Case of the Vanishing Visitor

by Shanna Swendson

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think I got a look at her feet. Contrary to popular belief, women don’t always notice each other’s shoes.” Near the earring was a tangled length of nylon rope, like the kind used on boats. I felt dizzy. This was even worse than what I’d been imagining.

  I heard a roaring in my ears, and the world started to go black around the edges. I don’t remember what happened immediately after that, but the next thing I knew, I wasn’t on my feet anymore, but I was still somehow moving. A voice coming from close to my ear called out, “Does anyone have any water for Lexie?”

  “I can go get some,” another voice said. Cissy?

  “You stay right where you are,” Wes ordered. That was the voice close to me. I didn’t realize until I was being put inside a car and being hit with a blast of air conditioning that he’d been carrying me, cradled in his arms like a damsel in distress. And I hadn’t even been conscious enough to enjoy it.

  “I didn’t faint,” I told him.

  “No, you just took a momentary break from consciousness,” he said, but as he leaned over, I thought he looked truly concerned.

  “It was the heat,” I said. With all the running around I’d done, it was no wonder I’d gone woozy. That might have happened even without any shock.

  “That’s why I put you in the car where it’s air conditioned.” He pressed his palm against my forehead and frowned as he concentrated. “You’re sweating and not too clammy, so that’s a good sign.” An officer brought a bottle of water over from one of the police vehicles, and I took it gratefully.

  After I’d had a good drink of water, I felt a little steadier. The dizziness and queasiness had faded. “Was there anything else I needed to look at?” I asked.

  “No, that was it. Thank you. You take it easy for a moment. You need to be more careful in the heat. Drink the rest of that water.”

  Fortunately, I was still able to watch what was going on from where I sat. In fact, I had a better view because I was still inside the crime scene tape.

  “We need to search that house,” Wes said when he returned to the cluster of officers beside Hugo’s car.

  “Can you tell me what this is about?” Cissy demanded, getting up in his face. “What did you find?” She craned her neck like she was trying to see, but Wes herded her away from the car.

  “Do you know Hugo Marz?” he asked her.

  “We dated in high school. Thirty years ago, so I don’t know how that’s relevant.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  She hesitated and glanced quickly toward the car. This was a tricky calculation for her. Surely she knew that they’d probably already determined the owner of the car and therefore had a good guess as to the identity of her visitor. There was no saving face here, and a lie could get her in trouble. “He, uh, well, he’s been visiting me.”

  “Hugo Marz is the visitor you referred to?” Wes asked.

  “Yeah.” She drawled out the word like a kid reluctantly admitting to taking a cookie from the jar.

  “Where is he now?”

  “I didn’t see him inside,” Officer Thornton said.

  “He must be in the back of the house. Or he might be out,” Cissy said.

  “Do you know Florence Marz?” Wes asked.

  “I met her at our class reunion last month. She was there with Hugo.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  Cissy started to speak, then stopped herself as she glanced at me. I gave her a smile. She winced and said to Wes, “I think she might have been at Margarita’s on Thursday night.”

  “So, you knew she was in town. Did her husband know?”

  “We didn’t discuss her. I’d practically forgotten seeing her by the time I got home.” I couldn’t tell if she was giving an excuse for having told me she hadn’t seen Florrie or if it was the truth and Jean was right about Florrie having an uncanny talent for blending in to the woodwork.

  “Did his wife know where he was?”

  A look of sheer panic spread over her face. She was caught and she knew it. “I–I don’t know. I think he told her he had to take a business trip to Vegas, but I don’t know exactly what lie he told her.” It sounded like she was throwing Hugo under the bus.

  “Do you know if he’s tried to contact his wife or if he’s heard from her since Thursday?”

  “I don’t think so, unless he did it while I was at work.” Some of her gumption returned as she straightened her shoulders and demanded, “Tell me what this is about. Last time I checked, it wasn’t against the law to spend time with an old friend. I don’t see how any of this is any of your business.”

