Hidden Falls (11 page)

The diagnosis was a bad projector bulb. The spare—if there was one—was in a closet at the high school.

Sylvia sucked in her breath, walked back to the stage, and stepped behind the microphone again. She was beginning to hate this.

The video booth.

The PowerPoint.

Both strategies were supposed to buy Sylvia some time while others searched the grounds for Quinn. What were the odds that both would fail in a matter of minutes? She had no more tricks up her sleeve for distracting people from the delay.

“I’m afraid technology has thrown us another curve,” she said. “We beg your indulgence once again while we discover what the actual order of events will be.”

She said nothing more before descending from the stage. Sylvia returned the smile of a frequent customer in her books and gifts shop and progressed toward the row of round tables closest to the stage, just short of the rectangular head table. Sylvia allowed her eyes to meet the gaze of her niece. Next to Lauren was Nicole Sandquist, and on the other side of Nicole sat Ethan Jordan.

Quinn would have liked that. He had said so just minutes ago. Nicole and Ethan together, and both of them with Lauren. Three of his favorite former students—perhaps the
most
favorite—at one table would have merited a whole-faced grin. Sylvia approached the table.

“Nicole. Ethan. I’m so glad to see you here,” she said. “I’m sorry the evening has taken such an unexpected turn.”

“Aunt Sylvia, what’s going on?” Lauren’s voice strained with query. “At first I thought it was nothing, just Quinn being funny. But it’s been half an hour.”

Thirty-three minutes, to be precise.
Sylvia pointed at the empty seats on the other side of the table. The place settings appeared disturbed enough to think someone had been there. “Who else is at this table?”

“The Gardners,” Lauren said. “And another couple I didn’t recognize.”

“Where are they now?”

“I don’t know. When Quinn didn’t come out and the applause died down, everybody got on their phones. The Gardners were calling all their kids.”

Sylvia laughed nervously. “It appears I am not to be trusted with the guest of honor. I let him out of my sight for five minutes and I lost him.”

“He seemed fine beforehand,” Nicole said.

“He was,” Sylvia said. “He absolutely was. Oh, he was protesting even up to the last minute that everything was over the top, but he gave me no reason not to expect his full cooperation.”

“Well,” Ethan said, “something changed.”

“I sent Miles on an errand,” Sylvia said, “and then we’ll have to make a decision.”

She scanned the room and almost didn’t recognize Cooper Elliott coming toward her in a black suit. Around town he was either in his two-toned blue sheriff’s department uniform or jeans and polos. The tailored black suit accentuated his height, even though Sylvia would not have described him as tall.

“Hello, Sylvia.” Cooper smiled at the entire table. “We’ve certainly had some drama tonight.”

“It’s all right,” Sylvia said. “You can speak freely.”

“Cooper Elliott.” He put out his hand toward Lauren, who took it. “Lauren Nock,” she said.

“I know.”

Sylvia saw the blush in her niece’s face. “Cooper Elliott, please meet Nicole Sandquist and Dr. Ethan Jordan.”

“Welcome to Hidden Falls.”

“Nicole and Ethan grew up in Quinn’s neighborhood, in addition to being students of his.”

“Then I’m sure you would like to find him safe.”

“Of course,” Nicole said. “This is all some kind of misunderstanding.”

“Cooper is with the sheriff’s department.” Sylvia’s feet suddenly ached.

“So you’ll look for Quinn, then,” Nicole said.

Cooper straightened his tie and buttoned his suit jacket. “While I am as curious as the next person about why Quinn didn’t come off that stage, I’m not sure yet we have anything to be alarmed about from a law enforcement perspective.”

“You don’t suspect foul play?” Sylvia asked.

“
Suspect
is a strong word,” Cooper said. “It’s too soon to suspect anything. All we can say for sure is that we don’t know what happened.”

“Obviously,” Nicole said. “Isn’t the real question
why
?”

Cooper shrugged. “How can we ask
why
if we don’t know what we’re discussing?”

Sylvia was desperate to give in to the rubbery sensation in her knees. “Can we please not talk in code? Cooper, are you not concerned about what happened to Quinn?”

“That’s my point,” he said. “We don’t know what happened to Quinn, so we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion of foul play.”

