Hidden Falls

by Newport, Olivia

  “Hello, Sylvia.” Cooper smiled at the entire table. “We’ve certainly had some drama tonight.”

  “It’s all right,” Sylvia said. “You can speak freely.”

  “Cooper Elliott.” He put out his hand toward Lauren, who took it. “Lauren Nock,” she said.

  “I know.”

  Sylvia saw the blush in her niece’s face. “Cooper Elliott, please meet Nicole Sandquist and Dr. Ethan Jordan.”

  “Welcome to Hidden Falls.”

  “Nicole and Ethan grew up in Quinn’s neighborhood, in addition to being students of his.”

  “Then I’m sure you would like to find him safe.”

  “Of course,” Nicole said. “This is all some kind of misunderstanding.”

  “Cooper is with the sheriff’s department.” Sylvia’s feet suddenly ached.

  “So you’ll look for Quinn, then,” Nicole said.

  Cooper straightened his tie and buttoned his suit jacket. “While I am as curious as the next person about why Quinn didn’t come off that stage, I’m not sure yet we have anything to be alarmed about from a law enforcement perspective.”

  “You don’t suspect foul play?” Sylvia asked.

  “Suspect is a strong word,” Cooper said. “It’s too soon to suspect anything. All we can say for sure is that we don’t know what happened.”

  “Obviously,” Nicole said. “Isn’t the real question why?”

  Cooper shrugged. “How can we ask why if we don’t know what we’re discussing?”

  Sylvia was desperate to give in to the rubbery sensation in her knees. “Can we please not talk in code? Cooper, are you not concerned about what happened to Quinn?”

  “That’s my point,” he said. “We don’t know what happened to Quinn, so we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion of foul play.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Sylvia said.

  “We should be checking for his car,” Nicole said. “Ethan and I looked around the lot, wondering what he drives these days.”

  “Same old green Olds,” Sylvia muttered.

  Nicole and Ethan looked at each other. “We didn’t see that car. We would have recognized it.”

  “Are you sure?” Cooper asked.

  “Positive,” Ethan said. “We had quite the discussion about what Quinn would drive, actually. Seeing that old beater would not have slipped by us.”

  “Well then,” Cooper said, “in my opinion the most likely scenario is that Quinn drove away. We’ll double-check the lot, of course.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Sylvia said. “He was fine. I told him what to do. He knew to stay on the mark.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ethan said. “Even if Quinn did drive off, where would he go? Home? The lake?”

  “We’re a small county,” Cooper said, “and he won’t cross the county line. He’ll turn up soon enough.”

  Sylvia jumped when she felt a touch in the middle of her back.

  Quinn used to touch her like that.

  She spun around. “Miles.”

  “I told Cooper he shouldn’t talk to you out in the open,” Miles said.

  “It’s all right.” Sylvia waited for her heart rate to fall back into a normal range. “He thinks Quinn drove away of his own free will.”

  “The caterer is going a little crazy,” Miles said. “She doesn’t want her reputation ruined by a disastrous event of this scale.”

  “That’s a good idea, actually,” Cooper said. “Everybody’s getting hungry, but nobody wants to leave the premises without knowing the end of the story. They paid for a meal, so feed them. In the meantime, we’ll see if we can get Quinn back here.”

  “I agree,” Miles said.

  “I’ll go out to his house,” Sylvia said.

  Cooper shook his head. “You are the public face of this event. You stay here. We’ll all stay here, but I’ll make sure a squad car goes.”

  “Fair enough.” Sylvia took a deep breath. “Miles, get the sound system going again. Turn the houselights down.”

  Sylvia gave Miles a head start and then climbed the steps to the stage and crossed to the podium.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “thank you once again for being with us tonight. We apologize for the delay in your dinner, but at this time we are going to ask the servers to begin with your Caesar salads. Your entrées will follow shortly. We all look forward to doing what we came to do, and that is to honor Ted Quinn for his unparalleled service to Hidden Falls.”

