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.
9:28 p.m.
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.
4
Unexpected Hero
Monday
8:30 a.m.
Side by side, Sylvia and Lauren stood on the sidewalk outside Waterfall Books and Gifts squinting into the sun’s reflection against the display window. Yellow crime scene tape formed a giant X across the storefront.
“They won’t even let you in?” Lauren said.
“My own store, and I’m denied entry.” Sylvia rolled her shoulders, but the motion did nothing to release the tension that had built up overnight. “Did you get any sleep?”
“Not much.” Lauren slid two fingers of each hand under her glasses to rub her eyes. “The polic
e took two hundred pictures. What more do they need?”
Sylvia shrugged. “Fingerprints.”
“It’s a store,” Lauren said. “Dozens of people are in and out all day, six days a week. Are they going to fingerprint everybody in Hidden Falls? What about all the tourists? Do they have a clue about how many items people pick up, even if they’re just browsing?”
Sylvia turned her palms up at Lauren’s tirade of frustration. “It’s their show to run. I have to stay out of the way.”
“They can’t keep you closed beyond reason.”
But who decides what’s reasonable? Sylvia thought. Though images from last night still seared the backs of her eyes, she once again pressed her face against the glass to peer inside. The window display, featuring a rash of new novels, was undisturbed. Looking past it into the main gifts display, though, Sylvia saw the wreckage afresh. A heavy, solid five-shelf unit of clocks and figurines left no survivors when it tumbled. The book racks were bolted to the walls, but at least half of the volumes they held had been pulled from the shelves and tossed around in no pattern. Four paintings on the walls were slashed.
“Why didn’t they just take whatever they were after?” Lauren said. “Why did they have to be so destructive?”
“We never know what’s in somebody else’s mind.” Like Quinn’s. What was going through his mind when he stepped off the backstage X where Sylvia emphatically told him to stand on Saturday night? And when he drove his car too fast around a bend in the road? Maybe amid the rage, the vandal had taken something from the store. Until Sylvia was allowed in to clean up and do a proper inventory, she couldn’t be sure.
Behind them, footsteps on the sidewalk came to a halt. The image of Gavin Owens reflected in the store window.
“You’re the headline of the breakfast rush,” he said. “That yellow tape gets attention, considering how little we see of it around here. The sheriff must have pulled it out of a back closet.”
Sylvia turned to face Gavin. “I hope you’re telling people that if they saw anything suspicious last night they should call the sheriff.”
“Either that or mind their own business. You want me to bring coffee or something to eat?”
“Thanks, but we’re on our way to the sheriff’s now.” Sylvia hitched the strap of her purse over one shoulder.
“You’re going to need a crew to help you clean up.”
“Eventually.”
“You let me know when. I’ll make sure everybody gets lunch.” Gavin gave a half salute and continued down the block to his café.
Sylvia looked at her watch. “We’d better get over there.”
“After this,” Lauren said, “I don’t ever want to see the inside of the sheriff’s department again.”
Sylvia fell into the ambitious pace Lauren set. “I had to call Lizzie Stanford and tell her not to come to work today.” She’d had to explain, of course. Lizzie was a competent assistant at the shop, but she too easily jumped to conclusions. In this case, she would have worried she was losing her job if Sylvia didn’t explain why the shop couldn’t open. Everyone in town would know soon enough.
They had been spared spending half the night in the sheriff’s office to complete the report on the break-in. As long as the store was secured, and because everything had been photographed, Cooper Elliott was satisfied they could leave the formal paperwork until the morning. The break-in had been through the back door, Cooper said. The lock on the door from the alley was intact, but scratches on the doorplate suggested someone who was not adept at picking locks had nevertheless succeeded.
It was an old lock. Everything on Main Street was ancient. Hidden Falls was one hundred and fifty years old, and Sylvia felt nearly that age herself. Even when she was young, she was never one to tolerate sleep-disturbed nights—and certainly not two in a row.
Quinn was her best friend, and he was missing.
The store was her livelihood, and it would take days to get up and running again.
And she was mayor of Hidden Falls. People wanted answers.
No one—so far—thought the burglary was related to Quinn’s absence. Sylvia hoped they were right.
Lauren pulled open the oversized wooden door at the sheriff’s office, and Sylvia stepped inside. For years she had been after the sheriff to come over from the Birch Bend station and figure out why the Hidden Falls building smelled distinctly musty, but he always countered that the task required a financial outlay his budget would not withstand. Maybe he was right and maybe he wasn’t. Either way, Sylvia wrinkled her nose at the smell. She had no influence on the county budget.