“How can you be so sure?” Sylvia said.

“We should be checking for his car,” Nicole said. “Ethan and I looked around the lot, wondering what he drives these days.”

“Same old green Olds,” Sylvia muttered.

Nicole and Ethan looked at each other. “We didn’t see that car. We would have recognized it.”

“Are you sure?” Cooper asked.

“Positive,” Ethan said. “We had quite the discussion about what Quinn would drive, actually. Seeing that old beater would not have slipped by us.”

“Well then,” Cooper said, “in my opinion the most likely scenario is that Quinn drove away. We’ll double-check the lot, of course.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Sylvia said. “He was fine. I told him what to do. He knew to stay on the mark.”

“Wait a minute,” Ethan said. “Even if Quinn did drive off, where would he go? Home? The lake?”

“We’re a small county,” Cooper said, “and he won’t cross the county line. He’ll turn up soon enough.”

Sylvia jumped when she felt a touch in the middle of her back.

Quinn used to touch her like that.

She spun around. “Miles.”

“I told Cooper he shouldn’t talk to you out in the open,” Miles said.

“It’s all right.” Sylvia waited for her heart rate to fall back into a normal range. “He thinks Quinn drove away of his own free will.”

“The caterer is going a little crazy,” Miles said. “She doesn’t want her reputation ruined by a disastrous event of this scale.”

“That’s a good idea, actually,” Cooper said. “Everybody’s getting hungry, but nobody wants to leave the premises without knowing the end of the story. They paid for a meal, so feed them. In the meantime, we’ll see if we can get Quinn back here.”

“I agree,” Miles said.

“I’ll go out to his house,” Sylvia said.

Cooper shook his head. “You are the public face of this event. You stay here. We’ll all stay here, but I’ll make sure a squad car goes.”

“Fair enough.” Sylvia took a deep breath. “Miles, get the sound system going again. Turn the houselights down.”

Sylvia gave Miles a head start and then climbed the steps to the stage and crossed to the podium.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “thank you once again for being with us tonight. We apologize for the delay in your dinner, but at this time we are going to ask the servers to begin with your Caesar salads. Your entrées will follow shortly. We all look forward to doing what we came to do, and that is to honor Ted Quinn for his unparalleled service to Hidden Falls.”

9:13 p.m.

Jack Parker smashed his dessert fork into the last crumbs of the cheesecake crust and transferred the result to his mouth. The servers had rushed the entrée on the heels of the salad, essentially serving them at the same time, but they had also done a good job of keeping the bread baskets full. Then dessert carts rolled between tables, and diners had their choice of cherry cheesecake, double chocolate cake, or apple pie. All in all, Jack thought it was a passable meal.

Too bad it was such a ruinous evening.

“Does anybody here think there’s really going to be a program?” Jack glanced around the table. He hadn’t met any of his tablemates before tonight other than Gianna, whose foot he ignored when it landed on his in exactly the manner he anticipated.

“Surely they’ve sorted it out by now,” said the woman across the table.

Raisa Gallagher. The color of her face hadn’t been the same since being caught in the collapse of the video booth. Jack had tucked her name away an hour ago when the group made nervous introductions. A homemaker with two small children, she was not likely to need his legal services unless her marriage crumbled. But he never knew, so Jack nodded cordially. Her mind was probably on whether the sitter had gotten the baby to sleep. Her husband, on the other hand, was an animated conversationalist who claimed to be an amateur inventor. Jack made a mental note to bone up on patent law. If she knew what he was thinking, Gianna would accuse him of being sexist. Jack preferred to think of his assessment as shrewd.

“I don’t see any sign of Quinn,” Jack said. “If everything’s all right, wouldn’t he be eating?”

Faces turned toward the head table, which Jack had watched all through the meal. Quinn had not turned up even for a moment. The mayor sat beside Quinn’s empty seat, but she didn’t eat. Members of the town council, all facing the main audience, leaned forward to talk to one another up and down the line, but their plates were removed with most of the food untouched. Jack had worked with plenty of jittery clients. In his observation, the guilty ones never lost their appetite even when their cases seemed doomed. The innocent who were scared—those were the clients who couldn’t make themselves take more than token bites.

