Lauren Nock pulled her apartment door closed behind her and made sure it locked. She was cutting it close. Seven minutes to be on time. She urged her sleep-deprived body to go faster than it preferred as she bounded down the flight of stairs to the street and set a lively pace down two blocks and around the corner to the church. By her own routine, she was at least an hour late. Lauren liked arriving early at Our Savior Community Church on Sundays, in time to listen to the musicians warming up and get a hint of what the morning’s music would bring. In her office, she liked extra time to gather the handouts and sign-up sheets she intended to distribute to children, youth, and parents that day, giving people plenty of opportunities to participate, both to offer ministry and to receive it. And someone always popped in for a quick chat before the service.
Not today.
With only three minutes to spare now, she entered the church. The pre-service music was under way, and worshippers were curtailing their conversations over coffee in the foyer and drifting into the sanctuary.
“Good morning, Mrs. Berrill.” Lauren’s long habit had been to disregard the dour expression etched on Mrs. Berrill’s face and greet her with cheer, no matter what. Ever since she retired and closed her hair salon, Mrs. Berrill seemed to require personal attention from every member of the church staff each Sunday or she mumbled to others in the congregation about how church leaders were too busy for her. Today Lauren dreaded mustering interest in which part of Mrs. Berrill’s body hurt now. She suspected the root cause of the pain was in the woman’s spirit, anyway. Thankfully, with the prelude beginning, even Mrs. Berrill wouldn’t choose this time to start on her litany of ailments.
Lauren slipped into a random pew. This was the sort of day she wished she had a regular spot to sit and know what to expect from the others around her. Her intentional custom, though, was to choose a different part of the sanctuary each week so her greeting and chatting were not confined to the same predictable list of people every Sunday. How could she serve as director of family ministry if she didn’t intersect with every family in the church?
On this morning, it didn’t matter where she sat. She wasn’t in any condition for socializing and doubted she would remember a thing anyone said to her.
She stood with the congregation for the opening songs, one hymn and one contemporary song to placate preferences for both styles of music. Even though her lips moved with the familiar words, Lauren’s mind spun with the events of last night and the consequent lack of sleep.
Lauren spent enough of the night sitting across from Cooper Elliott to watch his face begin to advertise its need for a morning shave. He wasn’t on duty, but someone—Lauren wasn’t sure who—decided to wake him and bring him in to do the questioning because he had been present at the banquet when Quinn disappeared.
It was the sheriff’s staff who asked Lauren to sit in a room by herself while Cooper further interviewed Nicole and then sent Nicole away during Lauren’s interview. Lauren resented the implication of wrongdoing. To officers on the scene, Nicole reported finding Lauren standing near the accident, but not with rancor or suspicion. They had bonded in their worry about Quinn’s welfare. Nicole didn’t suggest Lauren had anything to do with the accident.
Cooper kept saying they needed to piece together separate testimonies and not have two witnesses confusing each other and potentially blocking independent memory of significant details. By two in the morning, the circular nature of Cooper’s questions irritated Lauren. Cooper was making careful notes, but he didn’t seem to grasp that Lauren didn’t see the car’s collision with the tree, and she didn’t see Quinn get out of the car. She had no idea how long before her arrival the crash happened. She wasn’t hiding information. No matter what angle Cooper’s questions came from, the answers didn’t change. Lauren knew nothing.
Around three in the morning, Lauren overheard confirmation that Quinn’s house still showed no sign of his presence.
Now, Lauren spoke the words of a printed congregational prayer without taking in their substance. She sat when the congregation sat, hard-pressed to recall even a snatch of a phrase that might suggest the day’s theme.
Next would come the announcements—and the moment Lauren dreaded. Quinn was supposed to briefly present the health fair and would have had something clever to say. His congenial manner alone would have stirred interest. Lauren hadn’t stopped in her office for the sign-up sheets and hadn’t even remembered to bring the clipboard she carried around town yesterday for some basic information.
Only yesterday.
It seemed such a long time ago that she ran into Quinn outside her apartment and heard his reassurance that all was in hand.
Today all was most definitely not in hand.
Lauren caught sight of Nicole sitting three rows forward on the other side of the center aisle. When her turn came during the night, Nicole had to remember everything she touched inside the overturned car, any place where investigators might discover her fingerprints. She had been at the station just as late as Lauren, and given Nicole’s “maybe” answer to Lauren’s invitation to attend church, Lauren hadn’t expected to see Nicole in the service.
Someone nudged Lauren’s shoulder and she stirred.
“The pastor is calling for you,” Raisa Gallagher said behind Lauren. “Are you supposed to make an announcement?”
No, I’m not, Lauren wanted to say. Quinn is going to do that.
She stood up, arranged a smile on her face, and walked to the front of the sanctuary, where the pastor moved aside to give Lauren room to speak into the microphone.
Lauren saw in her mind the microphone and podium from the banquet hall. She saw her aunt’s drawn face at the end of the evening when she retrieved a speech that for the most part had gone unspoken. She saw the forlorn stage.
Lauren closed her eyes for two seconds to push the image away and instead visualize the clipboard she ought to have had in front of her. She cleared her throat, chiding herself for not at least bringing a bulletin up with her.
“Good morning. You’ll see in your bulletin that Saturday is the health fair we’ve been organizing for the last couple of months. I know that many of you are involved.”
Lauren hadn’t seen the final list of volunteers, but it seemed reasonable to give the congregation the benefit of the doubt. Quinn couldn’t do everything himself, after all.
“This is an exciting outreach to our community and a chance for all of us to explore better health in body and spirit.” Lauren could say this much with confidence because it had been her main argument for introducing the idea for a health fair in the first place. “If you haven’t signed up to help, I’m sure we still have room for you. And no matter what, we hope you will come and enjoy the booths and demonstrations. It’ll be a great chance to meet members of the community as well as learn something new about your own health.”
This seemed like a good place to mention specific attractions, if she could just remember some of them. “We’ll have … um, cooking demonstrations … um, immunizations and games for the children …” What else was there? “You won’t want to miss the joke contest, because laughter is good medicine.”
Chuckles broke out around the sanctuary.
“The list is too long to mention everything now. If you have questions during the week, you can call or e-mail me here at the church.”
That was the best she could do. Lauren might not have answers for any questions, but she couldn’t discourage people from asking. Quinn meant no harm yesterday by saying he had everything under control, but Lauren wished she had pushed harder, and sooner, for detailed information. The meeting they scheduled for Monday after school looked dubious.
Lauren needed Quinn to turn up soon. But after seeing the state of his car, she had to wonder what condition he was in for following through on the fair.
Sylvia’s eyes trailed Lauren’s sluggish movement back to her pew. Next to Sylvia, her mother leaned against her shoulder and whispered, “Lauren looks tired.”
Emma was right. Lauren usually had a crisp, perky appearance and demeanor. Today it seemed not to bother Lauren that her glasses slid down her nose, and she had done nothing more with her hair than pull it into a midweek afternoon ponytail. Even the dress she wore was faded. Sylvia was surprised her niece still had that old thing, much less that she would wear it on a Sunday morning. On the surface, her announcement about the health fair was fine. Not overly informative, but fine.
A trio of teenagers made their way to the front to sing for the offertory. Sylvia glanced at Lauren again, expecting she would look pleased. For months now she had lobbied for including a wider range of people in the music program as part of a ministry to families. But it looked to Sylvia as if Lauren barely registered that anyone was singing.
Just yesterday Sylvia assured Lauren that if Quinn was working on the health fair, she had nothing to worry about.
Everybody in town, whether or not they attended the banquet, would remember the night the mayor lost the favorite teacher. The evening was nothing it was supposed to be. Sylvia had tossed and turned through the lengthening hours of the night and supposed she didn’t look much better than Lauren did.
Her mother phoned Sylvia at seven in the morning as she had for several years. Emma was awake to see the sun sneak out of its nocturnal cocoon most days and could tell anyone in town what the weather had been at dawn. If anything, aging had reinforced this habit, which now gave Sylvia peace of mind. The jangle of her bedside phone at seven each new day meant her mother was fine. She was up eating Nutella on toast and reading the psalms she had loved all her life.
“It’s warm in here,” Emma whispered as she passed the offering plate to her daughter.
Warm or cold. In her mid-eighties, Emma seemed to have two temperatures these days, and neither one of them was particularly comfortable. Sylvia handed the offering plate to the waiting usher. The warbling teenagers arrived at their big finish and held the last note like professional choristers. A slight smile crossed Lauren’s face, and Sylvia allowed herself a moment of relief.
Pastor Matt stood behind the pulpit and asked the congregation to pray with him.
“Why don’t they adjust the thermostat?” Emma fanned herself with her bulletin.
“I’m sure it will feel cooler soon.” Sylvia hoped her whisper would remind Emma to lower her voice.
The pastor began to read the New Testament passage he planned to preach on.
Emma shirked off her sweater. Sylvia ignored the rustling and focused on the voice coming through the sound system. Around them, most of the congregation settled in. Feet shuffled in search of a comfortable position, and Bible pages turned. A few rows behind Sylvia, a toddler whimpered.
“I have to go out for some air,” Emma whispered.
“Give it some time,” Sylvia said.
“What?”
“Just wait a few minutes.”
“I can’t hear you.” Emma picked up her purse. “I’ll take a walk.”
