“You’re right,” Samuel said.
Sylvie’s eyes saddened again. She’d had a respite from the grief briefly as her mind was engaged with other things, but the pain was coming back now. I wished I could be of help, but I sensed it was time to go.
I stood. “Well, I’m sorry to have just dropped by, but I did want to tell you how sorry I was.”
They saw me to the door. I doubted they had any financial problems, but the typewriters might be a help to them down the road.
I got into my car and took a deep breath. That hadn’t been the easiest of duties, but I had no way of knowing that that wasn’t even going to be close to the most difficult part of my day.
12
“Hey, Clare,” Chester said as I walked through the front door.
“Good morning,” I said as I noticed his worried expression. Adal stood back by the counter, looking grim. I glanced at the time on my phone.
“I’m not late for something, am I?” I said.
Baskerville sat on the end of a middle shelf. He stood up and meowed woefully at me.
“What’s up, boy?” I asked as I scratched behind his ear.
“No, you’re not late,” Chester said. “Nathan is.”
“What time did you expect him?” I asked.
“An hour ago,” Adal said.
“He and I had dinner last night. I got home about nine. Maybe he slept in.” I remembered what he’d said about his schedule and how he needed the space to do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it. “Or maybe he’s writing. If he’s in the middle of something, he might have lost track of time.”
“He’s not answering his phone,” Adal said.
“Did you call the hotel?” I asked.
“I did,” Chester said. “They knocked on his door, but he didn’t answer.”
“Maybe he’s in the shower?” I said.
“Maybe,” Adal said as he shrugged.
“He really does like to keep his own schedule. He told me as much. I’m sure he’s fine,” I said. “I could run down there,” I offered, thinking they would both tell me it wasn’t necessary.
“It wouldn’t hurt,” Chester said.
“I’ll go with you,” Adal said as he looked at Chester.
I didn’t understand their concern, but I respected their instincts enough to make the trip.
The hotel receptionist didn’t receive an answer when she dialed Nathan’s room from the front desk.
“Is there any way you could check on him?” I asked.
“Unlock the door?” she said. “No! There’s no real cause for alarm just because someone isn’t answering their phone. I’d get in trouble.”
She brought her eyebrows together as she looked at Adal and me. “Do you really think something’s wrong?”
Adal looked at me. “I know you said he likes to keep his own hours, but he’s been exceedingly polite since he arrived. He’s texted me if he’s running only a few minutes behind. He’s texted me thank-yous every evening, but not last night. I didn’t think anything of it until he didn’t answer the phone this morning.”
I wondered whether I needed to call Jodie; however, even though a small amount of worry was working through my gut, I wasn’t too concerned.
Fortunately, the girl behind the desk jumped in as she reached for something under the counter.
“You have to stay back,” she said as she held up what I thought must be a master key.
“We will,” Adal said.
Once we were outside room 154, Adal and I stepped back as she knocked. “Mr. Grimes, sir, are you in there?”
“Anything?” Adal asked.
She sent us an impatient look, and I put my hand on Adal’s arm.
“Please stay out here as I go in,” she said.
We nodded. I was impressed by her cool demeanor. She couldn’t have been much more than twenty.
Using the master lock card, she unlocked the door and went inside. “Sir. Mr. Grimes?”
We stepped closer and peered inside.
“He’s not here,” she said after she checked all the reasonable spots. “But there are wet towels in the bathroom. He’s probably just out for breakfast somewhere.”
I leaned in more than she would have liked, judging by the frown on her face, and tried to digest the scene in the brief seconds before she closed the door again.
The bed was unmade. There were no food wrappers, but I spied a coffee mug and two clear plastic cups, both with a thin layer of liquid at their bottoms, on the nightstand.
I saw the Splendid, and stacks of paper on the small table next to the window. A piece of paper was threaded through the machine and I wished I could hurry over and see the words he’d put on the page.
The receptionist closed the door before I could snoop further. “Can I give him a message?” she said.
“Sure,” I said. “Have him call Clare and Adal.”
“Will do,” she said with a brief eyebrow lift at my compadre’s name.
She stepped quickly around us and back to her post at the front desk as Adal and I moved more slowly toward the exit. The mention of “wet towels” was enough to ease most of our concerns.
“He’s just at breakfast,” Adal said hopefully. “Not checking his phone.”
“I think so,” I said. “He’ll be in when he’s ready. We’ll ask him to call us from here on if he’s going to be late.”
“Good idea,” Adal said.
Whether or not it was a “stereotypical” German trait, Adal was nothing if not extraordinarily prompt, and he resented it when others weren’t, took it personally. He had about a seven-and-a-half-minute window of forgiveness, but that was it. I’d never been an hour late to something we’d scheduled, but I imagined Adal might not forgive Nathan for this affront.
Our trip back up the hill was hurried. We both hoped we’d find Nathan at the shop with Chester and Baskerville, but we were disappointed.
