Death in a Dacron Sail: a Rhe Brewster Mystery

Publisher Marketing: Death in a Dacron Sail is the next in the Rhe Brewster Mystery series. On a cold February morning, Rhe Brewster, a tall, attractive emergency room nurse with a type A personality, a nose for investigation and a yen for adrenalin, is called to a dock in the harbor of Pequod, a Maine coastal town. Because she is a consultant to the Pequod Police Department, her brother-in-law, Sam Brewster, who is Pequod's Chief of Police, wants her to look at a discovery by one of the local lobstermen: a finger caught in one of his lobster traps. There she meets the lobsterman, Peter Barnes, and his enigmatic brother, James. Marsh Adams, the state Assistant ME at the hospital where Rhe works, identifies the finger as that of a young girl, and Rhe's job is to look at unsolved cases of missing girls in the state, to see if that finger might be linked to any one of them. There are four, one of which is a girl who disappeared many years before and who was Rhe's best friend. The subsequent finding of the body of a young girl, wrapped in a sail on an isolated beach north of Pequod, sends the investigation into high gear because the finger belongs to her body. In the meantime, Rhe is having a worsening relationship with her husband, Will, who is mysteriously absent much of the time. He is both unhappy with Rhe's pregnancy and resentful of the fact she is working with the police on murder investigations, and he lies about his absences. Rhe and Sam, along with two familiar FBI agents, Bowers and Bongiovanni, use information from the FBI to identify the girl and receive a valuable lead from her parents. Bowers follows up on the lead and almost dies, drugged and left in his car in a ditch to freeze to death. When rescued, he remembers nothing, and revisiting his search yields no results. When a second body is located, the search settles around Crystal Bog, where that body had been buried, and leads back to the original suspect, who lives near the bog. In the meantime, Rhe and her best friend, Paulette, locate the brother of Rhe's childhood friend, Deirdre. He left Pequod with his father, leaving no forwarding address, soon after Deirdre's disappearance. He is living on Swan Island, and when Rhe and Paulette visit him there, they learn the father had been abusing Deirdre. The investigation into the missing girls intensifies when Sarah, Paulette's daughter, is abducted Then Rhe herself is snatched from a parking lot. It is Rhe's job to free them both, along with the last missing girl. To do this, she must cross Crystal Bog in the middle of winter, fighting off hypothermia and trying to protect her baby at the same time, in order to get help. Will she survive? Will her marriage survive? And who is the kidnapper?