“It’s all right,” Dani said to onlookers. “We just may be a couple of minutes late getting started.”
Eva had fled the scene of her failure. Dani watched her run across the lawn, dodging and weaving through the crowd. Where was she likely to go?
It didn’t matter. Dani couldn’t chase her now. She’d have to find her later.
Dani had amassed extra spectators because of the burst of flames. She might as well take advantage of the attention. The cooler contained several more trout. Now the demonstration would include the added feature of how to fillet a fish. Then it would pick up with Dani’s plan to grill both a whole fish and a fillet. Samples would be slightly delayed but still delicious. Fifteen minutes from now no one would remember the unplanned diversion. They would be too busy salivating over bites of perfectly grilled fish.
The look of the sky suggested Dani might not have the opportunity for a second demonstration. If she were out on a hiking trail under a darkening sky like this one, she would be planning how to take cover.
12:39 p.m.
Nicole lost her grip on two pages of notes and they fluttered away in the wake of two children, with painted faces and balloons, running perilously close to her propped-up boot cast.
“Hey!”
They didn’t hear her above their own squeals.
Ethan was busy looking in another set of facial openings. Nicole leaned over for the crutches tucked against the side of her chair. She had enjoyed the morning’s sunshine but now wondered if she would have been better off spending the day in Lauren’s apartment. The cast and crutches made mobility difficult, so she had only been up and about a few times, and no matter how many times she set down her pile of notes, determined to enjoy the day, she picked them up again. The mystery filled the crevices of her mind, leaving room only for frustration that she was missing something obvious. She hadn’t been much help at the fair. Maybe she’d even been in the way.
The breeze gusted, threatening to take Nicole’s pages farther from her reach. She swung toward the nearest sheet and stabbed it with a crutch to hold it still while she went through the laborious steps of balancing to keep weight off her injured foot as she bent to pick it up. In the meantime, the second page skidded across the grass.
“I got it.” Lauren swooped down to rescue the second page.
“Thank you.” Nicole straightened up, relieved to lean on two crutches again.
“What’s all this?” Lauren scanned the paper she held.
“I wish I knew.” Nicole took the page from Lauren and nested it against the other, arranging her armpits on the crutches while she examined her own scribbles and arrows and question marks. In the last hour she’d made little progress in deciphering the relationships between the bits of information she’d collected.
“Mind if I pull up a chair?” Lauren filched a rented chair from a nearby assortment and set it beside Nicole’s. “I’ve been on my feet all morning, running every which way.”
Lauren’s efforts had paid off, Nicole thought. The fair had come together even without Quinn. Once they’d found Quinn’s planning notes, Lauren went into high gear with the details. If any of the planned activities were absent, no one would know. For nearly four hours now, the lawn was host to a steady stream of visitors.
“We’re almost there,” Lauren said. “In another couple of hours, we can declare the first community health fair a rousing success.”
“Quinn will be proud when he hears how you stepped in and pulled it off.” St. Louis, Nicole reminded herself. Quinn had been in St. Louis. He bought gas and dinner. He was all right. Or at least he had been a few days ago.
“Benita Booker is a lifesaver.” Lauren’s eyes scanned the grounds constantly, sweeping one direction and then arcing back again. “And Ethan saved the day after the pediatrician on Quinn’s list left us hanging.”
“I didn’t think Ethan liked kids, but he’s doing all right.” Nicole had checked the time on her phone only a few minutes ago. It wouldn’t be long now before Ethan left. Already he’d checked out of the motel on the other side of the lake and stowed the few personal belongings he traveled with in his Lexus for the drive back to Columbus.
“I’m sure he’ll stay in touch,” Lauren said softly. “It won’t be like before.”
“We haven’t made any promises.” Nicole fiddled to reunite the rescued pages with the rest of her collection of notes.
“Without you he would have found a reason to leave before now.”
“He took pity after I broke my ankle. That’s all.”
