by Terry Shames
I take him back upstairs and show him the gap in the collection of bags in the closet and point out that her toothbrush and toiletries are gone.
“That makes me feel better,” he says. He mops his forehead with his handkerchief. It isn’t that warm. He’s upset.
Downstairs, Maria is holding Loretta’s cell phone. “I can’t believe she doesn’t have a security code,” she says. “That’s not smart. But at least that meant I could get right into it.”
“And?”
“And nothing. She hasn’t used it for two weeks.” She sets it down. “What’s the point of even having a cell phone if you aren’t going to use it?”
“She must have used her landline,” I say. “Let’s get a printout of her phone records for the last month.”
While Maria uses the computer to access Loretta’s landline account, I show Scott the list of men’s names that we found. He gets a glass of water and sits down at the kitchen table and looks at the notes she made. I also show him the photograph. “Do you recognize him?”
“No.” He stares at it for several seconds. I expect he’s having the same response I have—a strange kind of possessiveness. He groans. “Oh, Mamma, what have you done?”
Maria looks like she could cry. “Scott, it’s possible that she’s off on a lark. Sometimes people meet someone and get swept off their feet. It happens even to older people.” She cuts her eyes at me as a prime example. I met Wendy several months ago, and she wowed me from the first day I met her. “Swept off my feet” describes it just right.
“Not Mamma. She’s too practical.”
Maria smiles. Scott doesn’t want to think of his mamma in that way. But even though Maria is right that people Loretta’s age can meet someone that they take to right away, that’s not the part that bothers me. I’m bothered by the statistics I saw regarding the number of oversixty women who get bilked by men on these dating sites. It’s appalling. But I’m not going to tell Scott that. “We’ll figure this out,” I say.
“How?” He practically begs.
“First of all, I’m going to call the Department of Public Safety. They need to know we’ve got a missing person. I’ll get them to put out a bulletin to look for her car. And I’ll get them to tag her credit cards. If she went any distance at all, she’s bound to need gas at some point. Or she’ll stop to buy snacks or a meal. We have to hope that she uses a credit card, and when she does, we’ll have an idea what direction she went.” I also want to find out what kind of action they take if it looks like someone has been duped by a person they met online, but again I don’t feel the need to say that to Scott.
“Good. That sounds like a start.” Scott is clutching at my words.
“Then, depending on what they say, I’ll call the FBI.”
“The FBI?” His eyes widen. “What do they have to do with it?”
“In specific cases, they handle Internet fraud. Mostly it’s a state concern, but there are circumstances where they’ll step in. I don’t know if they’ll think this qualifies, but it won’t hurt to talk to them.”
“Meanwhile,” Maria says, “I’m going to go over her phone records and match them to the men on her list. I’ll also try to contact the men on the list that she marked ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ to find out if they heard from her.”
Scott nods. “I guess you have a plan. What can I do?”
“Call your relatives and see if anybody has heard from her. Her sister, your cousins, your brother. Or any old friends she might have mentioned recently.”
“Good. I’m glad it’s Friday so I can be here all weekend.”
My heart sinks. It’s hard to have a feverish relative looking over our shoulders. “Try not to get your relatives too worried.” They might descend on Jarrett Creek in droves, and we surely don’t need a whole posse of worried relatives.
“I got you.”
“I’m going back to headquarters to make my calls,” I say. “It’s getting on in the day, and I want to try to get some responses before they close up for the weekend.”
Maria stays behind to dig deeper into Loretta’s computer. “Maybe I’ll find something more.”
“Like what?” Scott asks.
“I’ll look through her Internet history. She might have checked a map or looked up the name of someplace where she was thinking of traveling. I have your permission, right?”
“My permission? Absolutely.”
Back at headquarters, I call the regional office of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). I have a good friend in the local office over in Bryan-College Station, but I want to get to a higher level. It turns out the honcho I reach is not too interested in my story.
“We don’t usually get involved in problems with those dating sites,” he says. “Unless we find out for sure that somebody has been defrauded. Or attacked. We get a lot of calls from people who are worried that a loved one might get into trouble, and we simply don’t have the manpower to look into all of them.”
“Well I’d like you to put out a notice to be on the lookout for her car anyway.”
“That I can do.” He takes down the information.
“And I’d like to have you tag her credit cards.” Scott looked through her bills and gave us the numbers of two cards she uses.
“You can do that yourself,” he says.
“Yes, but they’d pay more attention if it comes from DPS.”
“If you think so, I’ll get that done too.”
“Would the FBI give me any help?”
He hesitates. “It’s not a bad idea to talk to them. They won’t do anything straight off, but they do look at patterns. If something has happened to your friend, they’ll want to record the information in case there is a rash of problems.” He gives me an 800 number to call.
When I finally reach the proper FBI department and talk to a live person, he listens patiently. Then he chuckles. “I wish I had a dime for every time I hear that story. I get a call from Mary Smith telling me her mother is hooked up with a guy she doesn’t trust or Joe Jones telling me his wife has run off with a boy taking their retirement funds with her. And so on.”
I don’t appreciate his being amused. “But this woman is missing.”
