“Who would want to hurt Derek? Or you?” Shannon wanted to know.
I shrugged. “No idea. Someone who thinks one of us knows more than we do? Although it was probably just an accident. And even if it wasn’t, I don’t think it was directed at me. It’s Derek’s car, and there’s no way anyone could have known that I’d be driving it today.”
“But it’s not like anyone has a reason to want to get rid of Derek, either,” Shannon pointed out, “and they might know that you’re usually with him. And that you don’t have a car of your own. Anyone who knows you two, knows that. You’re usually together.”
“True. And most people seem to like Derek.”
“Absolutely,” Shannon agreed with a grin. “Except for Ray Stenham, maybe. I don’t think he’d kill him, though.”
“Probably not,” I said with real regret. The Stenham twins had tortured me mercilessly the one time I’d met them when I was little, and had made Derek’s formative years a nightmare as well, and I’d love to make them pay someday. Still, Ray had been decent to me this morning. “Ray was actually pretty nice today. He was the one who had Derek’s truck towed to Cortino’s while Melissa drove me to the house. The accident happened right outside their construction site.”
“That’s a big hill right there,” Josh remarked. “Good thing nothing worse happened.”
I nodded.
Broad Street intersects with Main right in downtown Waterfield, and Cortino’s auto repair shop turned out to be on the other side by a few blocks. It was a blue-painted cinderblock building with three bays, and through the middle one, I could see Derek’s truck up on a lift while a couple of people in blue overalls stood underneath, conferring.
“You want us to wait for you?” Josh asked as I crawled out of the back seat. I shook my head.
“No need. I’m just a few blocks from Aunt Inga’s house. Go back to work on your forensic facial approximation software. See if you can’t figure out who that poor woman was. If she wasn’t local, the dental records may not do any good.”
Josh nodded. “See you, Avery.” He pulled away while Shannon waved. I waved back before I headed for the door to the office.
The counter was manned-or womanned-by a plump blonde a couple of years older than me. She had a round face with a snub nose and slightly protruding, pale blue eyes, and she looked familiar, like maybe I’d passed her on the street or nodded to her at Shaw’s Supermarket sometime. She wasn’t anyone I knew or had ever been introduced to, but I knew I’d seen her before.
“Hi,” I said politely. “I’m Avery Baker.”
“Jill Cortino.” She looked me up and down a few times, assessing me. “So you’re Derek’s new girlfriend. And business partner.”
“That’d be me.” Girlfriend and business partner. Also the person who had driven Derek’s beloved Ford F-150 into a ditch this morning. “I came to check on the truck.”
“Peter’s been looking at it. I’ll get him for you.” She got up and walked over to a door in the back wall. A few moments later, one of the overalls-clad mechanics came jogging toward us.
“What’s up, babe?” He grinned down at her. She indicated me.
“This is Avery Baker. Derek’s girlfriend. She came to find out about the truck.”
Peter Cortino turned to me and flashed another smile. I staggered.
Don’t get me wrong: I adore Derek, and I certainly have no complaints about his physical characteristics. He’s a good-looking guy: a lean six feet or so, with sun-streaked hair and melting blue eyes, not to mention a killer smile and a dimple. And that’s just the exterior. But although I’m attached, and happy to be so, I’m neither stupid nor blind. Peter Cortino was easily the best-looking man I had ever seen, with the possible exception of a soap opera actor I spied in a bar in Greenwich Village one night a few years ago. He was so handsome he looked unreal, especially in the dirt and dust of this untidy auto shop in back-beyond Maine.
An inch or two shorter than Derek, Peter Cortino was as dark as Derek was fair. Black, curly hair covered his head, while his face-a masterpiece of exquisite bone structure and smooth, olive skin-boasted long, thick, curling eyelashes surrounding a pair of eyes as dark and melting as those on a cocker spaniel. It was like Michelangelo’s David had stepped off the pedestal and traded the fig leaf for a pair of dirty overalls.
“Nice to meet you,” I managed. Jill chuckled, and I blushed. It’s bad form to stare at someone else’s husband, even if Jill acted like she was used to it. I wondered if she was also used to people looking from him to her, wondering how she had landed such a catch. Did whispers of, “What’s he doing with her?” follow them around?
“Likewise.” He extended a hand, briefly. And although my mental visions were of dusty Italian vistas, Peter Cortino’s accent was Boston, all the way. And not upper-crust Boston, either. “Where’s Derek?”
I explained that Derek had gone to the dump with someone. Peter nodded, as if this was par for the course.
“Tell me what happened this morning.” He stuffed one hand back in the pocket of the oil-spotted overalls and put the other around his wife’s waist. She leaned into him. “The guy who towed the truck in said the driver had lost control and driven into a ditch.”
“There was a little more to it than that,” I answered. “I only drove the truck into the ditch because the brakes didn’t respond, and I didn’t want to cause a worse accident.”
Peter nodded, as if this confirmed his findings. “I had a look at it. The good news is, the problem’s easy to fix. I don’t know how much you know about automobiles…?”
He waited for me to speak. When I said I’d never owned a car and knew next to nothing about them, he grinned. “In layman’s terms, then: You had a hole in the brake lines, which turned into no response from the brakes. It’s a simple thing to repair. Installing new brake lines won’t take long at all.”
So far, so good. “What’s the bad news?”
“It didn’t happen accidentally. Someone nicked the lines, and while you drove, the tear became bigger and bigger, until the brake lines broke completely. Likely the same person jiggled with the mechanism for the airbag so that when you did have an accident-and you would have one, eventually-the airbag wouldn’t work.”
Something seemed to have gone wrong with my breathing. “So someone was trying to hurt me?” Or kill me?
“Not necessarily,” Peter said. “The brakes could have given out at any moment, while you were driving ten miles an hour through downtown, or while you were doing sixty on the highway. Depending on the situation, you could have eased the car to a stop at the nearest curb with no harm done to anyone, or caused a six-car pileup on I- 295.”
“Or driven off the road and into the water if I’d been heading up the ocean road?”
He nodded. “That, too. If Derek had been driving, you might have avoided the accident altogether. He’s more experienced than you.”
“That doesn’t take much,” I agreed. “So maybe it was more of a warning? Or is it possible that it was just an accident and nobody messed with the brakes? Maybe they just broke?”
Peter shrugged. “I wouldn’t think so,” he said, “although anything’s possible, I guess.”
We agreed that he would fix the problem, as well as replace the headlight that had shattered and the fender that had been dented when I hit the ditch, not to mention the airbags that hadn’t deployed, and then he’d call Derek to let him know when the truck was ready to be picked up. I thanked them both and set out for Aunt Inga’s house on foot. The last thing I saw before I closed the office door was Peter kissing his wife.
I started the walk by contemplating the two of them and their relationship, and from there I went on to trying to remember where I might have seen Jill before. Recently. We hadn’t been introduced-I’d have remembered that-but I’d seen her before. At the store? On the street? In some restaurant or other where Derek and I had shared a meal? She’d have been alone, if so, because if I’d ever seen her husband before, I would have recognized him for sure. He wasn’t the kind of guy you forgot meeting.