by Terry Shames
“It’s unusual for me to get a visit from a police chief. What is it I can do for you?” he asks.
“I have a couple of questions for you concerning a case I’m working on.”
“Ooh, sounds interesting. Tell me more.” He folds his hands on the desk in front of him and raises his eyebrows as if he thinks we’re playing a game.
“First of all, let me get a little background. I understand you own a few stores here in Bobtail. What of kind of establishments are they?”
“Well, sir, I don’t know how this can help with your investigation, but I have a very nice women’s clothing store, a men’s western store, and a large discount shoe store.”
Women’s clothing. “Do you ever work in the stores?”
“Not these days. When I was getting started, I surely did. Worked long hours in all of them. But I’m happy to say that I had good success, and I haven’t needed to be on the floor for many years.”
“You never meet any customers?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I do stop by from time to time to keep my eye on the way the inventory moves. And I have a few old customers who call me to take care of them personally. But the inventory is my bailiwick. You can depend on people to do your buying and selling, but there’s nothing like your instinct for the new thing. I’ve always prided myself on having that instinct.”
“What kind of ladies do you cater to?”
“I’d like to say all kinds, but the younger girls . . . well, they like to go to the mall. Either in the outlet mall between here and San Antonio or in one of the big, sprawling complexes in San Antonio.”
“It’s the middle-aged and older women who frequent your stores?”
“I’d say so. You can’t try to please everyone. You have to know your community, and I think that’s where I’ve made my mark.” He beams with pleasure. I usually like a man who has pride in his accomplishments, but in his case I hesitate because I’m afraid Mr. Black might not be a man to admire.
“Now, surely you didn’t come here to find out how you can start your own clothing store. What’s up?”
I pull the sketch from my pocket and unfold it. “Do you recognize this man?”
He takes a pair of glasses out of his pocket and puts them on and peruses the sketch. “No. Never seen him before.” He lays it down.
I take his photo out and hand it to him. He gives a huff of laughter. “That’s me all right. But it’s ten years out of date. Where did it come from?” He lays it on the desk. He looks truly puzzled.
“Mr. Black, are you married?” I know he’s a widower, but I like to ask all the pertinent questions.
“Widowed. Five years.”
“Seeing anyone?”
He takes his glasses off and frowns. “I need to know what all these questions are in service of.”
“I’m getting to it. Have you signed up for a dating website?”
The light dawns, but instead of my question making him nervous, it makes him burst out laughing so hard he has to wipe his eyes.
“Well?”
“Excuse me. In a manner of speaking I have, or rather someone has for me. My daughters ganged up on me and signed me up on a dating site. They think I ought to find a lady friend and settle down.”
“And you don’t want to?”
“Oh, I want to, but I don’t need a dating site to help me with that. To tell you the truth, I rather like playing the field, and I haven’t had any trouble finding a date.” He actually winks at me, which seems a little extreme.
I indicate his photo. “Is this the photo that’s on the site?”
“No. There’s isn’t one. I told them they could say what they wanted to, but too many people know me and they’d recognize my picture. I didn’t want to embarrass myself.” He grins, but then his expression suddenly sobers. “Why do you have that photo of me?”
In reply, I bring out the photos of Elaine Farquart and Loretta. “Do you recognize either of these women?”
He glances at them and hands Loretta’s back. “Not that one, but this one looks vaguely familiar.” He continues to study Elaine’s photo, frowning. “Who are they?”
I tell him. “Do you recognize their names?”
“Elaine Farquart. Isn’t that the woman who was murdered? I heard it on the news an hour ago.”
“Yes, that’s her. How about the other one, Loretta Singletary?” His face gets red. “I know her name too.”
“From the dating site?”
“Yes. It’s pretty embarrassing. After my girls put my information on the website, several women contacted me to arrange a meeting. I think both of those women were among them.”
“And did you contact them?”
“Absolutely not. I told you, the whole thing wasn’t my doing.” His good humor is gone.
“Then can you explain to me why I found this photograph in the possession of Loretta Singletary?”
“What do you mean, ‘in the possession’?” He looks wary. “She’s not dead too, is she?”
“Not that I know of. But I need to know how she got your photo.” His eyes dart around the room as if he’s trapped, and his breathing is heavy. Finally, he speaks. “I’m going to kill those girls.”
“I don’t get your meaning.”
“I mean,” he says, his face growing redder by the second, “most likely my daughters sent the photo as if they were me and probably intended to trick me into going on a date with her.”
“If that’s the case, what happened?”
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out.” He reaches for his phone.
“Hold it,” I say. “We need to talk to your daughters in person. I need to be there.”
Understanding dawns. “You think I’d get them to lie for me? You think I had something to do with that poor woman’s death? Think again.” He hustles out from behind his desk. “Let’s go. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”
On the way out, he stops at the receptionist’s desk. “Liz, I need you to locate my daughters and tell them both I want them at my house right this minute. No excuses.”
“Yes, sir.” The look she sends his way tells me she’s not used to him speaking roughly to her.