“Well, that’s not what I think.”
What did it matter? In a few hours, Ethan would be on his way to Columbus, and Nicole would have to figure out how to get home to St. Louis. She could take all her notes and photos with her. Maybe she’d get somebody to take her back out to the cemetery to look at Old Dom’s ledgers one more time first, but St. Louis might still be the best place to track Quinn’s recent movements. Nicole knew people there, and with the right provocation they would help her.
And then there was the matter of her job. It would be a lot easier to get to the bottom of whatever happened at the newspaper if she went home.
Nicole would miss Ethan. She was fooling herself if she thought otherwise. It had been easy to slip into the understanding they shared of each other’s lives. It had even been easy to slip into his embrace, into his kiss.
But it was all because of Quinn. They came to Hidden Falls to see Quinn. They stayed because Quinn disappeared. But they couldn’t remain in romantic nostalgia indefinitely. Ethan had to save his job, and Nicole had to find out whether she had one to save.
Lauren’s phone rang, and beside Nicole she dug into her pants pocket to pull it out.
“Not again,” Lauren muttered.
“Not again what?”
Lauren waved a hand across her face. “Just a wrong number. They keep calling.”
“Then why don’t you answer it and tell them they’ve got the wrong number?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Lauren Nock, you tell me what’s going on.” Nicole rotated in her chair as best she could to look more directly at Lauren. A minute ago Lauren’s face flushed with pleasure in the fair. The color that rolled through it now was anything but pleasure.
“I’ve gotten these calls,” Lauren said. “Actually, I don’t think they’re wrong numbers. It’s somebody’s sick idea of fun. I’ve been through it before, and I’ll get through it again.”
“Have you told Cooper? If you’re being harassed, he might be able to help.”
“No, I haven’t told Cooper. I hardly know him.”
That might have been true a week ago, but Nicole wasn’t blind. Although Cooper was supposed to be running his own booth, all day long he still managed to show up wherever Lauren was with impressive frequency. Nicole could see it all from where she sat—and it seemed to Nicole that Lauren was glad to see him. Lauren had come a long way from the reticence of the evening Cooper showed up with Sylvia at Lauren’s apartment bearing dinner.
“If you’re not going to tell Cooper, then tell me,” Nicole said.
Lauren crossed her legs. “There’s not a lot to tell. Somebody with an Oklahoma number keeps calling me, but they never say anything. Sometimes there’s noise but nothing I can identify.”
“So you stopped answering.”
Lauren nodded. “Voice mail kicks in. They still don’t say anything. I just get a message of strange sounds.”
“The same number every time?”
Lauren tilted her phone’s screen toward Nicole. “See? I didn’t answer, and now there’s a notice I have a voice mail. I’m just going to delete it again.”
Nicole reached for the phone. “Put in your password and let me listen to the message.”
“I’m telling you, it’s nothing. Street noises, whistling. Maybe I’m wrong and it’s not on purpose. It’s like someone is pocket dialing me. Maybe they don’t even know it.”
“Just let me listen.” What could it hurt for Nicole to hear the message? At worst, she’d be as puzzled as Lauren. At best, she’d have an idea for how to stop the bothersome calls.
Lauren tapped a few buttons on the screen, and Nicole lifted the phone to her ear to listen to the automated voice announce one unheard voice mail.
The message began—and Nicole’s heart crashed into her throat. She screamed.
Lauren snatched the phone out of Nicole’s hand.
“No!” Nicole nearly tipped over her chair lunging for the phone. “Don’t delete that!”
“Why not? What did you hear?”
“Have you deleted all the messages from this number?”
“Yes, of course.” Lauren’s finger was poised over the phone.
Nicole groaned. “I want you to listen to this one and tell me if you’ve heard that sound before.”
Lauren moistened her lips and then complied.
“Yes,” she said. “Not exactly the same. This was somebody whistling. Last time it sounded more like a tinny out-of-tune piano. But it’s the same tune.”
