Case of the Vanishing Visitor

by Shanna Swendson

  “It may have totally slipped her mind, since she didn’t have her phone with her to give a calendar reminder. By that time, she was relaxed and enjoying herself and not thinking about your conversation the night before. Let the lady have her time off. And no digging around at Cissy’s house. I will cite you for trespassing if anyone calls to report a prowler.”

  Every fiber of my being longed to tell him that he’d be sorry when I turned out to be right and he’d had the opportunity to save Florrie, but I resisted the urge. I didn’t think he’d take it well, and it would be embarrassing if I turned out to be wrong.

  When I hung up, Jean perched on the corner of my desk and said, “I take it he’s not pursuing it.”

  “He thinks I’m letting my imagination run away with me.” Though I had to admit that he had a point. A busy wife and mother who was also a teacher on her summer holiday had a chance to take some time to herself while her husband was away. Leaving her phone in her car would be a great way to unplug and relax and not have to see what other people were posting online about their fabulous vacations. She might even have been punishing or testing her husband by staying out of touch with him, trying to see if he would worry if he couldn’t reach her.

  “You’re going to let it go?”

  “Of course not. I want to be sure she’s okay. Maybe the place she’s house-sitting is nearby, and that’s why her car is parked there.” Turning to my computer, I switched the map to satellite view so I could see which houses had swimming pools. There weren’t that many, which helped narrow it down. I still thought it was odd that she wasn’t parked in front of the place she was house-sitting. Maybe the driveway was being resurfaced or there was work being done on that street. That was something I’d have to check out in person.

  Meanwhile, I could investigate Cissy without trespassing. I needed to find out the extent of her relationship with Hugo and whether they’d reconnected at the reunion. For that, Margarita would be a good place to start. She knew a lot of people in town, so if she didn’t know directly, she’d know who to ask. It looked like I’d be having Mexican food yet again tonight.

  I waited until about seven to go to dinner, since on Sunday nights the big crowds tended to come before Sunday-evening church services and Margarita closed early. I had a better chance of talking to her when she wasn’t too busy.

  “Have you heard the latest?” I asked her as I took my usual seat at the bar.

  “The latest about what?” she asked.

  “The possibly missing woman who is not a ghost—at least, she wasn’t a ghost when I talked to her. They found her car parked not too far from here. It was reported as an unknown car that may have been abandoned, since it hadn’t moved in days and didn’t belong to anyone who lived nearby.”

  “Do you feel vindicated?” she asked.

  “Sort of. But she’s still nowhere to be found. Her phone was in the car, so that explains why she didn’t return my calls. And the car wasn’t parked in front of a house. It was on a side street, near where an alley lets out.” I leaned closer and lowered my voice. “And it’s close to where her husband’s prom date lives.”

  She was a lot more excited about that than Wes had been. Her eyes went wide, and she grinned like she’d just heard some juicy gossip. “You think he got back together with his prom date?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that there was a picture of them in the yearbook. I don’t know if they were actually an item or just went to prom together. Their class had a reunion a month ago. Maybe they reconnected.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, and the wife caught them, so they did something to her? Or maybe they want to get her out of the way so they can be together.” This was why Margarita and I had so quickly become good friends. We thought the same way.

  “Maybe. And, get this, the old prom date was in here that night. I know she saw Florrie, but she told me she didn’t see anyone.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Cissy Clancy.”

  “Oh, she gets takeout all the time.”

  “I guess you wouldn’t know if she and Hugo Marz were a big item or if they went to their reunion.”

  “Not if I didn’t cater it.”

  “It was at the Old Mill.”

  “Oh, that class. They talked to me about it, but I was already booked. But I know who might know. Mel over there was the organizer.” She gestured toward the corner booth, where a couple of women sat. “I’ll go find out.” She picked up a pitcher of water and went around the bar to make her way among the tables, pausing to chat with customers as she went. She refilled the water glasses at the corner booth and stood there chatting for some time. I wished I could hear what was being said. I couldn’t think of a casual way to ask if a particular pair of people I didn’t know had been at a class reunion I wasn’t part of, and asking questions was a big part of what I did for a living. I had no idea how Margarita might approach it. At least she had some connection to the event.

  I forced myself not to stare because that would make whatever Margarita did look a lot more suspicious and instead forced myself to study the menu. I’d never been a “the usual” person and was trying to sample everything on the menu at least once, though I did occasionally return to an old favorite. Maybe this would be a good time to have a salad. There was a chopped salad with black beans and avocado that sounded good and was possibly even good for me. It seemed like blasphemy to have a salad at a Tex-Mex restaurant, but this was my fourth night in a row to eat here, so it was probably a good time to start investigating the salad section.

  “Do you know what you want?” Margarita asked when she returned and caught me perusing the menu.

  I gave her my order and let her turn it in to the kitchen before I demanded, “What did you learn?”

  “Way too much about what people get up to thirty years after graduation. Let’s just say that this was a reunion in a lot of ways. Hugo and Cissy weren’t the only couple who got back together there.”

