After the divorce

After the divorce, her father, Cliff Yarber, left Slone and moved to Dallas, where he made a fortune in strip malls. As an absentee father, he apparently tried to compensate through expensive gifts. For her sixteenth birthday, Nicole received a bright red convertible BMW Roadster, undoubtedly the nicest car in the parking lot at Slone High. The gifts were a source of friction between the divorced parents. The stepfather, Wallis Pike, ran a feed store and did well financially, but he couldn't compete with Cliff Yarber.
In the year or so before her disappearance, Nicole dated a classmate by the name of Joey Gamble, one of the more popular boys in school. Indeed, in the tenth and eleventh grades, Nicole and Joey were voted most popular and posed together for the school yearbook. Joey was one of three captains of the football team. He later played briefly at a junior college. He would become a key witness at the trial of Donte Drumm.
Since her disappearance, and since the subsequent trial, there has been much speculation about the relationship between Nicole Yarber and Donte Drumm. Nothing definite has been learned or confirmed. Donte has always maintained that the two were nothing more than casual acquaintances, just two kids who'd grown up in the same town and were members of a graduating class of over five hundred. He denied at trial, under oath, and he has denied ever since, that he had a sexual relationship with Nicole. Her friends have always believed this too. Skeptics, however, point out that Donte would be foolish to admit an intimate relationship with a woman he was accused of murdering. Several of his friends allegedly said that the two had just begun an affair when she disappeared. Much speculation centers upon the actions of Joey Gamble. Gamble testified at trial that he saw a green Ford van moving slowly and "suspiciously" through the parking lot where Nicole's BMW was parked at the time she disappeared. Donte Drumm often drove such a van, one owned by his parents. Gamble's testimony was attacked at trial and should have been discredited. The theory is that Gamble knew of Nicole's affair with Donte, and as the odd man out he became so enraged that he helped the police frame their story against Donte Drumm.
Three years after the trial, a voice analysis expert hired by defense lawyers determined that the anonymous man who called Detective Kerber with the tip that Donte was the killer was, in fact, Joey Gamble. Gamble vehemently denies this. If it is true, then Gamble played a significant role in the arrest, prosecution, and conviction of Donte Drumm.
A voice jolted him from another world. "Keith, it's Dr. Herzlich," Dana said through the phone's intercom.
Keith said, "Thanks," and paused for a moment to clear his mind. Then he picked up the phone. He began with the usual pleasantries, but knowing the doctor was a busy man, he quickly got down to business. "Look, Dr. Herzlich, I need a little favor, and if it's too sticky, just say so. We had a guest during the worship service yesterday, a convict in the process of being paroled, spending a few months at a halfway house, and he's really a troubled soul. He stopped by this morning, just left actually, and he claims to have some rather severe medical problems. He's been seen at St. Francis."