Emma stepped past Sylvia’s knees and padded up the aisle. Sylvia pressed her lips together and made a rapid decision to follow her mother. Lately the confusion was unpredictable. Since the death of Sylvia’s father seven years ago, Emma lived alone and managed fairly well—but when Sylvia visited several times a week, she noticed more and more items out of place. Her mother seemed to pour a lot of coffee she never drank and strewed shoes around the house after a lifelong rule of shoes belonging in closets.
Sylvia reached the foyer right behind her mother. “We can sit out here.”
“I just needed some air. You didn’t have to come.”
“I wanted to stay with you.” Sylvia pointed to a loudspeaker. “We can still hear the sermon out here.”
“He’s preaching on trust again.” Emma sat in one of a pair of identical stuffed armless chairs with a round table between them.
“It’s a series,” Sylvia said. “Two more weeks, I think.”
“Well, I trust he will bring it to a trustworthy end.”
Sylvia tilted her head toward Emma as she took the other chair. “I don’t think that’s the lesson he wants us to learn.”
“Let an old lady have her fun.” Emma crossed her ankles.
“Would the old lady like a glass of water?”
“Don’t call me old. No, thank you. I don’t need water. I’m cooler already just being out here.”
“Good.”
“This business about Quinn is certainly mysterious,” Emma said.
“Yes, it is.”
Even though Sylvia purposely didn’t discuss last night with her mother, there was no telling what Emma had heard. Any number of people might have phoned Emma with speculative information along with the sparse facts.
“It’s not the first time somebody from this town has disappeared under mysterious circumstances,” Emma said.
Sylvia angled her head to consider her mother, whose own face was poised on the precipice of recollection.
“It’s a good story,” Emma said.
“You’ll have to tell it to me sometime.” Sylvia glanced up at the loudspeaker in the ceiling and tried to tune in to Pastor Matt’s voice.
“Now, I’m not sure I’ll get all the details right.” Emma tapped her fingers against the purse in her lap.
“There’s no hurry. You can think about it and tell me another time. Do you feel cool enough to go back in?”
“Let’s see,” Emma said, “actually there were two families.”
“Mom,” Sylvia said, “have you cooled off?”
Emma waved a hand. “Oh, trust God and pray. You know how the sermon is going to end.”
Was it so much to ask that Sylvia have a chance to sit still and quiet in a place that represented God’s presence to her?
“The two families didn’t have much in common, as I recall.” Emma pushed her lips to one side in thought. “Your grandmother used to tell the story. Actually, she didn’t tell it so much as she talked about it as if she knew something.”
Sylvia was trapped. If she walked away now, her mother would have every reason to take offense.
“And of course I haven’t heard the story in decades,” Emma said. “Not since I was a young woman. A girl, really.”
“Mom, let’s go back in to church.”
“Just give me a minute. It will come.”
An usher came out of the sanctuary. Sylvia recognized the Sunday morning attendance sheet he carried between thumb and forefinger.
“Hello, Henry.” Sylvia hoped the interruption would distract her mother.
“I sure wasn’t expecting to fill in for Quinn on usher duty,” Henry said. “I figured this was one weekend he’d be in church for sure.”
“Yes, well, we’re all a bit surprised.”
“What a night it was for Lauren,” Henry said.
“For Lauren?” Why should Henry Healy pick out Lauren, when Sylvia was the one the town would hold responsible for Quinn?
“I’m surprised she even came to church after being at the sheriff’s office until the middle of the night.”
Sylvia sat up straight.
“Oh, hadn’t you heard?” When Henry raised his eyebrows, his whole face lifted. “I assumed someone would have called you.”
“Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning.” Sylvia pushed her internal professional button for outward calm.
“I’m trying,” Emma said, “but I can’t quite remember how the story begins.”
Sylvia put a hand on her mother’s knee. “I’m sorry, Mom. I meant Henry. I think he has something to tell me.” She stood up and stepped several yards away from Emma. Henry followed.
“My son called me first thing this morning.” Henry parked his pencil above one ear. “He works nights for the janitorial service and was cleaning at the sheriff’s department last night. He said Lauren was there until all hours after the car wreck.”
“I think I’ve got it now,” Emma said. “There were two families and it seemed like they had nothing in common and probably didn’t even know each other.”
“I’ll be right there, Mom.” Sylvia kept her eyes on Henry.
Emma scratched her chin. “Now, what was it? Maybe they knew each other after all. I’m trying to remember what Mama used to say. She was quite a gossip, you know.”
Sylvia did know. “I’m sure it will come to you. Just give me a minute to talk to Henry.”
“Is she all right?” Henry asked.
“Yes.” Sylvia licked her lips. “What wreck, Henry?”
“Quinn’s, of course. Didn’t you hear they found his car?”
Sylvia determined her face would give away nothing.
“From what my son heard, Lauren was one of the people who found the car. That Sandquist girl was with her.”
“Nicole?”
“Yes, she’s the one.”
Sylvia’s heart thudded. “And Quinn?”
Henry shook his head. “No sign of him. They called in Cooper Elliott to take down the testimony.”
Sylvia rapidly indexed the people she had noticed in the sanctuary. Cooper was not among them, but his attendance was erratic under normal circumstances. Why hadn’t anyone called her?
Henry flapped the paper in his hand. “I’d better go count the kiddos in the children’s wing.”
“Do me a favor, Henry?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t mention this to anyone after church. Give me a chance to find out what’s going on.”
“You got it.”
How many people had Henry already tried to impress with his advance information?
Quinn was the one who got Nicole Sandquist started going to church in the months following her mother’s death. Ethan Jordan came later, after Nicole knew every closet, coatrack, and drinking fountain in the building. She gloated in those days and doled out her stash of insider knowledge in measured weekly rations to the boy next door who was also the smartest kid in the class. They sat in worship on either side of Quinn. He didn’t have to be a parent to know that if the two of them sat side by side they would spend the hour whispering. As it was, they folded notes and labeled them “very important” as an appeal to Quinn to allow them to keep passing messages back and forth.
Later, when they were teenagers, Nicole and Ethan sat together on their own, and often in the rear pews where most of the youth group seemed to congregate. On Sunday evenings the youth group met in their own space on the second floor of the educational wing. Ethan and Nicole rarely missed a meeting. But that was years ago, and while Nicole had a church in St. Louis that she called her own, in truth she was only there once every five or six weeks.
Now Nicole was sitting in the pew where Quinn ought to have been, on the left side of the congregation and about a third of the way back. She had no idea if he still gravitated to that spot, but it had been the pew of choice when she started coming to church. If she breathed deeply, she could nearly smell his aftershave in the pew upholstery, and it didn’t require much imagination to sense Ethan sitting two spots over. Several times during the service, Nicole turned her head expecting to see them both and give herself over to the tug of those years. She would feel again the cushion that Quinn and Ethan, and all of Our Savior, had been for her during years of hard landings.
But they weren’t there.
Nicole didn’t know this pastor. The bulletin said his name was Matt Kendrick. Most likely he was doing a fine job of preaching, but Nicole was only hearing about every fourth sentence.
She would find Quinn. What was the point of training as a journalist and climbing out of the garden club and into investigative reporting if she couldn’t put her skills to work when they mattered most? More than one case in St. Louis twisted on a peculiar fact Nicole uncovered and confirmed before feeding it to a detective with the authority to act on it. The fact that Cooper Elliott wasn’t a detective became clear to Nicole in the middle of the night. He had some training, and he followed protocol in the way he questioned, but he wasn’t going to smell a trail the way Nicole could.
Nicole flipped over the bulletin and found an open square where she could make notes.
Principal.
Other teachers.
Neighbors.
Newspaper archives.
Falls and lake.
Sheriff’s report on accident.
Lauren.
She might have trouble getting the sheriff’s report and photos, but she had her own memory of the scene. Nicole drew a line under Lauren’s name. Sometimes people knew information without realizing it. The right questions could bring it to light.
The pastor closed his sermon with a prayer, and the congregation stood to sing one last time. Nicole folded the bulletin and stuffed it in her purse. As soon as the final syllable of the benediction faded, she turned toward the tap on her shoulder.
“It is you!”
Nicole looked into the bright blue eyes of the woman who had been her Sunday school teacher for most of high school. Benita Booker looked just the way Nicole remembered her—perhaps because her captivating eyes had always been the feature Nicole noticed most. Benita opened her arms, and Nicole happily leaned into the embrace.
“I was just sure that was you,” Benita said. “I almost let my husband persuade me otherwise.”
“It’s me, all right. It’s good to see you.” Nicole meant what she said.
“Did you come home for the banquet last night?”
Nicole nodded. How many other people dear to her past had been in that confused crowd?
“What could have become of Quinn?” Benita said. “It must have shocked you even more than the rest of us.”
Nicole resolved not to say anything about the accident. If she was going to find Quinn, the last thing she wanted to do was fuel the rumor mill with incomplete information.
“People are saying the most dreadful things.” Benita shook her head with a sigh.
“Oh?”
“There was a couple at my table I didn’t recognize, though I think they had to be at least ten years ahead of you in school. They went on and on about how Quinn and Sylvia never married and maybe it was because he already had a wife somewhere.”
“I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in my life.”
“That’s exactly what I said. What kind of person wants to sully the reputation of someone like Quinn at his own banquet? I nearly picked up my plate to look for a seat at another table.”
“Don’t pay any attention to idle gossip.” Nicole seethed with indignation that such an explanation would be the first to spring to anyone’s mind. The whole town would be in trouble if people resorted to thinking the worst. “What matters is finding Quinn and making sure he’s all right.”
“Do you think the police will find him?”