“She’s most likely hiding out because she’s embarrassed that she got caught up in fraud. She’ll come back with her tail between her legs, along with a lighter bank account.”
“I don’t mean to argue, but I know this woman pretty well. She’s smart and she’s careful.”
“And she lives alone, right? Religious? Generous?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“Let me fill this out a little more for you. In the last few weeks or months, she has started dressing a little younger, maybe had her hair fixed different, started a new hobby. And people have noticed that she has a sparkle in her eye?”
I’m momentarily stunned into silence.
“Fit the profile?”
I sigh. “I guess it does.”
“One thing is a little different though,” he says. “She at least has people worried about her. Some of these poor women, and men, too, are just plain lonely. Nobody pays any attention to them until it’s too late, and they’ve lost their money and are either too embarrassed to call us or they wait until the trail is cold.”
“You’re right. Loretta has a lot of friends, and we’re all surprised that she went on one of those websites, and now we’re getting worried.”
“I’d suggest you sit tight. It won’t take too long before this guy gets enough money and he’ll suddenly disappear or send her packing. That’s when she’s going to need friends and family.”
That night over spaghetti, I tell Wendy what the FBI said.
“That makes me feel bad,” she says. “I never would have thought of Loretta as lonely, as social as she is, but it wouldn’t hurt for us to pay more attention to her. We could ask her to have a meal with us or maybe drive to a music festival or something.”
She’s right, but we grin at each other, kno
wing it probably won’t happen, at least not right away. We like to spend time alone together. We’re still getting to know each other. We haven’t even gone out with her daughter and son-in-law, and they live in Bobtail. Not that we spend every minute together. We both have busy lives; me with work and Wendy with family and travel plans she made months before we met. We like it that way. “We’re not teenagers,” she said one time, “and there’s no need to rush anything.”
“How worried are you?” she asks. “I mean, do you think Loretta’s in danger? I don’t mean financially; I mean bodily.”
“I don’t know what to think.”
When Maria got back from Loretta’s house late this afternoon, she said she hadn’t found anything helpful in the computer history or by going through the rest of the desk. She said that Scott was going to spend the night in his mamma’s house and hoped that she’d turn up.
“I tried to steer him in the direction of going home and letting us take care of it,” she said.
When I told her what the FBI said, she was dismayed. “They can’t do anything at all?”
“Not at this point.”
She had brought the list of men and the phone list from Loretta’s house, and she went to work trying to contact them. By the time I left for Wendy’s place, she hadn’t gotten very far.
CHAPTER 9
I‘m glad Dusty is old enough to go down to the pasture with me when I feed the cows in the morning. He has learned not to bark at them, but he watches them as if he thinks they might make a false move. They ignore him. The weather is glorious this time of year: cool in the mornings, although already with a hint that the day will be warm. I spend a little extra time in the pasture, cleaning up and checking on the herd’s hooves. We’ve had a wet spring, and soggy ground can lead to problems.
Next week I have to start considering which cows I’m going to take to auction. Truly Bennet will be back from west Texas, where he has been helping a newly rich retiree put together a herd. He usually helps me with the selection process.
Wendy is off to Houston this morning. Her younger daughter, the one with wanderlust, is back from India and is stopping in Houston for an unspecified number of days before she pushes on to the East Coast. That means I’m at loose ends this weekend.
When I get back to the house at ten o’clock, the land phone is ringing. I snatch it up.
“Samuel? This is Ida Ruth. I heard news I think you’ll want to know.”
“What is it?”
“A woman from Bobtail is missing. About Loretta’s age. The circumstances made me think of Loretta.”
An older woman missing. My heart thuds. It may not be anything at all to do with Loretta. “I’m glad you called. What circumstances do you mean?”
“According to my friend, the missing woman had a date to go out with a man she met on the Internet, and nobody has heard from her. I wasn’t worried about Loretta before, but this makes me wonder.”
“How did you find this out?”
“I’ve got a cousin who works in the accounting department at City Hall, and her husband is a police officer. She called me and told me.”
When I get off the phone, I call the Bobtail Police Department and ask to speak to my old friend Wallace Lyndall. He’s likely to be more forthcoming with me than an officer I don’t know. I’m glad when the duty officer says he’s in and puts me through.
“You’re mighty quick on the draw,” Lyndall says, when I tell him what I’m calling about. “We just heard this ourselves an hour ago. The chief hasn’t even had time to send an officer over to talk to the woman who reported her missing. How did you hear it?”
“You know how the grapevine works. I have a particular interest because a woman I’m friends with seems to have gone missing under the same circumstances.”
“Uh-oh.” He tells me their missing person is a widow who lives alone. “She lives in a nice subdivision that went up twenty years ago.”
“How did you find out she was missing?”
“Her next-door neighbor called us. Said the woman wasn’t answering her phone or her doorbell. She was worried that something had happened to her, so she went into her house, and it looked like the woman hadn’t been there for a couple of days. Cat hadn’t been fed. She’s alarmed.”
“I’d like to tag along to talk to the neighbor. Would there be an objection to that?”
