by David Archer
“I’d say it was my pleasure, but that’d be a lie. I’ve got a hunch you might end up regretting your decision to take this on.”
Cassie was on her feet. “Whatever happened to Sabrina, whether she’s dead or alive or what, I have to agree with Dex that somebody needs to know. Right now, I’m working on the theory that she’s dead, but if that’s true, then her killer needs to be brought to justice. My mother used to tell me that if I saw somebody in need and nobody else was helping, that was the good Lord telling me it was up to me to help them. Maybe that’s what this case is. Maybe things like this are what I’m supposed to do with my life.”
Alicia stood and extended her hand, and Cassie shook it warmly. “Well, I wish you the best. And by the way, don’t hesitate to call me if you need something. We’re not supposed to give out information, but most all of us do sometimes.”
Cassie smiled at her and turned to walk out of her office. A moment later, she was in her car in the parking lot and looking at the file again.
Raymond Francis had worked for Myers Construction, and as Dex’s file had indicated, he had become foreman just days before his disappearance. His two closest friends, Jim Beasley and Mark Crawford, also worked for the company and were apparently still there. She checked the address and put it into her GPS, then started the car and headed that direction.
The drive took her about twenty minutes. Myers Construction was one of many construction companies in the area, and specialized in building moderately priced homes. Most of their work was done on spec, meaning that the houses were built in the hope that they would be sold. Since Walter Myers seemed to have a knack for buying property that would gradually increase in value, he had been quite successful.
Cassie pulled into the office parking lot and got out of the car, walking into what was indicated as the visitors’ entrance. A receptionist looked up at her, did the usual double take and smiled nervously.
“Can I help you?”
“Hi,” Cassie said. “I’m Cassie McGraw, and I’m looking into the disappearance of Raymond Francis. I understand he used to be one of your employees.”
The receptionist looked confused. “One of ours? That must’ve been before my time, I’ve only been here about a year. Hang on just a moment.”
She got up and walked through a door to one side of her desk, and was gone for about a minute. When she came back, she was followed by an older man who smiled at Cassie and held out her hand.
“I’m Walter Myers,” he said. “You’re looking for Ray Francis?”
“Yes,” Cassie said. “I’m Cassie McGraw, and I’m trying to find out whatever happened to him. I was hoping maybe somebody here might have some idea.”
“Well, I’m afraid you’re gonna come up empty. I tried like the dickens to find him back when he vanished. He was a good worker, and I’d just promoted him to foreman. When he disappeared, it took us a week to get everything back to normal.”
“And you never found any clue as to what might’ve happened to him?” Cassie asked. “I understand his two best friends still work for you. Neither of them ever heard from him?”
Walter turned to the receptionist. “Call Jim and Mark,” he said, “and tell them to come up to the office.” He turned back to Cassie. “As far as I know, they never did. They’ll be here in a few minutes and you can ask them yourself.” He looked Cassie up and down, not lecherously, but more like someone sizing up a potential opponent. “Can you tell me why you’re looking for him?”
Cassie hesitated for a second, trying to decide on the best approach. Finally, she decided on honesty. “There was a young woman he was acquainted with who also disappeared,” she said. “According to everyone who knew her, she wanted nothing to do with Raymond, but he told his own friends they were getting married. I’ve had experience in dealing with stalkers and domestic abuse situations, and this actually seems to have earmarks of both. To be perfectly honest, my working theory at the moment is that she rejected him, and he may have killed her in a rage.”
Surprisingly, Walter didn’t immediately protest. “Well, Ray had a temper,” he said. “Personally, I’d be surprised if you’re correct, but I can’t say it’s not a possibility. Sad, though.”
“Did you know Raymond very well?” Cassie asked.
“Oh, we didn’t go to ball games together,” he said, “but I worked with him quite often. I’ve seen him blow up and start yelling at one of the guys, and there might have been a couple times it came close to blows, but it never did go that far.”
“Okay. Did he ever mention a woman named Sabrina Moss? That’s the young woman who disappeared when he did.”
