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“Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Yes. Let’s get that back to the hotel, and we can go through it there.”
Evan hefted the box up and then gave her a tilt of his chin. “Let’s go.”
The hotel where she was staying in downtown Reno was just a few miles from where Evan lived in the Virginia Lake area. He’d offered to let her stay with him, but she didn’t think that was a great idea on several levels. Mostly, though, because she needed clarity of mind while she was traveling back in time to that last week before she’d been abducted and her father had died of a heart attack she’d always imagined had been brought on by the intense stress and heartache of finding out she was missing.
She couldn’t help feeling partially responsible, though rationally she knew that was untrue and unfair to herself.
She’d loved her father fully. She’d grieved him deeply. She missed him still.
He would have loved Callie with all his heart.
Evan set the box of items on the desk by the window as she came up beside him. “How about I pour us a drink while you start going through that? What would you like?” he asked, walking to the mini fridge in the open cabinet that housed the television as well.
“Something strong,” she murmured, pulling out the first leather-bound organizer and checking the date. That one was older than the one she was looking for, and so she pulled out the next one, and the next, beginning to organize them by year. Her father had never been consistent in the type of book he used. Some of them were leather bound, some had cardboard covers with various designs—a desert, a close-up of a leaf, the Reno skyline—and others were covered in plain-colored plastic.
Evan held a drink out to her. “Rum and Coke,” he said. She took it and clinked her glass to his. “To answers,” he said, holding her gaze, his expression grim.
“To truth,” she added. He gave a short nod, and they both took a sip before Noelle set hers down and pulled out another planner, and then another. “Here it is,” she breathed, holding up the maroon leather-bound book from eight years before.
She brought it with her as she sat down on the edge of the bed, and Evan joined her, though he kept an arm’s distance, letting her page through her father’s calendar by herself first. She appreciated that, swallowing as she took in his precise handwriting, the one that had been inside her birthday cards and on her notes to the teacher and a hundred other things. She knew his writing as well as she knew her own.
She paged to two weeks before she was taken, moving her finger over the squares and reading his jotted notes.
“Look at this,” she murmured, pointing to a note in the margin. Evan leaned in.
“Dow, shop two fifteen,” he read. He frowned at her. “Is that an appointment? He met him at his shop a little over a week before you went missing, then?”
“Sounds like it,” Noelle said. “And a week before Dow was killed.”
“Did you ever know your dad to meet Dow at his place of business?”
“No, but I don’t know that I would have had any reason to know that. Dow and my dad worked on a few jobs over the years. I do know that once my dad installed some big lighting system that involved computerization, and he consulted Dow on it. I don’t remember where, or who hired him, but I remember my dad was excited about the job.” She remembered because it was one of the first times she’d seen his eyes light up over anything since her mom died. He seemed enthusiastic about the project, but she also remembered him saying it paid well. And they’d needed the money. Desperately. They’d been buried under debt. Thejob had ended, and he’d gone back to mostly sulky and silent, but for a moment, he’d been his old self. Yes, she remembered.
She flipped backward, seeing the name of an insurance company and an arrow running through the days of that week. She thought he might have been installing the electric system in the new build of a regional office. They definitely wouldn’t have required a computerized lighting system or anything out of the ordinary. So why meet with Dow at his shop? She had no guess. But it could have been any number of perfectly normal, uninteresting reasons that had nothing to do with anything relevant to them.
Noelle paged forward through that week, past the meeting with Dow. “Look,” she breathed, her eyes going over her father’s note at the bottom of the page. It looked atypically messy, as though his hand had been unsteady when he’d written it. “Dow. Not a robbery. Murder? Police?”
“Your father thought Dow was murdered,” Evan said, lifting his head. She raised hers, too, taking in his worried expression. Yet despite that, there was a tempered excitement shining in his eyes. They were onto ...something. But what?
“Apparently he did,” she said. “But what made him think that? Other than just a hunch?”
“I don’t know. He also putnot a robbery. But it was a robbery. Or at least, his personal items were missing from his body. Your father had some reason to believe robbery was not the motive? Also, why putpolicewith a question mark? Did he think the police had something to do with it, or was he questioning whether he should go to the police?”
“He’d already done that, though,” she said. “He’d reported Dow missing the day before.”
“True,” Evan said, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth and tapping his hand on his thigh. “So was he considering going to the police about additional information he had?”
“Maybe. But that’s pure speculation at this point.” She thought about it for a minute. “My father, though ... he was a good man, Evan. If he had information regarding a crime committed against his friend, he wouldn’t have questioned going to the police.” Their eyes met and held, and she knew what they were both thinking. Her father had gone to the ends of the earth—at least as far as he was able—to bring justice to his wife. He’d ultimately failed, and it had ruined him. Whywouldn’the try to help the police solve his friend’s murder if he was in possession of information that would do just that?
“Did Dow have any relatives or friends who might be willing to answer a few questions?”
She cast her eyes to the side. “I think I remember him mentioning a sister. But I never met her.”
“I’ll look into that,” Evan said.
“Okay.” Feeling troubled, Noelle turned the page. The week she’d gone missing. She had the insane urge to slam the book shut, as though opening it to that particular day could conjure malevolent spirits who might shuttle them both back to that moment and make them relive it once more. She reached out, grabbing the drink she’d left on the desk and taking one long sip before placing it on the floor at her feet.