“I’m going to be out for the afternoon.”
“You’re supposed to see Marybeth O’Toole at four o’clock.”
“Reschedule,” he snaps.
CHAPTER 17
Black wants me to ride with him, but I tell him I’ve got my dog in the car and I’ll follow him. It’s never good to get in the car with a suspect, no matter how unlikely his guilt. And I’m growing less inclined to believe in his guilt by the minute.
As we’re walking to our cars, I say, “How can you be sure your receptionist can reach your daughters?”
He seems brought up short by the question. “Dammit, I shouldn’t have talked to her that way. She’s a gem. I’ll have to get her flowers tomorrow.” He shakes himself. “In answer to your question, if it’s humanly possible to find the girls, she’ll do it.”
When we reach his house, a one-story ranch house on the south edge of town, two cars are parked in the driveway: a black BMW and a red sport convertible. He strides toward the garage, not waiting for me, but pauses when he reaches it. He turns and calls out, “You can bring the dog in. I have a dog, and we’ll put ’em in the back yard.”
Dusty and I follow him through the garage and into the kitchen, where we find two leggy young women in their twenties. They look like human racehorses, sleek and muscular. One is wearing black tights and a T-shirt. Her face is pink. She was probably called out of a workout session. The other one is dressed in a skirt and blouse. She looks like the older of the two and more serious. Both girls eye me nervously. The young one has a package of cookies out on the counter and is slitting it open. “Hey, Daddy,” she says, running over to kiss his cheek. “What’s going on? Liz said you were on the warpath.” Her voice has a forced cheerfulness.
“I hope this is important,” the other one says, pet
ulantly. “I had to cancel a meeting.”
“Let’s go in the living room, and I’ll tell you what’s up. And I warn you, it isn’t good. At least not for you two, it’s not.” At the tone of his voice, the girls exchange swift glances of alarm.
Dusty and Black’s golden retriever are frisking around, and when we get into the living room, Black opens the sliding glass door and sends them into the backyard.
Once we’re seated, Black introduces us. The older girl is named Caitlin, and the younger is Jessica—Jess, she puts in. “I’m going to turn this over to Chief Craddock to ask you a few questions,” Black says.
I normally would prefer to be speaking to each woman individually, but now that I’ve seen their reaction to his stern demeanor, I’m pretty sure Douglas Black was telling the truth about them being responsible for his involvement in the dating site.
“I’d like one of you to tell me how your daddy got involved in Smalltownpair,” I say.
The younger one, Jess, says, “Uh-oh.”
“You’re damn right, ‘Uh-oh,’” her daddy says. “Now answer the question.”
Caitlin sighs.
“We thought Daddy ought to widen his circle of lady friends,” Jess says. She avoids looking at her father.
“You thought,” Caitlin says.
“No, not just me. You can’t blame it only on me. You’re the one who brought up that he should be seeing women more his own age.”
“Girls!”
“All right.” Jess is turning surly. “We signed him up. He didn’t want to, but we thought it might be fun.”
“And he got some replies,” I say.
“Yes. Really good prospects,” Jess says. Her sister rolls her eyes.
“Did you show your daddy the replies?”
“Yes,” Caitlin says.
“And?”
The girls exchange glances. “Look, Daddy refused to go out with any of them, so we picked out a few and made dates with them. One of them was . . .” She swallows.
Jess says, “It was that woman, the one who was killed.” Her voice is trembling. She looks down at her hands, which are clasped in her lap.
“Oh, my ever loving . . .” Black puts his head in his hands.
“Daddy, we were going to tell you tonight,” Jess says. Her lower lip trembles and she scoots closer to her older sister, who puts an arm around her.
“Jessie, we didn’t do anything wrong.” She looks from her father to me. “The date we had set for her with dad was supposed to be tomorrow. We were going to tell dad and make him go, and then we saw the news this morning.”
“We didn’t mean to cause a problem,” Jess says.
“Look,” Douglas Black says, going over to the girls and sitting down next to them. “What happened to this woman isn’t your fault, but you can understand how surprised I was when Chief Craddock here came to my office to question me.”
I pull out the photo of Loretta. “Did you also reply to this woman?”
The girls look at the photo. “I remember her picture. Yes, we got back to her too,” Jess says. “She said she had to think about it.”
“You hadn’t arranged anything with her?”
Both girls shake their heads.
“Did something happen to her too?” Caitlin asks.
I hesitate to say, but I don’t know why it would hurt for her to know.
“She’s missing.”
“Oh, my God.” Both girls turn stricken eyes on me.
“I’m sorry we dragged you into this, Daddy,” Jess says.
“Is there anything we can do to help?” Black asks.
I tell him that the police are doing everything we can to find Loretta.
He nods. “Girls, I want you to resign me from that dating site, or whatever it is you have to do to get me off of it right now. We’ve had enough of this nonsense.”
Maria is meeting Kathy Weinman at the Hot Spot Coffee Shop at eleven to arrange to distribute the flyers Maria made up over the weekend. I go off to join them and question the weekday baristas.
