by Terry Shames
“Maybe the neighbor can tell us more,” I say. It sounds like Elaine confided her plans more than Loretta did.
The neighbor, Amy Martin, is a long-legged forty-year-old with blond hair tied back in a pony tail. She’s wearing baggy pants and a ragged T-shirt. “Sorry,” she says, indicating her clothing. “I’ve got three teenaged boys who are like wild animals, and Saturday is my day to clean up the zoo.” She leads us into a living room, where two boys are playing a video game in front of a big TV. They don’t look up when we walk in.
“Gavin, you and Freddie make yourselves scarce.”
One boy glances over at us. His eyes widen when he sees we’re police officers. He sets down his game gear, but the other one says, “Aw, Mom, just let us finish this game.”
“Gavin, now!”
Freddie punches Gavin, who reluctantly sets down his controller, too. Then he glances up, and like his brother, he hastily gets to his feet.
“Thank you, Freddie,” Amy says. “You’re now officially my favorite son.”
“Suck-up,” Gavin says, and punches his brother as he walks past him. The two boys scramble out of the room, tussling and growling at each other.
Amy watches them, rolling her eyes. “See what I have to put up with?”
“I got a couple of boys of my own,” Hogarth says. “And a couple of girls too. I don’t know which is worse.”
“Sit wherever,” Amy says. “As you can see, I haven’t cleaned up in here yet. Coffee?”
We both say yes, and she comes back with coffee that is my style— it could wake the dead.
As soon as she sits down, Amy’s expression turns sober. “I’m glad I have cleaning up to keep me busy. I can’t stand to think that something bad might have happened to Elaine.”
She tells us that they are good friends. They hit it off when Amy and her family moved in ten years ago, and they have remained close ever since. “When the boys were little she’d babysit on a second’s notice. She has two grown kids and she said mine were no trouble—even though I know they could be a handful. And if either of us has something on her mind, we can share it. I love her.”
She says the last without tears, but her voice is husky. “The boys call her Ms. Cool. They’re too old to need her to babysit anymore, but she makes cookies for them . . .” She unconsciously reaches over and scoops up a bunch of papers spread out on the coffee table and stacks them neatly.
“Ms. Martin, we’d like you to tell us what you know about Elaine Farquart’s activities on the dating site she was on. First of all, did she tell you the name of the site?” Even though we saw it on her computer, it’s possible she went onto more than one site.
“It was called Smalltownpair. We both thought it was probably best to use one of the smaller sites. And they had a special senior section.”
“How long had she been registered there?”
“She started around the first of the year. I’m actually the one who suggested it. She complained that it was hard to meet men. She said they’re all either married or looking for a nurse to take care of them in old age.”
“Do you know how many men she has gone out with?”
“Not many. Some of those guys are sketchy.” She shrugs. “We’ve had a lot of laughs over some of the replies she got to her profile. I mean, what is it with men who think they are God’s gift to the female species?” Her smile is rueful. “Present company excluded, of course.”
“We assumed that,” Hogarth says dryly, and we all chuckle. It’s good to break the tension.
“She brought over pictures or printouts of a few of the replies, and we’d make fun of them. And then a few days ago, she was all flustered. She said she thought she might have a live one.”
“You mean a man she was interested in going out with?” Hogarth says.
“Exactly. She said he seemed like a real gentleman. He was exactly the right combination of friendly and private.” Amy splays her hands out. “You know, you don’t want someone who seems too eager, but you also don’t want them to be too reticent.”
“Did they interact by email or phone calls?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I don’t really know. We didn’t talk details. She just said he sounded nice. Maybe it was on the phone.”
“Did she show you his profile on the website?”
She hesitates. “Yes, but that was the one thing that bothered both of us. He was really handsome.”
I think of the photograph we found in Loretta’s desk. It’s possible women would think he was nice-looking, but it’s a stretch to say really handsome.
Hogarth frowns. “Why would that bother you?”
Amy tilts her head to one side. “Look, Elaine knows she isn’t a spring chicken, okay? I mean she looks great for her age, but she didn’t think a man that looked like this guy, Andrew, would need to be on a dating site. We both figured there was probably something wrong with him that he wasn’t being truthful about.”
“Like what? Did she have any particular thoughts?”
“Like I said, we could get pretty silly. We wondered if maybe he was really five feet tall instead of the six feet he said he was, or maybe that was an old picture and he was really ninety, or he’d gained three hundred pounds, or he was living on the streets . . .” She shivers. “I wonder if we should have been worried about something worse.”
“Even though the two of you were dubious, she decided to go out with him anyway?”
Amy hugs her arms to herself. “Not at first. She said she told him she wasn’t sure. She said he wrote back a really nice letter, telling her he understood and that if she changed her mind, he’d like to meet her. He suggested they meet at a coffee shop, so in case she wasn’t comfortable she could leave and there’d be no hard feelings.”
“He wrote her a letter?” Hogarth asks.
She blinks. “She did say letter. Although she might have meant an email. People use them interchangeably these days.”
I presume if it was an email, Hogarth’s partner will find it.
