Hidden Falls (23 page)

“That can’t be. They print photos of all the faculty.”

Marv shook his head. “There are always a few who find themselves in a catchall category of ‘not pictured.’ Quinn is always in it.”

“For more than thirty years? How can that be?”

“I’m just telling you the way it is.” Marv’s desk phone rang and he snatched it up. He spun his chair around.

Nicole could only hear Marv’s side of the conversation, which consisted of a string of grunts and indefinite sounds, but the mention of Quinn’s name urged her out of her chair to stand in front of Marv’s desk.

He hung up the old phone and spun back around. “They found his glasses.”

“Where?”

“In the glove compartment,” Marv said. “They weren’t even cracked.”

Quinn had worn glasses for driving at night for as long as Nicole had known him. “But that means—”

“That’s right. Quinn wasn’t driving his car.”

“But was he in it?”

“That’s the question everybody’s asking. If he was a passenger, then somebody out there knows something.”

4:36 p.m.

Jack kept both hands on the steering wheel of his dated BMW, but he was watching his daughter more than he was looking for the puppy. They’d been at this for almost three hours, first on foot in their immediate neighborhood and then expanding the search radius in the car. His shoe barely touched the accelerator as they crawled down one side street after another. Brooke’s window was down and she hung her head and arms outside its frame. Every few minutes she ducked her head inside to glance at the dashboard clock, and each time she looked a shade paler to Jack. Gianna spent the entire morning searching, and Jack the whole afternoon. He was beginning to wonder what the statistics were about finding lost puppies that had been missing for more than eight hours. Roxie could be trapped in a hole, spattered on the highway, or perfectly healthy and contentedly wandering the miles of woods along the river and around the lake. Or she might be safe in the arms of another child who thought God had overridden the will of parents and answered a prayer for a puppy.

“Roxie has her tags on, right?” Jack fished for some encouragement.

“Mom never lets me take the collar off.” Brooke answered from outside the vehicle.

The BMW was moving so slowly that Jack figured Fred Flintstone could power it faster with his feet on the pavement. All afternoon Jack had tried to recall the conversations with Gianna about putting a chip in Roxie’s shoulder that would identify her wherever she ended up. He hadn’t been invested in the decision because he wasn’t invested in the puppy.

“What about a chip?” he finally asked. “Did Mom get the chip?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good,” he said. “You know that, right?”

Brooke nodded.

“If someone finds her, it will be easy to find us, too.”

“Only if they want to find us.” Brooke rested her chin on her arms, filling the bottom rim of the open window. Jack could see only the back of her head.

He turned the corner into the next block. They were miles from their own neighborhood. Was it possible a three-month-old puppy could find her way home from this distance? He didn’t know.

“Stop the car!” Brooke fumbled with the lock.

At the speed they were traveling, it didn’t take much pressure on the brake to stop. Jack put the car in P
ARK,
and Brooke scrambled out. He didn’t know what she’d seen, but he couldn’t just sit in the car while his frantic thirteen-year-old hurtled down the street. Jack felt his age as he tried to keep up.

They came to a corner, and she stopped.

“What did you see?” Jack tried to catch his breath.

“It was Roxie. I’m sure of it. She ran this way, but now I’ve lost her.” Brooke cupped her hands around her mouth to shout, “Roxie! Here, girl!”

Jack scanned the area but saw no movement to suggest the presence of a puppy. Maybe Brooke only saw what she hoped to see.

“There’s an alley.” Brooke began trotting down a narrow strip of road that led to garages behind several houses. When they emerged from the alley, a young man was getting out of a parked car.

“Did you see a puppy?” Brooke asked.

The man slammed his car door. “Brown?”

“Yes! And black. Was she brown and black?”

“I didn’t notice the black.” With his thumb he pushed a button on his clicker and his car doors locked. “That dog just about gave me a heart attack. Almost didn’t see it in time.”

“Thank you for not hitting my dog.” Brooke rubbed her hands on her denim-clad thighs. “Did you see which way she went?”

He pointed, and Brooke began running down the street calling the dog’s name.

Jack’s stomach sickened at the thought of the puppy under the tire of a car or tossed to the roadside. There was no telling how many drivers that day had braked for a puppy oblivious to the danger. The imminent darkness would soon bring a stop to their search. Keeping an eye on Brooke, Jack pulled out his phone and hit Gianna’s number on his contact list as he followed his daughter.