  “It becomes my business when the old friend’s wife is reported missing and her car is found abandoned near his girlfriend’s house, where his car is parked with his wife’s purse in the trunk, on the same day he told the police he’s in Vegas. May we enter your house to see if he’s there? As I said, there’s a warrant on the way, but it will save us all a lot of time if we don’t have to wait.”

  She wilted, all the fight going out of her, and nodded. “Yeah, you might as well go inside.”

  “We won’t conduct a full search until I have the warrant in my hand, but I want to determine whether Hugo Marz is in Stirling Mills and is present at this location. And if there’s any sign of Florence Marz in there.”

  “What? No! She’s not in there,” Cissy insisted, and I was fairly certain she was sincere. This wasn’t an act. “I’d know if she was in my house.”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t hurt to check,” Wes said. He nodded to Officer Thornton, who acknowledged his nod and headed back to the house with another officer. While I waited to see what they found, I drank my water and tried not to think about what the things in the trunk probably meant. There weren’t a lot of good explanations for a woman’s purse, one shoe, one earring, and a length of rope being in the trunk of a car, not when they were things she’d been wearing or carrying the last time she was seen. I’d never been so sorry to be right before in my life. I would have loved to find out that Florrie had been lounging by the pool, blissfully cut off from the world, all this time. I might have been irked that she’d skipped her appointment with me, but that still beat the alternative that currently seemed likely.

  A few minutes later, a man emerged, Officer Thornton behind him and the other officer at his side, as though making sure he didn’t try to run. It had to be Hugo Marz. He looked a lot like he had in the yearbook, with a bit of a paunch around his middle and possibly less hair, but still more or less square. He wore elastic-waist shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved or showered in days. I’d have thought a woman as striking as Cissy could have done better than him, but it was possible they had a deep emotional connection, even after all these years, and physical appearance didn’t matter to them.

  I thought there was a look of terror in his eyes as he surveyed the scene, but he made a valiant effort to hide it as he approached Wes. “What seems to be the problem, officer?” he asked, hooking his thumbs in the waistband of his shorts. He sounded like he’d just been pulled over for speeding and was going to try to bluff his way out of a ticket.

  “You’re Hugo Marz?”

  “Um, yes.” I got the impression he wasn’t sure he wanted to be at that moment.

  “I’m Lieutenant Mosby, Stirling Mills Police. We spoke an hour or so ago on the phone.”

  Hugo’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he gulped. “Yeah.”

  “Didn’t you tell me you were in Las Vegas?”

  There were titters among the bystanders in the alley. If I’d had a popcorn machine, I could have made a fortune. This was definitely a time to make popcorn and settle in for a good show.

  Hugo went pale, all the color draining from his face and down past the neckline of his T-shirt. “Um, well, I, you see, that was the original plan, and I hadn’t told anyone I hadn’t gone. I didn’t think it mattered.”

  “You lied to the police ab
out your whereabouts when I called you to notify you that your wife had been reported missing?”

  “Like I told you on the phone, my daughter was probably blowing things out of proportion. Florrie just went away for the weekend. She was mad that I wouldn’t take her with me to Vegas, so I bet she took her own trip and didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Did you actually go to Vegas?”

  Hugo gave a shifty look. “This week, or ever?”

  I thought Wes showed great restraint in not pulling out his gun and forcing this guy to give him a straight answer. “This week,” he said, clenching his teeth between words.

  “Uh, well, no. I’ve been here since Wednesday. It was a change of plans. The trip to Vegas got cancelled.”

  “Did your wife know you were here rather than in Vegas?”

  He paused, glancing around, like he was trying to decide just how much the police knew. Unfortunately, he didn’t glance at Cissy, who was frantically shaking her head. “Of course.”

  “But you just said you didn’t tell anyone you hadn’t gone to Vegas.”

  “Oh. Well, um, I meant my daughter.”

  “You told your wife that your business trip to Vegas was cancelled and you were going to spend that time with your high school girlfriend, instead?”

