Case of the Vanishing Visitor

by Shanna Swendson

  “I hope this turns out to be a good story, for all the time you’ve spent on it.”

  “I hope it doesn’t. That would mean something bad happened to Florrie. Lying to your wife about being on a business trip while you shack up with your high school girlfriend isn’t news any more than it’s a crime. Besides, it’s been the weekend. I’ve been on my own time.”

  Now that I thought about it that way, I probably needed to get a real hobby.

  Jean disappeared in a huff, and I went to the kitchen to put a kettle on. I’d need some herbal tea to relax if I wanted to get enough rest to be able to face Monday. Jean’s questions weighed on my mind. Why was I so obsessed with this? Was I truly only concerned about a woman I’d met once, or was there something else going on? Was I trying to prove something, to show that I’d noticed something no one else had? Or was I looking for excitement in whatever way I could find it?

  I’d just taken my tea to the sofa when there was a knock at my door. It was late for visitors, especially in a town where things shut down when it got dark. With a groan, I got up and went to the door, where I pulled aside the lace curtain on the window set into the door. Wes stood there, still in uniform. I groaned again. He’d probably come to lecture me about meddling and getting him involved. I opened the door and said, “Honest, I came straight home after you caught us.”

  “Can I come in?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Do you have a warrant?”

  “This isn’t official business. I’m off-duty, on my way home, so ignore the uniform.”

  Although I was wary, I was also a little excited about the opportunity. Now I was glad I’d done that shopping. I could offer him food. I stepped back and gestured for him to enter. “Be my guest. Would you like something to eat?”

  “You cook?”

  “I can open some fancy cheese I bought the other day and a box of crackers.”

  “They have fancy cheese in this town?”

  “Maybe not by Dallas standards, but if you look in the deli instead of in the dairy section, they have a few good things.”

  “Okay, sure, I could eat. And I don’t suppose you have any of that spicy orange tea.”

  I fought the urge to grin. I’d never have believed I’d turn him into a tea drinker, but he’d become a fan of herbal tea. I wondered if the other cops knew about that. “I just boiled a kettle. I’ll make some for you. Make yourself comfortable.”

  While he took a seat on the sleek Art Deco chair facing the sofa, I went into the kitchen, where I turned on the electric kettle to reheat the water and dug the cheese out of the refrigerator. I couldn’t think of why he’d visit me on his way home from work if it wasn’t business. We were kind of friends, but not really the hang out in our free time sort of friends. I’d never even been to his place. I suspected this was an unofficial visit about business, so as I brought a tray from the kitchen to the living room and placed it on the coffee table, I braced myself for a lecture.

  He served himself some cheese and crackers and sipped at his herbal tea before saying anything, which made me so tense that I lost any appetite I might have had. I held my mug, breathing the scent of the tea without actually drinking it. I thought I’d explode by the time he finally said, “Okay, Lex, this is totally off the record, but what’s going on with this weird obsession of yours? Are you so bored and desperate for news? If you are, as much as I hate to do it, I’ll work with you on an in-depth feature on the police department.”

  “You think I’m doing this for a story? Did it not cross your mind at all that I might just be concerned about this woman?” I knew that was a partial truth, which was why his accusation had stung. While I wasn’t working on a story, I’d already considered the possibility that I was looking for excitement.

  He frowned. “You really think something’s wrong?”

  “And you don’t, even after finding blood on her abandoned car?”

  “No one other than you has reported her missing. She’s not in any of the registries, and I even called her town directly. I’m sure they think I’m nuts.”

  “All that means is that no one in her life cares that much about her. Or they weren’t expecting to talk to her.”

  “Or they know where she is. She didn’t come to your interview. That’s it. You’re taking it personally.”

  I breathed in more of the steam from my tea before saying, “Maybe that’s it. I am taking it personally. I seem to be the only person who even noticed she existed, and that makes me the only one to know she’s gone. If a wife and mother could just vanish without anyone noticing, how many other people slip through the cracks?”

  “Don’t worry, if you go missing, I’ll notice it.”

  For a very brief moment, that thought warmed my heart, but then I realized what he probably meant. “Because you won’t be getting phone calls about wacky theories. And how many times have I been right?”

  “You do have a good track record, but it’s a relatively small sample size. Maybe you’ve been lucky so far.”

  “Remember, luck is my superpower. And speaking of superpowers, Jean thinks she knows what talent Florrie might have.” I explained it as well as I could, but it sounded kind of nuts when I said it out loud. “What if she’s someone people don’t think about when they’re not right there with her, and they barely notice her when she’s there? If she has that talent, it would be easy for her to disappear.”

  “That may be the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.” Before I could protest, he hurried to add, “Which means it’s fairly normal in this town. And it would explain a few cases I’ve worked. But we don’t know any of this. It’s all your conjecture.”

  “There’s a second car parked behind Cissy’s house, and her classmates said she and Hugo did seem to be striking sparks at their reunion.”

  “That’s why you were driving by tonight?”

  “It was just out of curiosity. Margarita remembered that Cissy had ordered a meal for two Thursday night, which was unusual. There’s definitely another person at her house.”