“But she changed her mind about meeting him?” Hogarth asks. “She came over a few days ago and said she had decided to go ahead and meet him. They were planning to meet at a coffee shop in Bobtail on Thursday. But this is where it went wrong.”
“What happened?”
She sighs. “Thursday morning she phoned and said that Andrew called and told her he twisted his ankle and he couldn’t really go out. He wondered if she would drop by his place. He said it would really help him if she could pick up a couple of things at the grocery store and he’d pay her back.” She bows her head as if in defeat. When she lifts it again, she looks stricken. “She asked me if I thought there could be something shady going on. But she didn’t want to leave him high and dry. I told her it sounded okay, but to get out of there if she felt uncomfortable.”
“So she went,” Hogarth says.
“Oh, why didn’t I tell her not to go? Or I wish I had gone with her, but to tell you the truth, it never occurred to me. Besides, she would have thought I was being silly if I told her I wanted to go with her.”
“You can’t blame yourself.”
She shrugs. “But I do. I meant to call her Thursday night and ask how it had gone, but Buster—that’s my oldest son—got hit by a baseball, and I spent a couple of hours with him in the emergency room.”
“I hope he’s okay,” Hogarth says.
“He’s fine. I call him my hard-headed one, and I guess in this case it was a good thing. He didn’t even have a concussion, which the doctor said was a miracle. And then last night I had a meeting. I’m on the prom planning committee for the PTA. We met for four hours. Four hours! Drives me crazy how long-winded some people can be. I didn’t get home until after ten. This morning I realized I hadn’t heard from Elaine, so I called to ask how things went. I’ve been kicking myself ever since I realized she wasn’t home.”
“How did you know she wasn’t?”
“She usually calls me back right away, so af
ter an hour, I thought I’d pop over and see whether she was home. The thing is, I noticed that she hadn’t picked up the mail. She usually asks me to get it if she’s going to be gone. I decided to take it inside, and to tell you the truth, I wanted to check and make sure she wasn’t sick and couldn’t get to the phone. At first, I thought everything was okay. Her cat seemed fine. He has one of those perpetual watering fountains, but then I realized he was really hungry. That’s when I got alarmed and called the police. I feel responsible. I should have called her Thursday night.”
“No ma’am,” Hogarth says firmly. “You can’t blame yourself. Even if you had sounded the alarm with the police, we most likely wouldn’t have paid much attention to the idea that a grown woman hadn’t come home for one night.”
The same way I didn’t take it seriously when Ellen first told me Loretta was missing. It’s easy to assume that everything is fine. Usually it is.
“If I might ask a question?” I defer to Hogarth. He nods. “Did she mention a last name for Andrew?”
“If she did, I don’t remember,” Amy says.
“And besides this man Andrew, did she ever mention any other names to you?”
“A few, but only first names, and Andrew was the first one she was really interested in.”
“Last question. Does she have a cell phone?”
“Yes, but she hardly ever used it. I tried calling it, but it went straight to voicemail.”
We get up and thank her. She looks around at the living room with a bereft expression. “I guess I’d better get busy. My husband gets home tonight, and he won’t like it if the house is a mess.”
“Gets home from where?” Hogarth asks.
“Oh, he’s a salesman. On the road a lot. I didn’t mean to make it sound like he’s strict with me. He thinks I’m too easy on the boys and I ought to get them to help me. He’s probably right.”
Back at Elaine Farquart’s, we search for the photo Amy mentioned of the man Elaine was supposed to meet, but we don’t find any photos at all.
“Maybe she took it with her,” Hogarth says.
“Why would she do that?” Officer Marks says. He had been waiting for us on the steps and followed us back into the house.
“Where else would it be?” Hogarth asks. “She wouldn’t have thrown it away. Tell you what. I’m going to ask DPS to send us a sketch artist from San Antonio, and I’ll ask Amy Martin to come down to the station to see if she can remember enough about him to make a sketch.”
Hogarth asks Marks whether Farquart exchanged any emails with potential dates.
“There were a few, but nothing that raised any alarms. But I used her printer to print a few that she exchanged emails with. I’ll get on that back at the station.”
We ask if there was an email from the man named Andrew, but there wasn’t. And we don’t find a regular letter in her desk.
“Her neighbor said she has a cell phone. Did you find it?” I ask.
“No, sir. I wondered about that. I knew she had one because I saw the bill for it, but I didn’t find it.”
“Let’s see if her cell service can get a read on where it might be,” Hogarth says. “Could lead us to her.”
Marks shakes his head. “Not likely, unless she has a smartphone. And even then, if the phone battery is dead, it might not get us to her exact location.”
Back at Bobtail Police Department, there has still been no report of Elaine’s car, a late model, red Acura, being found.
It’s time for me to get back home. I ask Hogarth to keep me up to date.
“You do the same. I hope there’s no correlation between the two women.” But I’m not counting on that.
CHAPTER 10
Maria is supposed to be on the afternoon shift, but she has come in early and is sitting at her computer. She says she was too restless to stay home. I dread having to tell her that a woman from Bobtail is missing.
“Any luck getting in touch with any of the men on the list?” I ask.