“I’m sure they intend to look.” Nicole didn’t add that she intended to search five times harder than anyone else. She wouldn’t stop until she was sure Quinn hadn’t come to harm—at least not more harm than slamming his car into a tree and perhaps wandering into the woods disoriented.
Ethan would have an opinion about whether disorientation could be a symptom of whatever was wrong with Quinn’s brain. Nicole stopped herself. She might not have Ethan’s scientific mind, but she was well trained not to jump ahead of facts she could prove. She didn’t know that anything was wrong with Quinn’s brain. Finding Quinn was all that mattered right now.
She spotted the mayor. “Excuse me, Mrs. Booker, but I want to catch Sylvia Alexander.”
To Nicole’s relief, she realized Sylvia was aiming toward her. Emma lagged behind Sylvia, stopping to chat with a couple of people. Unlike Benita Booker, Emma looked a great deal older than what Nicole remembered. Her hair had whitened considerably, and while her movements didn’t look strained, exactly, they were slower.
Sylvia gripped Nicole’s arm and pulled her toward a wall.
“I only found out a few minutes ago,” Sylvia said, “that you and Lauren were at the sheriff’s office well into the night. I haven’t even talked to Lauren yet.”
Nicole puffed her cheeks and blew out her exasperation as she mentally reviewed who had been present last night in a sparsely staffed sheriff’s department. Any of the officers sworn to uphold the law would know better than to spread rumors.
“I was driving home,” Nicole said. “Lauren was walking, but she had a healthy head start, so I was surprised to find her there when I saw the car.”
“How bad was it?”
Fear flushed through Sylvia’s face, but Nicole saw no point in holding back truth. Sylvia was sure to be on the phone to the sheriff before lunch. “The car flipped, probably when it went around a bend too fast. The front end hit one of the old maples at the side of the road.”
Sylvia shook her head. “Quinn doesn’t speed. He hardly goes the limit.”
“We don’t know what happened, Sylvia, but we’re going to find out. I promise you that.”
Sylvia prodded her mother to recall that she had known Nicole as a child and left them to chat. She scanned the sanctuary, but Lauren had slipped out of sight. A couple of musicians were picking up sheet music, but otherwise the congregation had dispersed to the foyer or the fellowship hall. Sylvia didn’t want to be drawn into conversation just then. She reached into her purse, woke up her phone, and found the nearly daily trail of text messages she exchanged with her niece. Sylvia wasn’t as speedy on the miniature keyboard as younger people she observed, and she detested abbreviations, but she was accustomed to sending text messages like a citizen of the twenty-first century.
WHERE ARE YOU? she typed. CAN WE CHAT?
Sylvia held her phone in her hand and ventured into the corridor that led to the staff offices, hoping Lauren had not already bolted from the building. “Come on,” she muttered. “Turn your phone on.”
Just when she was about to concede that Lauren had switched off her phone before the worship service and had not yet reconnected to the world, Sylvia’s phone vibrated.
IN MY OFFICE, was the reply.
ALONE?
AT THE MOMENT.
WAIT FOR ME.
Sylvia paced in a businesslike manner she hoped would communicate she didn’t intend to stop for chitchat—a strategy that successfully carried her past two ushers bearing offering plates to the office to count and Raisa Gallagher cradling a baby while chasing a squealing toddler. If Sylvia offended anyone by not being sociable, she would make amends later. At Lauren’s office door, Sylvia saw through the slim window that her niece was inside.
“Why didn’t you call me?” Sylvia demanded as she closed the door behind her. “Why does Henry Healy know where you spent the night before your own aunt?”
Lauren sank into her desk chair. “It was late. You were exhausted. If you were asleep, I wanted you to stay asleep.”
“I’m the mayor.”
“Officer Elliott pointed out that a car accident is a legal matter, not a civic matter.”
Sylvia swallowed the anxiety gathered in her throat. Cooper was right. Technically. But Cooper had to know how she would feel about learning her niece had discovered Quinn’s car under precarious circumstances—and Quinn nowhere in sight. She composed herself and sat in one of four chairs at a round table.
“Tell me what happened,” Sylvia said. “I want every detail.”
Her brow furrowed as Lauren recounted leaving the banquet hall, opting to stroll an indirect route home, coming upon Quinn’s car, looking up to see Nicole scrambling around the car, and spending half the night telling the same details to Cooper Elliott. Dizziness took hold behind Sylvia’s eyes as she tried to make sense of it all.
“Quinn had some kind of emergency.” Lauren rubbed each temple with two fingers. “What was so important that he didn’t think he could wait one more day—or even a couple of hours? And leaving his car makes no sense. He should have called 911 or the sheriff’s office.”
Sylvia sighed. “He probably didn’t have his cell phone. He’s always going off without it.”
“He could have waved somebody down on the road,” Lauren said. “If he was uninjured and could walk away, then he could just as easily have gotten someone’s attention.”
“He didn’t want anyone’s attention.” Sylvia put a finger on the tabletop and drew idle circles on the waxy surface to help her think. Didn’t Quinn know he could tell her anything? Disappointment mired her anxiety.
“How in the world did he get away from the banquet hall without anyone seeing him?” Lauren stood up and began to pace behind her desk.
“It’s like a magician’s trick,” Sylvia said. “Everybody was looking somewhere else.” It disturbed her that no one could say for certain whether Quinn was on his X when the prop cannon fired backstage while she was introducing him.
“He lost control of the car,” Lauren pointed out. “Maybe we should be asking what happened to make him lose control even before we ask why he would leave the scene of an accident.”
Sylvia snapped a tissue out of the box at the center of the table and blew her nose. She knew Quinn better than anyone, cared for Quinn more than anyone. She ought to be able to sift through the workings of his mind and come up with more than questions. They needed answers. The thought of Quinn being the object of gossip threatened to pound through her forehead. He would hate that.
A commotion burst out in the hallway. A child screamed and a woman shrieked.
“Raisa Gallagher.” Sylvia jumped to her feet and opened Lauren’s door. Henry Healy was awkwardly holding a fussing baby while Raisa grabbed a fistful of tissues from a box and dabbed at the flow of blood from her toddler’s forehead. The child thrashed against her mother’s efforts, and Sylvia stepped in to hold the little girl’s hands out away from the wound.
“I’ll find Bruce.” Lauren ran down the hall, returning a moment later to report that Raisa’s husband was pulling the car up so they could go straight to the hospital. She ran back into her office and produced a fleece blanket, and between the two of them, Sylvia and Lauren bundled the girl in a way that bound the girl’s arms.
“It’s a lot of blood,” Sylvia said, “but I don’t think it looks too bad.” The little one would probably scream through the stitches she needed, but the cut was at the hairline and not on the eye as Sylvia had first thought.
“What happened?” Lauren asked.
“Kimmie wanted Quinn,” Raisa said. “I kept telling her he wasn’t here today, but she ran off and fell against a table.”
Bruce Gallagher broke into the huddle and scooped up his daughter. Raisa took the baby from a startled Henry. In another moment, the Gallaghers were gone and the hallway was quiet again. Sylvia and her niece retreated into Lauren’s office.
“An emergency,” Lauren repeated. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Sylvia wished it were that easy. If Quinn had a medical emergency, he shouldn’t have been driving himself anywhere—and the road where his car was found was not on the way to the Hidden Falls hospital. What other kind of emergency could he have? He had no family, at least not any he had spoken of in years. Everyone came from some sort of family, Sylvia realized, but Quinn’s ties were loose enough to be confined to memories he seldom felt a need to express. Something a teacher once said to him. A class he hated in college. The cousin who died from a rare brain tumor when she was three.
Quinn’s life was in Hidden Falls. All of it. Sylvia was sure of this. Everything that mattered to him was in this town. I’m here.
So where was he racing to?
Lauren stopped pacing and looked out the windowpane in her office door. “Nana is out there.”
Sylvia looked up to see Nicole standing behind Emma, shrugging. “I don’t think she remembers Nicole very well.” Sylvia stood up and opened the door, slightly irritated. She’d wanted more time to talk with Lauren.
“Your mom was anxious to know where you were,” Nicole said. “It was her idea to look here.”
“I’m not anxious,” Emma said. “I’m just getting hungry. You know I eat breakfast at the crack of dawn.”
“I’m overdue for some of your Saturday morning chocolate chip pancakes,” Lauren said.
“Come next Saturday,” Emma said. “But you might have to bring the chocolate chips.”
“Next week is the health fair, Mom,” Sylvia said. “Lauren will be busy all day.”
“I thought Quinn was in charge of that,” Emma said.
Sylvia and Lauren looked at each other.
“He was a big help,” Lauren said, “but it’s my job to make sure everything comes off according to plan. I’m responsible.”
“Especially now that Quinn is gone, I suppose.” Emma sat down at the table with Sylvia.
“Well,” Lauren said, “we all hope Quinn will be back long before Saturday.”
“That’s rather hard to predict, isn’t it?” Emma said.
Sylvia watched her mother’s face. Though she still prepared her own meals and ate heartily, Emma had difficulty remembering what she had for lunch on any given day. She called Sylvia every morning on a precise schedule, but then she had trouble remembering what was on her calendar for the day. But in the moment, in a conversation, Emma still made accurate connections.
“We’re going to be positive, Mom,” Sylvia said.
“I think I’ll head on home now.” Nicole still stood in the doorframe.
“When are you leaving town?” Lauren took a seat at the table across from Emma.
“Not until I find Quinn.”
