Hidden Falls

by Newport, Olivia

  Sylvia sidestepped this trap. She wasn’t going to advise anyone on where they should live or why. If she pointed out that Birch Bend was a good deal larger than Hidden Falls and closer to the interstate, both factors that likely increased exposure to crime, she would only further frighten Betty.

  “Good morning, Betty.” Sylvia adjusted her grasp on the small brown briefcase she carried back and forth to Town Hall. For the most part, she kept important active documents in her possession.

  “Have you heard from Dani Roose?” Betty stood between Sylvia and the group lurking on the steps of Town Hall.

  “No, I haven’t.” Sylvia touched Betty’s shoulder and smiled at the others on the sidewalk, trying to read their faces.

  Shock. That’s what she saw. Betty’s sentiment about the safety of Hidden Falls was widely held. Three peculiar episodes in as many days were disconcerting. Certainly they were disconcerting to Sylvia. She had been on the town council for many years and mayor for a good deal more, and never had Hidden Falls experienced anything that remotely resembled a crime wave.

  Sylvia reminded herself that this wasn’t a crime wave. It was still possible Quinn left under his own steam, and anyone could have untied Dani’s boat with benevolent, if misguided, intentions.

  “Tell us you’re going to get to the bottom of this.” Patricia Healy, Henry’s wife, fixed her enormous brown eyes on Sylvia. Behind Patricia stood three people Sylvia recognized as employed in Main Street shops.

  Sylvia pointed toward the door of Town Hall. “I’m going to go in that door and do the job you all elected me to do. When the time is right, we’ll let you know what we find out.”

  The huddle parted, and Sylvia climbed three cement steps. She always suspected the architect of the building meant them to be marble and went to his grave shrouded in disappointment with a town council that voted down the expense. Inside the building, Sylvia paused halfway up the stairs to her office and took out her cell phone to dial Dani’s numbers. She still had the phone to her ear, listening to the vacant ringing, when she pushed open the door to the small anteroom outside her office.

  Marianne sprang to her feet, which signaled three women and two men to do the same as all heads turned toward Sylvia’s entry.

  “Who are you calling in to find Dani’s body?” one of them asked.

  Body? All anyone had seen so far was a broken boat and they had Dani halfway into her grave.

  “Let’s take one step at a time.” Sylvia dropped her phone into her purse. “I’ll need some time before I can say anything definitive.”

  “Have you spoken to anyone in the sheriff’s office?” Marv Stanford, Lizzie’s father, had a pen poised over a miniature yellow legal pad, ready to craft an account for the Dispatch.

  Sylvia didn’t blame him. The last few days were the busiest news days Hidden Falls had seen in years, maybe even decades.

  “When I have something worth your ink to print, you’ll be the first to know.” Sylvia lifted her eyes to the group as a whole as she moved toward her office door. “In the meantime, we should all keep calm.”

  Marv cleared his throat. “George Kopp says he found a piece of the hull that looked like it had been drilled through.”

  “You know I can’t comment. We’ll have to wait to hear from Cooper.”

  Why hadn’t Cooper Elliott or someone else from the sheriff’s office called her before letting her walk into this bundle of anxiety? Cooper wasn’t in the habit of revealing information prematurely—or at all—but he had to realize people would expect Sylvia not to be the last person to hear the news. Getting hold of Cooper went to the top of her mental list.

  The faces in the room, including Marianne’s—and even Marv’s—weren’t merely curious. Events of the last three days, whether crimes or not, were unsettling. Sylvia was the mayor. It was her job to do what she thought was in the best interest of the residents of Hidden Falls.

  Quinn would have offered some wise advice. The damage in Sylvia’s shop would have pained him, and he would have been out looking for Dani. Sylvia missed him. She wanted him to walk through the door. Now would be an ideal moment.

  “As I said, we’ll take things a step at a time,” Sylvia said. “I encourage all of you to go about your normal day. If you see or hear something you think may be significant, call me or speak directly to Cooper Elliott.” When they had something definite to say, word would get around. It always did in Hidden Falls.

