Chapter 30
30
Q uinn examined the stage at the Sandbar. "There's just a few more pieces to add to it and then it'll be completed," Brian bragged.
"It looks good, guys. You've done a great job. Thank you so much."
Jace strutted across the beach toward him.
Quinn turned and grinned at his friend. "What do you think of this?"
"I think it looks pretty fucking good. I can't wait till your party, Bud. What is that like two weeks away now?"
"Not even."
"Did you talk to Jami Hart?"
"I did. They're here and they're gonna play."
Jace clapped his hands together loudly. "Excellent. Excellent. It's gonna be fun. I've got the food ordered. I've got the booze ordered. I assume you're bringing a date."
"You know I am."
"Okay, good." Jace laughed. "Alright, I gotta get back in and get ready for the dinner crowd. What are you doing? "
"I'm gonna go pick up my girl and we are going to have dinner with Sid and Grace tonight."
"Yeah, I don't feel left out at all."
"You're welcome to join us, Bud. We're gonna be here, anyway. Hanna hasn't met Grace yet, and I wanted her to meet them since they're getting married soon, and I'm hoping Hanna will be in my life for a long time."
Jace grinned and slapped his buddy on the back. "Good for you, man. Good for you."
"So anyway, that's what I'm doing. I'll see you in a little while." He started toward his truck. "Actually, do we need to reserve a table?"
Jace laughed. "No, you can have this one right here, the one closest to the stage since no one seems to want it right now with the construction."
He chuckled. "Fine, we'll take it. It's a good view, anyway, don't you think?"
Jace looked up at the stage and grinned. "Man, it's great. I can't wait to start having concerts here. I'm gonna start calling bands and getting them set up."
"Excellent." Quinn's phone rang.
He didn't recognize the number, but he nodded to Jace. "Gotta take this, Bud. We'll see you later."
He started toward his truck as he answered his phone. "Quinn Kurtz."
"Quinn, it's Lance. Lance Valentine, Hanna's father. Hey, we can't find her. Is she with you?"
"No, I'm at the Sandbar finishing up a job here. What do you mean you can't find her? Isn't she at the bakery?"
"No, no. Allison was here helping Hanna. Hanna took the garbage out and she never came back. We're...Quinn, we're scared."
"I'll be right there." Quinn hung up the phone and ran the rest of the way to his truck, got in, and sped to the bakery. His stomach tightened as he drove. Once he got to the bakery, Lance was waiting near the front door for him. He ran inside and shook Lance's hand.
"What's happening? Tell me what's going on."
Lance scraped his hand through his hair. "Allison's in the kitchen talking to the police. Hanna took the garbage out, and Allison was waiting for her to come back in. She never came back. So Allison went out to check and she couldn't find her anywhere. Her car's here. She's not answering her phone. We don't know where she's at. She wouldn't just leave. She's responsible. She has a business to run. She would have been back here. Where would she go without her purse and her car? Where would she go?"
"Okay. All right." Quinn scraped his hand through his hair and swallowed to keep his stomach from emptying its contents. This couldn't be happening. Things were going so well. Maybe too good, if there was such a thing.
"Okay. Let's go to the kitchen and talk to Allison."
"Yes, of course. Of course." Lance turned toward the kitchen, but he didn't look like the vibrant man he'd met yesterday. He looked older today. Worry etched lines in his face and his back rolled forward as if he'd aged twenty years overnight.
He followed Lance to the kitchen and found Allison sitting on a stool near the table. Two local police officers, Erin Moody and Trey Fielding, were standing in the kitchen asking her questions.
He shook both of their hands. "Hi, Erin. Trey."
"Hey, Quinn."
Allison looked up at him. "Oh, Quinn, please tell me you know where she is."
He shook his head slowly. "No, Allison, I'm sorry. I don't. Can you please tell us all what happened? How long ago was this? When was the last time you saw her? Tell me everything."
Trey rested a hand on Quinn's shoulders. "Hey, Bud, let us ask the questions. Why don't you take a seat?"
Trey reached over and pulled another stool up next to the table. Quinn brushed it away. "I can't. I can't sit down." He swallowed again and glanced at Lance. "Why don't you sit, Lance?"
"I will. My knees are shaking."
Trey began to ask Allison questions. "When was the last time you saw her?"
"It was about an hour ago. She took the garbage out. She emptied the garbage from the front and the kitchen here and she took them out. She said, ‘I'll be right back,’ she never came back."
Trey responded. "Okay. So she doesn't have her purse and her car is still out there. And she didn't say anything about going to visit anybody. You didn't hear her talking to anyone outside."
"No, I didn't hear anything." Allison began to weep, and Lance put his arm around her shoulders.
"Okay," Trey said. "Erin is going to go check with the local businesses and see if anybody has cameras that maybe recorded someone with Hanna. And we'll see what we can find there. I'm going to go out and peruse the area and see if I can find any evidence of anything. And she's not answering her phone, you said."
Erin stepped out the back door and Quinn swallowed the hot lump that had formed in his throat.
Allison managed to say, "I've been calling her and calling her and calling her and she's not answering her phone. "
Quinn pulled his phone out and tapped Hanna's number. The phone rang and rang. She didn't answer. He closed his eyes and lifted his face to the ceiling. "Fuck."