Sylvia Alexander rushed toward them. “I heard a scream. Is everybody all right?”
Ethan came out from behind the screen and hurriedly handed a form to a parent. “What happened? Your foot?”
Nicole shook her head. “Give me the phone, Lauren. I’m going to call that number back.” Trembling, she found the number in the phone’s log and tapped it. A few seconds later it rang four times. No one answered, and no one’s voice invited a message. In an unsteady hand, Nicole scrawled the number across the top of one of her note pages and checked it three times.
Nicole handed the phone to its owner. “Lauren, have you ever heard the tune before these calls started?”
“No.”
Nicole looked at the trio of expressions locked on her face. “Well, I have. It’s Quinn’s tune.”
“Quinn’s tune?” Sylvia echoed. “What are you talking about?”
Nicole could hardly breathe. Her pulse hadn’t raced this hard in a long time.
“After my mother died,” she said, “my father was so bereft he didn’t know what to do with me. But Quinn was there. He knew I was scared and lonely, and one day he said I needed a song.”
“What kind of song?” Ethan asked.
“A song that was just mine,” Nicole said. “It didn’t even have to have words. We sat at his piano and I picked some random notes. Quinn turned them into a few bars of music. After that he whistled them to me when he knew I was feeling low. Even in high school, when he saw me in the hall, he whistled those notes.”
Six eyes around her widened into stunned discs.
“That voice mail is someone whistling Quinn’s tune. It’s not Quinn—I would know his whistle—but no one could know that tune if they don’t know Quinn.” And it would have to be someone Quinn trusted. Why else would he share something that was just between him and Nicole?
Fifteen seconds passed before anyone spoke. Finally, Sylvia took control.
“We need to have a meeting, and we need to do it soon. We’re all circling each other with pieces of information that might be relevant, and it’s time to get everything on the table.” Sylvia checked her watch. “I want all of you to find a way to get away from your stations and meet me over behind the auction tables in thirty minutes.”
Nicole nodded.
“Lauren,” Sylvia continued, “get Dani, Jack, and Liam. And Cooper. Everybody we need is here today. Don’t take no for an answer.”
Ethan left to see another child waiting to have his tonsils examined, and Sylvia pivoted to march across the lawn to the silent auction.
“What just happened?” Lauren’s face blanched.
“You’ve been walking around with a clue for days.” Nicole stilled the shaking in her limbs.
“I didn’t know! I thought it was the guy who bullied me in high school.”
“No one’s blaming you,” Nicole said. “But Sylvia’s right. It’s time to find out what everyone knows.”
Lauren jaunted across the lawn and halted in front of Liam’s table.
Nicole hadn’t trusted anyone else to find Quinn, but she hadn’t found him, either. All of her digging through information hadn’t revealed why Quinn would leave Hidden Falls. It was Dani’s skills that turned up the lead that Quinn had been in St. Louis. Could he be in Oklahoma now?
Ethan dismissed his patient and came back around to kneel in front of Nicole. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know what to think, what to feel.” Breath was still elusive. “This could be big.”
“I hope it is. I hope it breaks Quinn’s disappearance wide open.”
Nicole’s stomach hardened. She didn’t want to hear what was coming next.
Ethan put a hand on her knee. “I have to leave as soon as the fair wraps up.”
“I know.”
“I hope you also know I don’t want to.” Ethan leaned toward Nicole. “Especially now.”
Nicole swallowed. “We’ll find Quinn. I’ll make sure he calls you.”
“Nicole.” Ethan’s voice thickened. “No regrets, right?”
She welcomed his kiss but felt the good-bye in it.
1:16 p.m.
Not everyone seemed eager to be there, but that didn’t deter Sylvia. She needed only enough cooperation to glean information.