The determination in Nicole’s voice puddled Sylvia’s jumbled emotions.
“So we’ll see you again,” Lauren said.
“I’m sure.” Nicole met Lauren’s eyes, and then Sylvia’s. “I wish our reunion was under better circumstances.”
“We’ll have a real celebration after Quinn’s home safe.” Sylvia had trouble recalling a time in the last fifteen hours that her thickened throat had not threatened to cut off her airway.
Nicole stepped out of the office.
“Quinn’s disappearance is so curious.” Emma set her purse on the table and smoothed her skirt. “I was getting ready to tell Sylvia a story earlier. You might find it interesting, too, Lauren.”
“What’s it about?” Lauren asked.
Sylvia had hoped to avoid another halting round of this story at least until after lunch.
“Some families who used to live in Hidden Falls a long time ago, when I was a girl.” Emma tilted her head in thought. “I’m not sure when they disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Lauren said.
“Well, they left town suddenly and never came back,” Emma said. “No one knew where they went, either. That sounds like disappearing to me.”
“Me, too.”
“During the Depression, I think.” Emma leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Yes, not too long after the Crash.”
Sylvia stood up. “Mom, you said you were hungry. Why don’t we go back to my house? I’ll make you some lunch.”
“I feel like ham.” Emma picked up her purse.
“I just bought some.” Sylvia turned to Lauren. “How about you? Hungry?”
Lauren shook her head.
“We should all eat,” Sylvia said.
“I need sleep. And I want to call Raisa and see how things went for Kimmie. But if you hear something—”
“I’ll call.”
The old Adirondack chair was still on the Sandquist back porch, weathered but sturdy. Ethan angled the chair away from a view of the Jordan home next door and eased himself into it. Trees planted along the property line when he was a small boy towered now, with broadened branches and thickened trunks. Burnished leaves trembled against the threat of plummeting to the ground, obscuring the line of sight between the two houses, but Ethan didn’t want to take any chances. The size of the chair would disguise his form lest one of his parents happen to step outside the Jordan house and glance toward the Sandquists’ back porch. Sitting on the front steps would have left him exposed, and Nicole would pull her car around to the back even if she didn’t bother with the garage. Ethan’s Lexus was parked up the street.
He jiggled one foot while he waited. Church was at nine thirty. It was after twelve now. What was taking her so long?
His phone buzzed. “Hey, Hansen. What’s the word?”
“I can help you out.”
“That’s good news.”
“It’s only one day,” Hansen said. “And you’ll still have to deal with Gonzalez.”
“Rounds are covered tomorrow. That’s all I wanted.” One day at a time, Ethan told himself as he pocketed his phone.
Finally, he heard the engine of Nicole’s white Hyundai purr into the driveway. He’d been right. She did pull the car to the back. Ethan sat still, listening to the sounds of her opening the car door and shuffling some bags. The door slammed and Nicole made her way along the path of narrow cement rectangles embedded in the ground. When she reached the edge of the porch, Ethan stood up.
She met his eyes and shifted a pair of paper sacks in her arms. “I stopped for food. There’s nothing in the house, obviously.”
“You knew I would be here, didn’t you?” Ethan took one of the sacks from Nicole.
“You don’t walk away from things, Ethan Jordan.” Nicole fumbled with her keys and moved toward the back door.
He had walked away from her ten years ago, or more like slithered away.
Nicole unlocked the door. “The food is from Fall Shadows Café. I got the pot roast you used to like. You’ll have to tell me if it’s the same as it always was.”
Ethan could think of no other person in his life with whom he could slip into old habits so comfortably. “It’s good of you to feed me.”
Nicole laughed. “Says the boy who is secretly relieved that the girl is not going to try to cook again.”
“Have you given that up?” Ethan set the sack on the kitchen table, a flimsy maple set with four spindled chairs.
“Mostly.”
“My recollection is you were starting to get good at it.”
Nicole shrugged and lifted a Styrofoam container from one bag. “I live alone. It doesn’t seem worth the bother.”
He owned the zing she hadn’t meant to shoot. Nicole stated a simple fact, but if Ethan hadn’t slithered away, they could have been married, and she wouldn’t be living alone.
“The other one is pork, if you’d rather have that.” Nicole opened both containers on the table and pulled two iced teas out of the second bag. “Extra sweet, no lemon.”
She remembered everything. And she knew he couldn’t leave town.
“I only finagled one more day.” Ethan could stay until midnight on Monday and still be in Columbus in time for morning rounds on Tuesday and the surgery schedule that followed.
“Then we’ll have to find Quinn in one day.” Nicole opened a drawer, pulled out two dusty forks, and moved to the sink to rinse them. Old pipes rattled against the unexpected demand.
And if we don’t? Ethan thought. He would still have to leave at midnight the next night or risk his residency.
“Do you keep the water on when the house is empty?” he asked.
“Quinn taught me to work a main valve when I was eleven.” Nicole sat down and handed Ethan a fork. “There’s something you should know.”
While they ate, Nicole relayed details of discovering Quinn’s car.
“Could he have an accident because he’s sick?” Nicole asked.
“It’s possible.” Ethan forked the last of the pot roast. “But if he was that seriously impaired medically, I’m not sure he could walk away and out of sight so thoroughly.”
“I want to start looking for him,” Nicole said. “We can check things out at his house, for starters.”
“I thought the police said he hasn’t been there.”
“A good reporter always double-checks her sources.” Nicole stuffed the empty food containers back into the paper sacks. “If we don’t find anything there, we can hike toward the falls.”
“Seems like an obvious place to go for a man who is trying not to be found,” Ethan said.
“First of all, we don’t know he’s trying not to be found, and second, I have to get inside his head. Try to think like he thinks. And the falls or the lake seem like the best place to do that.”
She had a point.
“Just give me a minute to change into jeans.” Nicole pushed the swinging door from the kitchen into the hallway.
Ethan heard the rhythm of her feet taking the stairs. He started to put the trash in the bin under the sink before remembering that an empty house wouldn’t have any trash service. Though it had been unoccupied for years, everything in this house was exactly as Ethan remembered it, down to the collection of red and yellow wooden roosters on the shelf above the sink. Nicole’s father must have decided to decorate from scratch in his new home. Perhaps there were too many memories in Hidden Falls, like the ones that pressed in on Ethan.
He wandered into the living room and found the major pieces of furniture covered in drop cloths, but their shapes and positions evoked the evenings he and Nicole sat on the couch to watch TV while they did homework. The dining room furniture was exposed and dense with dust. Ethan stood with both hands in his pockets, remembering Nicole’s pile of cookbooks on one end of the table. What had become of them?
He took one hand out of a pocket, put a finger in the dust, and stacked two sets of initials. NS over EJ.
Ethan heard Nicole’s steps on the stairs and moved to the foyer. “That was fast.”
“No time to waste.” Nicole squatted and tightened a shoelace on a running shoe. “I’m not sorry I went to church, but I’m ready to get moving.”
“How was everything at Our Savior?”
“You should have come.” Nicole hooked her keys around a belt loop.
Ethan shook his head. “I don’t do that anymore.”
“Maybe you should.”
Ethan regretted asking about the church. “Let’s take your car.”
“You don’t want to go through the fence?”
Ethan wasn’t eager to be spotted in the neighborhood, much less in his parents’ backyard crawling between loose boards. “You’re the same size, but I kept growing during college.”
“Fine. We’ll drive around the block. But then I want to hike so we can look carefully.”
“Let’s stop at my car,” Ethan said. “My camera might come in handy.”
Fetching the camera and driving around the wide block took less than five minutes.
Nicole parked as close to Quinn’s house as she could get. “How do we get in?”
“Maybe we don’t.” Ethan winced at the blade Nicole’s eyes threw at him.
“That’ll make it hard to find any useful information.” Nicole opened her door and got out. “The place looks the same on the outside.”
Ethan circled the hood of the car to stand next to her. “Normalcy means something, doesn’t it? He wasn’t planning to leave.”
Nicole cocked her head. “Why do you suppose he always locked up?”
“You locked your house when we left.”
“I’ve been polluted by living in a city. Plenty of people in Hidden Falls wouldn’t even be able to tell you where their house keys are, but even when Quinn is inside the house, he keeps the door locked.”
Nicole paced toward the house, slipped between bushes, and pressed her face against the front window.
“Do you have X-ray vision to see through closed drapes?” Ethan stood behind her.
Nicole slapped his shoulder with the back of her fingers.
A teenage boy in running gear pounded the pavement down Quinn’s street. “Now there’s a man after my own heart,” Nicole said.
At the sight of them, the boy stopped and, with his hands on his hips, let his chest heave while he eyed Nicole and Ethan.
“I suppose you’re wondering what we’re doing.” Ethan had no plan for how he would answer that question.
“Looking for Quinn, I guess.” The boy used the sleeve of his sweatshirt to wipe sweat from one side of his face. “He’s not here, is he?”
“Nope.” Nicole stepped away from the window.
“Too bad. He could have helped me smooth things over.”
“You’re in trouble?” Ethan asked.
“Seriously,” the boy said. “I’ll never live down knocking over the video booth at the banquet last night. My parents were mortified.”
“Oh,” Nicole said, a knowing grin coming over her face. “You’re Zeke Plainfield.”
“Does the whole town know it was me?” Zeke squatted and tightened a shoelace. “There are no secret identities in this town. If you’ll point me to the nearest hole I can jump down, I’ll be on my way.” Zeke took off down the street.
