Page 39 of Guess Again
Ethan looked across the lake. In every direction, the shoreline was dotted with homes. An unpaved access road twisted from the mainland and ran to the backside of the small island.
“And Callie lived on the lake?”
“Yes,” Lindsay said. “She had a big house in Harmony Bay.” Lindsay pointed off to where Callie used to live.
Ethan remembered that Harmony Bay was also where Christian Malone’s mansion was located. He wondered if the tech guru had made any progress on pulling the deleted text threads from Callie’s SIM card. Francis Bernard and their upcoming visit, which was scheduled for Sunday morning, also intruded on his thoughts, but Ethan blinked away the distractions. He reminded himself of his old mantra when he used to do this for a living.One thing at a time, Ethan.
They all stepped off the boat and headed toward a neglected building that stood a few yards from the dock.
“I’d think this place would be a goldmine,” Ethan said. “The only restaurant on a lake crowded with homes.”
“It was,” Lindsay said. “Back in high school it was very popular, but people stopped coming after Callie disappeared. Bad vibes and rumors about what happened to her kept residents away.”
“What were you guys doing that night?” Ethan asked.
“Playing volleyball out on the sand courts. Come on, I’ll show you.”
They walked around the old restaurant until the volleyball courts came into view, now just rectangles overgrown with weeds and bare poles between which the nets used to hang.
“These volleyball courts were a big attraction back in the day,” Lindsay said. “They were always full. And when people saw that Callie and I were playing . . . you know, a lot of people liked to watch us.”
Ethan imagined the pretty, blond, seventeen-year-old who drew a huge crowd of fans that watched her compete on the volleyball court and also followed her out to The Crest to watch her play pickup games in the sand. He imagined middle-aged men watching Callie Jones from the stands, and the bad intentions that might have been born from secret admiration.
“Did you two have . . . I guess I’d call themfans? Was that a thing?”
Lindsay shrugged. “Maybe, but none that we knew of. Cherryview, in general, was our fan base.”
Ethan pulled out a notepad from his pocket. It was new. He jotted down a note.
“So you guys played volleyball that night?”
“Yes. And we were getting ready to play two guys from the football team who had challenged us. It was a thing that happened all the time. The guys always wanted to play us because they could never beat us in a two-on-two game. Word had spread that we were going to play, so people started coming out of the restaurant and gathering around the court to watch. We were waiting for the game in front of us to finish up. But we never ended up playing that night.”
“Why?”
Lindsay shrugged. “Callie got a text and had to leave.”
“Who texted her?”
“Her mom. Callie said she needed her to come home.”
“What time was this?”
“Nine o’clock. She left and that was the last time I saw her.”
“It was the last time anyone saw her,” Pete said. “And the text wasn’t from her mother. Phone records show the text came from the prepaid Samsung.”
Ethan walked onto the weed-infested volleyball courts, his feet sinking into what little sand remained on them. He looked around, imagining Callie Jones standing in that exact spot ten years earlier.
Summer 2015
Cherryview, Wisconsin
Saturday, July 18, 2015
CALLIE STOOD AT THE EDGE OF THE SAND VOLLEYBALL COURT AND TRIEDto watch the game unfold. Patrons of the restaurant cheered when one of the players spiked the ball into the sand to win a point. Callie knew they were cheering, not for the point itself, but because it brought the game closer to its conclusion. And once the current game was over, Callie and Lindsay would take the court to challenge two football players who were talking trash. Callie and Lindsay were undefeated in sand volleyball out on The Crest, and every football player wanted to be the one to end their streak.
The crowd was growing by the minute, but Callie’s thoughts were elsewhere. She had gone to The Crest only to placate her friends, who had given her a world of shit when she had mentioned that she didn’t want to go out on Saturday night. She wanted to be somewhere else tonight. She stared at her phone and waited for a text back from Blake. She’d been trying to reach him since practice that morning, but all her texts and calls had gone unreturned that day. Finally, her phone buzzed with a text message.