  “That may not have anything to do with your missing woman. People have company. It’s not unheard of. What might people think about my truck being parked at your place on a Sunday night?”

  I wondered if he was worried about that, if that was the reason he hadn’t made any move to ask me out. Then again, he’d come here, so he wasn’t too worried about being seen at my place. “Maybe you should have parked around the corner.”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone’s driving down the downtown alleys now that you and Margarita are at home.”

  “So you don’t think anything’s up with Cissy?”

  “I’ll admit, it does sound fishy. But it’s material for gossip, not law enforcement.”

  “You’ll have to find a body before you do anything?”

  “Or some evidence that there’s been any crime at all.”

  “Blood on the car?” I reminded him.

  “She could have had a cut or scrape when she opened the door.” He leaned over and sliced another hunk of cheese to put on a cracker. “This is actually pretty good. It’s in the deli, you say?”

  “Yeah. My original idea was to eat at home more instead of spending all my time at Margarita’s. And I’ve eaten there every night lately, so I guess it didn’t work.”

  “She’s closed tomorrow, so you’ll have to make do. I’m not eating your Monday dinner, am I?”

  “Just part of the appetizer. I’ve got something else to attempt to make. I’m trying to learn to cook.”

  “The fire department moves pretty quickly, in case you need them.”

  “Ha ha, very funny.”

  He finished his tea, put his mug down, and stood. “Well, thanks for the snack. And sorry for barging in on you like this.”

  “But you want me to stay out of things,” I said, airing what I was sure was his unspoken thought.

  “I don’t like it when I get called about things my friends are doing. It puts me in a diff
icult position.”

  “I’ll try not to alarm the neighbors in the future.”

  “Or you could let me know what you’re up to.”

  I walked with him to the door. “Then you’d tell me not to do it.”

  He paused in the doorway. “Exactly,” he said with a grin before heading down the stairs. I closed the door and locked it behind him, then cleaned up and put the food away. His concern was touching, but I had no plans to let this go.

  In fact, soon before ten the next morning, I was already driving toward Cissy’s neighborhood. I was stopped at an intersection when my phone rang. It was Margarita, and I put her on speaker while I resumed driving. “She’s here,” she reported. “I think I recognize one of the cars from her driveway in the parking lot, but I’m not sure.”

  “I’m less worried about the car than I am about her,” I said. “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Let me know what you find.”

  I ended the call just before I made the turn down Cissy’s alley. One of the cars was still parked there. I quickly snapped a picture of the license plate, then drove on. The last thing I needed was another neighborhood watch call. I paused at the next intersection to e-mail the license number to a contact I’d made during my Dallas newspaper reporting days to see if he could find out who the car was registered to. Then the thought of the neighborhood watch gave me an idea. I drove to near where Florrie’s car still sat and parked in front of the house where I’d seen the neighbor watching from her front porch. I took one of my reporting notebooks out of the glove compartment, got out and went up to the front door, which opened before I could ring the bell.

  “Hi, I’m Lexie Lincoln with the Gazette,” I said. “I’m working on a story about the importance of neighborhood watch organizations, and I understand the group in this neighborhood is one of the most effective. Are you involved with the neighborhood watch?”

  The woman’s expression went from wary to bright. “Oh, yes! We have the absolute best watch. Nothing gets past us.”

  “Have you seen anything suspicious lately?”

  “There have been a few prowlers the last couple of days, but the cops got here in time to scare them away before they could break into anyone’s house.”

  “That’s good,” I said, trying not to look guilty. “Do you have a lot of break-ins?”

  “We had a few earlier this year. You know, when all that jewelry was being stolen.”

  I definitely remembered that case. It had been one of those things where I felt something was going on and it took me a while to convince Wes. You’d think he’d have learned by now to listen to me when I thought there was a crime.

  We chatted a bit more, but in spite of asking all the leading questions I could think of, I couldn’t get her to mention noticing anything odd at Cissy’s house. She hadn’t noticed when Florrie’s car was parked. I’d thought she was the stereotypical nosy neighbor who justifies her curiosity as being part of the neighborhood watch, but if she was spying on her neighbors, she was keeping what she’d learned to herself.

  My alibi established—and with some good notes for a legitimate article—I went on to a few other nearby houses, focusing on those I thought were possible places where Florrie might be house-sitting. People came to the door for the first two houses on that list, which allowed me to eliminate them, but there were two more where no one responded. Finally, I got around to Cissy’s house. There was no answer to the doorbell, but I was pretty sure I saw the curtains nearest the door twitch. I felt positive someone was there. Or else Cissy had a curious but quiet pet.

  “Working on a big story?” my assistant, Charlene Robinson, asked when I returned to the office.

  “Not really,” I said. “This is something personal.” I gave her a quick rundown of the weekend’s activities.

  “Good for you,” she said. “Too many people are practically invisible to the world, and we all need to look out for each other.”

  “See? That’s exactly what I thought, but Wes thinks I’m nuts, like I’m blowing it out of proportion.”

  “Trust your gut. It seldom lies.”