Nicole turned to Ethan. “I think Quinn has a secret.”
“And this secret explains his disappearance?”
“It’s a workable theory,” Nicole said. “Now we have to test it. Isn’t that what you scientists do?”
“I agree.”
Nicole narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re full of surprises.”
Ethan took three steps back and tilted his head to survey the upper level of Quinn’s house. “Ever since I saw him last night, I’ve been thinking about something Quinn once said that I never understood.”
“I need more than that to go on.”
Ethan shrugged. “There isn’t much more. He knew I didn’t get along with my parents. One day when I was whining about it, he said that as estranged as I might feel, I had no idea what it felt like to truly be separated from people you love.”
“I’ll bet that was the end of that.”
“Pretty much. I didn’t dare ask what he meant.” Ethan wished he had.
“He told me once how he used to play in the water sprinkler with his little brother,” Nicole said. “But millions of kids do that every summer. All I ever knew about his family is that they were back East somewhere.”
“So we grow up running to Quinn like he’s the parent we wish we had, and this is the best we can do?” Ethan spread his arms wide. “Maybe he had family somewhere between here and the Atlantic Ocean?”
They stood silent. A car swished past on the road behind them, and a crackling swirl of leaves blew up in its wake.
Finally, Nicole spoke. “Like you said last night, we were kids. We were so hungry for what he gave us that we didn’t really see the world through Quinn’s eyes.”
“Do you think he was—is—happy?”
“Yes,” Nicole answered without hesitation. “He helped—helps—people because he wants to, because he cares if they’re happy. And he has his faith. It’s real.”
Ethan clamped his reply closed. He wasn’t going down the faith trail.
Jack Parker was starting to wonder what, precisely, his son did the night before. Colin was seventeen—closer to eighteen. Maybe Jack didn’t want to know what Colin and his friends did. Next year at this time, Colin would be away at college, and Jack wouldn’t see that his son looked slightly hung over at lunch on Sunday. The girls had gotten up and gone to church, but even Gianna gave Colin a wide berth these days and hadn’t knocked on his door in the morning. Colin didn’t say more than “I need the butter” for the entire meal when the family gathered in the formal dining room with its tall windows and wide crown molding. This was the room that sold Gianna on the house. She didn’t seem to need much of an excuse to serve family meals in the dining room. Jack preferred the kitchen, figuring that since they spent a small fortune renovating it, they ought to use it.
Eva had come home for breakfast. The swim party last night turned into a sleepover, so she looked tired, but she made an effort to be pleasant. Thirteen-year-old Brooke chattered about the shopping spree her friend’s mother took them on the night before and the chocolate-covered shortbread squares they baked. Perhaps Brooke’s brightness was a sign that she didn’t blame him for isolating the family in this small town. Gianna wouldn’t tell Brooke directly that she didn’t think the girl was ready to stay home alone in the evenings, even at thirteen. Somehow, Jack realized, Gianna made sure Brooke had something enticing to do whenever everyone else was out.
“I was going to tell Quinn I wanted to help at the health fair,” Brooke said as Gianna began stacking dishes. “Now I guess I should tell Lauren.”
“If that’s what you want to do,” Gianna said, “let her know. I’ll make sure you can be there.”
“Quinn will be back before Saturday, won’t he?” Brooke said.
Jack and Gianna glanced at each other.
“What about school tomorrow?” Eva asked. “I can’t give my family genealogy presentation to a sub.”
“Quinn has many friends.” Gianna laid the fifth dinner plate in her stack. “I’m sure he’ll be fine. It’s not something we have to fret about. Let’s just enjoy our Sunday.”
Colin unfolded out of his chair. “I have homework.”
Jack watched his son slink from the room. No “excuse me” or “thanks for dinner.” No taking dishes to the kitchen. It might as well have been Jack saying, “I have to work.”
The guilt made Jack stand up and lift the stack of plates and silverware Gianna had assembled. “I’ll do the dishes.”
When Gianna caught his eye, she looked stunned. Other than her blinking eyes, nothing moved.
“I know I haven’t cleaned up in about a hundred years,” Jack said, “but I will today.”
“Well, I have been looking for time to catch up on my scrapbooks.” Gianna’s face lit up.
“Then go on,” he said. “I’ll take care of this.”
Gianna scooted her chair back. “If there’s anything you don’t know what to do with, just leave it on the breakfast bar.”
Jack wasn’t sure whether to be relieved at this instruction or insulted. Gianna was already predicting he wouldn’t know his way around the kitchen. Every time he emptied the dishwasher—usually under unexpressed duress—she later remarked about finding an item in an odd place. And by odd she meant wrong.
Eva picked up two empty serving bowls, and Brooke took the bread basket with the cross-stitched liner that draped an autumn leaf pattern over the rim of the basket. It was the perfect accent for the season and the room, Jack observed. That was Gianna. The perfect accent.
“Go,” he said again. “Spend the afternoon doing exactly what you want to do.”
Gianna smiled, and Jack bent to kiss her.
She stroked the side of his face. “Thank you.”
He was making an effort. It didn’t come naturally, but he was trying. Jack carried the plates into the kitchen. When he returned for the glasses, Gianna had left the dining room. In the kitchen, in addition to tableware, Jack faced the cookware required to produce a Sunday meal featuring meat, potatoes, salad, two hot vegetables, and rolls.
Folding up the sleeves of the dress shirt he had worn to church, Jack started in. Someone turned on the television in the other room and changed channels every eight seconds. Jack rinsed and scrubbed and loaded the dishwasher with Gianna’s voice in his head at each task. He was pleased to leave nothing on the breakfast bar, and only twice did he put something in a cupboard without being certain the location was correct.
Having fulfilled his family duties and successfully lightened Gianna’s mood toward him, Jack went upstairs to change clothes. The master bedroom stretched across one end of the house and included space Gianna used for whatever was her current project. Jack had never seen the need to keep up with what the scattered craft elements meant. Rather than working at her table, though, Gianna was asleep on the paisley chaise lounge with a quilt pulled up to her neck.
Good. She wouldn’t miss him.
Outside, Brooke was playing with the puppy in the yard. The Airedale had a green chew toy between her teeth, and Brooke gripped its edges and shook it. Roxie’s tail wagged.
“Hi, Dad.” Brooke grinned.
She could be a calendar photo, Jack thought. A fresh-faced girl in a sweater playing with a puppy in a yard of fall leaves.
“Looks like you’re having fun.”
“I wish we’d gotten a puppy a long time ago.” The dog released the toy, and Brooke tossed it several yards away. Roxie scampered after it and, panting, brought it back.
“Mom is napping,” Jack said. “If she wakes up and wonders where I am, will you tell her I went for a walk?”
“Yep.” Brooke dropped to her knees and snuggled the puppy against her face.
Another calendar shot.
Jack was going to have to do something about the leaves in the yard, but not today.
He was aiming for his office. Jack would have preferred to live farther out of town in a newer subdivision. They could have avoided all the remodeling mess and expense of the last few months. But Gianna had wanted a house with character, so they bought a home built in 1906, knocked out a couple of walls to create the great room, and modernized the kitchen and bathrooms. From the outside, the old house maintained its stately charm and suggestion of gracious living.
Jack hated it. But Gianna was happy—with the house. She was less happy with Jack.
One advantage of living in town was that Jack could, in all honesty, say he was going for a walk and end up at his office in an old brick structure one block north of Main Street. He had inherited a number of loyal clients when he purchased the suite of offices and took over the law practice. He also handled the occasional real estate transaction. But Jack wanted something he could dig his teeth into.
A storeroom in the suite of rooms that housed his practice contained dozens of crates of old files. One by one Jack carried them to his desk, where he could sit in his high-backed leather chair and sort through folders looking for a random document or a handwritten note that might lead to a legal challenge that would make his heart race like the old days. Jack loved Gianna, and he loved his kids, but he was choking on the pressure to accept mediocrity and think it was a good life.
Now Jack wondered if his old files contained any records related to Quinn. One clue. That’s all it would take to bring some excitement to practicing law in Hidden Falls.
Liam Elliott hardly knew Jack Parker and surprised himself by lifting a hand in greeting, much less waving him over when he entered the Fall Shadows Café.
It was an impulse, and perhaps a desperate one.
Liam pushed away his plate with the remains of his roast beef sandwich and sweet potato fries. He came in for a late lunch after waiting as long as his stomach could take for Jessica to call. The baby shower for her coworker was supposed to start at ten thirty. Liam wasn’t sure what a room full of women found to do for more than four hours. Last night Jessica had been eager to spend most of the day with Liam, so why hadn’t she found some way to duck out sooner? He kept his phone on the table to be sure he wouldn’t miss her call, but what was the harm in a little strategic conversation while he waited?
He was just exploring options, not making a commitment.
Liam had heard the rumors about Jack coming to town with his tail between his legs over some corporate scandal. Whether there was any truth to it or not, the suggestion had put Liam off getting to know Jack, even though Jack moved into the empty office suite in Liam’s building months ago. Of course Jack had all the requisite qualifications for taking over a law practice, and the rumor mill also said some of the clients were satisfied that the previous attorneys wouldn’t have turned over the business to a shyster. They intended to stay put unless Jack Parker gave them reason to look elsewhere for routine legal services.
Some of the clients, Liam had noted in conversations around town, not most. Liam couldn’t afford to lose even some of his clients. It was hard enough to make a living as a financial consultant in a small town, traipsing all over the county every week—because if he waited for people to be willing to drive into town to meet at his office, he would never close a deal.
