Excerpt of Finding Jessica by Parker Riggs

In the wooded countryside surrounding the town of Haven,
New
Hampshire, in a log house along the shore of Two Isle
Lake, a red
miniature dachshund sat on the back of a couch looking
out a
window. His owner, Rose Chandler, sat in soft lamplight
trying to
read a book. It was a futile effort. She hadn’t turned
a page in
over twenty minutes. Instead, she listened to her own
breathing,
the ticking of the clock on the fireplace mantel, the
sound of the
icemaker clicking in the kitchen. Emily and Rocky and
the kids had
been over earlier to grill the last of the freezer’s
venison. And,
she was pretty sure, to keep her mind off what day it
was. Without
Jasper, Jake and Janie jumping on sofas, begging to swim
in the
lake, playing wiffle ball out front and eating a whole
bag of
roasting marshmallows, the house felt deathly quiet.

The day was a milestone, but nothing to celebrate.
Cameron’s death
had happened on a summer morning one year ago on the
country road
leading to Tibber’s Basin, the kind of road you make
plans to drive
along in the fall because the trees are bursting with
color. But
that morning, the road was deadly; that morning Cameron’s
motorcycle hurdled down an embankment, his body thrown to
the
ground, tumbling almost a quarter mile to Lover’s Ravine.
The
emergency response team told her he died instantly. She
wanted to
believe them, had tried to use this news to soothe
herself, but for
the past year while she kept her PI business going and
Cameron’s
gallery chock full of the best artists, she’d secretly
felt like
she was drowning, struggling to the surface, wishing she
could wake
up from this terrible dream.

From his perch on the back of the couch, Cosmo watched
restlessly
out the window. A white ray of moonlight split the night
and
illuminated the lake. Cosmo didn’t understand why
Cameron never
returned home. Confused and nervous, he moved over to
Rose’s side
and licked her hand. She scratched his ears. “Don’t
worry,” she
said, finally. “Everything’s all right.” Saying those
words
aloud, she realized that at some point she had started to
cross a
threshold into acceptance. Tomorrow dawn would break,
life would
go on, it really was all right. She leaned back and
closed her
eyes.

When the phone rang, Cosmo leapt off the couch, and Rose
grabbed
her cell off the table.

“Is this Rose Chandler of Chandler Investigations?”

Rose looked at her watch. It was almost midnight.
“Who’s this?”

“Marcie Payne. Barrington Bigelow’s agent?” the woman’s
accent was
pure New York. “He hired Chandler Investigations to find
some
godforsaken girlfriend he’s been mooning about since he
was
practically a child?”

“Yes,” said Rose. “I’m well aware of that, we’ve been on
the case.
But it’s strictly confidential, even if you are his agent
–”

“And I can’t get in touch with your PI, Hal,” the woman
interrupted
her, “who was supposed to be setting up his rental for
him, and Big
is totally lost and can’t find the place and this Hal is
not
picking up his phone –”

“Hal’s probably sleeping,” Rose said. And how dare you
wake him
up? “But I could talk to him if he’s lost. Does he have
a GPS?
The address should be on there.”

“Of course he has GPS,” the woman snapped. “It’s
Barrington
Bigelow.”

“Yes, I know,” Rose said. “I’ve already been on the
phone with him
quite a bit.”

“Right,” the woman said. “Big tells me you own the
investigation
business and you’re the owner of the gallery where he
wants to show
his photographs,” the woman plowed on, not waiting for
Rose to
answer. “Barrington is not a photographer, understand,
he’s a
painter. He shows at the major museums and all the best
galleries
in Europe and why in the world he wants to sell his
photographs at
a little gallery in the middle of nowhere, no offense
intended, is
beyond me.”

“No offense taken.” Rose rubbed her eyes. This woman
was
exhausting. “Actually I was also wondering why he’d want
to sell
his work in Haven,” she said.

“Hold on,” Marcie told her. “There he is.” She clicked
off. Rose
closed her eyes and felt her lids sting. She’d been
thinking how
weird it would be to have Barrington Bigelow’s work in
Mountain
Arts. Stepping up as the dealer after Cameron died
hadn’t changed
the gallery’s excellent reputation, but they showed
regional
artists, none were represented by agents in New York.

“He’s fine,” Marcie said brusquely when she clicked back
on. “He’s
in the driveway. He’ll see you in the morning to talk
about the
investigation,” she said. “And those photographs for
your
gallery.” Before Rose could say anything more, Marcie
clicked off.

As she carried Cosmo to bed and tucked him in beside her,
Rose
tried to ignore the pain in her left shoulder, the
remnant of an
old bullet wound that had been flaring up all day, a
symptom of
stress. It would keep her up all night unless she took
something
for it, so she rolled over for the little bottle of
ibuprofen on
her bedside table and swallowed one without water.

Lying back in the dark, she could just make out one of
Cameron’s
paintings above the dresser, the lake on a summer day,
thick clouds
reflected in the water, trees full and lush along the
shoreline.
She remembered how much Cameron loved Barrington
Bigelow’s work.
Early in their marriage, when her own appreciation of art
was still
in its infancy, he’d dragged her to the Currier Museum of
Art to
see a special exhibition of his paintings. She was
struck by the
artist’s range, there was something both cataclysmic and
melancholic about his work, as though he’d stood on a
precipice and
seen how the world ended, and had come back to show it
through his
paintbrush. She was looking forward to meeting him in
person.