Page 47 of Jack
Oh brother. But he signed it, with aHappy reading, because that’s all he had. “When did Ty leave?” He handed the book back.
“Oh, yesterday. After work, I think. Thank you.”
“Can you have him call me when he gets back?” Harper took the pen from Jack, then picked up the receipt and wrote on it. “I’m only in town for the weekend, so I’d like to catch up.” Her smile matched her coffee—sweet.
“Of course. Ty will be so happy to see you. He still has your debate-team picture on his desk.”
Harper practically pushed Jack out of the house.
“I forgot that Conrad has a game tonight,” Harper said.
“You keep track of his game schedule?”
She followed him off the step. “Oh yeah, I’m a total hockey groupie. Glued to the television?—”
He stared at her.
She laughed then. Really laughed. “Oh, your face. No, Jack. I have a normal Minnesotan’s love of hockey—that’s it. Conrad mentioned it to Penelope last night. She said she’d watch it if she could. I forgot that when he mentioned it this morning.”
“If she could?”
“Yeah. I thought she meant all the wedding stuff, but maybe . . . I don’t know . . . she had plans?” She sighed. “Maybe you were right. Maybe she’s not missing at all. She is a little . . . quirky. Maybe she got Ty to drive her to Minneapolis to go to the game.”
“Would she do that?”
“She bought tickets on the spur of the moment to a Wrexham match two years ago when they toured the US, just in hopes of seeing Ryan Reynolds, so yes.”
He considered her for a moment. Funny, but he’d gotten exactly the opposite feeling in his gut. She had not taken a joyride into the city. “Let’s check out the security footage.”
He climbed back into the car.
Maybe he just didn’t want to go back to the house. Maybe he’d liked the fact that Mrs. Bowman had his book and he’d signed it in front of Harper.
Maybe he liked the fact that Harper had told him about Ty, like . . .
Shoot. Maybe he just liked her, the old feelings from the past stirring to life like an dormant ember.
Shesowasn’t an eighteen-year-old spring breaker anymore.
He pulled out and drove back through town to the Moonlight.
“So, what facts are different?”
He glanced at her.
“The book versus the movie.”
Oh. “Well, first, I wasn’t the last person to see Sabrina. She’d gone out with some girlfriends after our study session, and a bouncer at the campus pub saw her leave.”
“But you were the first one to notice she was missing.”
“She’d asked me to go with her somewhere the next morning, so yes. Except I was about an hour late. I went for a run, showered, changed, and went to her apartment. She’d left without me. I called her—no answer. So I waited there about an hour before her roommate came home.”
“In downtown Minneapolis, in the height of winter.”
“They got that wrong too. It was March. The snow was melting.” He turned onto Main again. “And I didn’t search for her by myself. Not at first. Like I said, I called her and called her and then contacted campus police. But I had nothing but a gut feeling that something wasn’t right. And then, forty-eight hours later, I checked, and the campus police hadn’t found her—and hadn’t contact the Minneapolis police, so I did. They found a cam shot of her car leaving the neighborhood early the day she disappeared—a bank cam caught it. So they decided she’d gone home.”
“To Iowa.”