Hidden Falls (18 page)

He was just exploring options, not making a commitment.

Liam had heard the rumors about Jack coming to town with his tail between his legs over some corporate scandal. Whether there was any truth to it or not, the suggestion had put Liam off getting to know Jack, even though Jack moved into the empty office suite in Liam’s building months ago. Of course Jack had all the requisite qualifications for taking over a law practice, and the rumor mill also said some of the clients were satisfied that the previous attorneys wouldn’t have turned over the business to a shyster. They intended to stay put unless Jack Parker gave them reason to look elsewhere for routine legal services.

Some
of the clients, Liam had noted in conversations around town, not
most.
Liam couldn’t afford to lose even some of his clients. It was hard enough to make a living as a financial consultant in a small town, traipsing all over the county every week—because if he waited for people to be willing to drive into town to meet at his office, he would never close a deal.

Now Liam felt some sympathy for Jack. News traveled fast in Hidden Falls because it didn’t have far to go before falling on fresh ears. If a rumor started that Liam had been unethical in his business, it might as well be on a billboard over the W
ELCOME TO
H
IDDEN
F
ALLS
sign. Whether it was true or not, his business would never recover.

As much as Liam hated to admit it, Jack Parker, attorney at law, might be just the person he would need on his side if the question of the missing funds blew up in his face.

Maybe the operative word was
when,
rather than
if.

Jack made his way across the café to the small table where Liam twiddled a fork.

“Heading to your office?” Liam asked.

“Thought I might. Just wanted a cup of coffee to take with me.”

“Sit down if you have time.” Liam gestured to an empty chair. “I’m about to order some myself.”

Jack hesitated but took a seat and raised a hand for Gavin’s attention. They ordered coffee. When Jack didn’t ask for his “to go,” Liam’s mind churned over the challenge of managing this conversation. He managed conversations every day, but the stakes were steep in this one.

“I’ve got fresh blueberry pie.” Gavin wagged his eyebrows and reached for Liam’s empty lunch plate.

“Let me buy you some pie, Jack.” Liam spoke quickly, before the opportunity faded.

“I was just lamenting that my lunch at home didn’t include dessert,” Jack said. “How about some ice cream on that pie, Gavin?”

“You got it. Two?” Gavin looked at Liam, who nodded.

“So as a lawyer,” Liam said after Gavin left, “you must find last night’s events curious. Have you dealt with missing person cases before?”

“In my experience,” Jack said, “there are two kinds of missing persons. Those who don’t want to be found, and those who have been strongly encouraged to go missing against their wills.”

“And Quinn? Do you have a theory about him?”

“I never actually met him. How well do you know him?”

“Not as well as some,” Liam admitted, “but we’re working on a business deal.” There seemed no harm in stretching that particular truth.

“Did he seem like someone who would up and walk out while five hundred people are applauding him?”

“I would have to say no.” That was the truth.

Jack turned his palms up. “There you have it, then. Somebody got to him.”

“Got to him?”

“A little chloroform, perhaps. A pistol in the ribs. A chop to the neck. It could happen any number of ways. The closed curtain was a perfect cover—and that blast, whatever it was.”

Liam grimaced. “That sounds a little dramatic.” Just how much time did Jack spend working on criminal cases compared to how much time he spent watching reruns of
Law and Order?
He hated to think that something like what Jack suggested actually happened.

Jack shrugged. “I’ve tried enough criminal cases to face facts. It happens.”

“I didn’t realize you were that kind of lawyer.”

“I spent a few years in criminal and a few years in corporate.”

“I see.” Either way, criminal or corporate, Jack could be of help to Liam—if it came to that. The combination could bode well.

Gavin returned with coffee and pie. Liam poured cream into his cup. Jack chunked off an ambitious bite of blueberries.

A commotion at the back of the café demanded their attention. A woman tripped over a chair and cried out, “My purse!”

Liam froze, but Jack bounded out of the booth and tackled a man with a lump under his sweatshirt. The thief sprang to his feet again and pulled his hood up to obscure his face. A woman’s purse tumbled to the floor as he careened out of the café. Jack picked it up and handed it to the distressed woman.