“Jack, where are you?”

“Some old neighborhood to the west. Brooke thinks she saw the dog.”

“Then you’re close.”

“Maybe, maybe not. We don’t know for sure it was Roxie, and she’s nowhere in sight now.” He moved his phone to the other ear. “It’s going to get dark, Gianna. How realistic is it to keep looking?”

“She won’t want to stop.”

“I know. But we put a chip in the dog for a reason. Someone will call.”

Gianna sighed into the phone. “I’ll start dinner. You see if you can get Brooke to come home.”

Gianna had the easier job, Jack thought as he dropped his phone back in his pocket and lengthened his stride to catch up with Brooke.

“Do you see her?” Jack scanned a block for the hundredth time that day.

“We have to knock on doors again.” Brooke marched toward a house. If there was a system to her choice, Jack didn’t discern it.

“We’ll make posters,” he said. “You can print them on the good photo printer, and I’ll help you get them up first thing tomorrow.”

Brooke halted. “Are you saying we should stop looking for Roxie?”

“Sweetheart, it’s going to get dark. I think we have to call it a day.”

“But we’re so close! We can’t stop now.” Brooke punched her hands into the pockets of her hoodie and fixed her stare at her father’s face.

Even if the dog Brooke spotted was the right puppy, she could be four blocks in any direction by now. It was like starting the search all over again.

“I just talked to Mom,” Jack said. “She thinks we should come home, too.”

“Fine. You go.” Brooke turned away. “I’m not leaving without Roxie.”

“Brooke, come on. I promise we’ll look again tomorrow.”

Her face scrunched. “One more block. Please?”

Jack blew out his breath. “All right. But if no one has seen her in this block, we need to go home.”

He stood on the sidewalk and watched her knock on one door, her shoulders raised in hope only to droop again as she turned around. At the second house, he saw the way she swallowed back her fear, but the woman in the door frame still shook her head. Jack held his tongue. He had promised her the whole block. She would be disappointed enough without being rushed.

In front of the third house, Jack took out his phone to look for an icon announcing a voice mail or text message.

“Dad!”

He glanced up. Brooke waved him up to the porch.

“They found a puppy. Just now!”

Jack raised his eyes to the middle-aged woman who stood on the step.

“That’s right,” the woman said. “I just put her in the garage. She wouldn’t hold still long enough for me to get a look at her tags yet, but when I saw her in the yard, I knew a puppy that young and frisky had to be lost.”

“Let’s have a look,” Jack said. It did sound like Roxie.

The woman led the way to the detached garage, set slightly back from the house, and opened a side door. As soon as the light went on, the puppy pranced across the garage.

Brooke gathered the dog in her arms and buried her face in Roxie’s fur. Jack had never seen such joy and relief on his daughter’s face.

“Let’s go home,” Jack said to Brooke. He extended a hand to Roxie’s rescuer. “Thank you. You’ve made my daughter very happy.”

Brooke strapped herself into the backseat of the car where she could play with the puppy. Jack paused long enough to send Gianna a text.

F
OUND
R
OXIE.
C
OMING HOME.

As he drove, he glanced in the rearview mirror every few minutes. When he pulled into his own driveway, Gianna and Eva clambered down the front steps and out to the car, both eager to get their hands on the dog. Gianna looked over the heads of their girls and mouthed, “Thank you.” Inside, Colin turned off the enormous flat screen and welcomed Roxie with her favorite green chew toy.

Jack closed the front door behind him and leaned against it. Not many things rallied his family. He was as guilty as any of his children of being antsy to be on his own, to be released from family togetherness and let his mind chase down what interested him. The moment before him now was the stuff of Christmas letters he rarely bothered to read, from people he barely knew anymore.

And he savored it in all its unfamiliarity.

He’d lost the entire afternoon. With a start, Jack remembered his promise to Sylvia Alexander to drive out to the lake and look for Dani Roose to see if she would help restore the mayor’s bookshop. There seemed no point in driving out there now. Sylvia would have already tracked down Dani or made other arrangements. Whatever opportunity he’d seen that morning on the sidewalk with Sylvia and Lauren had evaporated.

