A Risky Undertaking for Loretta Singletary

by Terry Shames

As I walk down the steps, I glance down the street toward Loretta’s house, feeling a sense of despair. I stop short. I’m sure I saw a light in the house. It flashed on and bobbed around and then turned off, as if someone is using a flashlight. I watch the house for a minute but don’t see a repeat of the light. It could be my imagination. It’s not fully dark yet, but that shade of twilight where everything looks spooky. Maybe a car was driving by one street over and its lights momentarily reflected in a window. Or it could be that Scott decided he can’t stay away and has come back. However, there are no cars parked in front, where he usually parks. And why would he use a flashlight and not turn on the lights?

  “Uh-oh,” I say out loud. “Dusty, maybe some kids know Loretta isn’t there and have broken in. Let’s go see what’s up.” I pause to consider calling Connor or Maria for backup, but I’m not even sure I saw anything. Still, it will only take a minute for Maria to get over here. It’s probably better for me to phone her.

  Dusty makes up my mind for me. He has been dancing down the street in front of me, but as we near Loretta’s house, he takes off toward it at a dead run.

  “Dusty! Here boy! Come back.”

  I could have saved my breath. Usually he would be stopped by the gate, but it has been left ajar, as has the front door.

  He runs straight up the front steps without making a sound. I’ve noticed that when he is intent on something, he moves without barking. That’s the Border Collie in him.

  I run into the yard and pull the gate shut behind me. Whoever is in the house could have an innocent excuse for being here. If so, why didn’t they turn on a light?

  Dusty has disappeared into the house. I take the steps up to the porch two at a time but pause outside the front door. Suppose whoever is in there has a gun? They could shoot my dog—or me.

  “Who’s in there?” I shout. “Dusty, come!”

  From inside, I hear a snarl, a hoarse shout, and then a yelp.

  Dusty comes flying out onto the porch, leaping at me with excitement. I hear a drawer slammed shut and another opened and someone scrabbling through papers. Then there’s another flash of light.

  Grabbing Dusty’s collar and pulling him along with me, I creep inside, moving toward the kitchen. It’s much darker inside the house than out. I’m trying to remember exactly how the furniture is laid out when I nudge a table. It wasn’t much of a nudge, but it’s enough for a knick knack to fall over. No way the intruder won’t have heard it. I’ve brought my flashlight, and as I flick it on, he explodes out the kitchen door, running past me, knocking me down. I fall awkwardly, hitting the side of the table I nudged and sending a cascade of knick knacks to the floor.

  I’m not hurt, but I’m not as physically quick as I used to be, and by the time I pull myself to my feet, I hear the intruder crash into the gate and Dusty barking hysterically, with a few snarls thrown in for good measure. I run out onto the porch and see the guy sprinting down the street. Whoever he is, he’s stocky and doesn’t move like a kid. Dusty is hot on his heels. The man kicks backward, and Dusty barely leaps out of his way.

  I know there’s no way I can catch the runner. If I had my flashlight, I could turn it on and maybe see who it is, but when he knocked me down, I dropped it and didn’t stop to pick it up.

  The man turns the corner and disappears from sight, Dusty right behind him, still barking. Soon I hear a car start up and roar away from the curb. I tense, hoping Dusty has sense enough to get out of the way.

  “Dusty, come!” I yell. It takes a couple of calls before he comes trotting back to the gate, panting. I tell him he’s a good boy. I crouch down and feel around for any tender spots, but he seems fine.

  When I go back inside, I take him with me. I flip on lights as I go. In the kitchen, one of the desk drawers is open. What could the guy have been looking for in Loretta’s desk? Only one thing occurs to me. Suppose this is the man she was meeting, and he was afraid she had kept a photo of him? Or information about him? I don’t touch the desk. It will have to be fingerprinted. I’d rather wait until tomorrow to do it in the daylight, but there’s no way to guarantee he won’t come back in the middle of the night to finish his job, and our little police department doesn’t have the manpower to stake out the house overnight.