  I just about fell off my barstool. “They got back together there?”

  “Not to the point of making out in a corner during the reunion, though apparently that did happen with some other couples. But they definitely clicked like no time had passed, according to Mel. And, yes, they were a couple in high school. Everyone was surprised that he ended up marrying someone else. I guess they split up when he went off to college and he met his future wife.”

  “What about his wife? Was she there?”

  “They weren’t sure. They don’t remember seeing her, but they were pretty sure his reservation was for a couple.”

  Florrie’s superpower seemed to have struck again. “I was already wondering if Hugo is really on a business trip or if it was an excuse to spend time with his old girlfriend, but this makes it really fishy.”

  “You say you saw Cissy here the same night Florrie was?”

  “Yeah, she came in to pick up a to-go order.”

  “Her usual is a regular order of chicken fajitas, but I should have a record for the other night since she has an online ordering account. Let me check.” She turned to the computer behind the bar and typed in some things. A moment later, she returned, grinning. “She ordered beef fajitas for two, so either she was planning for leftovers or she had company.”

  “She’s not married?”

  “She went alone to the reunion. Have you told Wes about Cissy?”

  “Yeah. He wasn’t impressed. Florrie hasn’t been reported missing yet, so he’s not actively investigating or looking for suspects.”

  “Because her husband hasn’t been looking for her.”

  “Exactly my thought. He told me I have a vivid imagination and need to stay out of it.”

  She got a mischievous gleam in her eye. “I close early tonight. Maybe we could go for a drive.”

  “Yeah, it wouldn’t hurt to tour the neighborhood. See what’s up. And maybe we could figure out where Florrie’s house-sitting.”

  As closing time approached, I was the only
customer remaining, so Margarita was able to lock the door instead of waiting for customers to leave. She filled a couple of to-go cups with soda and loaded a bag with leftover tortilla chips, and then we headed out through the rear exit to Margarita’s car. I directed her to where Florrie’s car had been left. We had maybe half an hour until it got truly dark, so we could clearly see the silver sedan still parked on the side of the road.

  “They didn’t tow it away?” Margarita asked.

  “Wes said it wasn’t parked illegally, and it hasn’t been there long enough to be considered abandoned.”

  “And there was blood on the door handle?”

  “Even Wes thought that’s what it looked like, but I haven’t heard if any test results have come back yet. While it’s still light, I want to check out some of the house-sitting possibilities near here. I looked up the houses with pools.” I directed her down the streets I’d identified, and none of them were under construction. There were alleys in this part of the neighborhood, so the driveways weren’t visible from the street. Margarita drove down a couple of the alleys so we could see if any had been torn up, and I didn’t see any reason why someone wouldn’t have parked at any of these houses.

  “I can’t think of why she’d have left her car here,” Margarita said when we returned to where the car was.

  “I know. That’s the thing that bugs me.”

  “So, which house is Cissy’s?

  I pointed her toward that one, and she drove past it. There were lights on, but I couldn’t see inside. At the end of the block, Margarita turned down that alley and slowed to a crawl as we reached what should have been Cissy’s driveway. There were two cars parked there. “She’s not alone,” I said. “You’re sure this is her place?”

  “Look at the number over the garage.” It was the same address. Either a single woman who worked as a grocery store cashier had two cars, or she had company. Of course, that didn’t mean the company was Hugo, but I thought the odds were pretty good, given all the other evidence.

  “Let’s drive by the front again,” I suggested.

  It was fully dark by now, and light glowed golden and welcoming from the windows of the houses we passed. Maybe it was the same part of me that made me curious (or nosy) enough to be a journalist, but I’d always loved driving or walking through a neighborhood after dark when I could see lights in windows and get a glimpse of the lives that went on inside the homes. We reached Cissy’s house and Margarita slowed. There were sheer curtains at the large front window that probably provided some privacy during the day while letting in light, but at night all they did was blur things a bit. I saw a tall figure with hair in a ponytail—probably Cissy. She brought a drink to someone sitting in a chair before moving toward the window.

  “Drive, drive!” I urged Margarita. I didn’t know if Cissy was looking out the window or merely coming to close the drapes, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Just before we were so far past that house that I could no longer see through the window, the window went dark, as though someone had pulled heavy drapes shut.

  “Did you see anything?” Margarita asked.

  “It looked like she brought a drink to someone who was sitting in the living room.”

  “Aha!”

  “We don’t know that it’s Hugo,” I cautioned, even though I felt in my gut that it had to be.

  “Let’s take another run down that alley,” she suggested. “We might notice something else.”

  “And I could get the license numbers on those cars. I’ve got a friend in Dallas who may be able to run them for me.”

  At the end of the block, Margarita turned onto the side street, then down the alley. She slowed again behind Cissy’s house, but it was too dark to read the plates without getting out of the car and using a flashlight, and I figured that would be highly suspicious. “Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow while she’s at work,” I said.

  “I’ll be doing some shopping in the morning, so I can let you know if she’s at the store so the coast will be clear for you.”