  9:13 p.m.

  Jack Parker smashed his dessert fork into the last crumbs of the cheesecake crust and transferred the result to his mouth. The servers had rushed the entrée on the heels of the salad, essentially serving them at the same time, but they had also done a good job of keeping the bread baskets full. Then dessert carts rolled between tables, and diners had their choice of cherry cheesecake, double chocolate cake, or apple pie. All in all, Jack thought it was a passable meal.

  Too bad it was such a ruinous evening.

  “Does anybody here think there’s really going to be a program?” Jack glanced around the table. He hadn’t met any of his tablemates before tonight other than Gianna, whose foot he ignored when it landed on his in exactly the manner he anticipated.

  “Surely they’ve sorted it out by now,” said the woman across the table.

  Raisa Gallagher. The color of her face hadn’t been the same since being caught in the collapse of the video booth. Jack had tucked her name away an hour ago when the group made nervous introductions. A homemaker with two small children, she was not likely to need his legal services unless her marriage crumbled. But he never knew, so Jack nodded cordially. Her mind was probably on whether the sitter had gotten the baby to sleep. Her husband, on the other hand, was an animated conversationalist who claimed to be an amateur inventor. Jack made a mental note to bone up on patent law. If she knew what he was thinking, Gianna would accuse him of being sexist. Jack preferred to think of his assessment as shrewd.

  “I don’t see any sign of Quinn,” Jack said. “If everything’s all right, wouldn’t he be eating?”

  Faces turned toward the head table, which Jack had watched all through the meal. Quinn had not turned up even for a moment. The mayor sat beside Quinn’s empty seat, but she didn’t eat. Members of the town council, all facing the main audience, leaned forward to talk to one another up and down the line, but their plates were removed with most of the food untouched. Jack had worked with plenty of jittery clients. In his observation, the guilty ones never lost their appetite even when their cases seemed doomed. The innocent who were scared—those were the clients who couldn’t make themselves take more than token bites.

  Jack gestured that he wanted more coffee, and a server with a pot appeared to top off cups around the table. For both the sake of his business and peace in his household, Jack had not objected to coming to this banquet. He had even filled the time between Quinn’s disappearance and the start of the meal by introducing himself to people at nearby tables and making pleasant conversation, including nodding in concern at Quinn’s peculiar absence. But Quinn had been gone for an hour and a half now. The evening was a fiasco, and the sooner the dignitaries admitted the truth, the better it would be for everyone.

  The server with the coffeepot wandered to an adjacent table, and in his place another balanced a large tray in one hand while deftly reaching with the other between diners to remove dessert plates and empty bread baskets and pile everything on the tray. The waitstaff were all on the clock. The caterer wouldn’t be eager to pay them extra because the program planners didn’t keep to a schedule. The mayor couldn’t stall much longer.

  “I’m going to stretch my legs.” Jack pushed his chair back.

  “You just asked for coffee,” Gianna said.

  “I changed my mind.”

  “Jack—”

  “It’s all right, Gianna. I won’t be gone long.”

  He sauntered toward the front of the room, putting to use everything he ever learned in tria
l settings about appearing confident and unflustered no matter how thin his case was. Jack had not represented a client before a judge in more than a year, but he could still taste the craving as if it sat on his teeth like tonight’s cheesecake.

  Jack watched the waitstaff and timed his steps toward the mayor to follow the young woman who was removing dishes from the head table.

  “Good evening, Mayor.”

  Sylvia Alexander looked up. Jack assessed what her eyes revealed. It wasn’t the first time he saw irritation there, but the dominant sentiment was anxiety.

  “I hope you enjoyed your meal, Jack,” she said.

  “I can never decide whether to get the steak or the fish at these events,” Jack said. “Did you get a chance to eat in the middle of everything?”

  “The servers were very attentive.” Sylvia folded her white napkin and laid it calmly on the table.

  She didn’t answer his query, though.

