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Chapter Fifteen
PEARL BAIMBRIDGE SAT on the edge of her daughter’s bed as the Channel 3 News began: “A local photographer was taken into custody for questioning earlier tonight in the case of missing twenty-three-year-old Ashleigh Matthews.”
Pearl clutched Martha’s hand. “This is going to devastate your father.”
“Teresa Hedge has more in this live report.”
The picture changed to a female reporter standing in front of Ashleigh’s house holding a microphone.
“Police arrested Wilmington photographer Richard Baimbridge earlier this evening on suspicion of murder in connection with the case of missing twenty-three-year-old Ashleigh Matthews.”
Martha had taken a Percocet tablet that left her groggy and thick-tongued. “Oh, Richie,” she moaned as they played video of Richard being paraded through a crowd of reporters and pushed into the back of a police car. Tears strea
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My Sister's Keeper Chapter Seventeen
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My Sister's Keeper Chapter Eighteen
AFTER DARK, I slipped into the laundry room and lifted a slat in the blind to get a look at Ashleigh’s house. The place was dark. I visualized the inside and tried to recall anything she’d said that might be a clue, but nothing came to mind. I located another flashlight, slipped into a dark windbreaker, and stepped out into the night. It was cave black.The darkness was alive with a thousand sounds. Endless rhythms and patterns of drumming, chirping, buzzing, rustling. Nature’s symphony. The sounds of life. Sounds one would rarely hear locked away in prison.I squeezed into the row of bushes at the back of the lot and emerged about thirty feet from Ashleigh’s steps. There was a large seal on the door that hadn’t been there Sunday night. Otherwise, it looked exactly the same: potted plants hanging along the edges of the porch and a pair of dirty tennis shoes sitting by the entrance.I moved forward, lifted the police tape, and starte
My Sister's Keeper Chapter Nineteen
FIRST THING THE NEXT MORNING, I called Scott and left a message on his voicemail telling him what Mrs. Winslow had said about Ashleigh walking off later that Sunday night. The way I figured it, that changed everything. All my appointments for Friday had been canceled and the phones were silent all day. I set up prices for Sydney’s photo packages, ran off twelve hundred order forms, and dropped them off at the dance studio on my way home. The lobby was crammed with moms gabbing noisily and tending to babies while keeping an eye on the monitors.Sydney was teaching, so I left the forms with the receptionist. I did, however, see Sydney on one of the monitors. She and her class were moving in complete unison like a school of fish darting here and there changing directions at the same instant, controlled by the same remote. She was dressed in a black leotard with a short sheer skirt and her hair was back in a ponytail. Even on that monitor I could see the joy on her face and
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My Sister's Keeper Chapter Twenty-Three
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