  “Good plan,” I said.

  We reached the end of the alley, and Margarita paused to check for oncoming traffic before pulling out. What we saw were flashing red and blue lights on a vehicle waiting by the end of the alley. “Oh, no,” she groaned as someone got out of that car and motioned for us to stop.

  I couldn’t see much of the person approaching because the flashlight he held was blinding, blocking out anything behind it, but I wasn’t surprised to hear Wes’s voice say, “Oh, it’s you two. What are you up to?”

  Chapter Eight

  “Is there a problem, officer?” Margarita asked, the picture of innocence as she put the car in park.

  “We got some neighborhood watch calls about a suspicious car driving back and forth down the street really slowly and down the alley a couple of times,” Wes said. “They thought someone might be casing the neighborhood.”

  Margarita burst out in a loud guffaw. “Seriously? Then I’m lucky no one called the cops on me when I was in high school and had a huge crush on someone. I drove by his house all the time, seeing if he was home or if anyone was visiting him.”

  “Are you stalking a particular crush now?” I was glad it was Margarita he was talking to and not me so I didn’t have to answer that question. He’d said he couldn’t read my mind well, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

  “No one in particular at the moment. We were just exploring. I was showing Lexie around the historic district.”

  “Really?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Including our scenic alleys?” Looking past Margarita to me, he said, “I thought I told you to stay out of it. The last thing we need is Lucy and Ethel getting up to wacky crime solving shenanigans.”

  “Aren’t you a little young for that pop-culture reference?” I asked. “Not to mention using the word ‘shenanigans’ unironically.”

  “I watched reruns with my grandmother, and ‘shenanigans’ is a perfectly good word that applies to this situation. Let me guess, you’re scoping out Cissy’s house.”

  “And looking for where Florrie might be house-sitting. I figured it might be near where her car was left, and we were trying to see if there was a reason she couldn’t have parked closer to where she’s house-sitting,” I said.

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Nope, unfortunately,” Margarita said. She held the paper bag of chips over to him. “Chip? Sorry, there’s no salsa or queso because that would get messy in the car.”

  He ignored her offer. “Why don’t you two go on home? I can’t look out for your missing person if I’m having to respond to calls about prowlers alarming the neighbors.”

  “Is there that much crime in this neighborhood?” I asked. “The neighbors seem to be rather on-edge if they’re calling about a car that’s been parked for a few days and someone driving down the street and alley.”

  “There’s little crime because the neighbors look out for each other.”

  “I’m glad I don’t live here, then,” Margarita said. “I don’t need people that much in my business.” I wasn’t sure she had it much better, since she had Jordan’s security cameras watching her place, but that wasn’t something to bring up in front of Wes. She put the car in gear. “Is that all? Are we free to go?”

  “For now, but if I find out there’s been a break-in around here, you’ll be my first suspects.” He stepped back and signaled for us to drive away.

  “I noticed you didn’t tell him about there being two cars at Cissy’s place,” I said as Margarita turned the car back toward downtown.

  “And neither did you.”

  “I could already hear the scoffing in my head, so there was no point.”

  “You think there’s something to this?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know. I’d almost be willing to bet that the other person at Cissy’s place is Hugo. Whether they had anything to do with Florrie’s disappearance, well, that I don’t know. But it is suspicious.”

 
“I’ll head to the grocery store around ten, and I’ll let you know if Cissy is there. Then you can get closer and check out the car she didn’t take to work.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Thanks for driving tonight, and sorry to get you in trouble.”

  “You call that trouble? It wasn’t even a strongly worded warning. Wes doesn’t scare me.” She pulled up near the rear stairs at my apartment. “It was actually kind of fun. It took me back to my young and stupid days.”

  “You really did stalk your crush?”

  “‘Stalk’ is such a harsh word. More like I conducted interested surveillance. I also had his class schedule memorized and knew where all his friends lived.”

  “Who was the guy who was worth all that effort?”

  She laughed. “Would you believe, I don’t remember! I had a few crushes, but now I can’t recall which one I had it so bad for that I became some kind of private detective. Anyway, it was fun going back to that, but with a less silly motive.”

  After finalizing our plans for the next day, I ran upstairs to my apartment. I nearly jumped out of my skin when someone said, “What did you learn?” before I even turned on the light.

  Once I realized it was Jean and got my breathing back to something close to normal, I said, “I thought we agreed that you left my apartment alone unless I invited you.”

  “You weren’t here. So, what’s the scoop? Tell me, and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “I didn’t learn anything other than that the ex and the husband did seem to hook up at the reunion, and the ex appears to have company. She lives alone, but she ordered for two that night, and there are two cars in her driveway.”

  “That’s a lot to learn.”

  “I’m going to try to get license numbers from the cars—or whichever one is at the house while Cissy’s at work—tomorrow and see if one of them belongs to Hugo. After that, I don’t know. There’s still no reason for Wes to get involved as long as Florrie hasn’t officially been reported missing.”