Hidden Falls (24 page)

A baby squalled in the background. Liam heard Raisa Gallagher shuffle across the room.

“I’ll ask my husband to call you,” she said. “He’s the one who handles most of our financial matters.”

“Of course. Can I leave my number?”

“Let me find a pencil.”

Raisa shuffled around again. Liam heard the baby, probably on her hip now, cooing. He rattled off two phone numbers and hung up.

These two pitiful calls had been his best leads. He had meetings set up with three businesses to discuss retirement plans, but not for another two weeks. That could be too late.

Missing or not, Quinn was his best shot. But if Jack Parker was right and Quinn was taken against his will, Quinn would be another dead end.

Liam rubbed his eyes, as if he could rub out the word that had crossed his mind.
Dead.
Even if Quinn didn’t come on as a client, Liam certainly didn’t want to imagine him dead.

There was still the mayor’s office. Liam needed a way to jump over a lesser official who was the gatekeeper of town finances and have a direct conversation with Sylvia Alexander. He opened a new file on his computer to put together a fast proposal for what he could do for the town’s investments if she gave him a chance.

He heard footsteps on the stairs leading to his second-floor office in one of the old downtown buildings and clicked open his calendar. Had he forgotten an appointment, someone coming by after work?

No.

That would have been too easy. Liam’s entire day had been appointment-free, not a good sign in his line of work.

The footsteps stopped at the top of the stairs, outside Liam’s office, rather than passing down the hall to one of the other businesses, perhaps to Jack Parker’s office. His door opened.

Jessica entered and immediately leaned across the desk to offer a juicy kiss.

“Let’s go to dinner.” Her voice was velvet. “We can drive over to Birch Bend and get away from the doom and gloom around here.”

“Doom and gloom?” Liam’s head tilted back. What did Jessica know?

“About Quinn,” she said. “Everywhere I go, it’s all anyone is talking about. The world didn’t spin off its axis.”

Liam clicked the space bar on his keyboard, tempted to say he needed to spend the evening working. The truth was, he wasn’t sure he could keep hiding from Jessica the reason for his recent intense burst of work. Just the day before yesterday he promised to spend more time with her.

Jessica came around the desk for a proper embrace and settled her lips on his again. She was still in the dress she wore to work, with no jacket. Liam could feel the heat of her skin under his hands at her waist.

She broke the kiss, cocked her head, and smiled. “You’re not seriously going to tell me you have a better offer.”

He swallowed and stepped back to turn off his computer.

6:34 p.m.

Nicole always preferred to run. Ethan wondered if she still did. As children, though he was stronger, Nicole was nimbler than Ethan. Inevitability this was her advantage.

Ethan had spent the afternoon hiking the sloped banks of the river, the shore circling the lake, the path cutting across the top of the falls. While he took advantage of the opportunity for photos, he also looked for people. Theoretically it was possible someone living closer to nature than to downtown would not have heard of Quinn’s disappearance and perhaps had seen him and not thought it unusual. It was also conceivable that among the visitors who were a routine sight among the waterways was someone whose behavior made a Hidden Falls resident take pause.

It was a matter of asking the right questions, a diagnostic process that sifted symptoms until settling on the answer that made sense to pursue. Ethan did it every day. Now he had spent most of Monday doing the same thing around the lake.

He found a stump and sat down to read again the hours-long exchange of text messages with Nicole.

It had started when she wrote, T
HEY FOUND HIS GLASSES.
Q
UINN WASN’T DRIVING.

F
OUL PLAY NOW?
he answered.

O
FFICIALLY NO COMMENT.

W
HAT’S UP WITH THIS
C
OOPER DUDE?

N
OT MUCH.
T
IGHT-LIPPED.

Ethan couldn’t blame Cooper Elliott for withstanding the temptation to speculate. In itself, the fact that Quinn wasn’t driving meant nothing about his volition at the moment of departure from the banquet hall. It did, however, increase the odds that someone out there had seen Quinn.

Unless …

Unless Quinn’s disappearance and his car’s disappearance were unrelated. Ethan turned the theory over in his mind, not quite persuaded. He scrolled to a later message.

I
’M FINDING DIDDLY-SQUAT IN THE NEWSPAPER ARCHIVES.

