Hidden Falls

by Newport, Olivia

  “Dani’s coming this afternoon.”

  Nicole’s stomach flipped. “You told someone we have the computer?”

  “I didn’t think you’d want to take it back to Quinn’s after what we went through to get it.”

  He was right about that. Other than laying hands on the computer and wondering if God answered technology prayers, Nicole didn’t know what she was going to do, but returning the computer without getting into it hadn’t entered her mind. It held too much potential—both for Quinn’s whereabouts and the mysterious photo—to abandon the effort.

  “I thought maybe you would look at it again,” she said.

  He turned both palms up and spread his fingers. “These are the hands of a brain surgeon, not a technology expert. I used up my last trick at two in the morning.”

  So had Nicole. She’d hoped Ethan was just tired and would put his analytical skills to good use in the light of day. Nicole double-knotted her shoe. She couldn’t afford to trip over a loose lace right now. “What makes you think we can trust Dani?”

  Ethan laughed. “Even in high school she would never rat anybody out. I don’t think much has changed. If she turned us in, she’d have to get involved—and that would cut into her fishing time.”

  He was right again.

  “Not turning us in is one thing,” Nicole said. “Actually helping is another.”

  “Getting her here is the first step.”

  Nicole nodded. She’d persuaded plenty of people to do what they said they wouldn’t. She would handle Dani Roose when the time came.

  “In the meantime, let’s go see Jack Parker,” she said.

  “I have a feeling this is against my better judgment.” Ethan stood up.

  “You can torture me with ice all afternoon.”

  “Is he expecting you?”

  Nicole looked away. “Bring the photo, please. And my iPad.” Jack Parker would have no reason to know Ethan Jordan. She wanted the full effect of laying the photo on Jack’s desk while Ethan was sitting right in front of him.

  “Do I at least get to know what your hunch is?”

  Ethan never had been one for blind obedience.

  “It’s the cemetery,” she said. “Your twin is standing in Hidden Falls Memorial Garden.”

  “And Mr. Parker?”

  “Has old things in his office. Very old.” She didn’t make an appointment because experience told her that catching people off guard gave her the advantage in establishing the path of the conversation. Surprising people was a well-cultivated investigative habit.

  “I had to park down the street.” Ethan stood up.

  “I’ll wait on the bench outside the barbershop.”

  They spent far more time getting Nicole in and out of Ethan’s car than they did driving around a couple of street corners to find the brick building of stately office suites. Nicole had never been in this building. An elevator followed by wide halls with gray marble floors guided them to the second-floor suite that bore the sign JOHN H. PARKER, ATTORNEY AT LAW. Ethan held the door, and Nicole took careful steps with her crutches.

  In the outer office, the sleek modern desk looked out of place with the high ceilings and crown molding. It had a phone, a stapler, and a tape dispenser but no computer. The credenza behind it supported only a vase with silk flowers. In one corner were a gray leather loveseat on one wall and two chairs upholstered in a blue-and-gray plaid on the adjoining wall, with a square coffee table pulling the pieces together. The furniture was in near pristine condition. Certainly Jack Parker had redone the decor. And certainly he worked alone.

  Ethan gestured that Nicole should sit down, and she didn’t object. Resisting the habit of putting weight on her injured foot made for tedious progress, and she was tired. The door to the inner office stood open.

  “Hello?” Nicole called out.

  After a brief shuffle, Jack Parker appeared, wearing a starched blue dress shirt and a tie with a sophisticated classic stripe over navy trousers. Nicole was sure a matching suit jacket was arranged on a hanger on the back of his office door. His hairline was impeccably trimmed and not a wave was out of place.

  “Miss Sandquist,” Jack said. “I didn’t expect to see you up and around.”

  “Thanks for taking me to the urgent care the other day.” The smile with which he greeted them, however, seemed a tad too wide to Nicole. She felt like fresh meat.

