by Terry Shames
“After we eat, we’ll sit down at the computer and maybe we can narrow it down.”
We never get around to it because we end up, as we often do, in the bedroom. I don’t usually sleep over because I have to be up early to see to my cows. Wendy has never complained about it. Maybe it’s because we were both married for a long time, but we don’t feel the need to spend every second together.
CHAPTER 6
Maria isn’t coming in until later. She has gone to Bobtail to track down information at City Hall on a cold case she’s working on. I’m at headquarters on the early shift with Connor. I ask him what he knows about online dating sites and am surprised when he blushes as red as a tomato. Connor is an awkward young man, chunky, with a tendency to blush easily. He is quick with a sharp reply at what he perceives as little slights. Sort of like Maria, actually. But Maria has a better sense of humor.
“Why would I know about that?” he asks. His beaky nose twitches and his eyes narrow.
“Because you’re young.”
“Oh.” He relaxes.
“Most people your age are a lot savvier on the Internet than us older citizens. I’d like you to help me research Internet dating sites.” At least I can dazzle him with my knowledge that there’s more than one site.
He favors me with a speculative look, and I know he wants to ask me why I’m interested in dating sites. Before I can formulate a reason that doesn’t sound lame or implicate Loretta, he opens his computer and starts pecking away. I’m envious. I never got the hang of typing and still have to hunt and peck. “Here,” he says, and turns his computer to face me.
I look at the screen. It’s a list of dating sites. Like Wendy said, there are a lot of them, with names like “Match,”
“Elite,” and “Eharmony.”
“Is this all of them?” I’m reading down the list. There must be twenty-five, all with cute names.
“Heck, no, there’s a lot more. This is just the most popular ones.”
“Would they all appeal to everybody? How about older women?”
He screws up his face, thinking. “These are more for younger people.” He takes his computer back and types some more. “Here are five that Google says are popular with older women.”
Google says. Why didn’t I think of that? I look things up on Google, but sometimes I still don’t think to do it. “What kinds of people use them, and how do they get their names in there?”
He shrugs. “Anybody can use them.” I appreciate that he takes the question for what it’s worth rather than acting smug because I don’t know what I’m looking at. Another siege of typing. “Here’s one of the websites. It tells you how to sign up. It isn’t hard. They all make it easy.”
“Why?”
“Because they want to sell you a subscription. They’re not in it to make people happy, no matter what they say. They’re in it to make money.”
The one I’m looking at is a site called “Fifty and Beyond.” It asks for your email address and zip code, and then it asks for gender and whether you are looking for a man or woman. It seems to me if you put your gender in, that’s all you need. They would know you are looking for someone of the other sex. But then I realize I’m being narrow-minded.
“You mean if a man is looking for another man, they’ll know that?”
He shrugs. “Sure.”
I don’t want to stare at him, but for a few seconds, I think I’ve stepped into alien territory. I’m no prude, and I believe it’s best to live and let live, but his attitude surprises me. It isn’t even the idea that same genders are looking for each other online that brings me up short; it’s that Connor is so casual about it. He grew up in Bobtail, not in a big city. How is it that he takes such things for granted? It occurs to me that I don’t know a thing about his love interests. I shut the door on my speculation. It’s none of my business.
“People don’t have a problem putting in their email address? Aren’t they afraid these websites will start hounding them?”
“That goes with the territory if you sign up for anything at all on the Internet. But they have to know basic information, like what area you live in. It doesn’t make sense for them to show you the profile of somebody who lives in Arkansas when you’re here in Jarrett Creek.”
“People could lie.”
“Sure, they could, but why would they? You go on a dating site to find somebody to date. You’re not going to find anybody if you aren’t willing to share a little bit about yourself.”
“What if I just want to check whether someone is on their database?”
“Who?”
I hesitate, not wanting to drag Loretta into the conversation. But Connor is a cop, even if he’s young. There’s no need to keep things from him. I tell him that no one has seen Loretta in a few days, and there is a suggestion that she was looking at dating sites. “I want to look through and see if she signed up for this one.”
Connor wags his finger. “Unh, unh, unh. No can do. It’s pay to play. You have to sign up to browse through the members.”
“I need to know which site Loretta is on. Do I have to sign up for every one of them? Can I send whoever runs the site an email asking if she’s there? Or do I have to get a court order to be able to look?”
“All you have to do is sign up as if you are a man looking for a woman like Loretta. But you’ll have to sign up for as many sites as it takes to find her.”
I sit back, considering the number of sites I might have to sign on to. “How much does it cost?”
“It varies, but most aren’t expensive. At least not at first. I’ve heard that the sites will offer all kinds of gimmicks for finding a mate, and it can get costly.” He taps vigorously into his computer again. He looks like he enjoys searching. “Here’s an article that says they charge anywhere from $25 to $50 a month or less if you sign up for several months.” My phone rings. It’s Loretta’s son, Scott. Thank goodness. Saved by the bell.
“Hi, Chief. My wife said you called with a question?” His voice is hurried, like he has taken a minute out from something important. “Scott, did your mamma tell you she might be going away?”