  It’s lucky I still have my cell phone with me. I call Maria and tell her what happened. She arrives a half hour later with the forensics kit to take fingerprints.

  “I hope we get a useful print,” she says, and then gets a puzzled look on her face. “What did you do to your arm?”

  I look down and see a gash in my forearm that leaked a fair amount of blood but has since congealed. “I must have scraped it when the guy pushed me down. I’ll clean it up when I get home.” My back and side are starting to feel sore from the fall.

  “What do you suppose the guy was after?” she says. It’s not really a question. She’s asking the air. “And how can we find out?”

  “I don’t know, but we’re going to do what we always do. We’re going to take it step by step.”

  “I wonder how he got in,” Maria says.

  “It couldn’t have been the outside key. I took it with me last time I was here. I was afraid she might have told other people where it was. I didn’t want them to come in and poke around.”

  We go back to examine the front door. It was ajar, which first alerted me to the break-in. There’s no sign of the door being jimmied or otherwise forced. “I suppose there could be a second hidden key that the intruder was aware of,” I say. There is one other possibility. I left before Scott did this afternoon. Maybe he forgot to lock one of the doors. He was sweating. Maybe he opened a window and forgot to close it.

  We go back to the kitchen, but there’s no sign that a break-in occurred there either. We split up and go through the house looking for windows that might have been opened, but when we come back we report that all windows were locked up tight.

  “Still,” I say, “it’s possible that one of them was open and when he climbed in, he locked it after him. That might account for why he opened the front door, to give himself a way out.”

  “There’s one other possibility,” Maria says. She looks stricken. “It could be that he got the key from Loretta.”

  We’re silent for a few seconds, contemplating that dreaded possibility.

  After that, we set to the business of taking prints, dusting not only the front and back door, but the windowsills as well. If the intruder doesn’t have prints on file, then it won’t be of any use, but at least it makes us feel useful for now.

  “Do you suppose he was here to get that photo we found?” Maria says, as we’re packing up.

  I nod. “It’s possible.”

  “You said the Farquart woman had shown her neighbor a photo of the man she was supposed to meet, but you didn’t find the photo in her house. Maybe he broke in and got it and he was planning to do the same thing here. “

  “I’ll phone over to the Bobtail Police Department tomorrow to tell them what happened here and get them to take prints in the Farquart woman’s house, including the desk.”

  After Maria leaves, I go through Loretta’s desk one more time, taking out the drawers in case something is stuck and looking behind the desk for anything that might have fallen. For once, I’m annoyed that my friend is tidy. “Loretta, where are you?”

  I spend a restless evening at home and go to bed early after taking ibuprofen to help with my aches and pains from the assault.

  I don’t usually dream a lot, and I don’t remember my dreams the way some people do, but in the middle of the night, I wake up with a gasp, heart pounding. I sit up and my dream comes back to me full force. In the dream, I answer my phone, and it’s Loretta:

  “Samuel.”She talks in a whisper.

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s me. Loretta.” The same whisper.

  I strain to be sure it’s really her. “Where are you?”

  “I don’t know. There’s nothing around here.” She whim
pers, “You have to find me. Please!”

  “Well, tell me . . .”

  “There’s another woman here too.”

  “Elaine?Is that her name?”

  “I have to go.” Her voice fades.

  “Loretta, no, wait!”

  The line goes dead.

  I frantically dial Star 69 to get the number she called from, but I get a message that says, in a sing song voice, “Sorry, the call return feature cannot be used to return your last incoming call.” I dial it again, and this time the phone bursts into flames.

  I get out of bed, still not quite believing it didn’t happen. I walk into the living room to the front door and peer out. Now I understand the impulse that grabbed Maria this afternoon. I have an urge to run out the door, jump in my car, and start looking for Loretta. I keep remembering her voice from the dream, plaintive and scared. Now I worry that she might really try to call and I won’t be here. I picture her listening to the phone ring, willing me to pick up.

