Reconstructing Brigid - Softcover

Nichols, Lee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0373895623 ISBN 13: 9780373895625

Publisher: Red Dress Ink, 2008

Synopsis

When the daughter of a politically connected CEO is found dead in her car off the Maine coast, her father wants the best investigation money can buy.

He demands that Brigid Ashbury determine the cause of death: was it a simple car crash or did someone force his daughter off the road? For the country's premiere accident reconstructionist, it should be an open and shut case.

Except for one minor problem: Brigid is afraid of cars.

While struggling to overcome her motorphobia, the result of her own recent collision, Brigid is trying to determine whether this really was an accident. A wealthy family, a possible kidnapping and questions of inheritance muddy the waters. The prime suspect, Aaron White, is the boyfriend of the dead girl's sister. He even admits to sleeping with the victim...twice...but insists he didn't kill her.

Determined to keep her suspect close, Brigid enlists Aaron as her chauffeur. And although he may be trying to seduce Brigid (and everyone else in his path) they do make a good team. But if they're going to crack this case, Brigid must first get herself back on the road to recovery.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Aaron White was sipping hot cocoa on the balcony when the SWAT team exploded through the door.

He'd been pacing his room at the bed-and-breakfast, too distracted to watch TV. He noticed the Swiss Miss packet by the coffeemaker, and thought: Swiss Miss, Mr. Coffee, Uncle Ben's, St. Pauli Girl... Maybe Swiss Miss and Pauli Girl were related. Pauli would be the black sheep of the family, and Mrs. Butterworth and Aunt Jemima would suck their teeth and worry over the poor lost girl. Why couldn't she be more like her sister?

His mind had been doing that a lot lately. Since Jody disappeared. He'd made cocoa and sat on the balcony, listening to the quiet of the countryside. It was early September in Cumberland, Maine, ten miles north of Portland. The B and B was called The Copper Pot, located on a family farm with sheep and goats and a couple of alpacas. Aaron had spent the afternoon feeding apples to the alpacas, the two halves of their mouths probed and nibbled like gentle feelers around their sharp teeth.

He sipped the cocoa, trying to relax. Crickets chirped in the field and a distant car drove past. The moon was a hazy sliver behind clouds. Then the door burst open and there was a blur of motion— six or seven guys in dark uniforms with guns and intent eyes.

Aaron froze, the mug an inch from his lips. A long pause, and one of the guys spotted him on the balcony. The man shouted and pivoted—his gun a great black sucking hole.

Aaron said something, and a couple seconds later was no longer sitting, no longer sipping cocoa. Handcuffs were biting his wrists.

Aaron had slept with Jody Hulfinger two times before she disappeared.

The first was after she'd heard him laughing at Cate, her twin sister.

Cate was twenty-eight, blond, with perfect teeth and a horsey face that was enough like a model's to convince her she was beautiful. But she tried too hard to be hard—like a diamond, glittering and impenetrable. It was a pose, but there was something beneath it Aaron found appealing. He wanted them to move in together. Cate laughed every time he raised the subject.

"I'm serious," he told her. "It'll be great—like playing house."

"Wow, Aaron, that does sound serious."

"You like playing doctor well enough. We could rent a house in Cambridge."

Cate shook her head. "You know Bethany's husband, the chef?

He cooks all day and serves TV dinners at home."She smiled softly. "I'm eating fine as it is."

Actually, she was too skinny, but Aaron said: "How about L.A., then?"

Not L.A.

"Portland? Boulder? San Francisco?'

Cate said no, no and no, a little tightly. It was a conversation they'd had before. He knew he was annoying her, but couldn't stop.

"We could live abroad," he said.

"Don't be sexist," she snapped.

"What?" he said.

"Abroad. A broad."

He thought she was kidding. "Well, broadly speaking..."

"Not funny, Aaron. If you—" She stopped at a noise behind them.

Jody was framed in the doorway. She and Cate weren't identical twins. Not even close. Jody was short, dark and plump. She wore round glasses that mirrored the shape of her face, with square bangs and an uneven smile.

"Excuse my sister," Jody said."Sometimes she's as thick as a broad."

Aaron couldn't help laughing, and Cate swept from the room.

Jody moved her head and her glasses caught the light and f lashed. She sat next to Aaron on the sofa, her legs folded under. They talked. Then went for a stroll which ended in her bedroom. She was lively, quick and—Aaron couldn't help comparing her to Cate—softer. Afterward, she'd stood, naked but for her glasses, and had given the venetian blinds a quarter turn. Stripes of warm light had brushed her, making topographical patterns on her soft and rounded skin. At that moment, Aaron regretted that he'd ever taken up with Cate.

* * *

The second time Aaron slept with her, he'd been at the Hulfinger's summer camp—otherwise known as an estate—for almost two weeks. He'd been sitting on the back patio reading the "Best Places to Retire" issue of Money magazine when Jody opened one of the glass doors, walked the ten yards to the stone steps and sat. She picked at the moss poking through the cracks and stared at what they called the back lawn. It was five minutes before she noticed him. Maybe her eyeglasses didn't flash a greeting. Or maybe they did. He sat next to her.

"My father," she said. "Not good with shades of gray."

