by Pat Muir
I made a mental note of the last statement just in case we ever needed Flynn’s DNA. I thanked her for coming to the office and escorted her to the exit. The male staff ogled her as she walked out with a slight swish that Marilyn Munroe had exaggerated in the movie Some Like It Hot. I ignored the comment “Hot babe there” by one of these men as I returned to my desk.
CHAPTER 5
I continued to follow up on Flynn’s phone records, especially those in the days shortly before he disappeared. There were several calls to his neighbor, Mary Smith, two calls to the Larry Swift residence, and two more to Laurel Real Estate. Incoming calls came from sales associates, none of whom offered useful information on Flynn. There were two calls to Charlie Jones, the elderly man in the mobile home park with whom Art played cribbage every Wednesday evening. The out-of-town numbers were to or from people who had left their home for Flynn to sell while they had moved to be with or nearby their kinfolk. Two phone calls pertained to mobiles homes whose sales were in escrow.
I managed to contact everybody Flynn had called in the two months prior to his disappearance and found nothing or nobody suspicious. The phone calls showed Flynn had a very modest social life. It could be he was still getting over his divorce. To cover the possibility that Flynn had taken off to avoid paying alimony, I submitted an open inquiry to the Social Security office to see if his Social Security number (SSN) was being used elsewhere for purposes of employment. Even if one disappears, one has to earn a living to support oneself.
I phoned Tom Small to ask for clarification of the fishing camp data he had sent me. “I don’t enforce filling in of the folio completely when the camper pays in cash,” he replied. “The phone number requirement is largely for campers with children. There were no children in that section and few elsewhere in the camp since school had already started.”
“Were any of those campers regulars who might have known Flynn from past visits to the camp?” I asked.
“The Wellhouses and Bill Watson are regular visitors. I wouldn’t know if they knew Art.”
I thanked Tom for his help and began to telephone the five campers who had put down their phone numbers on the folios. I realized it would be better to call in the evening, when these campers would more likely be home. In the interim, I began to check the vehicle license numbers against the addresses of campers who had not put down phone numbers. It is surprising how many people don’t know their license plate number or put it down incorrectly. Furthermore, some people fail to give their change of address to the DMV whenever they move. For those with incorrect, missing, or incomplete license numbers, it would be necessary to contact their charge card companies to get names and addresses. I prepared a court order request for that purpose and got it approved a day or so later.
I looked at Flynn’s ten-year-old rental application that Bert Swanson had given me. I added the phone numbers of his references to the list of phone numbers to be called. No numbers were current. I tracked down one of the references from his former address, who said he’d known Art Flynn when he’d been at Maine University. “A nice guy, easygoing, but not particularly ambitious,” he remarked.
I then studied Flynn’s employment application with Laurel Real Estate. He’d been born in July 1960. That would make him forty-eight, not the fifty as earlier reported. He’d been born in Bar Harbor, Maine. He’d gone to the University of Maine and graduated in 1984 with a degree in psychology. At San Diego State University, which I attended, we used to think education and psychology were the lowest of academic quality. I noticed he did not graduate until he was twenty-four, meaning he’d been there two years longer than a regular student. Perhaps he was a slow learner. Perhaps he’d been working and studying part time. Perhaps he’d stayed on to take some graduate courses and had quit to take full-time employment. The application showed Flynn had then worked until 1995 with the Bar Harbor Fishing Company in the town of his birth. From 1995 to 1998, he’d worked as a real estate agent for the Axis Real Estate brokers, selling mobile homes in Augusta, Maine. Laurel Real Estate had taken him on in 1998. I could see no gaps in the employment history.
I made telephone calls to the numbers listed for his former employers but found them to be incorrect. I researched on the internet to discover the fishing company had gone out of business in 1998 and Axis Real Estate Brokers had been absorbed by another company three years after Flynn had left. Highly unlikely the latter would have records on Flynn. The portrait of the missing man that emerged from the application was of somebody without a lot of drive, not a man to take risks and contented with what life offered him.