  She strode across the room, past Marianne’s desk, and into her private office.

  Dumping her briefcase in a side chair, Sylvia again pulled her cell phone from her purse.

  Nothing from Quinn.

  Nothing from Dani.

  Nothing from Cooper.

  She’d said the right things to the people on the sidewalk and in the anteroom. She would say them again, she was sure. Calm, professional, official. Sylvia wanted to do nothing that might interfere with any of the investigations.

  Investigations. What an odd word to use about anything that happened in Hidden Falls.

  Sylvia set her cell phone on her desk in plain sight and went through the motions of powering up her desktop computer and flipping through the file of correspondence Marianne had laid beside it. Even mayors got junk mail—leadership conferences a small town couldn’t afford to send anyone to, offers of business services she didn’t need, newsletters she hadn’t subscribed to.

  And a hand-addressed, square gray card envelope with no stamp. Quinn.

  Sylvia scooted around her desk and pulled open her office door. A new set of faces stared back at her.

  “Marianne,” she said, “can I see you, please?”

  Once the door was closed again, Sylvia held out the envelope. “Where did this come from?”

  “Quinn gave it to me with strict orders to give it to you with today’s mail.”

  “Quinn said that? When?”

  “He came by with it last Thursday, I think it was.”

  Sylvia focused on breathing normally as she tore the flap open. She carried this card in her shop, a simple “thinking of you” greeting. A drawer in her study at home held every card Quinn gave her over the years.

  But why today?

  Congratulations, he had written inside. Twenty years in business is an accomplishment worth celebrating.

  It was the anniversary of opening Waterfall Books and Gifts. Sylvia doubted anyone else in town would have realized that. She’d forgotten herself. Of course no one else was there every night after work for two months arranging stock and preparing for the opening. Quinn had done that for her. Even now the thought warmed her.

  “Is everything all right?” Marianne asked.

  Sylvia slid the card back into the envelope. “Very. Now tell me about the people out there.”

  “As soon as the others left, more came in. They all want to see you.”

  “I suppose I should speak to them.”

  Marianne opened the door. Sylvia looked across the waiting room to see Jack Parker enter.

  “There’s your appointment,” Marianne said.

  “Good morning, Jack.” Listening to Jack’s pitch for handling the town’s legal affairs was the last thing on Sylvia’s mind, but she had promised to hear him out. “Come right in.”

  “Hey!” A man scrambled out of his chair. “Why does he get to go right in when we’ve been waiting our turn?”

  Sylvia smiled. “Because Mr. Parker has an appointment, which he made two weeks ago. I know you all have questions and concerns. Please feel free to leave detailed messages with Marianne, and I promise to read them all carefully.”

  She closed the door on the protests and shook Jack’s hand properly. “The latest news is causing quite a stir.”

  “I don’t know Dani Roose personally,” Jack said, “but she seems to be all anyone is talking about this morning.”

  “Dani grew up in this town.” Sylvia gestured to a chair where Jack would be comfortable. She chose to sit behind her desk in case she had
to remind Jack whose territory they were in.

  “I’ve heard she’s a bit of an odd bird,” he said.

  Sylvia shifted in her chair. “She has her own approach to life, but people have known her a long time. Hidden Falls is a tight community. These last few days have been unnerving.”

  “I could make some calls,” Jack said.

  “What kind of calls?” Sylvia was dubious.

  “I have connections with people who might help track down Quinn. I can call in some favors. It won’t cost anything.” Jack turned a palm up. “Wouldn’t it help settle things down around here if people knew what really happened?”

  “I’m sure it would.” Quinn had been gone three nights and two days. No one wanted to know what happened to him more than Sylvia did.

  “Then I’ll get on it as soon as I get back to my office.”

  The smugness of his tone grated against Sylvia’s polite smile, but what could it hurt to let him try?

  10:22 a.m.

