The Edge Read Online Free PDF

If I hadn't been looking for it I wouldn't have seen it.

    I was surprised how much it looked like their home back in Philadelphia. It was then I saw a police car parked across the street from the house.

    I pulled into the empty driveway, wondering how much longer Paul would be at the hospital. I walked to the cop car, a white four-door Chrysler with green lettering on the side: SHERIFF.

    I stuck my head in the open passenger window. "What's up? You here to see Paul?"

    She was a woman in her early thirties, wearing a beautifully pressed tan uniform, a wide black leather belt at her waist, a 9mm SIG Sauer Model 220, a sweet automatic pistol I knew very well, bolstered to the belt. She said, "Yes. And just who might you be?"

    "I'm Ford MacDougal, Jilly's brother, from Washington, D.C. I'm here to see her, and find out what happened to her."

    "You're the FBI agent?"

    There was deep suspicion in her voice. "Word gets around fast," I said. I stuck my hand through the open window. "Just call me Mac."

    She was wearing black leather driving gloves that felt very cool and soft to the touch when she clasped my hand. "I'm Maggie Sheffield, sheriff here in Edgerton. I want to find out what happened to Jilly as well. Did you just come from the hospital?" At my nod, she said, "No change?"

    "No. I left Paul there with her. He's pretty upset." "No wonder. It's got to be hell for him. It's not every day that a man's wife drives off a cliff, ends up in the hospital rather than the morgue, and leaves her Porsche twenty feet underwater."

    She sounded like she wanted to cry. About Jilly or about the Porsche?

    "You've driven Jilly's car?"

    "Yeah, once. Funny thing is that I never speed unless I have to, which isn't often. But I got behind the wheel, looked out the windshield, and my foot just hit the gas pedal. I was doing eighty before I even realized it. I was grateful there were no cops around." She smiled and looked away from me for a moment. "Jilly was so excited about that car. She'd drive it down Fifth Avenue, hooting and shouting and honking the horn. She'd swerve it from one side of the street to the other. People would come out of the grocery store, their houses, laughing, betting with her that she'd wreck the car with her shenanigans." "She did."

    "Yes, but it wasn't because of her having fun like a crazy teenager. It was something else entirely." Her voice had lightened up just a bit, but now it was low and suspicious again. To my surprise, she suddenly smacked the steering wheel with her gloved fist. "It's just plain nuts. Rob Morrison, the state cop who pulled her out, said she speeded up as she went toward the cliff. It's a pretty sharp incline at that particular spot, so that means she had to push down on the gas, like she wanted to go over. But that doesn't make any sense at all. Jilly wouldn't have tried to kill herself." She paused a moment, frowning over the steering wheel into the forest across the street. "I don't suppose you've got any ideas about this?"

    I should have just said no, because I didn't want this sheriff to think I was crazy, but what came out of my mouth was "Yes, I do. It's just that I don't understand my ideas either."

    She laughed. It was an honest laugh that filled the car. "I think you'll need to explain that. Listen, you're a Fed when all's said and done. Sure you're Jilly's brother, but you're a Fed first. What's going on here?"

    "All that's true, but I'm on leave from the FBI. I'm here as Jilly's brother, nothing more. I'm not going to throw my weight around, Sheriff." My stomach growled. "Tell you what. Paul's still at the hospital. Actually I'm going to stay here with him since the Buttercup B and B is filled up with the orthodontist convention. It's time for lunch and I'm starving."

    "Orthodontist convention, huh? That's how Arlene got rid of you? The woman's got no imagination."

    "She tried. I think I frightened her. Is it because I'm an outsider? A Fed?"

    "Oh, yes. Arlene Hicks