Hidden Falls (73 page)

“Just barely,” he muttered, “and only because I was afraid for my own skin.”

“But you did it. Give yourself credit.”

Beside Dani, Liam cleared his throat.

“I’ve been thinking about how old we are,” Dani said.

“Not
that
old,” Liam said.

“Old enough to stop thinking I can outrun God. Your soul is not toast.”

6:29 p.m.

Jack’s theory was that if he didn’t look at Dominick, the old man couldn’t be sure Jack had seen him and therefore would not be offended by his guest’s intrusion into the dinner hour. Casually scratching the side of his nose, Jack angled his head away from the doorway where Old Dom lurked.

The muffled cough Dom managed was the most fake and least subtle expulsion of air Jack had ever heard.

“I’ll just be a minute,” Jack said, turning another thick page in the dusty ledger book from the mid-1930s. It had taken him a long time to adjust to decoding the slender flowery handwriting without feeling as if he was mentally translating word by word into a typeface he could recognize. Now that he was reading more fluidly, he was out of time.

Dom flicked the lights off and on a couple of times.

“You’ve been so helpful,” Jack said. “Please bear with me.”

“You’re welcome to come back,” Dom said, “but I’ve got to go. I don’t normally drive after dark.”

“I can take you home.”

“Don’t want to leave my car here.”

Reluctantly, Jack closed the book without being sure what he’d accomplished by spending the last couple of hours with Dom. He still had no idea who was buried in the grave marked simply
Infant.
Here and there in the book, Jack noticed the dots and dashes Nicole had referred to, but he didn’t know Morse code. Whatever conclusion Nicole had come to, she’d had the advantage of Quinn’s secretive trail of hours of poring through the records and chatting with Old Dom about what he remembered. Jack was depending on his instinct, and it was falling short.

Jack’s phone rang. He didn’t have to look to know it was his wife.

“Dinner is on track for seven,” Gianna said. “Are you?”

“I should come pretty close.” Jack stepped across the room into Dom’s office area. The groundskeeper turned off the lights and pulled the door closed before turning a key in the lock.

“If you’re not here by 7:15, I’ll keep a plate warm.”

“Thank you,” Jack said. “I won’t be long.” He heard no scolding in Gianna’s tone. She didn’t even ask where he was or what he was doing. Perhaps the last few days had moved them out of the tunnel they’d been stuck in for so long.

He walked out with Old Dom.

“Do you figure you’ll be back?” Dom asked.

“I’m not sure.” Jack pulled his keys from his pocket. “Tell me, Dom. If you had to say who was buried in that infant grave, what would be your guess?”

“I don’t suppose I’d have a guess.”

“No? Your father seemed to have opinions.”

“Hard to say he was always right, though. I long ago gave up trying to ferret out what was in his mind.”

“Oh?” Jack raised his brows. “I thought you believed he had his ways of knowing things.”

“There’s knowing, and there’s
knowing,
if you get my gist.”

Dom’s words cast a blanket of doubt over what Jack thought he knew. If the cemetery records couldn’t answer his questions about the mysterious grave, he would have to dig deeper into other sources of information—birth records, family histories, law enforcement records, missing children’s reports. He could investigate multiple avenues before he gave up on isolating what kind of crime—or crimes—might have been committed and for what reasons. The main question was what consequences resulted. Who benefited?

“You heard a baby cry that day,” Jack said. “Even then you thought something was funny. Wouldn’t you like to know what really happened?”

Dom shuffled toward his car. “People have their reasons. I think that’s what my daddy believed.”

“There could have been a crime.”

Dom nodded. “True. Or maybe it was just the best way out of a hard time.”

Jack didn’t want to let go. He would have to tell Ethan he was going to get to the bottom of whatever happened. He could promise to try to minimize the impact of the investigation on the Jordans, but there was no getting around the fact that the baby presumed to be in that grave had in fact not died for more than another twenty years.

“Good night, Dom. Thanks again.” Jack got in his car. The hospital wasn’t far from the cemetery and it wasn’t large. How long could it take to determine whether Ethan was there? Jack could get this settled now and still make it home for dinner only slightly late.

At the hospital, Jack inquired about Ethan at the information desk and fingered the coins in his pocket while the volunteer on duty made a couple of calls. She hung up the phone and smiled at him.