When another two hours passed and we all (even Baskerville) became both irritated and worried, I did the only thing I thought was appropriate. I called Jodie.
She was at the shop in record time, bringing with her heavy bags under her eyes and an even more grim expression on her face than Adal’s.
“You look rough,” I said. “You okay?”
She shook her head. “What’s going on with Nathan Grimes?”
I gave her a brief rundown, after which she relayed some orders into the mouthpiece of the radio that was attached at the shoulder of her uniform. She sent officers to investigate the hotel room and the surrounding restaurants.
“He walks up here from the hotel?” she said.
“Yes.”
“I’ll walk his route.”
“I’ll come with you,” I said.
Adal had figured out what might happen and he suddenly appeared next to me with my coat.
“You’ll need this,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Call as soon as you know something,” he said to Jodie. “You’ll find him, I know.”
She nodded, and even in the middle of moments so full of stress that I could feel the tension in the air, I saw her spirit lighten a little, the bags under her eyes become less heavy. I knew I’d just witnessed something I should take note of, something wonderful for my best friend. Now wasn’t the time, though.
“We’ll call,” she said.
I tried to keep up with her typically heavy steps, but she was even quicker today, like a gazelle in army boots.
“Other than the fact that we’re looking for Nathan, what’s going on? Did you talk to Creighton?” I asked. “You look like you didn’t sleep.”
“I didn’t sleep. I talked to Creighton. Then I couldn’t sleep well.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke. She looked all around, at the people on the sidewalks, an
d into the shop windows. She even looked up a time or two toward second stories of buildings, but I couldn’t figure out why.
“What did he say?”
“Not much of anything. He told me that my question to him about the invitation was the only thing that made him remember that he’d received one. He said he’d thrown it away, not interested in the least about going to a gathering with any people from high school, particularly ones he wasn’t friends with. I believe him about that part, since he’s a couple years older.”
“You don’t believe him about not remembering it and then throwing it away?”
“I’m not sure, Clare. Can you think of anyone less interested in high school friends than you, me, and Creighton? We all kind of followed the beat of our own drummers. I can see me just throwing something away if I wasn’t interested.”
“But if I got an invitation like that I’d remember it and I’d talk to you about it,” I said.
“Right, but Creighton doesn’t talk to me about anything. He’s a cop, Clare. He’s naturally observant. I would think that the murder would spark a memory of the invitation.”
“What’s going on with him, Jodie?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Help me look for Nathan.”
“Nathan might have his scarf and hat on or he might not, and, bizarrely, he looks very different without them.”
“Good to know.”
We walked the route, twice. The second time we went into almost every shop, restaurant, and bar we came to. Other than the restaurants, most places were just opening for business. No one whom we talked to had seen Nathan that morning, but he’d had breakfast at one of the restaurants the day before. The picture of Nathan that Jodie held out for identification was the picture on the back of his most recent novel, displayed on the screen of her phone. In it he wore both the scarf and hat. Each time Jodie showed it, we received raised eyebrows and exclamations of how exciting it was that he was in town, but other than the waiter at the restaurant, no one had seen him in person. They were sure they would have remembered him.
“You were almost the last person to see him, Clare, but the man working at the hotel desk last night remembered him coming in.”
“But the person working this morning doesn’t remember him going out?”
“No, but she has her hands full in the mornings taking care of the front desk and making sure the breakfast bar is set up. He could have—and must have—walked right by her without her noticing. Don’t know if the security cameras got anything, but we’ll look.”
“Wet towels?” I said.
“Yes, wet enough to think he cleaned up this morning, but where would he go after that?” She put her hands on her hips and looked back up the hill. We’d gone the full distance down again.
“The only places I can think of are a restaurant or The Rescued Word,” I said.
“Did he mention any other things that might interest him? Does he ski?”
I thought back. “I’m pretty sure he mentioned that he’d never gotten into winter sports. No, it was that he’d never gotten into any sports, not winter specifically. He says that he only writes and reads and sometimes watches television. I bet he likes to go to movies, but it didn’t come up and it’s too early for a movie.”
She nodded and bit her bottom lip, a habit she did so often and with so much conviction that I was always surprised she didn’t draw blood.
She looked at me. “Clare, is there any chance at all that he’s a flaky author who doesn’t mind inconveniencing others because he’s an arrogant jerk who doesn’t care about other people’s schedules?”
I took a deep breath. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, he likes to stick to his own schedule, but he knows that about himself, so he’s purposefully isolated himself. In a way at least. But he’s been very aware of our schedules, enough to make me think that he doesn’t want to be annoying. No, I don’t think so.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we didn’t go up the hill past Bygone, and there’s a bookstore up there. I think it’s worth a quick check. He’s a writer and a reader, so it might not be a long shot. I’ll go up and see if Sarah is there and if she’s seen him.”