Jack gestured that he wanted more coffee, and a server with a pot appeared to top off cups around the table. For both the sake of his business and peace in his household, Jack had not objected to coming to this banquet. He had even filled the time between Quinn’s disappearance and the start of the meal by introducing himself to people at nearby tables and making pleasant conversation, including nodding in concern at Quinn’s peculiar absence. But Quinn had been gone for an hour and a half now. The evening was a fiasco, and the sooner the dignitaries admitted the truth, the better it would be for everyone.

The server with the coffeepot wandered to an adjacent table, and in his place another balanced a large tray in one hand while deftly reaching with the other between diners to remove dessert plates and empty bread baskets and pile everything on the tray. The waitstaff were all on the clock. The caterer wouldn’t be eager to pay them extra because the program planners didn’t keep to a schedule. The mayor couldn’t stall much longer.

“I’m going to stretch my legs.” Jack pushed his chair back.

“You just asked for coffee,” Gianna said.

“I changed my mind.”

“Jack—”

“It’s all right, Gianna. I won’t be gone long.”

He sauntered toward the front of the room, putting to use everything he ever learned in trial settings about appearing confident and unflustered no matter how thin his case was. Jack had not represented a client before a judge in more than a year, but he could still taste the craving as if it sat on his teeth like tonight’s cheesecake.

Jack watched the waitstaff and timed his steps toward the mayor to follow the young woman who was removing dishes from the head table.

“Good evening, Mayor.”

Sylvia Alexander looked up. Jack assessed what her eyes revealed. It wasn’t the first time he saw irritation there, but the dominant sentiment was anxiety.

“I hope you enjoyed your meal, Jack,” she said.

“I can never decide whether to get the steak or the fish at these events,” Jack said. “Did you get a chance to eat in the middle of everything?”

“The servers were very attentive.” Sylvia folded her white napkin and laid it calmly on the table.

She didn’t answer his query, though.

“If there’s something I can do to help, I am at your disposal.” Jack crossed his wrists in front of him.

“Can you excuse me, Jack?” Sylvia stood up.

Jack followed her gaze to the end of the head table, where the high school principal assumed an expectant posture.

“Of course.” Jack stepped back from the table and casually turned toward the exit into the corridor that ran alongside the banquet hall. He paced through the exit, put his phone to his ear though there was no call, and nodded at several other dinner guests coming and going. When Jack slipped back into the dining room, pleasure flushed down his neck at the confirmation that he had hedged his bets accurately.

Sylvia Alexander huddled with Miles Devon and the young man Jack recognized from the sheriff’s office. Elliott something. No. Elliott was his last name. Officer Elliott, with a first name that sounded like a last name. Jack clucked his tongue in frustration that the man’s first name did not come to him.

“Cooper, what did you find out?” Mayor Alexander asked.

Cooper. That was it. Officer Cooper Elliott.

Jack inched closer, his silent phone still to his ear, and angled his face away from the trio.

“A squad car went to Quinn’s house,” Cooper said. “The place is locked up tight.”

“It always is,” Sylvia said. “And his car?”

“No sign of it. The squad car went up to the lake, too. If he took his car up there, he didn’t park in any of the usual places.”

“Where else would he go?” Miles Devon said.

“I called the station in Birch Bend and asked them to keep a look out,” Cooper said.

“Cooper,” Sylvia said. “Tell me straight. What do you think happened?”

Jack closed his eyes to concentrate on the voices. The pause seemed elongated to him.

“I’m not going to speculate,” Cooper said. “In the unlikely event of foul play—and I stress
unlikely
—we don’t need a bunch of rumors flying around town that people will trace back to us.”

“I think it’s safe to say the evening is over,” Miles said. “If we can’t produce Quinn, we don’t have anything left to do here.”

Jack heard Sylvia’s sigh.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “We have to handle things. But this is very unlike Quinn. Very.”

“Do you want me to make an announcement?” Miles offered.

“I’ll do it.”

“Keep it calm, Mayor,” Cooper said. “These circumstances are unusual for Hidden Falls, but the town may take your cue. And whatever you do, don’t answer any questions.”

Jack turned around in time to see Sylvia nodding. He dropped his phone in his pocket and picked up his pace, arriving back at his table just as the mayor took the stage.