Miranda shook her head. “He hasn’t had a day off in weeks. He’s hardly been home except to sleep. He finally came in last night and crashed, and then the baby got sick and both of us were up all night. I tried to get him to go back to bed, but he’s barely seen her, and he wanted to help.” Miranda wadded the paper towels and tossed them in the trash. “It’s her first cold, and I didn’t know what to do. Turns out, there’s nothing you really can do.”
“How is she today?”
“A little better.” Miranda pulled a phone from the pocket of her lab coat. “Our nanny just called and said she’s napping peacefully, so maybe she’s through the worst of it.”
Nicole waited, not sure of what to say. She’d never seen Miranda so out of sorts. Right up until her due date, she’d seemed completely Zen and appeared to have everything under control. Nicole had gone to visit her, and she’d had the nursery perfectly decorated and her freezer filled with casseroles.
Nicole watched Miranda as she washed her hands. She wore a lab coat over jeans and a button-down shirt, which probably worked well for nursing. Instead of her usual tidy French braid, her long brown hair was up in a messy bun.
“Well, enough of this, right?” Miranda dried her hands and loaded up her tote bag. “Let me just get this bottle into the fridge and I can give you the update. Has Ryan started?”
“He was waiting for you.”
“Sorry.”
“Miranda, please.”
She shouldered her tote bag. “God forbid they might have a private room in this damn place so I wouldn’t have to pop out a boob in front of all the men I work with.”
“There’s nowhere you can go?”
“Well, I could go to my car, but that just takes longer.”
Nicole followed her down the hall. Miranda turned a corner and entered the garage where vehicles were processed. They paused beside the door to pull paper covers over their shoes. Then Miranda stepped over to the break area and stashed a bottle of breast milk in the mini fridge.
“There you guys are. We ready now?”
Nicole turned to see Ryan crossing the garage. The CSI wore white coveralls and had a pair of goggles perched atop his head.
“Yes,” Miranda said, joining them.
“I was just showing Adam the trunk.” He looked at Nicole. “You want to see?”
“Absolutely.”
She followed him past a mangled Kia and two pickup trucks to the far side of the garage. At the end of the row was Aubrey Lambert’s little blue Subaru.
Adam McDeere stood off to the side. Today he wore the typical Lost Beach detective uniform—navy golf shirt, brown tactical pants, and all-terrain boots—even though he wasn’t technically a detective yet. Like Nicole, he had covers over his shoes, and he looked very studious holding a notebook and pen in his gloved hands. Adam was three weeks away from his detective’s exam, and he’d been taking a lot of notes lately.
Ryan offered Nicole a box of latex gloves. She pulled out a pair and tugged them on.
“So, what did you find?” she asked.
“A lot,” Miranda said. “Have you had a chance to see the autopsy report?”
“Brady emailed it to the team this morning.”
Nicole had scoured it for clues and planned to study it more this afternoon.
“There were some small nylon fibers clinging to the body,” Miranda said.
“Yeah, I saw the notes about that. What are those, you think?”
“These were tiny, thready-looking fibers clinging to the skin and hair, apparently.” Miranda stepped closer to the trunk, and Ryan shined a flashlight into the cargo space. “We found similar fibers back here.”
Nicole and Adam moved closer and peered down at the trunk.
“Not seeing anything,” she said, glancing at Adam, who looked blank, too.