I’m at the coffee shop early, and I show the regular baristas all the photos, but the only person they recognize is Elaine because her picture has been all over local news this morning. Although Loretta was supposed to meet someone here last Tuesday, apparently she didn’t— or at least no one remembers it if she did.
Ever since I had the dream about Loretta calling me on my landline, I’ve been worrying that if she actually did get the chance to call, I might not be home. While I wait for the women to arrive, I call the phone company and give them my identification number as a police officer. I tell the woman I need my landline to ring through to my cell phone.
“No problem.”
It turns out to be a little bit of a problem because I need my account number, and I’m not in the habit of carrying it with me. Why they can’t simply get the account number from my phone number escapes me. But eventually the woman gets the number and performs the hocus pocus needed to have the number ring through. I’m ready to hang up when she adds, “It will take a few days for that order to go through.”
“No, I need it to take effect immediately.”
She digs in her heels, and I ask to speak to her supervisor. That entails a long wait, during which the women, who have brought one man, arrive to get the flyers.
The phone company supervisor doesn’t have much more interest in my request than the first one I talk to. It’s not the first time I’ve run into petty phone company bureaucrats determined to wield their bit of power.
“This could mean a matter of a woman’s life,” I say.
“Yes, sir, I’m sure. We hear that a lot.”
“Do you hear it from the chief of police?” I repeat my ID number. “If the missing woman manages to call, and I’m not at home—which I can’t be all the time because I am, in fact, the chief of police, the consequences could be fatal. We already have one woman dead. I suspect that the phone company won’t be thrilled to get the kind of publicity that would go with causing a woman’s death.”
“Publicity” seems to be the operative word. By a miracle, the phone company can take care of the matter right now.
“Good for you, boss,” Maria says when I click off my phone.
I introduce Maria to Kathy and the gang she has brought with her, all armed with staplers and tape. The flyer looks good, but seeing it makes Loretta’s disappearance all too real. I think about people who have lost children and parents and have put up flyers, desperate for their return. I’ve never seen statistics on how effective they are, but I don’t have high hopes.
If it is effective, it may well be due to those who have come to tack up the flyers. They are as well prepared as a small army. They’ve brought maps that lay out specific parts of town, and they tell me they will enlist others in neighborhoods. They know the parks and grocery stores. They know where people congregate.
“It looks like you’ve done this before,” I say to Kathy.
She shrugs. “Mostly for lost pets. But Alicia’s dad had Alzheimer’s and he went missing last year for two days.” She indicates one of the women. “Thank goodness the weather was mild and somebody found him in a park. They said they had seen a flyer and recognized him. So, we know it can work. Let’s just hope somebody has seen Loretta.”
CHAPTER 18
When the women leave to distribute the flyers, Maria stays behind so we can discuss our next moves. Before we can get started, my phone rings.
“Chief Craddock? This is Ray Sanchez. We need to have a talk about Robert and T.J. Caisson. They didn’t take kindly to the suggestion that a girl lead the opening parade for the Goat Rodeo this year.”
“Who did you choose?”
“I don’t think who I chose is the problem. The problem is that she’s a girl.”
“When you say ‘didn’t take kindly,’ what do you mean exactly?”
“T.J. threatened to kill me. Not that I take it seriously,” he adds hastily. “But I thought you ought to kn
ow.”
“I’m going to have to get to the bottom of it,” I say. “But don’t be alone with either of them.”
“I’m not worried about it, but I worry that they will threaten someone at the school.”
When I get off the phone, I tell Maria that the Caisson brothers threatened Sanchez. “How can it be so important who leads the parade for the Goat Rodeo?”
“They threatened Father Sanchez?” Smoke could be coming out of her ears. She is a good Catholic, attends mass, and adores the priest. “I told you we hadn’t heard the end of it with those brothers.”
“I’ve got a good mind to run them in and keep them locked up until the rodeo is over,” I say.
“Then you’d have to deal with Darla. I’m not sure that’s much better. Let me deal with them,” she says grimly.
“No, I’m going over to the garage right now and tell them I’m not going to put up with anymore aggravation over this rodeo.”
“What should I do while you’re gone? I could help with the flyers.” I tell her I’d like her to go to the big outlet mall an hour away, on the road to San Antonio, and show Loretta’s and Elaine Farquart’s photos to the clerks in the clothing stores. “We’ve got to find out if there is another connection between those two women—why they were both chosen.”
“I hate that mall,” she grumbles.
“Do you have a better idea?”
“No. I’m not saying it’s not a good idea. I’m just saying I don’t like it.”
“Who do you think I should send? Connor?”
She snickers. “I’d like to see his face if you made him go.”
The Caisson Brothers’ Garage is on the north side of Bobtail. It’s a big outfit, the kind you usually associate with car dealerships. According to the sign out front, they are a full-service business—not only repairing engines but doing bodywork and smog certificates as well. There’s a big barn-like building with a dozen slots for car repair, all filled and in various stages of work. It’s a surprise to me that these two clowns manage a thriving business.
