ideas, anyone?

So, I am thinking about writing an adolescent mystery-- I was such a fanatic of Nancy Drew and I want to emulate Caroline Keene. But I need help now with the plot. What follows is the first couple paragraphs and what YOU need to do is feed me ideas!

A small Toyota pickup rambled through the mountains. The bed was covered loosely with tarp that billowed in the breeze though it was impossible to tell what the cargo was. The tarp was faded green and frayed on most of its edges. It smelled of old furniture, cat pee and dirt. Someone had done a poor job of securing it with red rope, and I sat in the back shivering as air mixed with light dirt whipped around filling my nostrils and sticking to the hairs on my arm. The ride wasn’t comfortable: The old Toyota pickup was at least fifteen years old and rattled, jolted and shook. I had been riding for at least 2 hours. Day was dawning, but the only sounds of human activity were the driver’s voices. Indiscernible conversation mixed with the tarps flapping were the background to a pinkish grey dawn lighting the sky. I tried to lie on my side but the ridges in the truck bed dug into me and sitting up offered no comfort: my tailbone was sore as we bumped along the road. Parched I began thinking of huge glasses of water with condensation dripping off the sides. My immediate physical needs were impossible to meet: rest, hydration. I tried to think clearly but my senses were overloaded and blocked any semblance of logical thought process.

What was I doing in a pickup at the break of dawn without any clear sense of the immediate future? How I got here is a story started years before.

A little background is in order: I am Renata, seventeen years old and going on 30-- or at least that is what my mother always says. I am the second daughter of a librarian and chemist. Juliet, my mother, studied in Boston and on weekends she worked at a small, Italian restaurant in the North End. She made a little money on the weekends for small things she wanted: clothing, a book, museum passes. My father was one of the cooks at the restaurant. He came to Boston from the Midwest intending to return to the hills of the Ozarks. But after meeting Juliet, Alfred never found the right time. He enrolled in school. Once finishing his degree he found a job. He had lived on the east coast long enough to call home and couldn't bear to leave Juliet behind. They married and struggled like all young couples with the responsibilities of marriage. My sister Ana was born a couple years later and then I, eleven months later.

The first fifteen years of my life were spent in a small Connecticut coastal town New London. New London is a complex city, a microcosm of the class system in the US that exists yet no one wants to acknowledge. On one end of the city there is the downtown: a collection of historic buildings, winding streets filled with shops, galleries, municipal buildings and restaurants and the other end million dollar sea-front houses with private beaches. Downtown is on the cusp of gentrification-- it should attract a hip, artistic moneyed crowd-- but never quite gets there because of the high number of street people and drug problems. "Restrooms for customers only" signs are ubiquitous in shop doors and many spaces lie vacant. Entrepreneurs discouraged by the poor foot traffic abandon their dreams. The other end, what used to be my end, is another story. Soaring homes overlook the Thames river which passes through the town and flows into the sea. Many have plaques dating the structures to mid 19th century construction. The buildings are old and full of charm, flowers, and nautical references. All are meticulously landscaped and the sidewalks are even.