This isn't a standard murder mystery. Like so many murders, these were ignited by a love story. Unlike so many murders, these took over eighty years to get closure. Needless to say, though it must be said anyway, it's a story I'll remember for the rest of my life.

Sheriff Maurea Sandifer

Currituck County, North Carolina

2011

And so begins the tragic history of three young people-all born on the same night during a snow storm in 1908-all born to completely different circumstances that will influence their lives with three irreversible endings.

Chester Pinkham, born in Corolla, North Carolina, in humble surroundings, must live with a deformed hand and forehead. Maurea Applewhite, born in a mansion in Richmond, Virginia, must live with the worst excuse for a mother she could ever have. Known simply as Mirlande, also born in Corolla in humble surroundings, she must live with an aunt from Haiti, who practices the mysterious art of voodoo.

When the lives of these three babies, then children, then adults, collide like a hurricane against the Outer Banks, two people will die in the boathouse of Corolla Island, now called the Whalehead Club, and one of the three will be blamed. But who is really to blame? The terrible mother? The evil Aunt? Or is passion and jealousy at fault?

It takes four generations of Currituck County sheriffs-as well as one final death-before the truth is revealed. Even then, Sheriff Maurea Sandifer isn't sure what the truth is, but she knows its secret lies with The One Red Brick.