“We don’t have much time.” Sylvia made no suggestion that anyone should sit down, not even Nicole. They stood a few yards away from the end of the silent auction table because it seemed like the best option for staying out of major traffic flow around the lawn while still observing the fair. Already Lauren had positioned herself to look out on the activities she felt responsible for.
“What are we doing here?” Liam looked like he could barely stand up.
“I’ll get right to the point.” Sylvia met each gaze around the circle. “You may not all know each other, but we all want to see Quinn come home. I’ve had enough conversations with each of you in the last few days to suspect that if we all threw our thoughts against a canvas, we might be surprised at the picture that resulted.”
Jack looked lost and defensive.
Liam clearly was exhausted by something other than Quinn’s disappearance.
Nicole’s face was white with intensity.
Ethan’s was full of remorse. Or dread.
Dani, as usual, wore a deadpan expression that meant she didn’t intend to invest herself in this conversation.
Lauren paled with confusion.
Cooper’s stance next to Lauren appeared protective.
“No offense, Cooper,” Sylvia said, “but we need to speed up the process of sorting things out. You and your team might not even be aware of some of the information floating around, so you can’t possibly evaluate whether it’s worth investigating. As mayor, I believe this conversation will be in the best interest of the whole town.”
“Please proceed, Your Honor.” Cooper crossed his wrists in front. “I respect both your authority and your wisdom.”
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Sylvia said. “One at a time, I’m going to ask you to share with the others what you’ve shared with me—or anything else you know that may be relevant. Think of this like a brainstorming session. There are no wrong answers. Every idea matters. We get everything out there, and then we decide what to do with it.”
Sylvia wasn’t sure whether the squinting in some faces was because of the sun—which wasn’t as bright as it had been earlier—or doubt about the usefulness of the analogy. As mayor, Sylvia had led enough meetings to understand that people don’t always know what they know and that how the pieces fit together mattered more than individual agendas.
“I’m depending on you to be straightforward,” Sylvia said. “Even if you think I already know something, the point is to tell everyone else. Understand?”
Heads nodded.
“Liam.” She pointed at him. “You first.”
He shifted his w
eight from one foot to the other. “I think what the mayor has in mind is my accidental discovery that Quinn uses a UPS box in Birch Bend. The number is similar to mine, and I mistakenly got a piece of his mail.”
“Why does he have a UPS box?” Cooper asked.
“That’s what we don’t know,” Sylvia said. “Keep going, Liam.”
He wrapped his arms across his belly and grasped his own elbows. “You mean the pictures?”
Sylvia nodded.
“I took pictures of the envelope before I turned it in, and I gave them to the mayor. I thought she might know something about it.”
“But I didn’t.” Sylvia turned her attention. “Jack? You were going to investigate the return address.”
Jack shrugged. “Sorry, I didn’t come up with anything. Whatever it is, it’s buried pretty deep.”
Sylvia saw Liam’s eyes flick toward Dani. “Liam, do you know something?”
“Only what Dani told me.”
All heads turned toward Dani, whose eyes had taken on a glare.
“It’s not buried so deep,” Dani said. “The envelope is a small holding of a detective agency. My guess is Quinn’s looking for someone and got the box in Birch Bend because he didn’t figure it was anybody’s business. Which it isn’t.”
“That fits.” Nicole adjusted the stance of her crutches. “He’s been doing genealogy research at the cemetery. You wouldn’t believe the books Old Dom has out there.”
Interest flickered through Dani’s eyes. “But at the cemetery he’d be looking for someone who is dead, someone who died in Hidden Falls. I don’t see how that fits with a detective agency in Pennsylvania.”
“I wonder if he went to Pennsylvania,” Sylvia said. “He came from back East somewhere.”
“Doubtful,” Jack said.
He was posturing because his own efforts had turned up nothing, and it irritated Sylvia. But she had said every idea mattered, and she held herself to her own instructions and didn’t comment.
“Jack is right,” Ethan said. “Quinn didn’t go east. He went west, to St. Louis.”
Hidden Falls Page 43