“No, I haven’t talked to her since last weekend. Why are you asking?”
“I don’t want to alarm you, but nobody has seen her for a few days, and she didn’t tell anybody she was leaving town. I was hoping you might have an idea where she is.”
“Hold on a minute.” He hollers, “Marcie? Where are you? Can you come here for a minute?” Kids are squabbling in the background.
“This better be important,” she says loud enough for me to hear. “I’m trying to get the kids ready for school.”
Scott asks Marcie whether his mom mentioned to her that she was going somewhere. I hear the anxious tone in his voice. Marcie says she hasn’t talked to her since Scott did. “Why? What’s going on?”
He comes back on the line. “You sure Mamma didn’t just go over to Bobtail to go shopping?”
“It doesn’t seem that way. She was supposed to meet a friend and didn’t show up. I took the liberty of going to her house, and she wasn’t there and the car’s gone.”
“Have you called the hospital? Maybe she had a wreck.”
“We did call the hospital in Bobtail but not farther away. Do you know if she keeps emergency information in her purse? Who to call, that sort of thing?”
He hesitates. “I guess I never thought about it, but Mamma’s careful. It’s hard for me to imagine her not having information like that with her.” He has gotten increasingly agitated. “Listen here, I don’t like the sound of this. Let me call into work and cancel a couple of appointments, and I’ll get back to you. I think I’d like to come down there.” Twenty minutes later, he calls back. “Marcie wondered if you’ve talked to her friends. You know, they might have gotten it into their heads to go down to Fredericksburg to look at the bluebonnets or go shopping in Houston.”
I always wonder why people think they know more about police work than police do.
What kind of fool would neglect to call a missing person’s family, friends, and the local hospital? “I contacted a few of her friends, and the ones I talked to didn’t know of any plans.”
“Well, where the hell is she?” I realize this is a rhetorical question. “I think I’d better come over there.”
“Look, Scott, let me put a little more time into it. I called you in case someone in your family had an emergency and she took off to go be with you and didn’t have time to tell anyone. Let me get a little further along before we start to worry. I don’t want to get you all fussed up over nothing.”
“I don’t know . . .”
I would have the same concerns in his place. But he’s a man with a family and a job, and I don’t want him to waste his time, when his mother might just be gallivanting around somewhere.
“You go on to work, and I’ll pursue this. I want to talk to a couple more people.”
“Call me the minute you know anything. And if you haven’t located her by, say, two o’clock, I’m driving down there.”
I get his work number and hope that I’ll be able to call him soon and tell him the mystery is cleared up—that Loretta is back home and mad because we were too nosy for our own good.
Loretta seems to know everybody, but when it comes down to it, she doesn’t have what I think of as a “best friend.” She and Ida Ruth Dillard get along well though. Maybe she confided in her. She knows Ida Ruth can keep a secret. Ida Ruth was close to a friend of mine who died a few years back, and it turned out Ida Ruth had kept a secret about her for many years that no one else knew. Loretta was impressed and said if she had a secret, she’d surely tell Ida Ruth before she’d tell anyone else.
I’ve barely hung up from Scott when Ellen Forester calls. “Samuel, I still haven’t heard from Loretta. Have you?”
“No. I spoke with her son Scott, and if she was planning to leave town, she didn’t tell him.”
“I’m so mad at her I could spit. Why would she go off like that and not tell anyone?” She sounds close to tears. I need to give her a task to keep her busy.
“Would you do something for me? She’s taking that watercolor class from you, right? Would you ask the people in the class whether she might have mentioned to any of them that she planned to go away?”
“That’s a good idea. I’ll be glad to. She and Kathy Weinman are both in the intermediate watercolor class, and they chat a lot with each other. Maybe Loretta confided in her.”
I have my doubts. It seems like she would be more likely to confide in Ellen. “Don’t get too worked up,” I say. “We’ll find her. She’ll probably be aggravated because we poked our nose in.” I tell her I’m going over to talk to Ida Ruth right now.
“I suppose you have to,” she says. I don’t know why Ellen doesn’t like Ida Ruth, but the few times she has come up in conversation, Ellen has had a sour face. It’s unusual. She usually likes most people. I’ve never asked what the trouble is.
I’m lucky to find Ida Ruth at home. She has been a pillar of the First Baptist Church in Jarrett Creek for many years, and she’s gone a lot, traveling all over the state attending meetings. I don’t know what they do that involves so many meetings.
Ida Ruth and Earl have lived here all their lives. They have a nice little place right in the middle of town. Unlike Loretta, who is an avid gardener, Ida Ruth and her husband are clearly in my gardening camp—simple is best. A lawn with a few trees and a couple of potted plants on the porch do the trick. I wonder whether it’s Ida Ruth or Earl who decided on the dazzling yellow color of the house. I suspect it was a mistake and neither of them had the nerve to admit it to each other.
Ida Ruth gives me a cup of coffee, which I always appreciate. She says Earl is in Bobtail looking at property. She laughs. “I don’t know what he thinks he’s going to do with land if he finds acreage he likes. We’re too old to build a new house, and farming never appealed to him. No telling what he has in mind. He always was one for big ideas.”