Now Liam felt some sympathy for Jack. News traveled fast in Hidden Falls because it didn’t have far to go before falling on fresh ears. If a rumor started that Liam had been unethical in his business, it might as well be on a billboard over the WELCOME TO HIDDEN FALLS sign. Whether it was true or not, his business would never recover.
As much as Liam hated to admit it, Jack Parker, attorney at law, might be just the person he would need on his side if the question of the missing funds blew up in his face.
Maybe the operative word was when, rather than if.
Jack made his way across the café to the small table where Liam twiddled a fork.
“Heading to your office?” Liam asked.
“Thought I might. Just wanted a cup of coffee to take with me.”
“Sit down if you have time.” Liam gestured to an empty chair. “I’m about to order some myself.”
Jack hesitated but took a seat and raised a hand for Gavin’s attention. They ordered coffee. When Jack didn’t ask for his “to go,” Liam’s mind churned over the challenge of managing this conversation. He managed conversations every day, but the stakes were steep in this one.
“I’ve got fresh blueberry pie.” Gavin wagged his eyebrows and reached for Liam’s empty lunch plate.
“Let me buy you some pie, Jack.” Liam spoke quickly, before the opportunity faded.
“I was just lamenting that my lunch at home didn’t include dessert,” Jack said. “How about some ice cream on that pie, Gavin?”
“You got it. Two?” Gavin looked at Liam, who nodded.
“So as a lawyer,” Liam said after Gavin left, “you must find last night’s events curious. Have you dealt with missing person cases before?”
“In my experience,” Jack said, “there are two kinds of missing persons. Those who don’t want to be found, and those who have been strongly encouraged to go missing against their wills.”
“And Quinn? Do you have a theory about him?”
“I never actually met him. How well do you know him?”
“Not as well as some,” Liam admitted, “but we’re working on a business deal.” There seemed no harm in stretching that particular truth.
“Did he seem like someone who would up and walk out while five hundred people are applauding him?”
“I would have to say no.” That was the truth.
Jack turned his palms up. “There you have it, then. Somebody got to him.”
“Got to him?”
“A little chloroform, perhaps. A pistol in the ribs. A chop to the neck. It could happen any number of ways. The closed curtain was a perfect cover—and that blast, whatever it was.”
Liam grimaced. “That sounds a little dramatic.” Just how much time did Jack spend working on criminal cases compared to how much time he spent watching reruns of Law and Order? He hated to think that something like what Jack suggested actually happened.
Jack shrugged. “I’ve tried enough criminal cases to face facts. It happens.”
“I didn’t realize you were that kind of lawyer.”
“I spent a few years in criminal and a few years in corporate.”
“I see.” Either way, criminal or corporate, Jack could be of help to Liam—if it came to that. The combination could bode well.
Gavin returned with coffee and pie. Liam poured cream into his cup. Jack chunked off an ambitious bite of blueberries.
A commotion at the back of the café demanded their attention. A woman tripped over a chair and cried out, “My purse!”
Liam froze, but Jack bounded out of the booth and tackled a man with a lump under his sweatshirt. The thief sprang to his feet again and pulled his hood up to obscure his face. A woman’s purse tumbled to the floor as he careened out of the café. Jack picked it up and handed it to the distressed woman.
“Thank you!” She hugged Jack and returned to her table. Someone started a rhythm of applause. Jack gave a dignified bow.
Gavin Owens dashed out the door after the thief but returned almost immediately shaking his head.
Liam was flabbergasted as Jack slid back into his seat. “That was some quick thinking.”
“That’s how fast crime happens.” Jack picked his napkin up off the floor and sat back down. “Hidden Falls may be the kind of town where people think crime will never strike, but believe me, it happens everywhere. It just takes one person with one screw loose.”
“So you think that petty thief has a screw loose?” Liam stirred his coffee. “Or are you saying somebody mentally unstable has Quinn?”
“I’m just saying that anything could have happened. That poor woman came in for a sandwich, and look what happened to her.”
Liam picked at his pie. While he was as stunned as anyone by Quinn’s disappearing act last night, until this moment Liam hadn’t confronted probabilities. He swallowed a forkful of sweetened blueberries. If Quinn was taken against his will, his return was less predictable with every hour that passed. That meant Liam’s options were narrowing as well.
“It sounds like you’ve seen some serious cases.” Liam resumed his query for what he needed to know from this conversation.
“I’ve had my share.”
“What about on the corporate law side? You must see some hanky-panky there, too.”
Jack took a long sip of coffee. “Corporate law is all about money. Who has it. Who wants it. How they plan to get it. What price they are willing to pay. What they’ll do to avoid responsibility.”
Liam’s gut tightened at the relevance of every one of Jack’s points. He knew he didn’t have the missing money. So who did? And how did they get it? Liam had only suspicions he couldn’t prove—yet. If Liam didn’t figure out something soon, he would be responsible whether he liked it or not. He cleared his throat.
“I suppose some of it has to do with creative bookkeeping,” Liam said.
“More than a little. Corporate decisions often come down to technical interpretation and applied logic of the law.” Jack had nearly cleared his plate already.
“Doesn’t it ever come down to somebody covering up, say, embezzlement?”
“Only if they’re not very good at it. You’d be surprised what people get away with.”
“If they get away with it, how does anyone find out?”
“Eventually somebody slips. They get greedy, make one transaction too many, something outside the normal pattern of the accounts in question.”
“And what do the attorneys do when that happens?”
Jack fastened his gaze on Liam. “Attorneys always act in the best interest of their clients. That’s our job.”
Liam looked down at his pie, wishing that the accounts he questioned didn’t already meet Jack’s description. Maybe it had been going on for longer than he realized, and only now had someone gotten greedy and made the first transaction that caught Liam’s attention. Nobody would believe he didn’t know, that he hadn’t seen it sooner—that he hadn’t done it himself. He had to protect himself. His vision of his future dangled precariously.
“Thanks for the pie.” Jack laid his fork on his plate. “I think I’ll get a second cup of coffee to take with me.”
Liam picked up his briefcase, and they walked to the counter together, where Liam paid the bill before continuing down the street to his car. He drove south, toward the banquet hall. The parking lot was full once again. Liam guessed it was the sort of run-of-the-mill wedding reception that Jessica would have nothing to do with. Once he shut the engine off, he reached into his briefcase for the envelope. It was time to put it back—without raising questions about why he had it to begin with. Liam sat in his car and watched the front entrance for five torturous minutes. If he had worn a suit instead of jeans and a pullover, it would have been easier to go unnoticed. He concluded from the lack of foot traffic that events inside were in full swing. If he was lucky, they were doing toasts and giving speeches and cutting cake, traditions none of the guests would want to miss.
Liam tucked the envelope in his waistband and pulled his sweater down. He strolled toward the building, through the door, and down the hall with the certainty of belonging. Breaking in again wouldn’t be necessary—as easy as it would be. Liam squatted to position the envelope under the door before giving it a swift two-fingered push. The angle was strategic, sure to leave the envelope in a place where it might easily have fallen off the corner of the desk.
The ring of his phone jolted Liam. With hastening steps, he answered it. “Hi, Jessica.”
His brain didn’t register her words. Liam powered past the doors from the banquet hall that opened into the hallway. When he heard steps behind him, he didn’t turn. No one saw his face. Still on the phone, he sank into the driver’s seat.
The envelope was out of his hands.
And he had what he needed from its contents.
“I want to be kept in the loop at every step.” Sylvia strode across her kitchen as she spoke into the phone, pivoted, and retraced her steps. “No matter how small the detail, tell me. It might mean something to someone who knows Quinn well.” Like me.
“Mayor,” Cooper Elliott said on the other end of the phone, “if there were something to tell you, I would. We’ve towed the car to a police holding lot. Tomorrow we’ll see if we can get an investigator on it, someone with some forensics experience. We don’t exactly have that specialty in Hidden Falls.”
“I want to know the results.”
“They won’t be instantaneous. Even if they find prints or fibers, a lot of people have been in Quinn’s car.”
“Thank you, Cooper. I’ll be in touch.” Sylvia hung up the landline just as her cell phone sang the tune reserved for her niece. “Hello.”
“Aunt Sylvia,” Lauren said. “I wanted to see how you are.”
“Bordering on frazzled.” Sylvia sat down and put her elbows on the kitchen table. “Did you sleep?”
“Yes,” Lauren said. “Some.”
“Good.” Sylvia’s phones had been ringing in rapid succession all afternoon. Members of the town council. Quinn’s neighbors. People from Our Savior. Everybody wanted to be the first to know when she heard from Quinn. Opinion seemed uniform that if Quinn would contact anyone, it would be Sylvia.
She hoped so.
She was an intelligent, educated, thoughtful person, a leader in her town. And she couldn’t think of one useful action she could take to help find Quinn.
“Aunt Sylvia?”
Lauren’s voice pulled Sylvia back to the moment.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“I’ve been going through my folder on the health fair,” Lauren said. “Some of the information is old, I’m sure, but I see a note about items from your store. I’m not sure what it refers to.”
“I told Quinn I would donate a few things for the silent auction,” Sylvia said. “At least, Quinn was going to look at them and decide if he thought they would sell.”
“Do you mind if I have a look instead?”
“Sure.” Sylvia admired Lauren’s practical approach. If Quinn were found well and safe before Saturday, he could still run the fair. But if not, Lauren had to be ready.
“Would tonight be too soon?”
