Brass Ring by Diane Chamberlain Read Free Book Online Page B

bridge.”
    Claire sat down behind the desk. “What do you mean?”
    “Well, it seems as though she grew up in Harpers Ferry, and twenty years ago—to the very day that she jumped—she and her brother were playing on that same bridge when the brother fell off and was killed.”
    “
What
?”
    “Right.” There was some pleasure in his voice, as though he enjoyed passing on a good piece of gossip. “I don’t know a whole lot more about it,” he said. “We got this piece of information from the social worker at the Avery Mental Hospital, and she didn’t know much more herself. Though she did say that Miss St. Pierre fell, too. Not into the water, but more towards the embankment. Hit her head on the rocks. They think that might have been part of what was wrong with her.”
    Claire looked out the window, where the sunlit snow still blanketed the ground and clung to the banks of the pond. What was it Margot had said to her: I died on this bridge long ago? Something like that. “It’s been haunting her all these years, poor thing,” she said.
    “Looks that way. The social worker said they were some kind of musical geniuses or something.”
    “Who were? Margot and her brother?”
    “Right. You know, that kind of kid who can play the piano as good as an adult?”
    “Oh!” Claire recalled more of Margot’s words. “Chopin.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Nothing.” She felt herself getting sucked in deeper. The more information she was given about Margot, the more she seemed to need. “Do you think I could talk to the social worker at the psychiatric hospital—if I should decide I’d like to?” She turned the pink message slip over and picked up a pen.
    “Don’t see why not.” Detective Patrick gave her the woman’s name, along with the number for the hospital. “This case is closed for us,” he said. “A suicide, cut-and-dried. But I thought you’d want to know this piece of it before I put the file away.”
    Claire stared at the message slip for a long time after getting off the phone. She was thinking. Plotting. She got up from her desk and walked quickly through the maze of corridors to Jon’s office.
    He was leafing though a stack of papers on his desk when she walked into the room. “Ah, good,” he said. “We need to talk about who can run the driving workshop at the retreat this year. Lillian’s going to be on maternity leave, and—”
    “Jon?” She sat down on his green sofa.
    He stopped shuffling the papers on his desk, raising his eyebrows. “Yes?”
    “One of those calls I returned was from Detective Patrick. He told me that twenty years ago, Margot and her brother fell from that same bridge. The brother was killed, and Margot was injured.”
    Jon’s eyes were wide. “No kidding? Was she trying to join him or what?”
    “I don’t know, but I would really like to find out. Would you mind if I took the rest of the day off?” He didn’t respond, and she rushed ahead. “I know we have retreat stuff to get done, but I can work on that tonight.” They would be swamped with “retreat stuff’ from now until the weekend of the annual retreat itself, to be held, as always, in September in the Shenandoah Valley. “I want to go to the library in Harpers Ferry to see what I can find out about that incident.”
    She couldn’t read his face. The miniblinds at his window cast lines of shadow across his cheek. He looked down at the papers on his desk, shoving one of them with the tip of his finger. “I didn’t realize you had so much Nancy Drew in you,” he said.
    “Neither did I.” She tried to smile.
    He was quiet again, tapping his fingers on the papers. When he looked up, he spoke quietly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this,” he said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, you don’t usually carry stuff around with you. Shit happens, and you say, que sera, sera, and get on with your life.”
    She sat back on the sofa with a sigh. He was right. “I don’t know