I thought it might be useful to interview Larry Swift to see if he had any animosity towards Flynn and a different perspective on him than Marge Holmes. I called him, and he agreed to meet me at his home the next morning at ten o’clock. Eleanor Bratz from space 77 in the Palomar South Park had left a message for me. I called her and agreed to meet her at her home three hours later. That would save me having to drive to North County twice.
When I left CID the next day, I noticed our address had reverted to Cope St. It reflected my mood that this investigation was cheerless work. I drove the same route, taking Highway 15 to Highway 78, again encountering heavy traffic on the latter highway, but I managed to arrive precisely on time at Swift’s palatial residence. The black maid opened the door. She had been briefed of my coming and promptly ushered me into a side room, saying Mr. Swift would be with me shortly. Shortly, as it turned out, was ten minutes, a time I decided was intended to let me know I was an intruder wasting the time of the master of the house, who would be in full control of the meeting. This sort of thing has happened to me many times before. My choices are to let the interviewee feel he is in control or for me to make it clear to him that he isn’t. Making me wait pushed me to the latter choice.
Larry Swift entered the side room dressed in an expensive blue business suit, a power suit. Six feet tall, about fifty years old, in good physical shape, he had a decisive mien. I could see why Marge would prefer him to Flynn. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Ms. Notfarg,” he said politely. “I understand you want to ask me about Mr. Flynn. I don’t know what I can add to what I already told Detective Walker or what Marge has already said.”
“I’m sure you appreciate the convenience of being interviewed in your own home,” I responded brusquely. “It is not clear you told Walker fully about your interactions with Mr. Flynn.”
The implication that he might have been less than forthcoming must have lessened his feeling of control, since he paused before replying. “What interactions are you referring to, and what has this got to with the missing man?”
“That’s for me to decide, Mr. Swift. Why don’t you go over all the interactions you’ve had with Mr. Flynn? I want to record your responses as well.”
Swift looked at me cautiously before speaking. “There haven’t been too many. Bert Swanson, my manager at the Palomar South Park, asked Flynn’s wife to help out in the office when Bert’s wife had to go to hospital. Marge did the job very well, and Bert suggested I hire her to work at my office or at one of my businesses. I did so and indeed found her to be very efficient. I had met Flynn on a few social occasions before Marge and I got into a relationship. I thought him a rather drab fellow. When Marge told him she was leaving him…and with her daughter, he became furious. I refused him entry to my house, so he came to my office. He made a very ugly scene there. He seemed most disturbed that he wouldn’t have visitation rights to Sally. He left only when I threatened to call the police.”
“Did he threaten you?”
Swift thought for a moment before saying, “No.”
My response was “Humpf.” I was recording the conversation, but I looked at my notebook as though reading from a list of questions, and I took a lengthy pause before I spoke again. “What do you know about the dispute between Mr. Flynn and your park manager?”
Swift seemed genuinely surprised. “I don’t know anything about it. Perhaps Collins Real
ty would know more… Bert is their sales agent.”
“Do you have any knowledge or opinion on why Mr. Flynn might want to disappear or where he might have wanted to go to?”
Swift seemed a little reluctant to say anything negative about Flynn. “I think he might have disappeared because he did not want to pay court-ordered alimony to his ex-wife. I’ve no idea where he went to after that fishing camp.”
I gave him another “Humph,” looked down at my notebook at length, and then looked up at him. “Thank you, Mr. Swift, for the information. If I have further questions, I’ll be sure to call you. And if you hear anything about Mr. Flynn, call me at my office.” I handed him my business card. I left the side room, and the maid opened the front door for me. No need to say a polite goodbye. I drove to a Jack in the Box and ate a couple of tacos and drank a large cup of black coffee for lunch, thanking myself for keeping my calorie intake low when the possibilities for more were abundant. I read the local paper and made some phone calls pertinent to other cases I was handling in order to kill time.
