To Love and to Perish - By Lisa Bork Page 0,38

forms were easy to make out. I spotted my own yellow raincoat, jeans, and brown hair, curled from the humidity. The corner where Brennan and Gleason argued was outside the frame.

The accompanying audiotape included the roar of the race cars engines as the parade passed by the photographer, overridden by a child pestering over and over, “Dad, can I have money for a brownie?” His father, the cameraman, kept saying, “In a minute. Look at the cars.”

I watched as Brennan entered the frame from the right and as I tried to get his attention. As he passed me by. His stopping. His head turn. His wave to acknowledge me. His approach toward me. The redheaded man in the royal windbreaker—two beacons in a sea of darker colors—entering the frame from the right, his wife’s pink raincoat nowhere in sight. My search for Danny, my face looking into the camera as I swung around to look for Brennan again. Howard Pint leaning low to take his shots of the oncoming cars. A surge of the crowd. Brennan and Gleason shifting toward the camera, converging on a collision course, now side-by-side.

The BMW 2002 took the corner, brakes squealing.

I leaned forward, trying to magnify my view.

The Cobra rounded the bend, seconds before the incident.

I held my breath, hoping to have all my questions answered.

A child screamed, “I want a brownie, Dad. I want a brownie right NOW.”

The YouTube video ended.

Tears welled in my eyes. So close. Still, I couldn’t really blame the kid. Those brownies had looked good.

I replayed the video ten times, trying to spot Wayne Engle in the mass. Two men with light hair had passed behind Brennan and Gleason, along with a dozen others. One might have been wearing a gray sweatshirt. The angle and definition on the video made it impossible to tell for sure. The dark-haired woman who fingered Brennan arrived seconds before the BMW came into the frame. I recognized her hairstyle, although, honestly, I couldn’t remember her face. No wonder Ray didn’t think much of me as a witness.

The dark-haired woman was closest to Brennan and Gleason. I supposed she had had the best view of the two of them. All the other spectators’ heads were turned toward the disappearing BMW or toward the oncoming Cobra. She seemed to be looking at the street directly in front of her, perhaps trying to figure where to stand to get an unobstructed view. Brennan and Gleason blocked her view and appeared to be speaking to one another. No arms were raised. Not yet, at least. But a crowd surged past them. At any second a different person passed behind them, even some blond men, one of whom seemed to hover in the background right before the video ended. Could that have been Wayne Engle?

I picked up the phone to dial Cory’s cell. He answered on the fifth ring. “Are you with Brennan?”

“I’m home. We had an argument.”

“He noticed his stuff was missing?”

“No. We had dinner together. I managed to put it all back when he was outside grilling. Everything was fine until I asked him about Monica and James Gleason. He clammed up. Wouldn’t say a word. Refused to tell me anything we didn’t already know. Wouldn’t tell me anything about the reunion, the accident, or his high school friends. I got mad. He got mad. I told him if he didn’t trust me enough to confide in me, we were through.”

“How did he respond to that?”

“He didn’t say anything. So I left.”

“Oh, Cory, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure we’re on the right track, Jo. He’s hiding something. I know it.”

Only problem, Brennan might be hiding something to save himself from prison. He and Cory would definitely be through if that was the case, especially if Cory helped put him there, which remained possible.

I filled Cory in on the article from the newspaper and the YouTube video. I emailed him the URL. He watched it a couple times while I waited on the line. He didn’t spot anything new. The video confirmed nothing—but it would make a great advertisement for brownies.

“The only people involved that we didn’t talk to are Suzanne and Matthew Gleason. I’d love to hear firsthand what her husband and Brennan argued about, wouldn’t you, Jo?”

“It might give us a clue as to why Brennan is being so secretive.”

“Can we afford another day off?”

I’d checked the messages on the shop’s answering machine before our family sat down to dinner. Only five calls all day, three for oil