A timer sounded in the kitchen, and Gianna left the puppy frolics to respond to whatever the noise meant. Jack followed her and went to the sink to wash his hands.

“Thank you.” Gianna opened the oven and pulled out a casserole. “I don’t know what we would have done with Brooke if you hadn’t found the dog.”

“Brooke found her.” Jack snapped a paper towel off the roll and dried his hands. “I just did the driving.”

“We have to stop talking about puppy training and actually find someone to help us.” Gianna poked a fork into the hot dish and tasted the concoction. “I don’t ever want to go through this again.”

“I agree.”

Gianna took a bagged salad out of the refrigerator. “I’ll make some calls first thing in the morning.”

Jack opened a cupboard and removed five plates. He had watched deep dread roll through his youngest child that afternoon, but he’d also seen powerful resolve he’d never suspected she possessed.

5:03 p.m.

Sweat pooled at Liam Elliott’s hairline all day, dripping onto the collar of his blue dress shirt and wicking through its fibers in a ring of perspiration that choked him every time he swallowed. He drank nine cups of coffee in a desperate effort to force his brain to see a way out. The piles on his desk, lugged from his apartment, were less haphazard now. He had sorted and re-sorted the papers and made his eyes bloodshot comparing printed numbers with the ones on the screen as he tried every display option available in the software.

An auditor would have to be an idiot not to conclude that Liam had embezzled seventy-three thousand dollars of his investors’ money. Clearly the money was missing. Two thousand here. Four thousand there. Seven hundred from one of the smaller individual accounts, but seven thousand from a more robust company retirement fund. If he were going to embezzle, this would be the way to do it—amounts that would suggest an individual merely had an off quarter. The funds Liam managed were meant to yield well over the long term. An occasional dip didn’t cause alarm.

But Liam hadn’t done this.

And he couldn’t take the chance that anyone would think he had—or reach the same suspicion that made more and more sense to him. Liam needed time. If he could get a couple of major investments, perhaps he could camouflage the records while he sorted out what really happened. The key was not to make things worse.

Liam clicked open his own account. For someone who made a living by impressing on people the necessity to plan for the future, he hadn’t done a very good job for himself. It wasn’t enough, and most of it was locked in at a disappointing rate for several more years anyway. If he invaded the joint wedding savings account he and Jessica held, he would have to come up with a credible explanation. He couldn’t just tell her what he was doing.

Now
that
would make things worse. There wasn’t nearly enough money in the account anyway.

He rummaged on his desk for the new-leads file he should have been working on all day. With his Bluetooth in place to free up his hands, he dialed a number.

“Hello, Mr. Plainfield. This is Liam Elliott, just following up on our conversation a couple of weeks ago.”

“Oh, right. You’re the investments guy.”

Liam had learned long ago to push past the lukewarm reception he initially heard in people’s voices. He wasn’t trying to sell people something they didn’t need, but a service to help them achieve an important financial goal.

“We only chatted for a few minutes,” Liam said. “What evening would be convenient for me to meet with you and talk further?”

“I appreciate your interest, but we’re not really in a position to consider investments right now.”

“It doesn’t take much each month to make a big difference down the line.” Sweat trickled down the center of Liam’s back.

“I know that’s what they say,” Dave Plainfield said, “but we’re just not there.”

“I’d be happy to look at your budget with you. Confidentially, of course. That’s one of my free services. My clients are often surprised at how painless it is to find a few dollars.”

“I have your card,” Dave said. “When we’re at a better place, I’ll call you.”

The call cut off. Liam would never hear from Dave Plainfield again. He dialed another number.

“Mrs. Gallagher? This is Liam Elliott at Midwest Answers. We met the other night at the banquet.”

“Oh yes. That certainly was an evening none of us can forget. Have you heard anything about Quinn?”

“No, I’m afraid I haven’t. I’m sure he’ll turn up soon.”
Not soon enough,
Liam thought. If Liam still believed he would be managing Quinn’s money soon enough to camouflage the missing funds—at least temporarily—he wouldn’t have called a long shot like the Gallaghers or toyed with a stolen bank account number. “Would it be more convenient for me to drop by on Wednesday or on Thursday to talk with you and your husband?”