“Let me talk to Brent Hogarth. He’s the one with the assignment.” He comes back on quickly. “He says if you can be over here within thirty minutes, he’ll wait for you.”
Twenty minutes later, Lyndall introduces me to Hogarth, a lanky man of forty who looks easy in his skin. “Lyndall said you have a friend who’s missing?”
“At first we weren’t too concerned, but it has been a number of days, and when I heard about your missing woman, I thought I ought to look into it. I understand your woman was on one of those Internet dating sites. Looks like that’s what Loretta was doing too.”
Hogarth grimaces. “I had hoped to keep that quiet. How did you hear that?”
“Grapevine. You know how small towns are.”
He nods. “I don’t like the sound of this. Like you, I didn’t make much of it when the neighbor told me our missing woman was supposed to go on a date with somebody she met online, but the fact that two women are missing under the same circumstances raises questions.”
“I’ve been looking into it,” I say, “and it turns out that meeting people through those sites can be dangerous for older women. The DPS and FBI said a lot of older women get taken in by con men on dating sites. They’re mostly fleeced out of their money. A few were attacked, but that seems to be a bigger problem for younger women.”
“Well, this one’s older. How old is your friend who’s missing?”
“Late sixties.”
“Same as our woman.” Hogarth jacks his hat back. “Lord, what did those two women get themselves into?” He shakes his head. “We’re going over now to search her house and talk with the neighbors. Be glad for you to join me and my partner.”
“I assume you called the hospital?”
“Yes. They don’t have any record of her. I also called her kids to find out whether she had talked to them about any plans, but she hadn’t. And as you might expect, they’re all stirred up now. Not that I blame them.”
Lyndall is working on another matter and can’t join us. Outside, I tell Hogarth I’ll take my pickup because I have Dusty with me.
“Good-looking dog,” he says. “He doesn’t get in your way?”
“He’s only six months old, but he already knows the drill.” Or at least part of the drill.
I follow Hogarth and his partner, a much younger officer, David Marks, over to the woman’s house. I brought my pickup rather than a squad car, so I can leave Dusty in the pickup bed. As we pull up in front of the house, I realize no one has told me the missing woman’s name.
Her house is a one-story sandy-colored brick home bordered by a flowerbed. The yard is shaded by a big pecan tree. Inside, the place is neat as a pin, but with a heavy scent that turns my stomach.
“Whew. Potpourri,” Officer Marks says. “My grandmother has that stuff stuck in bowls in every room in the house.”
“Marks, open some windows,” Hogarth says.
“What’s the victim’s name?” I ask.
Hogarth smiles. He knows it goes down better for a cop if you know the name of the person you’re investigating on behalf of.
“Elaine Farquart. Her husband was a city councilman. Died ten years ago. He was young, sixty-two. Mrs. Farquart was sixty-eight on her last birthday.”
On a table pushed against one wall, Elaine Farquart has set out a couple dozen framed photos. It’s easy to pick out Elaine and her husband, with her kids and grandkids. She’s attractive, slim with a youthful haircut and a glowing expression. She doesn’t look like a woman who is ready to call it quits with life. The question is, why couldn’t she have met someone the old-fashioned way? Why go for a s
tranger?
Suddenly I hear a “meow,” and a tabby comes slinking into the living room and immediately sidles over to rub up against my leg. I reach down and pet it.
The Bobtail officers split up to search the place, and I stick with Hogarth, keeping my eyes open and myself out of his way. Elaine’s place reminds me of Loretta’s, although a little messier. Her desk is in a small room off the hallway. In the middle of the desk, her laptop is surrounded by piles of notices of events like the theater and a fundraiser, travel brochures, and bills. Hogarth sorts through the bills. “The usual,” he grunts.
He sits down and opens the laptop and then pulls up her email program with ease. Twenty years is the line of demarcation between those of us who struggle with computer technology and those who have no trouble with it. I do wonder if he has permission to look into her computer files. As if he read my mind, he says, “Her daughter told me to go ahead and look through anything in the house.”
Hogarth starts to type and says, “If you want, you can go through the drawers, see if there’s anything that catches your eye.”
I’d rather watch what he does with the computer, but I’m an interloper on his patch, so I do as he asks.
There’s nothing of note in the drawers, but the more I see, the more I notice similarities between Elaine Farquart and Loretta. Their kitchens are both spotless, and they have little knick knacks on countertops and windowsills. An apron is hung on a hook near the stove, much like Loretta’s. How do their similarities account for their decision to go on an Internet dating site? And if they have been abducted, how will they respond—if they get a chance to respond? Loretta is fierce—like a banty rooster. Was Elaine like that, or was she more vulnerable? The more I compare the two, the more uneasy I get.
“Here we go,” Hogarth says, breaking into my thoughts.
He pushes the computer to his left so I can see. “It’s the same website Loretta was on,” I say. “How did you find it?”
“Looked in her history.” Hogarth takes a deep breath and taps his finger on the bottom of the computer. “I don’t know how to find out who she met or where.” I give him the benefit of the little I know. Hogarth tells Marks to go through her emails to see who she might have corresponded with.