N
OTHING OUT HERE EITHER,
he had answered. N
O ONE
I’
VE RUN INTO HAS SEEN ANYTHING UNUSUAL.

I
’LL GO TO
B
IRCH
B
END TOMORROW.

W
HAT’S THERE?

C
OUNTY CLERK’S OFFICE.
Y
OU NEVER KNOW.

Ethan wasn’t sure what Nicole could expect to find among mundane public records. And hadn’t she said she already checked out property taxes and the like on the Internet? Since he would be rounding at the hospital in Columbus by the time Nicole woke up, he held his questions. Apparently her experience as a reporter told her public records could yield secrets—or at least bread crumbs on the trail—if she looked hard enough.

His phone sounded a text alert.

S
TILL UP FOR DINNER?
Nicole’s message said.

Ethan would need a few minutes to walk back to his car.

He thumbed, 7:30?

S
EE YOU THERE.

Almost immediately the phone rang, and Ethan touched A
NSWER
on the screen. “Hansen, I don’t want bad news.”

“The chief is going out of town. It just came up a couple hours ago. Some convention where the hospital needs him to fill in at the last minute.”

Ethan began striding along the path back to his car, aware that his pulse had just accelerated. “How long?”

“His admin says three days. They’ve culled the surgical schedule to emergencies only. You know how he is.”

“Likes to see everything that goes on.”

“Right.”

“So he won’t know if I’m not there,” Ethan said.

“No guarantees. Right now you’re not on the board for any procedures. Take your chances.”

“I just might. Thanks, Hansen.”

Ethan walked faster. He was still a good fifteen minutes from his Lexus. Leaves crunched under his feet as he hustled toward the orange span of the setting sun. His hand was on the driver’s door handle when his phone rang again. Brinkman. Ethan answered.

“Just checking to see if you’re on your way.”

Ethan had no patience for the sneer he heard in Brinkman’s tone. “Change of plans.”

“No can do. We’re busy.”

“You’re losing your edge, Brinkman.” Ethan sat in the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition. “I know Gonzalez left town.”

“Which makes us three surgeons short instead of two.”

“We all know what happens to the surgical schedule when Gonzalez leaves town. You don’t need me.”

“People still get sick.”

“I’ve got some stuff here to take care of. I’ll let you know.” Ethan ended the call before Brinkman could bluster further, sure that he had just bought himself an additional day in Hidden Falls.

Nicole had reached the restaurant first. Ethan saw her sitting at the table in the Main Street window of Eat Right Here. She always wanted to be where she could see what was going on, even in their tree house and comic book days. An amber light in a tightly woven wicker shade hung over her head, creating a dome of golden illumination that made Ethan sit in his parked car to savor the sight of Nicole studying the menu. The years shivered through him—a decade of lost years, and decades more ahead. As long as he didn’t see Nicole, he’d persuaded himself the past was behind him. Now he wasn’t so sure. Bound together again by Quinn even in his absence, Ethan and Nicole had sampled their old familiarity, the recognition of fleeting expression, the memories they alone would share if Quinn didn’t come home.

And whether or not Quinn returned, when Ethan left Hidden Falls, this spell would break. How could it not? He pulled the key from the ignition, got out of his car, stowed his camera out of sight, and clicked the L
OCK
button on his keychain. When he opened the door of the restaurant, Nicole looked up and smiled. Her dark hair hung loose around her face above a peach sweater.

Ethan slid into a chair across from her. “Good news. I’m not leaving tonight.”

Her gasp delighted him.

“Can you go to Birch Bend with me tomorrow?” she said.

“I don’t see why not.”

Her face clouded over. “You know the trail is two days cold now.”

Ethan accepted the menu the waiter handed him. “If it’s any comfort, I don’t think Quinn is sick. We’ve covered a lot of ground along the water and trails and talked to a lot of people who would’ve noticed him. Nothing.”

“But you said he could have wandered off disoriented from the accident.”

“That’s when we assumed he was in the car in the first place.”

“I know. Maybe he was, but maybe he wasn’t. But that makes even less sense.” Nicole unwrapped the napkin around her flatware and put it in her lap. “I’m so frustrated—and worried.”