“Thank you!” She hugged Jack and returned to her table. Someone started a rhythm of applause. Jack gave a dignified bow.

Gavin Owens dashed out the door after the thief but returned almost immediately shaking his head.

Liam was flabbergasted as Jack slid back into his seat. “That was some quick thinking.”

“That’s how fast crime happens.” Jack picked his napkin up off the floor and sat back down. “Hidden Falls may be the kind of town where people think crime will never strike, but believe me, it happens everywhere. It just takes one person with one screw loose.”

“So you think that petty thief has a screw loose?” Liam stirred his coffee. “Or are you saying somebody mentally unstable has Quinn?”

“I’m just saying that anything could have happened. That poor woman came in for a sandwich, and look what happened to her.”

Liam picked at his pie. While he was as stunned as anyone by Quinn’s disappearing act last night, until this moment Liam hadn’t confronted probabilities. He swallowed a forkful of sweetened blueberries. If Quinn was taken against his will, his return was less predictable with every hour that passed. That meant Liam’s options were narrowing as well.

“It sounds like you’ve seen some serious cases.” Liam resumed his query for what he needed to know from this conversation.

“I’ve had my share.”

“What about on the corporate law side? You must see some hanky-panky there, too.”

Jack took a long sip of coffee. “Corporate law is all about money. Who has it. Who wants it. How they plan to get it. What price they are willing to pay. What they’ll do to avoid responsibility.”

Liam’s gut tightened at the relevance of every one of Jack’s points. He knew he didn’t have the missing money. So who did? And how did they get it? Liam had only suspicions he couldn’t prove—yet. If Liam didn’t figure out something soon, he would be responsible whether he liked it or not. He cleared his throat.

“I suppose some of it has to do with creative bookkeeping,” Liam said.

“More than a little. Corporate decisions often come down to technical interpretation and applied logic of the law.” Jack had nearly cleared his plate already.

“Doesn’t it ever come down to somebody covering up, say, embezzlement?”

“Only if they’re not very good at it. You’d be surprised what people get away with.”

“If they get away with it, how does anyone find out?”

“Eventually somebody slips. They get greedy, make one transaction too many, something outside the normal pattern of the accounts in question.”

“And what do the attorneys do when that happens?”

Jack fastened his gaze on Liam. “Attorneys always act in the best interest of their clients. That’s our job.”

Liam looked down at his pie, wishing that the accounts he questioned didn’t already meet Jack’s description. Maybe it had been going on for longer than he realized, and only now had someone gotten greedy and made the first transaction that caught Liam’s attention. Nobody would believe he didn’t know, that he hadn’t seen it sooner—that he hadn’t done it himself. He had to protect himself. His vision of his future dangled precariously.

“Thanks for the pie.” Jack laid his fork on his plate. “I think I’ll get a second cup of coffee to take with me.”

Liam picked up his briefcase, and they walked to the counter together, where Liam paid the bill before continuing down the street to his car. He drove south, toward the banquet hall. The parking lot was full once again. Liam guessed it was the sort of run-of-the-mill wedding reception that Jessica would have nothing to do with. Once he shut the engine off, he reached into his briefcase for the envelope. It was time to put it back—without raising questions about why he had it to begin with. Liam sat in his car and watched the front entrance for five torturous minutes. If he had worn a suit instead of jeans and a pullover, it would have been easier to go unnoticed. He concluded from the lack of foot traffic that events inside were in full swing. If he was lucky, they were doing toasts and giving speeches and cutting cake, traditions none of the guests would want to miss.

Liam tucked the envelope in his waistband and pulled his sweater down. He strolled toward the building, through the door, and down the hall with the certainty of belonging. Breaking in again wouldn’t be necessary—as easy as it would be. Liam squatted to position the envelope under the door before giving it a swift two-fingered push. The angle was strategic, sure to leave the envelope in a place where it might easily have fallen off the corner of the desk.

The ring of his phone jolted Liam. With hastening steps, he answered it. “Hi, Jessica.”

His brain didn’t register her words. Liam powered past the doors from the banquet hall that opened into the hallway. When he heard steps behind him, he didn’t turn. No one saw his face. Still on the phone, he sank into the driver’s seat.