  Jack offered a hand to Ethan. “I’m Jack Parker.”

  Ethan shook the attorney’s hand. “I’m Ethan Jordan.”

  Jack tilted his head. “I met a Richard Jordan yesterday. Any relation?”

  Nicole knew Ethan wouldn’t answer that question, and he didn’t.

  “Is this a good time?” Ethan asked without sitting down. “We can make an appointment to come back later.”

  If Ethan were in reach, Nicole would have kicked him. They would not come back with an appointment.

  “I realize we may be interrupting your day.” Nicole gestured to her crutches. “But as you can see, I’ve gone to considerable effort to come see you, so I would appreciate your time.”

  “Of course.” Jack waved an arm toward his private office.

  Nicole glared at Ethan as she hobbled past him. Jack hadn’t spared expense in his furnishings. Even the side chairs for his guests were plush and soft.

  Once she was seated, Nicole put out a hand for the folder Ethan held. “I understand your practice inherited some files that go back quite a ways.”

  Jack nodded. “Morris and Morris were in business for fifty years, I believe, but I suspect there was another practice here before them.”

  That’s what Nicole wanted to hear. The further back the files went, the better.

  “My inquiry is straightforward,” Nicole said. “If I provide you with a few names, would you be able to tell me if the old files contain any documents reflecting legal transactions involving the names?”

  Nicole felt Ethan’s eyes on her but didn’t turn her head.

  “I might,” Jack said, “though many legal matters are confidential, if not technically then certainly out of deference to clients.”

  “I’m quite certain the individuals I have in mind are deceased.” Nicole changed her strategy on impulse. She wouldn’t show Jack the photo of the man who looked like Ethan. Her instinct was not to stir up more curiosity in Jack than necessary for what she needed to know. Right now, she only needed to know if Jack had documents related to the graves around the towering tombstone.

  “Well, if the individuals are deceased and there are no heirs, then in some instances the files may be available.”

  There could be heirs, Nicole conceded. She could be sitting right next to an heir.

  Rather than pulling out the photo, she flipped open her iPad. “I made a list of names of people buried in a particular section of the local cemetery. These are the individuals concerned.”

  Ethan turned toward her in his chair. “How did you—”

  Nicole cut him off with one shake of her head and kept her eyes on Jack. There was time later to explain to Ethan that Hidden Falls Memorial Garden was an old enough cemetery to be of interest to some historians and genealogists, and she’d found an online map of numbered graves and a corresponding list of names of people buried. Once she’d found the name that started with K-R-A—Kravicz, it turned out—it was easy enough to match grave numbers with names within a thirty-yard radius. Based on the perspective in the photo, Nicole was fairly certain the distance was closer to twenty yards, but she couldn’t discern directions from the photograph.

  Jack looked at her list. “This could take some time.”

  Possibly. Without seeing the condition of the old filing system for herself, Nicole couldn’t dispute Jack’s observation. Glancing at the names on file folders wasn’t exactly strenuous work, even without an alphabetized system. He would know fairly quickly whether he had anything related to the names. Going through individual files looking for relevant documents—a will, for instance�
��would be more intensive.

  “I’m happy to leave a retainer for your time,” she said.

  He named a modest figure that would cover a few hours of work and gave her a standard agreement to sign about payment beyond the retainer. Nicole pulled a credit card out of her back pocket.

  2:44 p.m.

  Dani didn’t bother taking her Jeep to Lauren’s apartment. It was easier to park at home and walk the few blocks. The park across the street tempted her to find a sunny patch of grass and sit with a book.

  Quinn had told her five days ago that his computer was on the fritz again, so the news hadn’t surprised her. The main reason she agreed to Ethan’s request to look at the computer was because sooner or later she would end up doing it. She might as well do it while Quinn wasn’t hovering over her shoulder trying to understand everything she did. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the smarts to learn. Dani just didn’t have the patience to teach him—or anyone. There were classes at the community college in Birch Bend, but the most motivated people would figure it out the way she did. Just start doing it. If you’re good at it and manage to solve a practical problem, keep doing it. If you’re not good at it, then find something else to do. Dani had learned to fix most anything around a house by the same reasoned approach of testing a theory and learning from the experience, whether in failure or triumph.