Ethan laid down the menu that refused to come into focus. He would just ask for a hamburger and keep the decisions easy. He said, “I would lay odds that Quinn left town.”

“But people in Birch Bend know to be looking for him. Somebody would have called Cooper Elliott.”

“What if he went farther than Birch Bend?”

“You think that Quinn left on his own and that he left the
county
?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

Nicole shook her head. “I’ve talked to Marv Stanford, Sylvia Alexander, Lauren Nock, and a dozen people I’ve run into in town. They all say Quinn still doesn’t leave the county.”

“No one can know
everything
another person does.”

She pressed her lips together. Ethan could almost see the synapses firing in her brain as she tried to construct meaning from their conversation.

“His car is smashed,” Nicole said, “and the bus stop is pretty far out on the highway. No trains run through Birch Bend after five o’clock on a Saturday night.”

“I don’t claim to have all the answers. We have to be sure we’re asking the right questions.”

The waiter appeared. Ethan deferred to Nicole to order first and wasn’t surprised when she made the same choice of a no-fuss burger and avoided protracted conversation about side dishes.

“What do you make of the break-in at the mayor’s shop?” Ethan picked up his water glass, suddenly realizing how thirsty he was.

“Lauren seemed pretty rattled when I ran into her.” Anticipating the arrival of a plate, Nicole arranged her fork on one side and knife and spoon on the other. “She’s pretty close to Quinn these days, and now the news about her aunt’s shop … It’s a lot to take in, but she says she’s trusting God. It turns out she walks as much as she does because that’s how she prays.”

Ethan flicked up his eyebrows. He’d left behind that way of looking at the world. Lauren’s exercise would be good for her health, but praying wasn’t going to find Quinn.

8:18 p.m.

Liam hardly ate any dinner, but he drank a lot of coffee.

Jessica, though, lingered over both
calamari alla piastra
and
insalata caprese
before the
ziti boscaliola
and
spinaci
arrived. Now she flipped the dessert card back and forth.

“I can’t decide between the tiramisu or the chocolate-filled cinnamon pumpkin roll.”

“You can always get one to go,” Liam said. Beneath the table, his left leg jiggled and he wasn’t sure he could stop it even if he tried. When the server came by with a fresh pot of coffee, Liam nudged his cup to within her easy reach.

“Are you planning an all-nighter?” Jessica put a finger on the picture of the tiramisu.

If she had any idea how much coffee Liam had consumed before arriving at Vittorio’s nearly two hours earlier, she didn’t let on. But even what she had seen him drink was considerable this late in the evening.

“I had a rough day.” Liam forced himself not to guzzle the steaming coffee.

“Then you should relax. If you weren’t happy with what you ordered, you could still get something else. I’m in no hurry.”

Clearly.

The evening was early still. Liam and Jessica never let their morning work schedules dictate how late they stayed out or what time either of them left the other’s apartment. He couldn’t simply suggest they cut off the meal without dessert.

“I haven’t had much appetite the last couple of days,” he said. “But you get whatever you want.” In his mind, Liam was already adding up the expense of this meal. Perhaps if they had fewer extravagant dinners they would have saved enough for their wedding long before this.

He doubted it, though. The price tag on the wedding Jessica dreamed of seemed to increase with every conversation about it. She was up to seven bridesmaids, which meant he would have to find seven groomsmen. His brother, Cooper, could be best man, but that still left six vacancies. Hidden Falls had a dozen churches, and with the right decorator the banquet hall could be far more attractive than it had been for Quinn’s dinner—but Jessica wouldn’t hear of getting married in Hidden Falls. She had in mind the ballroom at a swanky Chicago hotel or a chartered boat with their vows coming at a precise moment on the middle of Lake Michigan, followed by an exquisite sit-down dinner. And considering the guest list she had in mind, the boat would have to be a high-end yacht.

Despite her expensive tastes, he loved her. No one made him feel the way she did.

Liam wanted to figure things out so he could live happily ever after and never speak the thoughts that overflowed his mind now. He watched her lips move and heard the silkiness of her tone against the controlled, dim hush of Vittorio’s carefully appointed interior, but her words didn’t register. The shirt collar he had perspired onto all day was uncomfortably dank, and he wished he had stopped by home to change before driving to Birch Bend.