  CHAPTER 14

  I wake up sore from the tumble I took, and I’m achy and grumpy. The dream I had last night has stuck with me, and I have to remind myself it wasn’t real. I take more ibuprofen before I leave for headquarters.

  Because we’re a small police department, there’s no one scheduled to work on Sunday, but I don’t have the place to myself. Maria is already here when I arrive, churning out flyers. I hope our antique printer can take the strain.

  I call Bobtail Police Department and talk to Hogarth. He’s frustrated that they haven’t found any solid leads to Elaine Farquart’s disappearance. “We have got to find them,” he says. “I’m already getting calls from panicked women, wondering if they’re next.”

  “You may not like it, then, but my deputy has made up flyers, and some women from Bobtail are going to distribute them.”

  He sighs. “I may not like it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a good idea. We’re planning to do the same. I’ll just have to deal with any fallout.”

  “There’s been a development on this end. Last night I surprised an intruder in Loretta’s house.” I tell him that he knocked me down and managed to get away. “He was searching for something when I discovered him. I wondered if he might be worried that Loretta had a printout of his photo that could identify him. Elaine Farquart’s neighbor said Elaine showed her a photo of a guy she was going to meet, but we didn’t find it in her house. It occurred to me that the same guy may have broken into Elaine’s house and stolen it.”

  “We didn’t see any signs that anyone had broken in, but I’ll send somebody over to her house right away to check it out. We didn’t take fingerprints because it wasn’t really a crime scene, but we’ll do that now. Do you know how the guy got into Loretta’s house?”

  “As far as we could tell there were no locks jimmied on the doors or windows. My deputy suggested that if the intruder were the kidnapper, he might have gotten the key from Loretta.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that, but it makes sense, and he may have gotten Elaine Farquart’s key as well.”

  “Tomorrow I’m going to call the FBI and see what legal means they can use to get information from the dating website.”

  “I hate to tell you,” Hogarth says, “but I already did that, and they said we’ll have to get a court order, and that’s not easy. We don’t really have probable cause.”

  “Maybe we can appeal to the better nature of whoever runs the website.”

  He snorts. We both know how likely that is.

  “By the way, I do have a possible lead. Loretta confided in a woman. She told the woman that she had made appointments with men she met on the dating website.” I tell him I went to the coffee shop in Bryan and talked to a potential suspect who turned out not to be suspicious after all.

  “That’s more than we’ve managed to uncover.”

  “This afternoon I’m going to the coffee shop in Bobtail where Loretta was supposed to meet the second date. Can I drop by and get a photo of Elaine Farquart? If they don’t recognize one, they might have noticed the other.”

  “Absolutely, and we can give you a copy of the sketch that came from the description Elaine Farquart’s neighbor gave us too.”

  “Have you located her car?”

  “No.”

  “I was thinking the cars might be in a garage.”

  Hogarth agrees. He tells me to let him know if there’s anything he can help with.

  Maria is printing out flyers, and she calls Kathy Weinman to arrange to get them to her. She isn’t home, so Maria leaves a message.

  “If she’s at church, she probably won’t be home until after noon,” I say. Since Maria isn’t technically on duty, I tell her to go home and wait for Kathy’s call.

  It’s not even ten o’clock. I’m not going to the coffee shop in Bobtail until this afternoon, to try to catch the same people on duty, so I’ve got time on my hands. I brew myself a pot of strong coffee and sit back to think.

  Elaine Farquart was abducted from Bobtail, and Loretta was supposed to meet someone at a coffee shop in Bobtail, which means logically we should focus on the Bobtail area to search for Loretta. If we found one of the cars, we might be able to narrow the search, but the fact that neither of them has been found suggests they are tucked away. If both cars are inside, it means the abductor either has a two-car garage, or larger, or maybe has a big place to keep cars, like a warehouse or barn. Barn suggests countryside. There are more than enough big barns and out-buildings around to make finding the cars highly unlikely.

