Cause Undetermined

When the county coroner rules a farmer’s death an unfortunate machinery accident, everyone is ready to move on.Everyone except Dr. Simone Aldridge.As the state forensic pathologist serving three rural counties, Simone has learned one unshakable rule: paperwork tells you what people believe. Bodies tell you what actually happened.Emmett Dwyer should have died in a tragic accident. Instead, Simone finds something a machine could never leave behind-a defensive injury days older than the fatal wounds.Men don’t fight tractors.As Simone reopens the investigation, suspicion falls on Emmett’s widow, whose recent life insurance policy and unexplained movements make her the obvious suspect. But the evidence refuses to cooperate. Every answer uncovers a deeper question, every clue points away from the story the town has already decided to believe.Meanwhile, the person responsible has no intention of letting the truth survive. Watching the investigation unfold from the safety of an ordinary life, the killer begins quietly removing the final loose ends before Simone can connect them.To solve the case, Simone must reconstruct a crime designed to disappear beneath an accidental death-and expose a motive buried for decades beneath old resentments, forgotten promises, and a rural community that mistakes familiarity for innocence.Because the dead cannot lie.But the official record can.Cause Undetermined is the gripping first novel in the Simone Aldridge Mysteries-a forensic thriller built on meticulous investigation, unforgettable characters, and the unsettling truth that sometimes the smallest wound tells the biggest story.