“Looks like you just caught him,” she said. “Our new doctor is checking on patients on the second floor. You should be able to catch him at the nurses’ station.”

Patients? Our new doctor?
Jack withheld his opinion that the gray-haired woman had overstated Ethan’s relationship with the Hidden Falls hospital, instead thanking her and moving down the hall toward the elevators. And the plural
patients
was a curious word choice, considering Ethan had only one patient.

Jack went up to the second floor and down the hall. Ethan was making notes on a small computer and looked up.

“Hello, Jack.”

“Hello, Ethan. Got a minute?”

Ethan leaned his head away from the nurses’ station, and Jack followed Ethan down the hall and a few feet into an unoccupied room.

“I’ve been thinking about our conversation yesterday,” Jack said.

“Good,” Ethan said. “I hope you’ve come to see how it would be best for my family if we left well enough alone at this stage.”

“I understand how you feel.” Jack hadn’t thought through the words he would use at this moment.

“Thank you. I don’t want to muck things up more than they already are. Let’s just give history a fresh start.”

Jack cleared his throat. This wasn’t the conversation he’d intended to have.

Hidden Falls was supposed to be his fresh start, a chance not to muck things up further. Gianna would never understand if Jack held on to this against all odds—and no billable client. The truce between them held the promise of affection again, but it was fragile.

If Jack left now, he could still be on time for dinner with his family.

“I’m going to put the will and the contract right back where I found them,” Jack said. “They’ll be there if you ever decide you want them. In the meantime, I wish your family well.”

“Thank you, Jack.”

Out in his car again, Jack exhaled. He wasn’t very experienced at letting go of a case that wormed its way into his mind, but he felt an odd sense of relief.

7:22 p.m.

Across the table at Fall Shadows Café, four eyes stared at Nicole. She cringed.

“Cooper, I was really hoping Ethan would have spoken to you by now,” she said. Sylvia and Ethan both had said they would talk to Cooper.

Cooper didn’t speak. Around them, tableware clinked and conversations rose and fell. Gavin zipped by with two platters of food.

“Say something,” Nicole said.

Cooper turned his head to look at Sylvia. “Mayor, you don’t seem surprised.”

“I tried to talk to you this morning,” Sylvia said. “It wasn’t a good time for you.”

“It wasn’t the easiest day I’ve ever had.” Cooper pulled his phone out of its holster on his hip. “I don’t see any missed calls from either of you. Or Ethan.”

Nicole and Sylvia exchanged glances.

Cooper cocked his head. “Is this where you tell me you’ve been out looking for Quinn on your own?”

“Well, I haven’t,” Nicole said. “Ethan wouldn’t take me with him. I would have slowed him down.”

“And you, Mayor?”

“I did what I could this afternoon, but I didn’t come up with anything.”

“I wish you had called me,” Cooper said.

“You had your hands full.” Sylvia laid her knife and fork across the top of her plate. “Liam needed you, and your staff has two people in custody.”

“I could have called in more officers from Birch Bend,” Cooper said. “Now it’s been twenty-four hours.”

“It’s
Quinn,
” Nicole said. “Of course Ethan and Sylvia are going to look for him.”

“If there is foul play, interference could make it worse.” Cooper tossed his napkin on the table.

Nicole didn’t know Cooper until ten days earlier, but in that time she hadn’t seen him this close to the edge. She pressed her lips together, giving him time to think.

“So what has Ethan been doing all day?” Cooper finally asked.

“Knocking on doors, stopping hikers, showing the picture he took last night.” The process was nearly identical to what Nicole and Ethan had done together the day after Quinn disappeared—and with equal result. “Nobody saw Quinn.”

“Maybe it wasn’t him,” Cooper said.

Sylvia tapped the table nervously. “But what if it was?”

“I saw the photo. It was Quinn.” Nicole nudged her plate away. “Cooper, let’s rehash what we should or shouldn’t have done later. Right now what matters is looking for Quinn.”

Cooper pulled a few bills from his pocket and dropped them on the table. “I’ve got to get to the station. I’m going to pull officers from Birch Bend, but we’ve lost the advantage of daylight now.”

Nicole watched him stride out of the café and turned to face Sylvia.