The envelope was out of his hands.

And he had what he needed from its contents.

5:12 p.m.

“I want to be kept in the loop at every step.” Sylvia strode across her kitchen as she spoke into the phone, pivoted, and retraced her steps. “No matter how small the detail, tell me. It might mean something to someone who knows Quinn well.”
Like me.

“Mayor,” Cooper Elliott said on the other end of the phone, “if there were something to tell you, I would. We’ve towed the car to a police holding lot. Tomorrow we’ll see if we can get an investigator on it, someone with some forensics experience. We don’t exactly have that specialty in Hidden Falls.”

“I want to know the results.”

“They won’t be instantaneous. Even if they find prints or fibers, a lot of people have been in Quinn’s car.”

“Thank you, Cooper. I’ll be in touch.” Sylvia hung up the landline just as her cell phone sang the tune reserved for her niece. “Hello.”

“Aunt Sylvia,” Lauren said. “I wanted to see how you are.”

“Bordering on frazzled.” Sylvia sat down and put her elbows on the kitchen table. “Did you sleep?”

“Yes,” Lauren said. “Some.”

“Good.” Sylvia’s phones had been ringing in rapid succession all afternoon. Members of the town council. Quinn’s neighbors. People from Our Savior. Everybody wanted to be the first to know when she heard from Quinn. Opinion seemed uniform that if Quinn would contact anyone, it would be Sylvia.

She hoped so.

She was an intelligent, educated, thoughtful person, a leader in her town. And she couldn’t think of one useful action she could take to help find Quinn.

“Aunt Sylvia?”

Lauren’s voice pulled Sylvia back to the moment.

“Yes, I’m here.”

“I’ve been going through my folder on the health fair,” Lauren said. “Some of the information is old, I’m sure, but I see a note about items from your store. I’m not sure what it refers to.”

“I told Quinn I would donate a few things for the silent auction,” Sylvia said. “At least, Quinn was going to look at them and decide if he thought they would sell.”

“Do you mind if I have a look instead?”

“Sure.” Sylvia admired Lauren’s practical approach. If Quinn were found well and safe before Saturday, he could still run the fair. But if not, Lauren had to be ready.

“Would tonight be too soon?”

Sylvia crossed the kitchen again and looked out into the living room, where Emma sat with a magazine in her lap. “Nana is still here. I want to give her another good meal, and then I’ll take her home. I could meet you at the shop about a quarter to nine.”

They said good-bye, and Sylvia set the cell phone down on the kitchen counter. She walked into the living room. “I’m sorry for all the phone calls, Mom. As you can imagine, everyone is worried.”

Emma didn’t answer.

Sylvia angled toward the chair where Emma sat with her eyes closed, her chin on her chest, and her hands slack over the magazine in her lap. Emma’s chest lifted in a slow breath. Relieved, Sylvia put a hand against Emma’s cheek. “Mom?”

Emma’s eyes fluttered open. “I dozed off, didn’t I?”

“How long have you been asleep?” With her spoken question, Sylvia also indicted herself for how long she had been on the phone and not paying attention to her mother.

Emma looked out the front windows. “It wasn’t this dark when I sat down with a magazine. What am I reading, anyway?”

Sylvia flipped the magazine closed in Emma’s lap.

“Goodness,” Emma said. “This is some sort of mayors’ magazine. No wonder it put me to sleep.”

Sylvia hadn’t noticed when Emma picked up the magazine. Who had she been on the phone with when her mother stopped puttering with Sylvia’s houseplants and sat down?

“I haven’t been very good company today,” Sylvia said.

“I know,” Emma said. “The whole town is in trouble because Quinn went missing.”

“It seems that way.”

“And you are the mayor, after all.”

“That’s right.”

“I should go home.”

“Let’s have supper first, and then I’ll take you.”

“What do you have?”

Sylvia smiled. That was just like Emma, always one to find out what the options were before committing herself.

“Frozen spinach mozzarella ravioli,” Sylvia said.

“I do like spinach. And mozzarella. And ravioli.”

“I have fresh salad greens, too.”

Emma scrunched her nose. “Salads are so much work to eat. An old lady should be able to take a pass on a bowl of weeds.”