"Dead Lift"

Rachel Brady is the author of the Emily Locke mysteries, Final Approach and Dead Lift.

She applied the Page 69 Test to Dead Lift and reported the following:

I do think page 69 is representative of Dead Lift. In this scene, Emily is out on a limb, about to be stranded outside in a tropical storm at four a.m. while her boss is home, warm and dry in bed. Here, we see her begin to piece together what may be going on in the case she’s working on. Little does she know what will unfold in the next twenty-four hours:

“What’s up, kiddo?” Richard said. I pictured him sitting up in bed too, checking his watch and rubbing a stubbly cheek. My shirtless Vince image had been way better.

“Claire didn’t off her husband,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“I just got out of bed with him.” The wind picked up and I ducked my head. “Tell your police buddies he’s at his house if they want to question him.”

“You didn’t say you were going to their house.”

“I don’t say a lot of things. See what you can find on a guy named Kevin Burke. This is one messed up marriage.”

“We sort of got that from the neighbors.”

“Right, but there’s more. The financial accounts are Daniel’s. She gets a million dollars in life insurance if he dies and probably inherits all the stocks.”

“Again, no surprise.”

“But if she dies, the insurance pays out to her kids.”

“Okay.”

“They’re in the middle of a divorce. What happens when they split?”

“It’s is a community-property state. Unless there’s a prenup, she’ll get half of those portfolios and everything else.”

“Say he wants to keep his share and hers too. There’s not much incentive to kill her. It’s a lot of risk and effort and he wouldn’t get any insurance.”

“No, but he’d keep his investments.”

“Sure. But maybe he keeps them anyway. Say he squirrels the money away while she’s all tied up in jail and can’t do anything to stop him. He could hide it off-shore or something.”

“You think Daniel framed Claire to give himself time to hide their money?”

“The murder weapon came out of their toolbox. Easy for Daniel to get. Harder for Diana.”

“There’s a problem, of course.”

“A huge one.” Bigger than my immediate problem—saturated clouds now freely dumping rain that pelted me like marbles.

Learn more about the book and author at Rachel Brady's website and blog.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue