Hidden Falls (58 page)

“Ah. Gonzalez still running that program?” Dr. Glass asked.

Ethan blinked.

Dr. Glass laughed. “Did you think a small-town doctor like me wouldn’t know his reputation?”

“I meant no disrespect, sir.”

“He was full of himself even in med school.”

Ethan allowed himself a half smile. “You know Dr. Gonzalez?”

“I’m not sure he’d admit to knowing me. We had rather differing perspectives on the human side of practicing medicine when we started out, but I have no doubt he runs a fine residency.”

“I’m there because of him.”

“Despite his quirks.”

Ethan relaxed. He liked Dr. Glass.

“Where are you going when you finish?” Dr. Glass asked.

Ethan shrugged. First he had to figure out if he still had a residency to finish. If he survived this crisis, maybe the hospital in Columbus would keep him on. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“I’ve been trying to retire for years. I send as many surgical cases as I can somewhere else, but they keep calling me in for emergencies. We could use someone like you around here.”

Ethan smiled blandly. “I’m not sure Hidden Falls is for me.” He was sure it wasn’t.

“You’re here now.”

“I came for Quinn’s banquet last weekend.”

“Well, we all know how that went, don’t we?” Dr. Glass stood up. “Let’s go see our patient.”

They stopped at the nurses’ station, and Nurse Wacker handed Dr. Glass a chart. He read the overnight notes and then handed it to Ethan.

“See?” Dr. Glass said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

Relieved, Ethan agreed. The radiologist’s notes on the CT scan mentioned nothing remarkable, and other than a mild headache and residual memory issues, Lauren had no significant symptoms.

When they entered her room, Lauren gave them a drowsy grin. “They’re not going to charge me extra for two doctors, are they?”

“Maybe you’re just seeing double.” Ethan held a finger up to see if she would follow it with her eyes and then automatically lifted the bedding off her feet to check her response to his touch.

“I feel everything I’m supposed to feel,” she said.

As he checked Lauren’s grip, Ethan glanced at Sylvia, settled in the chair beside the bed. “Is she behaving herself?”

“I’m here to be sure she does,” Sylvia said.

“Do you remember what happened?” Ethan asked.

“Not exactly. But I remember that Aunt Sylvia told me what happened. Does that count?”

He nodded. “It counts for something.”

Ethan listened while Dr. Glass asked some questions about headache and nausea and made some notes in Lauren’s chart.

“I’d like to keep you until we’re clear of the twenty-four-hour mark,” Dr. Glass said. “But right now I don’t see any reason why you should spend another night in the hospital.”

“You can come home with me,” Sylvia said, “at least for a night.”

“What about Nicole?” Lauren asked. “I’m supposed to be looking after her.”

“She can come, too, if she’d like,” Sylvia said.

“Nicole’s in the waiting room,” Ethan said. “She’ll be glad to hear you’re doing better.”

“Your friends can visit now.” Dr. Glass clicked his pen closed and slipped it into the pocket of his white coat. “But they shouldn’t stay long.”

With a wave, Dr. Glass left the room, taking Lauren’s chart with him.

“Would you like to see Nicole?” Ethan asked.

“Has she been here all night?” Lauren asked.

“We all were. Dani, Cooper, Liam, Nicole, and me.”

“Goofballs. You should have gotten some sleep.”

Ethan watched as Lauren rolled her head to one side and sighed. Clearly she was concussed, but her condition could have been much worse. She seemed in good shape to him for sixteen hours after a head trauma.

“Nicole’s the only one still in the waiting room,” Ethan said.

“Cooper’s gone?” Disappointment tinged Lauren’s voice.

“Maybe he went for breakfast or a shower,” Ethan said.

Sylvia patted Lauren’s hand. “He’ll be back. He was anxious to see you.”

“Is he all right?” Lauren asked.

“Scraped up,” Ethan said, “but all the parts are working properly.”

“Good.” Her eyes closed.

“Looks like you could use a nap,” Ethan said. “I’ll let Nicole know how you’re doing, and we’ll figure it out from there.”

“Thank you.” Lauren was already drifting off.

She conversed coherently. Ethan was satisfied she was progressing well.

“I promised Nicole some breakfast,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

He went down to the cafeteria and picked up orange juice, coffee, bagels, and bananas before returning to the waiting room.

Nicole moved magazines aside, and Ethan set the tray on a coffee table.

“She’s doing well,” he said.

Nicole exhaled. “Good.”

“I think you’re both going home with Sylvia tonight.”

“I could be on my own.”

Ethan laughed softly. “I think it’s already been decided.”

Nicole rolled her eyes. “I’d be fine.”

Ethan opened the juice bottles and handed one to Nicole, but she seemed more interested in lathering a bagel with cream cheese. She’d always liked three times as much cream cheese as he did. Closing her eyes, she moaned as she bit into her breakfast.

Ethan turned toward steps slowing on the tile in the hall and saw Jack Parker pause in the doorway.

“Here you are.” Jack came in and sat across from them. “My daughters made me promise to come and see how Lauren is doing.”

“She’s doing well.” Ethan gave a brief report.

“The girls will be glad to know that,” Jack said. “They both like her a lot.”

Ethan took a long swig of juice, suddenly realizing how thirsty he was. “You wanted to talk to me about something yesterday, before all this happened.”

Jack tapped his knees with his fingertips. “It was about that will I found earlier in the week.”

Nicole leaned forward. “The Tabor will?”

“Right.”

“What about it?” Ethan asked. “I thought you said you wanted to study it some more.”

“I did. Harold Tabor stood to inherit a great deal of money.”

“But he had to have a male heir,” Nicole said. “That’s what you told us the other night. Otherwise the money went to his brother.”

“Correct,” Jack said.

It seemed to Ethan an odd provision in a will, but in a time of higher infant mortality, perhaps a child who survived to five had better odds of reaching adulthood.

“And he did have a son,” Nicole said. “A boy named Merrill.”

“Correct again.”

Ethan looked from Jack to Nicole. What had she figured out and not told him?

Nicole put her bagel down and wiped her sticky fingers with a napkin. “But the Tabors left town when Merrill was two.”

“Was that in Old Dom’s ledgers?” Ethan asked.

“Those notes I was puzzling over yesterday,” Nicole said. “They had something to do with Merrill Tabor. But there was another family involved.”

Jack nodded.

“The Peases,” Nicole said.

Jack nodded again. Ethan felt lost.

“There’s some connection between the Tabors and the Peases,” Nicole said.

“I think I know what it is.” Jack raised his eyebrows. “And I think you’ll find it very interesting.”

8:55 a.m.

Jack had their attention now. “The man in the photo who looks like Ethan is standing in front of a Pease grave.”

Nicole nodded tentatively. “I want to go back to the cemetery to double-check that with Old Dom, but I think you’re right.”

“I haven’t quite got it sorted out,” Jack said, “but there’s a red herring involved—something that looks like it should matter, but it doesn’t.”

“You’re losing me,” Ethan said.

“I found a contract between Harold Tabor and Stephen Pease.”

Ethan turned his palms up. “So they had a business deal.”

“The Tabors were a wealthy family,” Jack said. “Back in the day, they owned half of Hidden Falls and had business ventures all over the Midwest. They had losses during the Depression, like everyone, but they came out all right in the end. Harold was a fourth-generation business tycoon. Stephen Pease was an uneducated man who drove a fruit truck when he could get the work.”

This contract could be nothing, some technicality an attorney advised. Or it could be much more. That’s what Jack didn’t know yet.

“Buying and selling fruit?” Nicole said. “Did the Tabors have orchards?”

Jack was impressed. “As a matter of fact, they did. Apples mostly. I have a stack of contracts six inches deep profiling the business operations of the orchards until they were sold.” Jack knew the fruit truck drivers were day laborers—and they had to have their own trucks.

“I still don’t understand what we’re talking about,” Ethan said.

Jack leaned forward and made sure he had eye contact with both Ethan and Nicole. “Why would a man like Harold Tabor draw up a contract with a transient worker like Stephen Pease for a vague transaction that on the face of it has no value?”

Jack let the question sink in. Ethan’s brow furrowed in confusion and impatience, but Nicole sucked on one corner of her mouth, thinking. Jack didn’t have all the answers to his own questions, but he felt fairly certain he was still a few steps ahead of Nicole.

“What exactly was this transaction?” Nicole tore off a piece of her bagel and tucked it into her mouth. “And what kind of money was involved?”

“Depends on your perspective,” Jack said. “To Harold Tabor it would have been pocket change, even in the Depression. To Stephen Pease? It would have meant a fresh start. Options. A chance to get out of debt.”

“And what did Pease have to do?”

“Deliver a package.”

Nicole leaned back in her chair. “Must have been some package.”

“The contents were never specified in the contract,” Jack said. “It was Harold Tabor’s prerogative to consider the package satisfactory, and Pease would get his money.”

“Sounds like Tabor had all the power,” Ethan said.

Nicole chewed. “Not necessarily.”

“He has the money, and he has the prerogative to call the deal null and void,” Ethan said. “What does Pease have?”

She smiled. “The package. Whatever it was, it mattered enough to Tabor to tempt Pease with the money.”

Jack waited. If Nicole solved this, he would know immediately. And he had the evidence she would need to prove any theory.

“So,” Ethan said, “what could the package have been?”

The three of them stared at one another.

“The babies,” Nicole said. “Quinn’s notes in Old Dom’s ledgers were about babies.”

Jack held his breath, his mind rapidly indexing the pages of notes he’d taken as he sorted files. Harold Tabor’s younger brother had three children—all sons. But Harold had married after his brother, and his only child had not come easily. If he did not have a living son on his fortieth birthday, his brother would inherit the lion’s share of the family business.

Yes, babies were an important link. But Harold had a son who would be five, two years before Harold turned forty. All had been well.

Jack looked up to see Sylvia Alexander enter the waiting room. “Good morning, Mayor. How is your niece?”

“Doing well, thank you.” Sylvia paced toward the group. “She’s sleeping at the moment. It seemed like a good time to get up and stretch my legs.”

“I could go sit with her,” Nicole said.

“Not just yet.” Sylvia pulled a chair up to the huddle. “Nicole, what babies were you talking about when I came in?”

“I’m not sure,” Nicole said. “Those Morse code notes Quinn was making in the cemetery records seemed to be about the age of some babies during the thirties. But what stumped me is that I don’t think it was necessarily about the
death
of the babies. Old Dom’s father had all sorts of notes in those books about the families.”

Jack cleared his throat. “It could be useful to compare those notes against my files.” He was not entirely comfortable with Nicole’s access to information that he hadn’t seen. She might get ahead of him.

“Babies during the Depression?” Sylvia tilted her head.

Ethan grunted. “Somebody has to catch me up. We were talking about a contract between Tabor and Pease about some package, and now we’re talking about babies? And what does any of this have to do with Quinn? Why was he making those notes?”

“Oh my goodness,” Sylvia said. “My mother’s story.”

“What story is that?” Jack asked.

Sylvia blinked three times. Something was coming together behind her eyes, Jack realized.

“Sylvia?” Nicole said.

“My mother was young during the Depression,” Sylvia said. “Her mother was the town gossip, so it’s hard to know if the stories she told were true. But just a week ago, my mother was remembering a story about two families with little boys about the same age. Both families left town and no one heard from them again. But there was money involved, and at least one of the boys was sickly.”

“That fits,” Jack said, nodding.

“What fits?” Ethan asked.

Nicole’s eyes widened. “That grave. It’s the marker for Stephen Pease’s little boy.”

The pieces snapped into place for Jack. “A little boy would be a valuable package to a man who needs a healthy male offspring in order to inherit a fortune.”

Nicole’s face simultaneously filled with horror and certainty. “
One
of the boys got sick. It just wasn’t the one everybody thought. Old Dom’s father figured it out.”

“Wait a minute,” Ethan said. “You think Tabor bought Pease’s kid?”

The outrageous truth swirled around them.

“My word,” Sylvia muttered. “Why didn’t I see this before now?”

Jack scratched his nose. What did the mayor know? He folded his hands in his lap and waited.

“I found some things of Quinn’s on Friday night.” Sylvia stared at a spot on the floor, concentrating. She covered her mouth with three fingers.

Nicole scooted forward in her seat. “What did you find, Sylvia?”

“A Matchbox collection.”

Now Jack felt as lost as Ethan had been looking for most of this conversation. “Matchbox? Like the little toy cars?”

Sylvia nodded. “I guess they’re Quinn’s, but I never knew he had them. Sports cars, I don’t know. I didn’t pay much attention.”