Sylvia crossed the kitchen again and looked out into the living room, where Emma sat with a magazine in her lap. “Nana is still here. I want to give her another good meal, and then I’ll take her home. I could meet you at the shop about a quarter to nine.”
They said good-bye, and Sylvia set the cell phone down on the kitchen counter. She walked into the living room. “I’m sorry for all the phone calls, Mom. As you can imagine, everyone is worried.”
Emma didn’t answer.
Sylvia angled toward the chair where Emma sat with her eyes closed, her chin on her chest, and her hands slack over the magazine in her lap. Emma’s chest lifted in a slow breath. Relieved, Sylvia put a hand against Emma’s cheek. “Mom?”
Emma’s eyes fluttered open. “I dozed off, didn’t I?”
“How long have you been asleep?” With her spoken question, Sylvia also indicted herself for how long she had been on the phone and not paying attention to her mother.
Emma looked out the front windows. “It wasn’t this dark when I sat down with a magazine. What am I reading, anyway?”
Sylvia flipped the magazine closed in Emma’s lap.
“Goodness,” Emma said. “This is some sort of mayors’ magazine. No wonder it put me to sleep.”
Sylvia hadn’t noticed when Emma picked up the magazine. Who had she been on the phone with when her mother stopped puttering with Sylvia’s houseplants and sat down?
“I haven’t been very good company today,” Sylvia said.
“I know,” Emma said. “The whole town is in trouble because Quinn went missing.”
“It seems that way.”
“And you are the mayor, after all.”
“That’s right.”
“I should go home.”
“Let’s have supper first, and then I’ll take you.”
“What do you have?”
Sylvia smiled. That was just like Emma, always one to find out what the options were before committing herself.
“Frozen spinach mozzarella ravioli,” Sylvia said.
“I do like spinach. And mozzarella. And ravioli.”
“I have fresh salad greens, too.”
Emma scrunched her nose. “Salads are so much work to eat. An old lady should be able to take a pass on a bowl of weeds.”
Sylvia chuckled. “Okay. No salad for you.”
“Then I accept your invitation to dinner.”
Sylvia’s next words were pure impulse. “Why don’t you stay the night in my guest room?”
Emma’s jaw moved back and forth. “I’ll think about it.”
“Fair enough.” Sylvia turned toward the kitchen, but not before she saw Emma pick up the magazine she had cast off only moments ago. Emma selected that magazine every time she came to Sylvia’s house, and each time declared it unreadable to the common person.
Sylvia returned to the kitchen, filled a pot with water, and lit the gas burner underneath it. Leaning against the counter, she took five intentional deep breaths.
And then the phone rang. Sylvia snatched the cordless from the base and looked at the caller ID before pushing the button to answer.
“Good evening, Henry.”
“Hello, Sylvia. Just wanted to know if everything got sorted out at the sheriff’s office. You seemed surprised at the news this morning.”
“Thanks for the heads-up. I’m up to speed now.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m letting the police do their jobs.” Sylvia opened the freezer and dug for the bag of frozen pasta.
“What do you think they’ll find?”
If she knew that, she wouldn’t have to wait for them to find it. “I don’t know, Henry. They have a plan, but these things take time.” She moved a carton of ice cream and found the ravioli.
When Sylvia closed the freezer door again, her mother stood at the stove peering into the pot. “I’ve got to go, Henry. I’ll talk to you later.”
“You didn’t have to hang up on my account,” Emma said.
“I’m tired of being on the phone.” Sylvia opened a drawer for a pair of scissors to cut open the bag.
“You should be. You’ve been doing it all day.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I picked up a magazine in there, but it’s all about being a mayor. Normal people don’t want to read that.”
“I’m a mayor, Mom,” Sylvia said.
“I suppose that’s why you’re on the phone all the time.”
“Well, today it is.”
“What’s so important, anyway?”
Sylvia watched for the pot to bubble. “Quinn.”
“Is something wrong with Quinn?”
Sylvia looked at Emma, and the familiar sadness over her mother’s memory gaps swept through her afresh.
Emma had known about Quinn’s disappearance. And now she didn’t know. This was happening more and more. Sylvia was starting to wonder how much longer it would be safe for Emma to live alone.
“How’s your appetite?” Sylvia decided to focus on dinner. The water was close enough to boiling that Sylvia dumped in the pasta.
“I’m famished. I’ve hardly eaten a thing today.”
The ache rose through Sylvia’s core. Emma had eaten enough lunch for two growing teenagers.
“This only takes a few minutes,” Sylvia said. “Why don’t you get plates out?”
Emma glanced around the kitchen. Sylvia pointed to the correct cupboard. Emma opened it and took out one plate. Immediately she realized she needed another. Now that she was in the cupboard, she also removed two water glasses and filled them at the sink. Normal motions, Sylvia thought, but not quite automatic.
“I’d like it if you would spend the night,” Sylvia said. “You like the guest room, don’t you?”
“It’ll do. Are we eating in here?”
“I thought we would.” Sylvia took a colander from a shelf and set it in the sink before lifting the pot to dump the water through it.
“Quinn disappeared, didn’t he?” Emma set the plates on the table.
Sylvia sucked in her breath. “Yes, he did.”
“I remember.” Emma sat down. “I remember a long time ago somebody disappeared. A whole family. Two whole families. No one ever heard from them again.”
Sylvia’s cell phone rang.
“That silly phone just doesn’t stop,” Emma said. “How do you stand it?”
Sylvia picked up the phone and, without looking at the number it displayed, turned it off. Even if it was Cooper Elliott, she would have to return the call later. Then she set the pot of pasta on the table and stuck a slotted spoon in it. “No more phone calls tonight. You can tell me the story that’s been on your mind all day.”
“I thought you were having salad greens,” Emma said.
Sylvia smiled. There was no predicting what her mother would hang on to these days. “I changed my mind. We’ll keep it simple. Tell me the story.”
“Which story?”
“About the families who disappeared.”
“I’m surprised you never heard your grandmother tell it.”
“It doesn’t sound familiar,” Sylvia said. She spooned food onto her mother’s plate and watched the ravioli slide into formation along the curves of the dish.
Emma picked up her fork. “It was during the Depression. So long ago. I was hardly old enough to be aware of what was happening. I suppose that’s why I don’t remember too much. People were so poor, and there were no jobs. Your grandfather lost his furniture store on Main Street.”
Sylvia had heard that story. “Is that when he became a barber?”
“He’d been a barber before the store, I think. But that was before I was born. After the Crash, people did anything just to survive. Some of them moved away.”
“They went to stay with extended family, I suppose.” Sylvia stabbed a piece of ravioli.
“No doubt. But moving away is one thing. Dropping off the face of the earth is another.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your grandmother used to talk about two families who left right around the same time. The odd thing was, one of them had money when no one else seemed to have any.”
Sylvia chewed. The story didn’t matter. She only wanted her mother to feel she was listening.
“I can’t really remember much more.” Emma took a bite.
“That’s all right. If something comes to you, maybe we can write it down. The Hidden Falls Historical Society might be interested.”
“It’s so dark outside,” Emma said. “As soon as it gets dark, I start thinking about going to bed.”
“If you stay here tonight, you can go right to bed.”
Emma nodded. “That has some appeal.”
They finished eating. With a fresh nightgown over one arm, Sylvia went into the guest room and waited for Emma to emerge from the bathroom.
“I need something to read,” Emma said. “I can’t fall asleep without reading.”
One of Sylvia’s earliest memories was of her mother propped up in bed with a book when Sylvia woke thirsty one night. “Do you feel like a mystery?”
Emma was always a voracious reader. It was possible the story she was working so hard to reconstruct was an old plotline from decades ago, a book about the Depression.
It didn’t matter.
The water kindly lifted the rowboat and nudged it toward the shoreline, requiring very little from Dani Roose as she rowed. Nearly ten hours on the lake yielded six fish she had released back—and the seventh she kept for her dinner. Lapping lake water soothed her spirit. As the bow knocked against the pier, regret flashed for half a second that she had not stayed out another thirty minutes. Dani secured the oars, a task that announced the finality of coming off the lake.
Grabbing the rope from under the bench, Dani took a long step out of the boat and up onto the short pier. She tied the boat to a steel post her grandfather had sunk decades ago for this purpose. Dani wished she were still using his boat, but the wood had weathered and crumbled and Dani hadn’t been able to keep it seaworthy. He would have been proud of the way she restored this one, though.
Dani rotated toward a brushing sound behind her but saw no one among the trees that marched in formation between the water and her cabin. She checked her knot before lifting her rod and reel in one hand and the trout in the other. It wasn’t far to the cabin, and her grandparents had made sure a path through the trees would be lit by low-set solar-powered lights once the sun faded. On some days, like this one, Dani couldn’t believe her good fortune that her two cousins still living in Hidden Falls had no interest in the cabin. She could have it to herself whenever she wanted.
Though slight, the noise she heard now was louder than the animals that made their habitat among the trees. Dani peered again but saw nothing but a leaf taking its autumnal journey toward the ground. She spent enough time alone in these woods to know the sound of another human wending through them. But she saw nothing.
She continued up the path and came to a log bench her grandfather had notched together to sit under a favorite tree and watch the lake.
A woman sat on the bench, and a few feet from her a man stood with a digital camera around his neck and an impressive zoom lens.
Nicole Sandquist and Ethan Jordan. Dani had been a couple of years ahead of them in school, but Quinn invited groups of students to his house often enough that everyone knew Ethan and Nicole lived in the next block. Were they still together after all these years?