  Elaine and Loretta are around the same age, widows who both happened to use the same dating website. Are there other things the two abducted women have in common? Was it possible that they knew each other? The dating site they used wasn’t the biggest one, so why did they choose it? I think back to the comment the FBI officer made— that women who go on those sites change their appearance before they dip into online dating. Maybe they bought clothes in the same shop. Loretta loved to shop, and she usually liked to go to the outlet mall down near San Antonio. But I don’t even know what shops are in the mall, much less where Loretta might have gone. Maria might have more luck than I would trying to trace something like that.

  I’m ready for an interruption, so I’m glad when I see someone drive into the parking lot. But then I see that it’s Father Sanchez. He must have come here straight after morning mass. Here we go again.

  Dusty is thrilled to have company and leaps around the priest’s feet. Sanchez crouches down and makes a fuss over him, which the Baptist preacher didn’t do.

  “What are you doing here? Don’t you have services?”

  “We Catholics like to get that over with early. Mass is over by nine. At least in my church.”

  “Well sit down and have a cup of coffee. I imagine I know why you’re here,” I say.

  “I expect you know at least one of the reasons.”

  “The rodeo?”

  “That’s number one.”

  Sanchez accepts a cup of coffee, and we sit down at my desk. He’s mid-forties, wiry with a shock of dark hair. He’s wearing jeans and a shirt. His only concession to the priesthood is a collar.

  “I’m not sure how to handle this rodeo situation,” he says. “I suppose I should give in and let the Baptist preacher have his way.”

  “As I pointed out to Reverend Becker, it won’t stop with the Baptists. If they get their part, then all the other churches will want a hand.”

  He gives a shout of laughter. “Everybody will want a hand in, and they’ll squabble over every job, like it’s going to get them into heaven.” He waves his arm up in the air like he’s at a meeting. “I want the peanut concession. No, I want it. You can have the soft drinks. No . . .” He swats his leg. “I sometimes think I’m not cut out for the priesthood. The idea of all that confusion kind of appeals to me in a perverse way.”

  “Maybe you’re right. But I’ll tell you what. I’m going to give you my usual check, and you can organize the
rodeo however you want to. I don’t want to get involved with church politics.”

  “Thank you, but it isn’t going to solve my problem.”

  “Maybe you could talk to the Methodist preacher and get him on your side? He seems like an easy going man, and he has been around for a long time. I bet he’d be willing to help you.”

  He brightens. “Not a bad idea. Although I hate to put him in Becker’s sights.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sanchez looks uncomfortable. He gives a half-shrug. “I don’t want to badmouth the man. Something about him bothers me though. I’ve never met a preacher who’s so relentless. Maybe it’s because he’s ambitious.”

  “Ambitious? Then being sent to a small town like this will be his worst nightmare. No wonder he’s itching for something to keep him occupied.”

  “Chief Craddock, all of us religious leaders have to go where we’re sent, especially in our first few postings. Some of us are luckier than others and end up where we should be. All those years ago when I first came here, I was disappointed, and I hoped I’d be moved before long. But then I got to really know the place, and when they asked me whether I wanted to go elsewhere, I told them I was content.”

  “I’m glad you stayed.”

  He nods in acknowledgment of our friendship. “The fact that Reverend Becker is too big for the town may be the reason they chose it for him. To take him down a peg or two. He told me he came to being a preacher only recently and that they put him here in a small congregation to test him.”

  “He said something similar to me,” I say.

  He grins. “The citizens of Jarrett Creek better watch their step. I suspect he wants to reel in a few new members so he can make the case that he should be moved to a bigger church, where he can have more of an impact.”

  “Either way, you’re the one who has to make the decision whether to include him in the rodeo.” I take out my checkbook and make out my usual donation. “Now you said there were two reasons you came.”

  “The second one is more in your ballpark, thank goodness. I’ve got two brothers who are at each other’s throats because each of them wants his son to be the flag bearer in the opening ceremonies.”