took one down for a look.
Two of them were photos of Xia Yu together with Charlotte; one was a solo shot of Xia Yu.
Two more showed Charlotte posing with different people. In one, the other person was a girl with long brown hair and a sweet, doll-like way of dressing, wearing a teal remodeled kimono scattered with cherry-blossom ornaments — and on her sash was... a Vision!
Conan leaned in and looked again. There was no mistaking it: the familiar glass-like orb.
But this orb's color was one he had never seen before — a vivid green — and thanks to the photo's quality, the pattern inside was hard to make out. Even the frame around the orb was unlike any he'd seen.
So his earlier guess had been right: Charlotte really was connected to those people who possessed Visions.
Curiosity piqued, Conan studied the final photograph all the more carefully.
In that last photo, the person standing beside Charlotte was an elegant, strikingly beautiful woman. She wore long golden curls beneath a black top hat, a strapless black-and-white dress, a ship's-wheel ornament at her waist, and yellow ribbons tied at her sleeves — and hanging from her left arm was that same unmistakable glass orb.
Her Vision was yellow, the same color as Noelle's, yet its frame matched the ones Lyney and Lynette carried.
Conan frowned, thinking hard. What, exactly, did the colors of a Vision mean — and its frames?