  “I just want to get my run in.” With a foot up on a kitchen chair, Nicole Sandquist leaned forward to tie her laces and spoke toward the cell phone set on speaker and laid on the table.

  “So maybe noonish?” Ethan said.

  “That sounds about right, but you’d better wait for me to call you.” Nicole liked to run at least five miles and often ran seven or eight. She could run toward town, loop around downtown, catch some of the river trail on the way back, and still have time to shower.

  “I thought you’d be in more of a hurry to get to Birch Bend.”

  Nicole stretched her hamstrings. “I think better if I run.”

  By dinnertime, Quinn would have been missing for seventy-two hours. Nicole didn’t have time for muddled thinking. Hours on the Internet and at the local newspaper archives the day before had turned up nothing about Quinn’s past before he moved to Hidden Falls. Everybody had a past and people who knew them before. The vacant column under Quinn’s name niggled at Nicole more persistently with each hour that ticked by.

  After jogging for a few minutes to warm up, Nicole ran hard. As soon as she was out of the stately subdivision where she grew up in the block behind Quinn’s house, she was off the harsh sidewalks and lengthening her stride on the softer shoulder of the road into town. A gap of three-quarters of a mile had somehow escaped the developers in the history of Hidden Falls’s gradual expansion like concentric rings around the shops on Main Street. Nicole had first started running along here when she was about twelve. She ran with a backpack in those days, getting off the school bus long before her assigned stop to discharge the anxiety that built up over seven hours in the classroom. Nicole hated being the only girl without a mother, agonizing over how to become a grown-up woman with no mother to show her or being jealous of all the girls who complained about their unreasonable mothers. At least they had mothers.

  Nicole got over being anxious and jealous, but she never let go of running.

  Quinn found her one day right along this stretch of road when she had run herself breathless and stood with her hands on her knees, trying to fill her lungs. He said he was on his way to get an ice cream cone and figured she would want one. Many years passed before she realized he was driving the wrong direction for an ice cream cone. More likely he was headed toward the lake to walk or fish on his own. He’d given up his afternoon to make a lonely child smile.

  Nicole’s feet thudded against the ground in unvarying rhythm. Her running shoes were worth every penny of the exorbitant price she paid for them at regular intervals. She catered to few indulgences, but new running shoes in the budget every three months was not negotiable.

  Her eyes soaked up the view. Reds and golds and browns rustled against one another in autumn breezes that swirled them, one by one, to the ground. In another couple of weeks, nearly bare tree branches would herald the unstoppable turn of the seasons. The sun would provide more light than warmth in the middle of the day, and one morning not long after that, snow would startle the county—and like all good Midwesterners, the residents of Hidden Falls would hunker down.

  Quinn would be assessing whether his firewood supply would see him through a winter of the roaring blazes he relished. He never had them growing up, he’d said once. His family never had a fireplace.

  Nicole stumbled with the memory and uncharacteristically halted her run. She stood with hands on hips, breathing hard.

  The lack of a fireplace hardly narrowed the possibilities of where Quinn might have lived, but the fact that she knew this bit of his past bolstered Nicole’s conviction that a clue would emerge if she only dug for it hard enough and deep enough. And if she could find where Quinn came from, she might also find where he had gone to.

  She could almost feel him there on the side of the road. Quinn had seen this same view three days ago, the same riotous swaths of competing color, the same midmorning brilliance of the sun. Perhaps he had stood in this spot.

  Had he known then whatever it was that made him leave?

  Nicole resumed running, suddenly feeling the urge to see if that old ice cream parlor was still in business. Instead of skirting around downtown, she would run right through it. She could go by Our Savior Community Church. If she remembered right, the frozen treats of her childhood were four blocks west of the church. Her path sloped gently now, and Nicole saw the steeples of several churches amid the patchwork of rooflines ranging from forty to one hundred years in age. Hidden Falls was a picture-postcard small town. Nicole had grown up here, but Quinn chose this town and liked it so well he never wandered more than fifteen miles to the west or south. On the other side, the county line ran just north of the river and just east of the falls. Still, the county covered over three hundred square miles.