“Two of them wrote back and said they had not heard from her.” Her dark eyes are full of gloom. “Then I realized there’s no way to know whether they are telling the truth.”
“I’m afraid you’re right. By the way, you remember that photo we found in Loretta’s notebook? Do you have it?”
“It’s right here.” She has it paper-clipped to the four sheets of Loretta’s notes.
“Do you think this man is good-looking?”
She stares at the photo. “Not really. I mean, some women, older women, might find him attractive, but not super good-looking.”
I’ll show Amy the photo. I glance over at the third desk. “Where’s Connor?”
“He went to Arlo Stevenson’s. Arlo’s wife called here an hour ago and said Arlo broke his leg. EMS was on their way from Bobtail, but she wanted somebody there with her.”
“How did he break it?”
“His tractor hit a stob and tipped over.”
I smile to myself. Maria is a city girl and a year ago probably didn’t have any idea what a stob was. I don’t even know if it’s a real word, but every farmer knows it’s a tree stump that was hewn level with the ground, but the roots weren’t removed. Grinding out the roots can be a big job, and a lot of people choose to leave them. It’s usually not a problem, but every now and then, somebody runs into one that is hidden and fouls their tractor plow or, like in the case of Arlo, tips the tractor.
“Lucky he wasn’t killed.”
“I’m sure Connor will be a big help,” she says sarcastically.
“Now Maria . . .”
“Okay, okay. Where were you this morning? Have you talked to Loretta’s son?”
My heart sinks. I’ve been so involved with the Elaine Farquart disappearance that I haven’t given any thought to Scott Singletary this morning. I’ve been stalling Maria too. “I’ll call him in a few minutes. I have something to tell you.”
When I tell her that a woman from Bobtail is missing, she jumps up and starts pacing. “We’ve got to find Loretta! And we don’t even know where to look! What do you suppose happened to those two women?”
I shake my head. None of the options seems good. “We have to hit the dating website angle harder. If we have to, we’ll go question every single person she had any email exchanges with. I agree with you that calling them isn’t going to be good enough.”
For once I wish Loretta revealed more about herself. She likes to gossip about other people—not mean gossip, just news—but I have begun to realize that she keeps a lot of personal information to herself.
“Maria, I have a list of the names of the women in Loretta’s church circle meetings. I’d like you to call them and ask if anybody knows anything. Maybe she confided in one of them.”
“I’ll get right on it.” Her expression is grim. I don’t envy these women. Maria can be relentless. If any of the women is reluctant to tell her what they know, they’ll regret it.
Now that Maria has a task, I need to figure out my next step. Elaine was originally supposed to meet her date at a coffee shop. And if she had followed through, I could have gone there and shown her photo around to find out if anybody had seen her there with a man. But Elaine didn’t follow through. Instead, she bit on the man’s ruse to get her over to his place. Or at least it looks like that’s what happened.
Looking at it with a wider lens, it’s possible that Elaine bought groceries, went to the man’s house, visited with him, and then was attacked by someone completely unrelated after she left the man’s house. But for now, the most likely explanation is the first one. I’d give anything for a copy of the photo Elaine had of her date. I’m sure Hogarth wishes the same thing. We can only hope that Amy can give a sketch artist enough of a description to get a good idea of what he looked like. It would be a win if it matched the photo that Loretta had, but that’s probably too much to hope for.
I wonder if there’s anything I can do to find out more on the dating website. Is there a way to send out an announcement to w
omen, asking whether they were contacted by someone who claimed to have twisted his ankle? Would the attacker use that excuse more than once? It even occurs to me that this man might have had more than two victims, and the others haven’t been found.
Although Maria said she was going to look through the history on Loretta’s computer, I want to take a look myself. I don’t know that I’ll find anything useful, but with Elaine Farquart missing, I want to go back and make sure I’ve got a good handle on Loretta’s online footprint. On my way out, I grab the list of men’s names that Maria was going through in case I want to match them up.
I’m not looking forward to telling Scott Singletary that another woman has gone missing, but I have to. In fact, I wonder why he didn’t call to nudge us this morning.
When I get to Loretta’s, Scott is outside with his cell phone to his ear. Although he isn’t shouting, his body language and flushed face tell me he’d like to punch whoever he’s talking to. He waves me closer, and I hear him say, “You haven’t heard the last of this. Do what you can to make it right.” He listens for a few seconds. “I’ll hold you to that. I have to go now. I’ll talk to you later.”
He hangs up and mops his brow. His face is sweating, and he didn’t shave this morning. He looks like an angry, bristly hedgehog in a kids’ storybook. “If this thing with Mamma isn’t bad enough, five minutes after I left work, the shit hit the fan.” He grimaces. “‘Scuse the language.” When I tell him what I was up to this morning, it turns out he already knows at least part of it—the easy part.
“I answered Mamma’s phone, and it was one of her friends telling her that a lady was missing in Bobtail.” He grimaces. “I don’t know why these ladies like to gossip about things like that. I remember when I was a kid, always being creeped out by perfectly nice ladies telling all the gory details of a trial or a news report they saw on TV.” He frowns, searching my face. “Why are you telling me this? Why did you get involved with something that happened over in Bobtail?”