Ethan stood very still, capturing a view of the lake in fading light. Dani held her pose while he tinkered with the camera settings. Finally, he looked through the huge lens and snapped several pictures. Dani stepped toward the bench. Ethan was already setting up another shot.
“Looking for something?” Dani said.
Ethan lowered the camera away from his face and glanced at Nicole.
“Don’t you recognize her?” Nicole popped up from the bench. “It’s Danielle Roose.”
“Just Dani.” Dani shifted the grip on her rod. “You’ve come a long way in your taste in cameras since you worked on the yearbook.”
“It’s beautiful out here.” Ethan raised the camera and pressed a button. The camera took a series of shots. “It always was.”
Dani couldn’t dispute that.
“I was always a little jealous your family had this place,” he said.
“I’m the only one who comes out here now.”
“Forgive us if we’re trespassing.” Nicole took several steps toward Dani. “We’re looking for Quinn.”
“He’s not here.”
“You’ve been out here all day?”
Dani nodded. “Since last night, actually. On the lake mostly.”
“And you haven’t seen or heard anything unusual?”
“Besides the two of you turning up like a blast from the past? No.” Until a few minutes ago, Dani hadn’t spoken to a soul all day. Irritation stirred at the interruption to her peaceful retreat.
“We’ve been hiking all afternoon,” Nicole said, “trying to remember the places Quinn liked to go.”
“That makes sense, I guess,” Dani conceded. “I thought he would come out here today, but he didn’t.”
Ethan was framing another shot, this time toward the woods.
“Aren’t you wondering where he is?” Nicole burrowed both hands in her jeans pockets.
“Relax. He’s fine.”
“I thought you said you hadn’t seen him.” Ethan still peered through his camera.
“I haven’t. But I know him pretty well these days.” Dani reasoned she knew Quinn light-years better than these two did, acting as if they could swoop back into town and be his favorites again. “He needs some space. Being the center of attention at a banquet is not his thing.”
Nicole ran one hand over an ear, taming her hair. “I don’t think you’ve heard the latest.”
“What’s that?”
Ethan braced his camera with a hand under the long lens. “He smashed his car into a tree.”
Dani almost dropped her fish.
“It’s true,” Nicole said. “I saw it myself. But he wasn’t there, so he must have wandered away on foot.”
Dani carefully set her rod and reel on her grandfather’s bench. “When you say ‘smashed’ …”
“The tree won the fight,” Ethan said.
“Yes, that’s true,” Nicole said, “but he walked away. We just have to find him.”
Dani picked up her gear. “What’s with all the photos?”
“We may need to look at them more closely,” Nicole said. “You know, something that might spark a memory of where else Quinn might go.”
“I don’t believe it,” Dani said.
“I wish it weren’t so.”
“No, I mean I don’t believe your theory.”
Ethan took his camera off his neck. “Danielle—”
“Don’t call me that.” Dani waved her fish at him.
His phone played a few bars from The Odd Couple theme song, and he looked at the screen. “Sorry. I have to take this.” Ethan put the phone to his ear and wandered away.
“Something tells me his phone rings a lot,” Dani said.
Nicole nodded. “He’s trying to get more time off work so he won’t have to leave before we find Quinn.”
“What about you?”
“I brought a project with me. I can work from here for a few days.”
“Quinn will turn up when he’s ready.” And he wouldn’t like you fussing over him.
Nicole paced four steps and turned. “Maybe. But the accident raises a lot of questions.”
“I haven’t eaten all day,” Dani said, “so you’ll excuse me.”
“Of course, but—”
“Stay as long as you like,” Dani said, “but Ethan won’t have much light left for his pictures.”
She hadn’t come to the lake to be chatty, and she wasn’t going to get caught up in a web of false anxiety. The condition of Quinn’s car didn’t change anything.
Dani stepped from one stone in the path to the next without being tempted to turn her head and look back at Nicole and Ethan. They hadn’t really been her friends in high school, and they didn’t know Quinn now.
A swoosh made her freeze midstep and hold her breath. The sound was coming from the woods. Something was out there. Or someone.
Lauren knocked on her aunt’s front door.
Sylvia opened the door and a bath of yellow light spilled onto the porch. “Oh, Lauren. I’m sorry. I forgot.”
“That’s all right.” Lauren followed Sylvia into the house. “If you’re too tired, we don’t have to do this tonight.”
“No, I’m not tired. And you need to know where things stand with the fair.” Sylvia swept her gray-speckled hair off her forehead.
“I’m still hoping for good news.”
“We have to be prepared. You have a job to do.”
“I’m mostly just trying to keep busy. If I sit around and think about things … well, you know.”
“I’m sorry I kept you waiting. You walked all the way out here only to go back into town.”
“I wanted to walk anyway.” Lauren dropped her pepper spray into her bag. She had never needed it, but it was the only thing that gave her mother—and her aunt—peace of mind about her nocturnal wanderings.
“I got distracted,” Sylvia said. “Nana and I decided she should stay here tonight.”
“Nana is still here?”
“She’s already been asleep for an hour and a half.” Sylvia rescued a pair of shoes from under the ottoman.
“Is it all right to leave her?” Lauren wondered what Emma would do if she woke in a bedroom not her own.
“She won’t rouse,” Sylvia said, “and we won’t be long. We’ll take a quick look in the shop, and I’ll run you home.”
“Can I look in on her?”
“Of course. Just don’t wake her.”
“I won’t.” Lauren dropped her bag into an easy chair and padded down the hall to the guest room. She turned the knob with extra care and pushed gently on the door. As a girl, she had stayed in this room enough times herself to know precisely how long the door would stick before popping open and the degree of pressure needed to avoid a sudden sound.
Emma was turned on her left side, her face toward the dim light from the hall and one arm splayed across the quilt tucked over her torso. Thirty years earlier, Emma had hand-stitched the double wedding ring pattern. These days she was likely to say she had given up quilting because she ran out of scraps long ago. Lauren was grateful to have at her apartment both the quilt Emma made when Lauren was a baby and her grandmother’s final creation, a tulip field in greens and yellows.
The day had been restless and wearing. Had Emma felt the tension Sylvia carried? If she had, she successfully released it when it was time to sleep. Her chest rose and fell in a gentle, unperturbed rhythm of a slumber Lauren envied. With slow steps, Lauren crossed from the door to the bed to give Emma the butterfly kiss they had always shared, brushing her eyelashes across Emma’s cheek three times.
When Lauren returned to the living room, she found Sylvia’s feet clad and a light jacket over her shoulders.
“Ready?” Sylvia said.
Lauren picked up her bag, and they went out through the kitchen to Sylvia’s red Ford Taurus.
“You know my offer to teach you to drive is open-ended.” Sylvia closed the driver door and reached for her seat belt.
Lauren laughed. “If I learn to drive, people will think it even more odd that I prefer to walk or bike.”
Sylvia smiled. They pulled out of the driveway in silence.
“Did Nana ever tell you the story she had on her mind this morning?” Lauren flipped up the visor, unnecessary in the nearly moonless night.
“She tried,” Sylvia said. “It was disjointed, but it doesn’t matter. I think focusing on the story was her way of trying to make sense of things. That’s what we’re all trying to do today, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“She just wanted someone to listen to her. And at least I did that much right today.”
They were on the highway now. The turnoff to Main Street was only a mile away.
“So,” Lauren said, “nothing new from Officer Elliott?”
Sylvia glanced over at her. “You do know that his thorough questioning was only because he wants to help Quinn as much as we do.”
Lauren raised both hands under the lenses of her glasses and rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“This morning feels like another day. Last night feels like another year.”
“With every ounce of mayoral authority I could muster, I firmly instructed Cooper to call me if he had the slightest movement on the case.”
“The case,” Lauren echoed. “I don’t like talking about Quinn as a case.”
“I know.” Sylvia turned on her left signal and prepared for the maneuver.
“I’ve been wracking my brain all day trying to think what kind of emergency he could have had.” Lauren’s voice broke. “And then when I think how things went from bad to worse, I start to feel frantic.”
Sylvia eased onto Main Street. Lauren tracked the rows of irregular lights and signs. This far out of downtown, the buildings were gas stations, repair shops, a lumberyard, a tackle shop—the kinds of businesses a community needed but not the sorts of structures with the charm of downtown.
“I have a set of devotional books you might want,” Sylvia said, “and a set of candle stands. People always seem to be interested in nice picture frames, too. Maybe a clock.”
“I appreciate your willingness to donate.” Lauren lifted her heels in nervous tempo against the floor mat. “I don’t want the silent auction to be ostentatious, but it might raise a little bit of money for the women’s shelter in Birch Bend.”
“We’ll have a look around. I can always donate whatever you think will get a good contribution.”
“I know you want to get home to Nana,” Lauren said. “We’ll make it quick.”
Sylvia parked directly in front of the store on Main Street. On a Sunday evening, few businesses were open. Out of habit, Lauren glanced down the street toward the building where she lived.
In tandem they slammed their car doors. Sylvia put her key in the shop door and led the way in.
Lauren heard her aunt’s gasp. “What is it?”
Sylvia grasped for the light switch, and the rank of fluorescent lights flickered on and began to buzz.
Lauren’s stomach flipped. She liked to think she knew the store’s arrangement nearly as well as Sylvia, but the disarray and breakage they faced now was so thorough it was impossible to discern what was missing. She fumbled for her phone and punched 911.