Aaron waited.

She took a breath. "It's his company..."

"Which company is that?"

"You don't know?"

"Cate said service industry. Hotels?"

Jody squinted though her glasses. Her eyes were dog-brown. Nothing special about them. "You really don't know what he does?"

Aaron smiled. "I really don't." He'd never been interested in the story of her father's wealth. "Small" was her father's nickname— he insisted you call him that, especially if it made you uncomfortable—and he seemed like the sort of man who was wealthy from nothing in particular.

"You don't want a job?" she asked. "A contact? Some venture capital?"

"I have enough money," he said.

Well, he had almost enough money, because a million dollars wasn't what it used to be, not when his income was zero. It wasn't penury, but he didn't qualify as idle rich. More like idle middleclass. But idle was the key, and spending a couple weeks with Cate at the Hulfinger "summer camp" was pleasure, not business. Sure, he was waiting for the next big thing, but Small wasn't the next big thing. If he were, his name wouldn't be Small.

Jody's smile went lopsided, and she f licked her fingernail against the stone step. "You interested in a rematch?"

Aaron tilted his head, not understanding.

"I should warn you," she said, "nothing's changed."

"Nothing's changed," he agreed, still with no idea.

She pushed her hair behind her ears. "I'm saying, Aaron, I'd like to take advantage of your good nature."

A synapse fired.

Jody touched his hand. "Would that be okay?"

She led him to her car, drove a couple miles to Fire Road 26, and they hiked five minutes to a clearing. She'd always wanted to bring someone here, she said, but was afraid what they'd think about being outdoors. For some reason—and she smiled when she said this, a coy and self-confident smile he'd never seen before— she figured it wouldn't bother him.

"Is it okay?" she asked again.

"Yeah," he said, stroking the nape of her neck with his fingertips. "It's okay."

It was more than okay. He could no longer pretend he had feelings for Cate.

Jody disappeared the next day.

It was two weeks before they found the body.

Two days ago

My name is Brigid Ashbury and mornings were the worst. I dreaded all of it: the hike, the driveway, the sidewalk. The oil-black asphalt with its ribbon of white—an imaginary barrier against a sudden incendiary death. Mornings were the lingering scent of exhaust, forever mingled in my mind with that explosive, violent crash. Then the eerie quiet before the whimpering cries.

I closed the cabin's front door behind me. The cabin. It was a trailer. I almost laughed. I lived in a trailer—not even a double-wide. That's where life had led me. At least it was in the hills, a half mile off the road, with a pleasant hike through Santa Barbara's low-slung oaks and chaparral. The morning air smelled of desert and ocean and of Highway 101, running like a scar up California's length.

No, I couldn't really smell 101. It wasn't a scar. It was just my too-vivid imagination—the double-edged blade of my imagination—and the only way to root it out was one step at a time. That's why I had my supplies delivered to the front house, my landlady's house. So I'd have to face the road every morning.

I gathered my hair into three hanks and wove them into a loose braid. Then pulled the lid off a bucket I kept by the front door and scattered a handful of seed for the finches and sparrows and dark-eyed juncos. The one-legged junco I called Teeter didn't show, the little ingrate. I gave him a couple minutes before I started walking.

It was getting easier. Last week I'd seen two SUVs hurtling toward each other around the curve on Calle del Sol. I'd watched the drivers' faces, both complacent that a five-inch strip of white paint protected them from an onrushing mass of steel and plastic.

The shakes had only lasted eight minutes. A month ago, I would've passed out. So it was getting easier. Dr. Kugelmeyer would be pleased. Of course, she would think it was the antidepressants I pretended to be taking.

I stepped off the path and onto my landlady's driveway and didn't let myself slow as I approached the sidewalk. Not until I heard the boy crying. My landlady's son, ten years old, standing at the foot of the driveway over a crumpled bicycle.

"She ran over my bike," he said.

"Who?"

"Mrs. Quinney." The next-door neighbor. "She was always saying that I ride it on her lawn, which wasn't me—and it was an accident anyway."

"Accidents happen,"I said. There must've been something in my voice, because the kid stared. I looked down at the wrecked bike. "You jumped it a lot, huh?"

"Nah, my mom told me not to."

He was lying. "See where the front fork's bent? That's from jumping."

"Could be where it got run over."

"No, it's still symmetrical. That means there's no damage from the collision itself." I knelt by the ruined bicycle. "Does Mrs. Quinney ever pull her car into your driveway?"

"Our driveway?" He shook his head.

"She only has the one car?"

"Yeah, big old clunker."

"Cutlass Sierra, '94 or '95." A good car, one of the lower crash-death ratios.

"The bike was a Christmas present from my dad." The kid kicked a clump of dirt. "Mom says it serves me right for taking it."

"Well, there are three quick things," I said, to distract the kid, before he started crying again. "Strike point, paint transfer and scrape marks. See that?" I pointed to a crumpled spot on the frame. "That's the strike point. It tells you the bumper height of the impacting vehicle. Too high for Mrs. Quinney's car. We're looking for a pickup or ...

Edition details

• Publisher: Red Dress Ink
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0373895623
• ISBN 13: 9780373895625
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 336