Thus, I arrived precisely on time at the Bratz mobile home, a modern Lancer doublewide, a premium brand. A one-year-old white Cadillac de Ville stood in the driveway. The door was opened by an elaborately coiffed woman of medium height and build in her late fifties, wearing a blue Max Mara wool dress, a triple string of pearls around her neck, and more expensive rings on her fingers than I could count. She seemed surprised as I introduced myself. She hadn’t been expecting a black detective. She looked me up and down, assessing my clothes, makeup, jewelry—earrings only—and appearance before inviting me in. I reciprocated by looking her up and down also, with a deliberateness to indicate I was not to be intimidated. She sat me at the dining room table and politely offered me coffee, which I declined. I started the conversation.
“You’ve lived in the park for a long time?”
“Six years actually…ever since my husband died. He was president of the United Auto Dealers Association, you know.”
“You are aware I’m investigating the disappearance of Art Flynn, your neighbor.”
“Of course. Mary from across the street said a sheriff was inquiring about him. Actually, Art sold me this mobile home.”
“I take it you haven’t heard from him?”
She smiled at the question. “No, I haven’t, though I’d love to. Art really is a nice man. I was very disappointed that he married Marge. She may be younger and better looking than me, but I would have been a lot more faithful than she.”
“So, you have no grudge against Art?’
“Not in the least. I heard he got an unsatisfactory divorce settlement. I think it a shame that somebody would treat him so badly.”
“What do you mean by badly?”
“Well, Mary told me about it. He loved little Sally so much. He was heartbroken when she got leukemia and even more so when he wasn’t allowed to visit her.”
“Do you think Art would want to disappear?”
“It’s hard to tell. I don’t think he has a lot of drive in his life. His divorce, I understand, was over four months ago. If he is going to move on, I would have expected him to do it sooner and probably plan for it… I have seen no evidence of his doing so.”
I smiled at the last sentence. This woman was still interested in Flynn. After a few more desultory questions, I thanked Mrs. Bratz for her time and went across the street. The sour-faced man living next to the Bratz residence watched me stonily, so I let my car stay parked against the red curb. I knocked on the door of 78, adjacent to the Smith residence. A white-haired lady of seventy plus greeted me cheerfully and invited me inside immediately after I explained who I was and what I was doing. She sat me down beside her bald husband and offered me coffee. Even though I had drunk a large cup an hour earlier, I accepted, since taking such an offer puts hosts at ease. They introduced themselves as Roger and Mabel Bessin, long-term residents in the park, and they were already aware that Flynn was missing.
“Mary told us that Art hadn’t returned and that his boss came around to check,” said Mr. Bessin. Very happy to be discussing their immediate neighbor with a detective, a black one no less, they discoursed at length. Yes, Flynn was a very nice guy and had sold them their home. A very professional purchase. They had met Marge and thought that, while very pretty, she was something of a gold digger, an opinion they felt confirmed when she’d moved in with Larry Swift. Sally was such a sweet little girl, and Art truly loved her. He would take her to preschool, to the parks, and to the movies. He seemed to love the little girl more than his wife. And Sally clearly loved Art.
“I don’t know why he didn’t adopt her,” remarked Mabel, the more talkative of the two. “Perhaps her father is still living. If Art had done so, then he would still be able to see her, poor thing.”
“Poor thing?” I queried.
“Yes, she’s got leukemia and is quite ill, I understand. Art told me he feels desolate that he cannot be there to comfort her when she gets treatment.”
“Does Art have any enemies in the park?” I asked.
“No. The only person who doesn’t like Art is Bert Swanson, the manager. But then, Bert doesn’t like anybody. I think he takes lessons from his wife there.”
“Is it true that Art is a womanizer?”