  Sitting down at my computer, I uploaded the photo I’d taken at Cissy’s house so I could take a closer look. Maybe there was something I hadn’t noticed, since I hadn’t dared linger. There was nothing remarkable about the car. In fact, it looked a lot like Florrie’s car, though it was a bit larger, probably the next model up. I squinted and peered at something just above the license plate. I couldn’t tell if it was a shadow or a smudge. I enlarged the photo to fill the screen, and I was pretty sure it was a handprint, just where someone would lift the trunk. And, if I wasn’t mistaken, it was blood.

  My e-mail dinged, and it was an answer from my friend. The car was registered to Hugo Marz. I should have been elated, but I felt sick. There weren’t many good reasons for Hugo’s car to be at Cissy’s house. Stirling Mills wasn’t between his home and Dallas, so it wouldn’t make sense for him to leave his car with Cissy while she drove him to the airport. And then there was that bloody handprint.

  I knew Wes needed to know about this, but I felt like the girl who’d cried “missing person.” I’d called him about so many things that he hadn’t considered important that he was probably primed to dismiss anything else I told him about this case. I could hear him tell me there wasn’t much he could do. He didn’t have probable cause to be checking out a car parked on private property when he had no reason to think a crime had taken place, and I hadn’t noticed the blood while just driving by. It had only shown up when I enlarged the photo, so he couldn’t claim to have noticed it while patrolling the alley.

  I was still sitting there, stewing over what I should do, when my cell phone rang, and I saw Wes’s name on the screen. I sighed. One of the neighbors in the keenest neighborhood watch group on earth had probably called about a strange car in the alley. That eagle-eyed neighbor was probably on high alert after the mysterious prowling the night before and didn’t connect it to the reporter talking to the neighbors about the neighborhood watch group. So, did I tell Wes what I’d learned, or wait?

  I reached out to pick up the phone, a feeling of dread pooling in my stomach. “Hey, what’s up?” I asked, trying to sound casual and innocent.

  “Well, looks like you were right,” he said.

  “About what? I’m right about so many things.”

  “Florence Marz was just reported missing by her daughter.”

  Chapter Nine

  I gulped, unable to form words for a moment. All this time, I’d been frantic about the possibility that Florrie was missing and no one cared, and now that it had been confirmed that she really was missing, I couldn’t feel vindicated. I was only worried. “Wha–what happened?” I asked, stumbling over my words.

  “The daughter’s been trying to reach her mother since Saturday afternoon and finally got worried enough to call the police in her hometown, and since I’d already called them to check, they called me,” Wes said. “I just talked to the daughter.”

  “Did she know about the house-sitting?”

  “No. In fact, she thought her mother was supposed to be at a school year kickoff luncheon on Friday, so she didn’t think she’d left town. She’s been calling the home number and her mother’s cell all weekend.”

  “And her mother left the cell in her car—or someone did. The luncheon may be why she didn’t show for the interview.”

  “It turns out it was cancelled at the last minute. The daughter checked with one of her mother’s coworkers before calling the police and found out that no one had seen Florence since Thursday morning.”

  “What about her husband? Has he spoken to her?”

  “He’s out of town and says he hasn’t called home.”

  Yeah, right, I thought. If they checked the location of his phone, they’d find he was a lot closer than Vegas.

  “Since you may have been the last person to see Florence—and you were apparently the only person who saw her—I’m going to need y
ou to come in and make a statement.”

  I swallowed the sarcastic remark I wanted to make about how I’d been trying to do that for days. This wasn’t the time to score points. “Of course. And I may have some info for you.” That bloody handprint was even more disturbing now that I knew Florrie really was missing.

  “I’m not sure I want to hear it. Since this is now an actual investigation, I want to go about things the right way, through proper channels. I can’t build a case around tips I get from a reporter.”

  “I think you’ll want to know this. I can tell you when I get there.”

  When I ended the call, I looked across the office to Charlene. “She’s now officially missing.” In this situation, I couldn’t celebrate being right.

  “Oh, no! I hope she’s okay. I’ll say a prayer for her.”

  “Yeah, that would be good. I need to go talk to the police since I may be the last person to have seen her.”

  “I’ll manage things here.” She gave me a worried frown. “Maybe you should have a cup of tea before you go. You look a little shaken.”

  “Wes is expecting me. I need to get going.” But I did feel shaky when I stood, like my legs weren’t quite up to supporting me.

  “You can walk and drink at the same time.”

  That was true. I poured some tea from the pot I kept on a warmer into a travel mug, and though I usually didn’t sweeten my tea, I added a packet of sugar. The hot, strong, sweet tea would help settle me by the time I made it to the police station, I hoped. It was only a few blocks away, not far enough to bother driving—if I even trusted myself to drive at the moment—and by the time I got there, the combination of the tea, fresh air, and exercise had worked off most of my shock, so I was able to face Wes without worrying that I’d burst into tears or fumble my words. I was also able to replay everything I knew in my mind to make sure I was separating what I actually knew from speculation and interpretation. I’d spent so much time thinking about this case that there was a lot to sort out to get back to the core details.