“He’s angry.”

“It’ll be all right,” Sylvia said. “He keeps his cool most of the time, but it had to be hard to watch his brother go through what happened this morning.”

“You and Ethan covered a lot of ground today,” Nicole said. “I’m not sure Cooper’s team could have done much better—not with the arrest going on and Bobby Doerr in custody.”

At least Ethan and Sylvia had been focused. Ethan combed the woods around the falls and the cabins along the lake for hours without being distracted by everything that would have been on Cooper’s mind.

“We’re going to find Quinn,” Sylvia said. “And he’d better have a good reason for coming back to town and not letting us know he’s here, or I’ll throttle him.”

Nicole puffed her cheeks and blew out her breath. Cooper was frazzled. Sylvia was frazzled. Ethan was frazzled.

And Nicole wished she could go for a long run to loosen the tension in her muscles.

“I have to get going.” Sylvia scooted her chair back. “I want to see my mother before she goes to bed and then go make sure Lauren doesn’t need anything.”

Nicole’s phone rang. “It’s Ethan,” she muttered as she answered.

“I’m leaving the hospital now,” Ethan said. “Have you eaten?”

“Just finished, at the café. Ethan?”

“Yes?”

“Cooper knows.” Nicole glanced up at Sylvia.

“Good. I wanted to tell him a couple of hours ago, but I didn’t want to get into it in front of Lauren. She still needs her rest.”

“Well, he knows now. You should probably call him.”

“I will. Will you wait for me there?”

“I’ll be out front. We can go see Cooper together.”

“I should be there in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

Nicole ended the call. “Ethan’s coming.”

“Good,” Sylvia said. “I didn’t want to leave you on your own.”

“I’m fine,” Nicole said. “Lauren’s apartment is just down the street.”

“It’s far enough you should have a ride.”

“Go,” Nicole said. “Tell Lauren I’ll see her tomorrow.”

Sylvia paced swiftly through the restaurant. Nicole moved more slowly behind her. Outside, Nicole bypassed the wooden bench in front of the café, once again aching to go for a run, to let her body free and clear her mind. But she couldn’t run. The best she could do was try to hop with more speed. On a clear sidewalk she could set her crutches down firmly and swing between them with more vigor than indoor maneuverings allowed. The motion felt good, and with plenty of time before Ethan would show up, Nicole moved farther down the street. At the end of the block, she paused and went a few feet around the corner before turning around to retrace her path.

When a hand clamped over Nicole’s mouth, she nearly lost her balance. Pressure on her shoulders compelled her to hop in a half circle. In the stillness that followed, the tune fell on Nicole’s ears.

Quinn’s tune.

Nicole focused on the eyes twelve inches from her face. They were not Quinn’s.

Wednesday
7:30 a.m.

Q
uinn tucked a throw pillow under Nicole’s ankle propped up on a footstool. “I have orange juice concentrate in the freezer. Oh, and some sausage links.”

Nicole looked into his yellow-brown eyes and gave herself once again to the sensation of relief and gratitude.

Quinn was home. Quinn was safe.

“You don’t have to wait on me,” Nicole said.

“My house, my rules,” Quinn quipped. “I threw out all the fresh food because it was, well, not so fresh anymore. But we’ll find enough odds and ends for a breakfast feast.”

Nicole didn’t care about the food. She only wanted to feast on Quinn. He picked up three large coffee mugs and a plate of cookie crumbs, evidence of the casual sustenance that had punctuated the last twelve hours, pausing to smile at her for the hundredth time. And for the hundredth time, Nicole grinned back.

“When you were a girl, you were never allowed to stay up all night gabbing with me,” Quinn said.

“Now I am.” It was the best all-nighter Nicole remembered with anyone.

“Sorry we had to nab you the way we did last night.”

“I’ll admit you scared me half to death.”

“I should have told my minion to be less thug-like in his approach.”

Nicole laughed. Quinn’s minion—the man Ethan caught in the photo on Monday evening—turned out to be more of a teddy bear than a thug. Her heart rate had shot up when his hand sealed off the protest springing from her throat, and his humming of Quinn’s tune launched a host of scenarios spinning through her mind. Only seconds later, though, with his hand still on her mouth, he’d shifted his position to allow her to see past him.