  “I didn’t exactly put it like that, but yeah, she knew I was coming here. My family’s from here.”

  Wes turned to me. “Miss Lincoln, is that what Mrs. Marz told you when you spoke on Thursday night?”

  I knew he knew what she’d said because I’d told him multiple times, but I figured he was messing with Hugo, and I was happy to join in. “No. She told me all about how her husband got to take a business trip to Vegas and didn’t want her to come along.” Wes turned back to Hugo and waited for a response.

  “So, I lied about a few things,” Hugo said with a shrug. “No, I didn’t tell my wife where I was really going. I didn’t want her to worry.”

  “It was for your wife’s own good that you told her you were going to Vegas but instead went to stay with your high school girlfriend?” Wes asked, sounding like he could hardly believe what he was hearing. I wondered what he was picking up mentally. There were enough people around that there would be a lot of thoughts to overhear, and from the way he described his ability, I guessed he wouldn’t be able to tell which thoughts were Hugo’s unless they were alone together. There was probably a lot of speculation from the onlookers about what Hugo was doing that could be mixed up with what Hugo himself was thinking.

  “We were just reconnecting, seeing where things went,” Hugo said with another shrug. “No point in getting Florrie upset until I knew what was up and decided what I wanted.”

  “What?” screeched Cissy, who had truly gone into Valkyrie mode. “This was some kind of audition before you committed to leaving your wife?”

  Hugo moved away from her, but he didn’t seem to fear her at all. He was either really brave or really stupid. “Hey, no point in blowing up my marriage until I knew it was more than just sparks flying at the reunion.”

  The neighbors gasped and made tut-tutting noises. They knew he was digging his own grave. It was a pretty good bet that Hugo would come out of this event without either a wife or a girlfriend, even if his wife was alive and well. “That’s not what you said to me,” Cissy screeched.

  “Come on,” Hugo said. “We’d barely spoken in thirty years. Yeah, there were some sparks that are definitely lacking in my marriage, but you didn’t expect me to just ditch my wife without being sure we really have something. And we do, babe. This weekend was the best in my life, and I’m definitely leaving her for you.”

  Cissy’s expression softened ever so slightly, but she kept her hands on her hips. Hugo gave her puppy-dog eyes, and she softened still more. At any moment, I feared they’d be in each other’s arms.

  Wes cleared his throat and stepped between them, keeping that from happening. “Sir, I have to ask again if you know where your wife is. The truth this time.”

  “I have no idea!” Hugo said. “Really.”

  “If she were going to be house-sitting for anyone in Stirling Mills, do you know who it would be?”

  Hugo shook his head. “Nope. Sorry. I don’t know who all her friends are. She has family here, I know.”

  Wes turned to the cops working on the car. “Finish processing the car, then tow it. We’re treating it as evidence.”

  “What?” Hugo said, sputtering. “What am I supposed to do without a car?”

  “You won’t be needing it anytime soon,” Wes said. “We’ll be happy to drive you to the police station.”

  “Why? You’ve got nothing on me.”

  “You lied to me. That’s a crime. It impeded the course of an investigation. And it looks particularly suspicious, given that your wife’s purse was found in your trunk, along with a bit of rope. Can you explain that?”

  “Huh?” Hugo’s jaw hung agape, like his brain couldn’t process this information. It looked to me like genuine shock. For the first time, I started to wonder if Hugo actually had anything to do with Florrie’s disappearance. Yeah, he was a real slimeball who was cheating on his wife and not treating his girlfriend very well, and he was a liar, but unless he was a brilliant actor who’d missed his calling, I didn’t think he was a kidnapper or killer. Or, if he was, the things in the trunk weren’t related to his crime.

  But if he hadn’t done anything to Florrie, why were her belongings in his trunk? She might have left her phone in her car, but what about her purse? I could have thought the items in the trunk had maybe fallen out of a donation bag on the way to a Goodwill drop-off box if I hadn’t seen her wearing those things the last time anyone saw her. I hadn’t had a good look at the lock on the trunk, so I didn’t know if had been broken into.