  “If there’s something I can do to help, I am at your disposal.” Jack crossed his wrists in front of him.

  “Can you excuse me, Jack?” Sylvia stood up.

  Jack followed her gaze to the end of the head table, where the high school principal assumed an expectant posture.

  “Of course.” Jack stepped back from the table and casually turned toward the exit into the corridor that ran alongside the banquet hall. He paced through the exit, put his phone to his ear though there was no call, and nodded at several other dinner guests coming and going. When Jack slipped back into the dining room, pleasure flushed down his neck at the confirmation that he had hedged his bets accurately.

  Sylvia Alexander huddled with Miles Devon and the young man Jack recognized from the sheriff’s office. Elliott something. No. Elliott was his last name. Officer Elliott, with a first name that sounded like a last name. Jack clucked his tongue in frustration that the man’s first name did not come to him.

  “Cooper, what did you find out?” Mayor Alexander asked.

  Cooper. That was it. Officer Cooper Elliott.

  Jack inched closer, his silent phone still to his ear, and angled his face away from the trio.

  “A squad car went to Quinn’s house,” Cooper said. “The place is locked up tight.”

  “It always is,” Sylvia said. “And his car?”

  “No sign of it. The squad car went up to the lake, too. If he took his car up there, he didn’t park in any of the usual places.”

  “Where else would he go?” Miles Devon said.

  “I called the station in Birch Bend and asked them to keep a look out,” Cooper said.

  “Cooper,” Sylvia said. “Tell me straight. What do you think happened?”

  Jack closed his eyes to concentrate on the voices. The pause seemed elongated to him.

  “I’m not going to speculate,” Cooper said. “In the unlikely event of foul play—and I stress unlikely—we don’t need a bunch of rumors flying around town that people will trace back to us.”

  “I think it’s safe to say the evening is over,” Miles said. “If we can’t produce Quinn, we don’t have anything left to do here.”

  Jack heard Sylvia’s sigh.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “We have to handle things. But this is very unlike Quinn. Very.”

  “Do you want me to make an announcement?” Miles offered.

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Keep it calm, Mayor,” Cooper said. “These circumstances are unusual for Hidden Falls, but the town may take your cue. And whatever you do, don’t answer any questions.”

  Jack turned around in time to see Sylvia nodding. He dropped his phone in his pocket and picked up his pace, arriving back at his table just as the mayor took the stage.

  “It’s over,” he murmured in Gianna’s ear as he took his seat.

  She turned quickly toward him. “What do you mean? Is Quinn—?”

  “They can’t find him. That’s what it comes down to.” He lifted one finger toward the stage. “The mayor’s going to send everyone home. We’re done here.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I’m a good lawyer. I know things.”

  Sylvia stepped to the microphone for the fifth time that evening. This time the spotlight stayed off and the houselights up.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed your meal. Let’s show our appreciation for the fabulous team of people who prepared the dinner and served us. Haven’t they done an outstanding job?”

  Mayor Alexander put her hands together to start a round of applause, and the audience complied.

  “See what she’s doing?” Jack whispered. “Acting like everything’s fine.”

  “Perhaps everything is fine.” Gianna clapped.

  “I think we waved good-bye to ‘fine’ at least an hour ago.” Politely, Jack contributed to the applause.

  The mayor continued. “What an amazing sight it is to look out from the stage and see so many of you here tonight. I know Hidden Falls is as dear to your hearts as it is to mine. Whether you came from across the county or across the country, you’re here because of a remarkable citizen whose contribution to all of us calls you home.”

  She was smooth. Jack gave her that. This was probably the speech she had prepared, but she would have to go off script soon.

  Sylvia paused for a breath.

  “Here it comes,” Jack muttered.

  “Unfortunately,” Sylvia said, “at this point we will bring our evening to a close. Drive carefully as you make your way to your homes or hotels.”

  Sylvia stepped away from the microphone.