  Nicole’s mental calculations had carried her into downtown. Rounding the corner at the church, she saw the woman with the baby and toddler a fraction of a second too late. She stumbled for the second time that morning, this time stepping off the curb before she judged its depth.

  Her ankle crumpled beneath her. Pain shot through her lower leg. Lying between two parked cars, Nicole tried not to shriek.

  “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” The woman scrambled off the sidewalk. “I didn’t see you. I was looking at the baby.”

  The infant bawled now.

  Rolling to one shoulder, Nicole breathed rapidly in and out. Her foot screamed. “I didn’t see you either. Accidents happen.”

  “Are you all right?”

  Nicole maneuvered to all fours, holding the injured ankle off the ground, and concentrated on not biting her tongue.

  “I’ll find help.” The woman took the toddler’s hand. “Come on, Kimmie. We’ll go in the church.”

  Nicole gripped the grill of the nearest car and pulled herself upright, amazed at the way pain superseded the instinct to breathe. She leaned on the hood of the car and tentatively tested her weight on the ankle—and immediately shifted to the other foot. As a runner, Nicole had her share of sprains. This was no sprain.

  The side door of Our Savior swung open and Lauren hustled toward Nicole.

  “Raisa Gallagher told me what happened.” Lauren ducked under Nicole’s arm to brace her weight. “What are you doing trying to stand up?”

  “It seemed like a better idea than lying in the street.” Nicole grimaced. “I think it’s broken.”

  “Lean on me.”

  With her foot off the ground, Nicole’s ankle dangled at a precarious angle. “Didn’t there used to be a little urgent care place around here?”

  “It’s part of the hospital now. We have to get you up there.”

  “This would be a really good time to tell me you have a car nearby.”

  “I don’t drive, remember?” Lauren tightened her grip around Nicole’s waist. “I think you’re leaning on Jack Parker’s car. Oh, there he is now. Jack!”

  Across the street, Jack’s head turned.

  Nicole didn’t know Jack Parker, but if he had a car and knew where the urgent care center
was, then he was about to be her new best friend.

  1:42 p.m.

  “How am I going to find Quinn when I’m doped up on painkillers, with my leg in a boot cast?”

  In the urgent care exam room, Lauren offered a sympathetic shrug in response to Nicole’s question. “You have to take care of yourself. Other people are looking for Quinn.”

  “Are they? What has that Cooper Elliott of yours turned up?”

  “He’s not my Cooper Elliott.” Refusing to blush, Lauren settled into a side chair to await the physician’s assistant who would return with final discharge instructions. “I hardly know him.”

  While Lauren was sorry to hear about Dani’s boat being smashed, she was also relieved that the latest incident had not taken her once again to the sheriff’s office for another round of questions with Cooper Elliott. At least—as far as Lauren knew—there had been no gruesome discovery of what became of Dani herself.

  “I cannot do this,” Nicole said. “I cannot be laid up like this. Not right now. There’s too much to do.”

  “One thing at a time.” Lauren examined the boot cast carefully wrapped around Nicole’s swollen ankle. The ankle was indeed broken. For now, the boot would immobilize it. Whether Nicole would need surgery was undetermined.

  “I know, I know. It’s just so frustrating. I don’t even care about my foot. We have to find out what happened to Quinn.”

  Maybe, Lauren thought, she would suggest that her aunt Sylvia call a special town meeting. Cooper could run it. The other officers could help with interviews. There had to be a faster way to find out who was the last person to see Quinn—and when and where.

  Lauren quickly dismissed the idea. Sylvia’s shop was in shambles. Asking her to take on a town meeting was out of the question.

  Nicole’s phone buzzed for the fifth time from its secure place in the sport band wrapped around her bicep.

  “Maybe you should answer that,” Lauren said.

  “It will either be my editor—and I don’t know what to tell him—or it’s Ethan wondering why I haven’t called. We were supposed to go to Birch Bend.”