  Then again, it was likely that Florrie had keys to her husband’s car, and those would have been in her purse. If Hugo hadn’t done anything to her, that meant that whoever it was who had taken her had also known which car was her husband’s and had left her belongings there. I supposed that would be a good way to throw the police off-track. If they were focusing on Hugo, then that bought the real kidnapper a lot more time.

  I drained the last of the water from the bottle and cautiously got to my feet. I was feeling a lot better, and I figured the excitement here was about to be over. While Wes interrogated Hugo at the police station, I could start trying to figure out who else might have taken Florrie and why. Was it about Florrie herself, or did someone want to hurt Hugo? As I recalled, Florrie had said he owned a company that installed alarm systems. Maybe someone was trying to use Florrie as a hostage to get the codes to a particular alarm and they’d miscalculated badly when Hugo figured they were doing him a favor by getting his wife out of the way.

  I shook my head. There I went again, spinning a story. Maybe Wes was right. I needed to look at the evidence and keep the narrative out of it until I knew more facts.

  I stepped out of the way as Wes hustled Hugo toward his SUV. He hadn’t put Hugo in cuffs, and I doubted Hugo would be at the police station long. He’d probably be released on bail as soon as he got in touch with his lawyer. Wes just needed to get him away from the crowd so he could get a good read on him, and that lie about his whereabouts was the perfect excuse.

  Now that the shouting had ended, the neighbors were starting to drift away. The ones who remained either stared at Cissy like she was a sideshow exhibit—come see the Amazing Scarlet Woman!—or watched Hugo being put in the back of the police vehicle. Word of their affair was probably going to spread pretty quickly around Stirling Mills. I wondered if it would also make it over to where Hugo lived. It might affect Hugo’s business if it did. People might not want to trust a man who’d been arrested for lying to the police to install their alarm systems.

  As I started to head to my car, I paused. There had been someone vaguely familiar in the crowd of neighbors. I turned back to look again. It was probably someone I’d interviewed that morning, but th
at wasn’t the familiarity that was puzzling my brain. There was something else, just out of reach. I scanned the crowd, and my eyes stuck on a woman wearing a large sun hat and a loose, brightly colored caftan, like the sort of thing you might wear over a swimsuit. Even though I couldn’t see much of her face under the hat and her oversized sunglasses, there was something really familiar about her.

  I felt like our eyes met, though her eyes were hidden behind those glasses, and then the crowd shifted and I lost sight of her. I’d have thought that hat would have made her impossible to lose, but it was as though she’d never been there. Maybe I’d imagined her. Or she was the ghost of a nosy neighbor who appeared whenever there was a nearby commotion. With a shrug, I headed down the alley toward where I’d left my car.

  I was nearly to the end of the alley when it struck me who that woman was: If I wasn’t mistaken, that was Florrie Marz.

  Chapter Eleven

  I froze in my tracks, shivering in spite of the summer afternoon heat. Had I really seen Florrie, or was it merely that I’d let her take up residence in my brain, so that I saw her everywhere? I had to be certain, especially if they were going to arrest her husband for her murder.

  I turned and jogged back up the alley. I had to flatten myself against a fence when one of the police vehicles drove by. It looked like it was Wes driving, with Hugo in the back seat. For a moment, I wondered if I should flag Wes down and let him know what I’d seen, but I wasn’t actually sure of what I’d seen. It wasn’t as though they were going to execute Hugo for murder before sundown, I reasoned, so I had time to be certain before I said anything. After spending days telling everyone Florrie was missing and that something surely had happened to her, I couldn’t exactly switch to telling people she was okay without being sure. It might not have been her. She’d said she had family in town, and she might have a cousin who looked a lot like her when wearing a hat and sunglasses.

  My credibility was going to take a big hit if she was okay after all the fuss I’d been raising, but it would take an even bigger hit if I tried to say she was okay and turned out to be wrong. This was no time to spin stories or share my wild theories. I needed facts.