Trey turned. "What?"
She was getting prank calls last night, so I asked her if she minded turning her phone off so we could finish dinner without the interruption, and I'll bet she never turned it back on."
Trey nodded. "Okay. Well, that means we won't be able to track her with her phone. We'll try though. Text me her number."
He and Trey had been friends for a number of years. At this time, Quinn was happy to know he was on this case. He was a great cop. Quinn texted Hanna's phone number to Trey. His fingers shook. His stomach quelled. His shoulders began to stiffen.
Trey looked at him. "Quinn, do you know anyone who would want to cause her harm? Who was prank calling her?"
"Isaac called her last night."
"Who is Isaac?"
"Her ex-husband. He said he was in town and wanted to talk to her and she refused to see him."
"Okay. Do you know where he's staying?"
"I don't know anything about him other than he's a deadbeat, and he's a criminal."
Quinn turned to Lance. "Do you know where he might be staying?"
Lance slowly shook his head. "Nope. We don't know anything about where he is. He hasn't made any contact with us, and he wouldn't. He knows we didn't think much of him. And you're right. He's a criminal." Lance ran his hand down his face. "But he wouldn't kidnap her. I mean, I don't think he would kidnap her."
"All right. So Isaac, who else?"
Quinn sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a whoosh. "Tisha."
Trey's eyebrow shot up into his hairline. "Seriously?"
"She followed us home last night from Lance and Allison's house. I did go see her this morning. I don't think she would do anything to Hanna. I honestly don't. She's manipulative, and she's deceitful. And last night, she wasn't thinking straight. But I don't think she has it in her to kidnap anyone or bring harm to anyone other than in a manipulative sort of way."
"All right. Tisha. Who else?"
"Well, there's three women who have been calling Hanna wanting money because Isaac catfished them."
Trey stopped writing and turned to look at him. "This guy really is a piece of shit."
"He is."
"So he catfished these women."
Quinn nodded. "I guess he took a lot of money from them, as in thousands. Twenty thousand, thirty thousand dollars. And they were calling Hanna, wanting her to pay them back because she had been married to him at one point."
"Well, okay." He wrote in his notebook. "Who else knows about this?"
Lance responded. "Grant Park, my attorney."
"Okay." Trey wrote Grant's name down.
"We went to him and asked him what we could do, and he said if those women called to have them call his office. I don't know if anyone has. I know Hanna did get one more phone call and told her to call Grant. So you could check with him."
"I'll do that." Trey kept writing.
When he was finished writing, he said, "Anything else that you can think of."
Quinn felt like he was going to throw up. He leaned against the stainless-steel table, took a deep breath, and shook his head slowly. "No. Nothing I can think of. Have you checked with Jalyn, her friend?"
"Nope. We'll check with her. Last I saw her she was riding out of town on a fire truck though."
"Yeah." He nodded and wished he had Jalyn's phone number.
"Okay. So we're going to do some investigating. We're going to look around outside. Please don't go near the dumpster until we've gathered any evidence there might be. If you can think of anyone else who may want to cause her harm, let us know."
Quinn nodded and stared at her parents. Both of them looked about as sick as he felt.
Trey started toward the back door, but it opened and Erin stepped inside. "There are tire tracks in the parking area next to Hanna's car. They lead out of the alley. The mud from the alley transferred to the road for a few feet, but it appears the vehicle flew out onto the square in the wrong direction."
Quinn stepped into the back hall near the back door. "Any idea what kind of vehicle?"
Erin locked eyes with him. "Small tread pattern. I'm thinking a Prius. Lucky for us they ran through the potholes and left nice prints. That also left the pattern on the road showing they went in the wrong direction. "
The front door to the bakery opened and Allison began to slide off her stool. "Oh, the door is unlocked."
Quinn shook his head. "I've got it, Allison."
He hurried out front and saw his son, Jared, standing at the counter.
"Hey, Jared, what are you doing here?"
"I came to get a sandwich and a cinnamon roll."
"Oh." Quinn took a deep breath. "Hanna's missing, Jared. We're trying to find her."
Jared slid the baseball cap off and scratched the top of his head. "Is there anything I can do?"
"Have you noticed anything recently around here? We're thinking about an hour ago is when she was taken. And we're thinking it was someone in a smaller vehicle, like a Prius."
Jared shrugged. "Not many of those around here."
Quinn froze. "We saw them at the barracks last week."
"We did, Dad. I saw some there today that looked fresh. I thought those kids were back and saw our stuff there and left."
"Hang on." Quinn hustled to the kitchen where Lance and Allison were. "I have to go. Stay close to your phones."
He hustled toward the back door. "Trey. Erin. I have a lead. The barracks. We've seen Prius tire tracks there the past week and Jared said he saw fresh ones there today."
Trey looked at Erin. "You stay and finish the investigation here, so we don't lose any evidence. I'll go with Quinn."
They hustled through the bakery. Quinn stopped in the kitchen. "You may want to lock the front door behind us."
Lance stood and shuffled toward him. He didn't wait. He hurried through the bakery, collected Jared, and ran to his truck. Jared jumped in with him. Trey was already in his cruiser and rushing the wrong way out of the square toward the barracks.