“I’ll come with,” I said.
We hurried back up the hill. I was in my winter shape, which was better than my summer shape, but I was breathing heavily when we reached the bookstore. Tourists liked to blame the altitude for their heavy breathing. My excuse was Jodie’s weird ability to out-good-shape everyone else.
Side by side, we peered in the front window, but Jodi stepped back a second later to get out of the way of the person exiting the store.
“Jodie!” the man said. “You’ve been looking for me, I hear. I stopped by the station this morning, but you weren’t there. How are you? I mean, this is a terrible time, and . . . well, I don’t quite know what to say, but here I am if you want to talk to me.”
“Name please?” Jodie said.
“It’s Howard. Howard Craig. Do I really look that different?”
“Yes, you do, Howard,” Jodie said. “You wore button-down collars and khakis in high school, not jeans and denim jackets. You had red hair. And the cowboy hat?”
She wasn’t trying to be funny, but Howard laughed.
“I was pretty uptight back then and the red already went gray. Hey, we shouldn’t be blamed for our high school selves, or some premature aging.”
“No, probably not,” Jodie said.
“And that’s Clare behind you. You two are still hanging out together. Always good to see some things never change.”
“Hi, Howard,” I said as I extended my hand for a shake because it seemed like the right thing to do. It was as awkward as I’d thought it would be. The entire moment was awkward, and I just wanted to find Nathan, not talk about high school.
“Well, I’da known you two from a mile away. It’s good to see you both,” he said. “Even though something terrible has happened and it’s probably the reason . . . well, I’m sure you wanted to talk to me because of Lloyd, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “How about we go down to the station?”
“Can’t we just talk here? I’ve got nothing to hide, so this would save us some time.” He nudged the hat a little farther back on his head and brought his eyebrows together as he put his hands on his hips.
“Yeah, okay, let’s just grab one of those tables so we’re not in the way of pedestrians.” She pointed across the street at the tables outside in front of a bar that hadn’t opened yet. It wasn’t warm outside and those tables were in the shade, but at least we wouldn’t be standing in the middle of the sidewalk and we could still keep the bookstore in sight.
“Anybody else in the bookstore?” she asked as she peered in.
“Just Sarah. No one else. Who are you looking for?”
Jodie didn’t answer but signaled us to cross the street.
Before I tagged along, I should have asked if I was invited, but I didn’t. We each took a seat on a metal chair. Howard stretched his neck to look inside the bar, but the window was dark.
“Should I go get us some coffee from somewhere?” he said.
“No, that’s okay,” Jodie said. “We won’t be long.”
“Okay.” He tipped his hat back again.
Jodie didn’t rush. “Howard, what did you think you were invited to? Meetings or a reunion?”
“Oh. Well, the invitation didn’t feel like a party. It felt like business was going to be discussed.”
“Do you know who sent it?”
“Someone from Star City, according to the postmark.”
“Did you talk to any of the people invited before coming to town?”
“I did. Donte and Sarah are friends and we talk every now and then. But, honestly, I don’t think there was much more than a brief ment
ion of the meetings. We all thought the whole thing was odd, but then we talked about something else.”
“Then why did you come to town?” Jodie said. “Sounds weird. I understand Sarah and Donte, but you had to travel from Wyoming, and Creighton threw away his invitation.”
“I didn’t come to town for the meetings. I was coming anyway to visit family, so I told Sarah and Donte we could see what was going on together.”
“Did you remember that Creighton was on the invitation?”
“Absolutely. Creighton, the big man on campus, a couple years older, football guy, dad a cop. Of course I knew who Creighton was.”
“Were you surprised he was included?”
Howard thought a moment. “Probably, but I don’t remember exactly.”
“Did you talk about Creighton to Donte and Sarah?”
“Huh. I don’t think I did. I think we got stuck on Lloyd and then moved on to something else. Really, Jodie, we didn’t think much of it, but I know we put it on our calendars, mostly so the three of us could make plans to get together.”
It was all plausible, but I understood what Jodie was trying to find out: did Sarah really not remember that Creighton was listed on the invitation or was she lying? And why would she?
As far as I could tell, the answer wasn’t clear.
“Do you have your invitation?” Jodie said.
“No, it’s at home,” he said.
“I see. Can you have someone send it here?” she asked.
“I live alone, but I have a secretary I might be willing to tell where I keep the hidden key. I can tell you what it said. I have a photographic memory. I never forget anything.”
“All right.”
He recited the invitation with the same information everyone else had given. The names were the same, the times, the location.
“Lloyd was staying at the same hotel you are staying at. Did you see him?”
“Not once. I had no idea he was there. Why didn’t he stay home? Are his folks still alive?”
“Yes. Why didn’t you stay with yours?” Jodie asked.
“Good point. There does come a time when we’d all rather not stay with our parents, even if we like them.”
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