  Dani had never been up to the apartments above the shops on Main Street. On the street level, shops with varying signage and entry styles broke up the monotony of red brick. On the second story in this block, four sets of windows were evenly spaced across the front. Quinn once told Dani that almost certainly the original shop owners had lived above their enterprises because they rarely had time off, and of course the Main Street structures were built before the advent of automobiles. Only the wealthiest Hidden Falls families operated businesses in town but lived on outlying acreage. Where Quinn came up with that tidbit, Dani didn’t know, but it was the sort of thing a history teacher would tuck away in his brain. Maybe he read it in the files of the Hidden Falls Historical Society.

  Or maybe he made it up to see how many legs he could pull.

  Dani ignored the elevator and took the stairs up to the apartments and found the one marked D. She only knocked once and the door opened. Dani looked down at Nicole sitting in a chair with a boot cast on one foot.

  “Thank you for coming.” Nicole rolled away from the door.

  “What happened to you?” Dani stepped into the apartment.

  “Clumsy.”

  Dani scanned the apartment, which was a cozy mixture of historical ambiance and modern convenience, from the original fireplace to the mismatched built-in cabinets to the unskilfully cut baseboards. The house Dani rented was a 1950s prefab down the block from the one her parents had occupied before they finally admitted that, though they had grown up in Hidden Falls, they detested small-town life. Her landlord gave her a steep break on the rent in exchange for handling all the upkeep for the three houses he owned and rented out.

  “The computer is over here,” Nicole said.

  Dani could see it just fine. She didn’t need a guided tour.

  “Ethan said he explained to you what we’re trying to do.” Nicole used her good foot to steer from the door to the table. “The first question is whether or not you can get it running. I sure hope so.”

  “Sometimes I think Quinn holds it together with chewing gum.” Dani pulled out a chair, sat in front of the computer, and pressed the power button. Ethan and Nicole flanked her. “Um, can I have some room to work, please?”

  Ethan rolled Nicole around to the other side of the table, where he sat down directly across from Dani. She would have preferred they go wait in the other room but supposed it would be rude to say so. Necessity had developed in her some tolerance of hovering customers desperate either not to lose data or not to have to shell out for a new computer—or both. Quinn’s laptop whirred and then shut off, just as she had expected it would. In response, Dani simultaneously pressed an arrangement of several keys, a strategy that worked often enough that she defaulted to it when she was troubleshooting PCs. If the computer stayed on, she could run diagnostics and narrow down where the glitch was happening.

  Across the table, Nicole responded to the encouraging sounds by wiggling and leaning forward.

  Dani clicked for a list of Wi-Fi networks. She could guess from the name, Faithworks, which one was Lauren’s. She allowed herself a half-inch shake of the head when she saw the network was unsecure. Why did people leave themselves so vulnerable and then complain about being hacked?

  It took another twenty minutes before Dani was reasonably certain that the computer was not in danger of imminent death. Quinn was going to need a new one soon. Dani would steer him toward a Mac if for no other reason than she preferred fiddling with them, and Quinn was sure to keep coming to her with his questions.

  “Okay, I think my work here is finished,” Dani said.

  “Wait!” Nicole’s urgent tone made Dani look up. “Didn’t Ethan tell you we’re looking for some information?”

  “He mentioned it.”

  “I can snoop around for half the night,” Nicole said, “but I have a feeling you know Quinn’s computer pretty well. You know how he stores information. Just think how much faster it would be if you helped us.”

  Dani looked from Ethan’s brown eyes to Nicole’s green eyes. She was in this far. She might as well find out what they had in mind. “What are you looking for?”