  The air went out of Gianna, and she put her hand on Jack’s knee. “Is that really all she’s going to tell us?”

  “What else do you want her to say?” Jack said.

  Sylvia walked across the stage and started down the steps at the side.

  “Where’s Quinn?” a voice demanded.

  “That’s the $64,000 question,” Jack whispered.

  Sylvia waved her hand and called out, “Thank you again for coming.”

  Jack stood up and picked up his wife’s wrap from the back of her chair. As he dropped it around her shoulders, he kissed her cheek. “I knew there would be something interesting in this town if we dug deep enough.”

  9:29 p.m.

  Dani folded her arms across her chest, resisting the tendency for them to slide across the unfamiliar satin. Frankly, the mayor’s announcement didn’t entirely surprise Dani. Yes, Quinn was the sort to persevere and finish what he started or to follow through on what he promised, but everybody had a breaking point. People had to stop thinking Quinn was next to God. Who could take that kind of pressure? Sylvia didn’t say why Quinn didn’t show up, so either she had no idea or thought it was nobody’s business. Either explanation satisfied Dani.

  Although Dani didn’t expect to marry and was 108 percent sure she would make a terrible mother, she thought Sylvia should have married Quinn years ago. Everybody thought so—not that the topic was anybody’s business, either. But if they had, their kids should have been bursting with pride at an event like this one.

  Except for the part about their father disappearing. They might have found that slightly embarrassing. Or mortifying.

  Dani had spent an awkward evening in an awkward dress lurking on the edges of awkward conversation. With enough people in her day to last her a week, she was exhausted. And for what? If she had left for the lake ten minutes sooner or fifteen minutes later that afternoon, she wouldn’t have seen Quinn and she wouldn’t be wishing she had a dress that covered her knees. Or instead of letting Quinn talk her into coming, they might have made another choice together. Dani replayed the encounter in her mind with alternate endings.

  She didn’t take Quinn home. She took him to the lake, and they decided to do some night fishing.

  Instead of dropping him off, she went in the house with him to look at his old laptop that might as well have been held together with chewing gum.

  Quinn got in her Jeep, and Dani aimed it fo
r the far side of Birch Bend, where the bridge spanned the river. Quinn liked to park at one end and walk along a narrow sidewalk to the crown of the bridge. There he would stop and stare into the distance. Always east, never west. And he didn’t like to talk while he stared.

  But they hadn’t done any of those things. Quinn asked Dani to come to the banquet and she came. And then he left, confirming Dani’s opinion that he hadn’t wanted to be there in the first place.

  Every clink of fork against china, each slosh of liquid poured from pitcher to goblet, the mindless inquiries from strangers about “How do you know Quinn?” Dani’s head was ready to burst from the pointlessness of it all. No one all evening had said a sentence to her that mattered, but she sat politely through every tortuous phase of the deteriorating event.

  Dani pushed her arms into the sleeves of a brown sweater with a blue stripe, which she knew didn’t match her gray satin dress. “I should have gone fishing like I wanted to do. I can still get to the lake tonight. So good-bye, everyone.”

  When Dani stood up, Liam looked up at her from his seat. “You’re going to leave, just like that?”

  “Yes, just like that. Putting on my sweater. Getting out my keys. That’s the general pattern for leaving.”

  “I’m surprised you’re not more worried about Quinn.”

  “That’s because you don’t know Quinn as well as I do.” Dani plunged one hand into the bottom of the tattered leather bag that passed as a purse when she absolutely had to carry one and felt around for her keys. “Quinn changed his mind, and everyone should leave him alone.”

  Jessica spoke up. “I agree with Dani.”

  Dani’s eyelids flicked up and she looked at Jessica directly for the first time in at least an hour. If she and Jessica found something to agree on, the universe must have rent in two. Dani could almost hear the rip vibrating against her eardrums.

  Jessica lifted the long strap of her own dainty gold bag from the back of her chair and slung it casually off one shoulder. “We should go, too, Liam.”