There were photos here, too, her parents’ wedding album, school pictures of her through the years. It was odd, because things didn’t hold people inside them, but in a way they also did, because Noelle didn’t think she’d have had a flash of her mother’s tender smile or the sleeveless yellow top she’d worn as she’d placed a bandage on her knee if she hadn’t glimpsed the old pink scooter her dad had kept in the garage even after Noelle was far too big for it. Objects conjured memories, and that was a gift, she supposed. But also sadness, not only because of the stirred emotion, but because she wondered how many items she’d tossed that carried the ability to evoke a memory that now she could never get back. Letting go was painful, deeply so.
How many times had Paula offered to clear this space out for her? To toss the contents, or donate it, or whatever Noelle wanted? But Noelle had consistently said no. It was in another state and inaccessible to her unless she boarded a plane to get to it, but still . . . she never could bring herself to imagine it . . . gone.
She suddenly understood why people were hoarders. Those who had lost so much already were scared to death of losing more. And so they held on, no matter the terrible clutter and filth it created.
But she wasn’t here to diagnose the reason for other people’s mental health disorders, and she needed to stop her mind from wandering so far and wide. She was on a mission.
Evan was crouched behind a pile of boxes, craning his neck as he looked for the place where she’d jotted a note about the contents with a Sharpie. “It looks like this is all kitchen stuff,” he said. “Even though the bed is over here.” He nodded to the wooden headboard leaning against the wall.
She looked at the boxes he was shifting around. The tape had peeled off the tops and was hanging loosely so that a few of them were gaping open. She frowned, glad they were kitchen items and not things that couldn’t be cleaned or that bugs or moisture might ruin.
Like journal paper.
She looked around, trying to remember unloading these items from Paula’s dad’s truck. She pressed her lips together, casting her mind back before walking to two boxes piled one on top of the other. She leaned around them. “Here,” she said, picking up the box on top and setting it on the floor and then leaning down and picking up the one beneath it. A cloud of dust wafted into the air, and she coughed as she averted her head.
She turned toward Evan, and he took it from her. It was heavy, and she knew that was because there were books inside. But his papers should be in there, too, including his collection of organizers. He’d kept them all, years’ worth.
“Check inside,” she said. “Make sure that’s the right one.”
Evan took his keys from his pocket, using one to slice down the middle of the tape, and then Noelle stepped forward, opening the flaps to peer inside. Yes. Just as she’d thought, there was his collection of organizers, her mother’s books piled just beneath them. “That’s it,” she breathed, and she could hear the emotion in her voice. She hadn’t tried to hide it.
“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. The job 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 put not 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 put police with 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.”