A half wall divided the small waiting area, representing the public portion of the large room, from a quad of desks. Rarely were more than two desks occupied at the same time. Across the back were three small enclosed rooms with large windows looking inward and two jail cells that hadn’t been used in years.
Lauren pointed to the room on the left end. “I was afraid that room right there was going to be my new home.”
“Quite a downsize from your apartment.” Sylvia flicked her gaze toward Lauren.
Beyond the half wall, Cooper sat at one of the desks, talking on the phone. Only one other person was on duty, and he seemed engrossed in waiting for the coffeepot to perk. Crime was small-time business in Hidden Falls.
Cooper waved them over while he finished his call.
“Let’s get this over with,” Lauren muttered.
They could get the report over with, at least. Then Sylvia was going to have to face the mess in the store and a fresh deluge of well-meaning phone calls. There was no telling what was waiting for her at her small office at Town Hall. Out of reflex, she felt in her jacket pocket for her phone, thinking to call Quinn and confide.
But of course she couldn’t.
Cooper arranged two side chairs next to his desk. Sylvia was beginning to think the mustiness was baked into the fibers of the commercial upholstery.
“We just need to go over the basic facts for the report.” Cooper clicked through several screens on his computer. “It’s important that we’re working with accurate information before we begin an investigation.”
“Whatever you need to know.” With reluctance, Sylvia sat in one of the chairs. Lauren took the other.
“So you weren’t in the store at all after you closed up on Saturday?”
“That’s right.”
“And that was about six o’clock?”
“Yes.”
Cooper tapped a few keys. “And you arrived at the shop around nine thirty Sunday night.”
“That’s correct.”
“Were you on Main Street at all yesterday before that?”
Lauren broke in. “You asked us all this last night.”
“I just want to be sure my report is right.” Cooper was unflapped. “We’re going to need to narrow the time down. What about after church yesterday?”
“I walked home,” Lauren said, “but I didn’t go past the shop.”
“I drove straight to my house with my mother and didn’t leave,” Sylvia supplied. Cooper knew as well as anybody that next to nothing was open on Main Street on Sunday afternoon. Gavin opened the café for the diehards, and down the street Eat Right Here catered to the tourists looking for refreshment after coming in from the falls or the lake. But most people who ran small businesses six days a week valued a day off.
“But you went last night to look at possible donations to the silent auction at the health fair.” Cooper’s fingers were poised above the keyboard.
“That’s right.” Lauren’s tone made clear her ongoing irritation.
“We’re all tired,” Sylvia said. “These last couple of days have been stressful.”
Cooper looked at Lauren. “This is the third time in a day and a half I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Lauren in the line of duty. I don’t find that stressful in the least.”
Sylvia froze her lips rather than let the corners turn up, because she suspected Lauren wasn’t am
used. Cooper Elliott wasn’t doing a very good job flirting, Sylvia thought, but his intention cut through the heaviness of her mood.
The half door creaked on the short wall separating them from the waiting area. Sylvia looked up to see Jack Parker enter.
“Good morning, Jack,” Cooper said. “If you’re here on official business, I’ll have to ask you to wait a few more minutes. And if not, well, I’m afraid I’m occupied.”
“I’m here to offer my legal services.” Jack buttoned his dark gray suit jacket. “I understand there have been several incidents in the last few hours.”
“You can wait right over there.” Cooper nodded at the bank of chairs by the door. “But seeing as how we don’t have any suspects, I’m not sure who you’re here to defend.”
“No suspects?”
Sylvia followed Jack’s eyes as they settled on Lauren. “This is not the place for your ambulance chasing, Jack.”
“Yes, I can see it might be better to talk with you in your office.”
That was the last thing Sylvia wanted. “Lauren and I are just giving a report. I doubt we’ll need your services, but we know where to reach you.”
“Of course. And I’ll see you tomorrow for our appointment.” Jack laid a business card on the end of Cooper’s desk before pivoting to depart.
Sylvia wished she didn’t dislike Jack Parker so much. But she did.
Cooper clicked his mouse, and the printer on the end of his desk whirred. He pulled two sheets of paper off the tray and handed Sylvia a pen.
“Look it over and sign here,” he said.
Sylvia signed.
“When can my aunt get back in her store?” If Lauren recognized Cooper’s attention, she didn’t let on.
“I have good news on that point,” Cooper said. “We already had a forensics guy coming out to look at Quinn’s car today. He can do the fingerprinting at the store as well. As soon as he gives the all clear, we can start cleaning up.”
We.
Sylvia followed Cooper’s gaze, which was still fixed on Lauren.
She stood up. “Good. I need to stop in at Town Hall. You can call me there or on my cell when he’s through.”
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