We sit in her living room, which is as full of knick knacks as you can cram in. She favors Hummel figurines and must have two dozen of them. “Now I’m going to warn you,” she says. “I may have to answer the phone. We’ve got a little argument brewing down at the church, and I’m trying to settle it down.”
I can tell by the way she raises her eyebrows that she wants me to ask what the argument is about, but I suspect it has to do with the rodeo. I’m not going to let myself get into that subject with her. “I’ll get right to the point then,” I say, “so I won’t have to keep you long. I’m concerned because nobody seems to know where Loretta is. I was hoping she might have told you if she had plans.”
“Loretta is missing?” She reaches up in an unconscious gesture to stroke the side of her face where the skin is wrinkled from a burn she got as a child.
“I can’t exactly say that. But I haven’t seen her in a few days, and she didn’t show up for a date she had to go shopping with a friend. Her car is gone, so it appears that she left under her own steam, but it seems funny that she didn’t tell anybody where she was going.”
Ida Ruth nods her head. She’s worrying her bottom lip with her big buck teeth. “I expect she’ll be back before too long. You know how Loretta is. She’s an independent person, and I don’t think she believes she has to answer to anybody.”
That’s an oddly defensive comment, and it makes me wonder whether Ida Ruth does have some idea where Loretta is. “I would really appreciate it if you could set my mind at ease.” I meet her eyes, and she glances away.
I persist. “Somebody suggested that she might have met a man through an online dating site. Do you know anything about that?”
She straightens her spine. “Samuel, sometimes women want to keep their business to themselves. It isn’t against the law to go out on a blind date.”
“Is that what she did?”
“I don’t know for sure. But yes, I do know she registered for one of those dating sites. For seniors. But I don’t think she has to broadcast the news all over town if she signs up and goes on a date.” She gives me a pointed look.
“All I want is to make sure she hasn’t met a man who’s up to no good,” I say.
“Tsk. She’s a grown woman, and she can take care of herself.”
The phone rings, and she rolls her eyes at me. “I’ll be right back.”
Her conversation with whoever called is one-sided, with Ida Ruth interjecting an occasional, “We’ll work it out” or “I wish you wouldn’t get so riled up.”
She comes back in but doesn’t sit down. “I have to go down to the church. You need anything else?”
“Yes. Do you know the name of the website she was using?”
“Oh, let me think.” She raises her eyes to the ceiling. “Something to do with small towns. Oh, right, Smalltownpair. She said they specialize in small towns in Texas, and they have a separate section for senior citizens.”
“You think it’s on the up and up?”
“I have no idea. It all seems shady to me. Not that I judge Loretta. She has been single for a long time. I think whatever people have to do to try to make themselves happy, they ought to do it. You know, the Lord put two by two in the ark, so I think He likes for people to be together.” She pauses, pursing her lips. “I’ll tell you this though. I personally would not get involved with anything like that. The idea of going out with a stranger bothers me.”
I get up. “Thank you for your time. If you hear from her, would you tell her she’s got a lot of people worried and to at least call me to let me know she’s all right?”
“I sure will.”
I have my hand on the doorknob when she says, “Can I get your opinion about something?”
Here it comes. I turn back to her. “What would that be?”
“It concerns the rodeo. I’m not sure everything is going well with that.”
“What do you mean?
“I hate to say it, but I believe Father Sanchez thinks he owns it. That
’s not right. It’s time for him to share some of the glory with others. Loretta was supposed to bring it up with you. Did she?”
The glory. I suspect those are Reverend Becker’s words. “Yes, she talked to me last week. She told me the Baptist preacher wanted to participate in putting on the rodeo. I told her that I worried that if the Baptist Church got to be a sponsor, then all the other churches would want in on it.”
“The other churches didn’t think of it first, though, did they? They’re willing to go along with the Catholics getting the glory. Since the Baptists are taking the initiative, they ought to get to be part of it if they want to.”
More about the glory. “I haven’t had much time to ponder on it,” I say.
“It shouldn’t take that much pondering. It’s a matter of principal.” She’s on the warpath now.
“Does Reverend Becker think Father Sanchez is doing a bad job?”
“I don’t think that’s the point.”
I find myself turning my hat around and around. “I guess I can’t help thinking if something isn’t broken, why fix it?”
She sniffs. “Well, you aren’t a church going man. I can see how you might not appreciate the nuances.”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s probably right.”
I open the door, and Dusty springs up.
“My goodness, look at that cute dog. Oh, no, no, you stay outside. Good dog.” She flutters her hands at Dusty, and he backs up with his ears back.
Why is it that when I leave one of the church ladies, I always feel like I’ve barely escaped?
CHAPTER 7
I‘m walking into the station when my cell phone rings. It has only been an hour since I talked to Loretta’s son, but he’s calling again. “Have you heard anything from Mamma?”
“I got a little information, but I haven’t found her yet. It’s only been a short time, Scott.”
“I know it, but I can’t get anything done for worrying. I’m going to come to Jarrett Creek.”
He won’t be dissuaded. It will take him a couple of hours to get here, by which time I hope his trip is unnecessary.