Mabel looked at her husband, who spoke carefully. “Art likes women, and they like him. I don’t think he was ever unkind to any woman. He was too much of a gentleman, a real old-fashioned type of guy.”
CHAPTER 6
It took me another half-hour to listen to the two of them ramble on about Art, their home, their neighbors, their family, and their friends. I sipped my coffee slowly. When they began to discourse on their ailments, I looked at my watch and informed them I had to leave. The coffee had gone through me by that time, and I had to use their toilet. I left them my business card and also posted it on the doors of other nearby neighbors with a request to call me. I used the opportunity while in the park to interview Charlie Jones in space number 129, occupied by an older singlewide mobile home. Men talk differently than women, and I hoped Charlie Jones might be a confidant of Flynn. The owner opened the door, and his eyes widened in surprise, an understandable reaction on seeing a black female who towered over his sixty-four inches. I introduced myself and the purpose of my visit.
“Yes,” said Charlie, a wizened eighty-year-old, as he invited me into an interior devoid of any woman’s touch. “I know Art’s gone missing. I take it you don’t know what’s happened to him.”
“No. That’s why I’m asking around. Have you any reason to think he might want to disappear?”
Charlie gave me the same details I had heard from Mary Smith, Sam Laurel, and Marge Holmes before he gave me a nugget. “The last time I played cribbage with Art on the Wednesday evening before he left, I could see something was bothering him. I asked him about it, but he said he was fine. I thought he might have heard some more negative news on Sally’s health…but that wouldn’t have been a reason for him to disappear.”
What could have been bothering Flynn?
Charlie continued. “People tend to underestimate Art. He’s such a decent man that many don’t know he is quite smart even though he’s not ambitious. I play cribbage with him, and I’m a pretty good player, but I know Art lets me beat him. He knows that I know. I miss playing cards with him enormously… He’s such great company.” Moisture came to the eyes of this lonely old man as he said, “I hope nothing’s happened to him. I hate to lose friends like him at my age.”
I patted him on the back and let myself out. This interview had yielded a clue. I phoned Mary Smith and asked her if she knew if or what had been bothering Flynn just before he’d left.
“I didn’t realize anything was bothering him at all,” she replied.
I drove back to the office, where I changed into sports clothes, and went to the gym. What could have been bothering Flynn? Maybe Flynn had had a negative interaction with a client. Maybe Sally’s health had taken a tu
rn for the worse. Maybe Jones’s perception of Flynn’s concern was misplaced. All these thoughts ran through my head as I worked up a sweat on the treadmill. I went home and heated up a frozen dinner. After dinner, I began calling the campers at the fishing campsites. A woman calling herself Alisha Johnson answered the phone of Bill Dollar from site T2, her voice bearing the patois of an urban Afro-American. I explained I was seeking information on a missing man in site T1 next to her at the Russian River fishing camp.
“I wasn’t feeling well,” said Alisha. I spent most of my time at the camp in the community hall, the cafeteria, and the swimming pool.”
“Did you see the man in the end site next to you closest to the river?”
“I had Bill, my boyfriend, drop me off at the front when we came in since I was feeling so shitty. I couldn’t tell you anything about the man next to our van, since I spent so little time at the site, but I can say his black car was still there when we left that Tuesday.”
“Could I speak to your boyfriend?”
“He’s not here at the moment.”
I detected a note of reluctance in that last sentence. I asked Alisha to have her boyfriend call me when he came back home.
I continued phoning. Harriet Moore, who had taken over site T3, which had been vacated by Bill Dollar, answered my phone call. She said there had been no cars at the two end sites when she’d arrived on Thursday afternoon, September 18, but the one next to the river had been occupied later. No help. Chad Meyer of site T5 took my last call of the evening. He could not remember anything about the people or cars at the end of this tenting area. Also no help. Calls that produce no fresh information are the tedious and time-consuming parts of an investigation. I had to wonder if all this effort for missing persons was worth it when, statistically, ninety percent of them show up later.
