Page 35 of Guess Again
Cherryview, Wisconsin Saturday, July 26, 2025
ETHAN CLIMBED ONBOARD THE METAL SHARK 32 DEFIANT, WHICH was part of a fleet of patrol vessels owned by the DCI and housed with the Madison Police Department.
He turned and offered his hand to Lindsay Larkin, who stepped from the dock and onto the boat.
He reached to help Pete Kramer, but Pete swatted his hand away.
“I’m not some damn invalid,”
Pete said.
Ethan didn’t protest or mention that Pete was, in fact, the very definition of an invalid.
Instead, he stepped back as Pete tossed the cane he had recently started using into the boat and managed to step down into the cabin unassisted, landing hard and unceremoniously onto the seat.
An officer with the Madison PD fired up the engine and pulled away from North Point Pier.
The humidity was thick, and the afternoon temperature hovered around 100 degrees.
Ethan was dressed in slacks and a short-sleeved shirt.
Lindsay was in a silk tank top and jeans.
Pete had mercifully removed his sport coat once he was seated on the boat.
As the Defiant took off, they all welcomed the breeze.
“There’s an island in the middle of the lake,”
Pete said over the hum of the engine.
“They call it The Crest.
There used to be a bar and grill out there, but it shut down in 2017.
Callie was there the night she disappeared.
To the best of my knowledge, it’s the last place anyone saw her alive.”
“You were there?”
Ethan asked Lindsay.
“That night at The Crest?”
“Yes, all of us were.
All our friends and most of the volleyball team.”
“And you saw Callie?”
Lindsay nodded.
“Yeah, we drove out to The Crest in her parents’ boat.
I was with her all night, until she left.”
The Defiant banked to the left as it cut across Lake Okoboji.
A light mist came from the bow and sprayed Ethan’s face, offering a reprieve from the heat.
They glided across the lake for fifteen minutes until the engines revved down and The Crest came into view.
It was a small piece of land just a few hundred yards wide that peeked from below the surface of Lake Okoboji.
A long pier that had seen better days reached out from the land like an arthritic finger. The driver guided the Defiant alongside the pier and Ethan tied off the bow.
“Back in the day,”
Pete said, “this used to be a popular restaurant and bar.
The only one on the lake.”
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 them fans? 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 TRIED to 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.
What’s wrong?
Callie quickly typed back.
I need to see you.
Where are you?
The Crest.
You okay?
I need to talk to you about the baby.
There was a pause with no return text.
Callie felt an urgency to tell him.
She wanted to call him rather than text, but it was too noisy on The Crest and she feared someone would overhear.
She looked around to make sure no one was paying attention to her.
I’m keeping it.
The reply this time was instant.
You didn’t go through with it?
No.
I want this baby WITH YOU.
I want to start a life with you.
I need to see you tonight.
Do you have your parents’ boat?
Yes.
Meet me at North Point Pier.
I’ll be waiting on the dock.
I love you, Blake.
I love you, too.
Callie stared at her phone a moment longer.
Her life was about to change, and she felt the weight of the last year lift from her shoulders.
She was ready for every bit of what was coming.
She took a deep breath and wiped a tear from her cheek as a smile came to her face.
She slid her finger across the text to delete the thread from her phone. The encrypted texting app she and Blake used promised that deleted text threads were gone forever. The app was Blake’s idea. He’d always warned her about leaving traces of their communication on her phone.
She turned from the sand courts, ready to run to her boat.
“Who was that?”
Callie looked up from her phone.
Lindsay was standing behind her.
“Oh, um, my mom,”
Callie said.
“She wants me home.”
Lindsay squinted her eyes and made a sour face.
“It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday.”
“The regular crowd shuffles in,”
Callie sung, trying to divert Lindsay’s attention from the urgency she was emitting.
She forced a smile.
“There’s an old man sitting next to me . . .”
She crinkled her nose. “No?”
“We’re playing next.”
“I can’t, Linds.
My mom’s all over me about something.”
“Why is your mom such a buzzkill?”
“You think anything my mom does makes sense?”
She shook her head.
“She’s probably having a breakdown about something.
I’m going to take the boat home.
Be back in an hour.
Then we’ll play those guys.
Kick their butts.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
Callie felt another tear run down her cheek.
She quickly wiped it away.
“Yeah.
All good.
I’ll see you later.”
Callie hurried off to her boat.