  “Try to reconstruct where he has spent his time online in the last thirty days.” Nicole licked her lips. “Credit card activity, bank accounts, deleted e-mails.”

  She’s done this before, Dani thought.

  “That’s a lot of personal information.”

  “In my experience as an investigative reporter, that’s where the clues are.”

  “Does Cooper know you’re doing this?”

  Nicole huffed her breath out. “Do you really think he’d turn his head if he did?”

  Never.

  Dani knew the password to Quinn’s Internet browser, and unless he had heeded her recent warnings, his e-mail password wasn’t much different. People would be surprised at how many passwords Dani had in her head—or could figure out—because they’d made no effort to keep them secret when Dani needed access to an account to troubleshoot. Most people seemed to think of a password as a necessary nuisance for getting onto sites they used frequently, rather than considering what would raise a barrier to someone else trying to get on those same sites. If Ethan and Nicole thought long enough, they would come up with Quinn’s password. Dani saved them a couple of days—during which time Quinn probably would come home anyway—and scanned the list of sites Quinn had visited in the last few weeks.

  “Nothing here,” she said. “Just the usual stuff.”

  “What does that mean?” Nicole said. “What’s his usual stuff?”

  “Book orders, the place he likes to buy his shirts from, teacher resources, history sites.”

  “Can’t you be more specific? Broad categories won’t give me anything to chase down. And you didn’t mention anything financial.”

  “Hacking into his bank account is over the line.”

  “You don’t have to look,” Nicole said. “Just get me in. I’ll look.”

  Dani wasn’t going to let two people who hadn’t seen Quinn in ten years look at his bank records. “If I get in,” she said, knowing that she would, “I am getting right back out if I don’t see anything suspicious.”

  “Who’s to say what’s suspicious?” Nicole started to roll herself around the table.

  Dani closed the browser window. “Either you trust me or the deal is off.”

  “Why can’t you trust me enough to believe I want to help Quinn?” Nicole parked herself next to Dani and stared at the background on Quinn’s screen.

  “Why can’t you keep your nose out of Quinn’s private business?” Dani turned her head and glared at Nicole, who apparentl
y didn’t understand the concept of asking nicely for favors.

  “I want to find Quinn.” Nicole spoke through a clenched jaw and gritted teeth. “After five days, during which no one has seen him or heard from him, you can’t possibly be a hundred percent sure that he’s all right.”

  “And you can’t be sure anything is wrong.” Dani leaned in near Nicole’s face, daring her not to pull back.

  “Ladies!” Ethan was on his feet now. “Let’s all keep our cool.”

  “Shut up.” Nicole and Dani spoke in unexpected unison, though neither turned to look at Ethan.

  He came around the table and pulled Nicole’s chair back about two feet. “Nobody is going to help Quinn this way.”

  Dani leaned back in her chair and eyed Nicole. “Here’s my final offer. I will look at his bank account, which is way out of my comfort zone. In exchange, you have to admit that I know him better than you do right now and trust my judgment about whether anything looks unusual. And I’m not looking back any more than thirty days.”

  Nicole pressed her lips together. “Fine. Thank you.”

  The arrangement wasn’t anywhere close to what Nicole wanted, but Dani was more interested in protecting Quinn’s privacy than satisfying Nicole’s curiosity.

  Dani logged onto the bank’s website and tried slight variations of core password elements she knew Quinn had used in the past on various accounts. She watched the clock at the top of the computer screen, knowing she had limited time before the site would lock her out.

  “I’m in,” she said finally.

  Nicole started to roll forward.

  “You come any closer, I’ll shut this down.” Dani held a finger over the computer’s power button.

  “Sorry,” Nicole muttered. “Reflex.”

  Dani’s eyes widened at what she saw.

  “What?” Nicole said.

  Dani turned slowly toward Nicole. “If we can believe these transactions, he’s in St. Louis.”

  4:27 p.m.