Walter screwed up his face in concentration. “I think the name sounds familiar,” he said. “I can’t really say for sure, but I think I’ve heard it before so it was probably from him. You said he was stalking her?”
Cassie nodded. “That’s the way it sounds. Apparently they had dated before, and had broken up. He turned up sometime later, insisting that he wanted her back. She was actually starting to get involved with another man at the time, and she ended up warning him to stay away so that he wouldn’t get hurt. That sounds like a stalker situation to me, and I’ve seen several of them.”
The door opened and two men came walking in. Walter motioned for them to come close to where he and Cassie were standing to one side of the front office. “Jim, Mark, this is Cassie. She’s looking for Ray Francis, and wanted to ask you guys some questions.”
The two men looked at Cassie, and both of them looked away almost instantly. Jim Beasley managed to turn his eyes back toward her face, but he seemed to be focused on her eyepatch.
“We ain’t seen Ray in a long time,” he said.
“I understand that,” Cassie replied, “but he always claimed you guys were his best friends. I was just wondering if you might’ve heard anything about where he went or what happened to him.”
“Not me,” Jim said. He looked at Mark Crawford. “Mark?”
“I never heard anything from Ray,” Mark said, “but there was one odd thing that did happen. It was about, oh, six months or so after he disappeared. I ran into a woman that he used to hang out with now and then, and I asked her if she’d heard anything from him. She said she hadn’t, and that nobody ever would again, but she wouldn’t tell me what she meant.” He shrugged. “I took it to mean she’d heard something about maybe him being dead.”
“Really? Would you happen to know her name?”
“No, ’fraid not. I didn’t really know her, I just remembered seeing her and Ray together sometimes. She used to go with him to a bar we hung out at now and then, that’s all I know.”
“What was the bar? Maybe somebody there will know who she is.”
“It’s called Freeman’s,” Mark said. “It’s down on the south side, but I don’t remember what street. Run-down little place, but it’s always been good for just hanging out without a lot of trouble.”
“Thanks, and can you tell me what this woman looks like? Was there anything about her that might stand out?”
Mark chuckled. “Yeah, as a matter of fact,” he said. “She had dark brown hair, but that last time I saw her she had a streak of white hair right at the front. It looked like part of her hair had turned white overnight.”
Cassie handed each of them her business card and asked them to call if they heard anything or thought of anything else that might help, then shook hands with all three men and walked out to her car. She picked up the file and scanned through it, looking for other female associates of Francis, but didn’t find any.
That suddenly struck her as odd. All of Raymond’s friends that were listed in the file were male, and there were no women. While that might fit someone who was capable of stalking and domestic violence, it seemed unusual that this woman Mark Crawford mentioned wasn’t listed. If it wasn’t uncommon to see them together, someone should have uncovered her before.
It was only ten o’clock in the morning, so she didn’t expect to find
a bar open. She glanced through more of the file and saw that another friend of Raymond’s was listed as James Alexander. James worked for the fire department.
Cassie took out her phone and dialed the number for the station he worked out of. It took only a minute to find out that he was off duty, and then she punched in his home address to her GPS.
James Alexander lived in a modest subdivision on the east side of Tulsa. She found the house with no trouble and parked in his driveway, then got out and walked up to ring the doorbell. A woman in her early thirties answered the door and managed only a brief double take before smiling.
“Hi, can I help you?”
“Hi, my name is Cassie McGraw, and I’m sorry to bother you this morning. Would James Alexander happen to be in?”
TWENTY-THREE
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Can I ask what this is about? He sleeping at the moment.”
“I’m actually trying to locate an old friend of his,” Cassie said. “James was listed as a close associate of Raymond Francis, and Raymond disappeared a couple years ago. I’m trying to find out whatever happened to him, because there was a young woman who vanished at the same time and it appears that Mr. Francis was stalking her.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “Stalking her? Do you mean that you think he did something to her?”
“I’m afraid that’s the possibility that I’m looking into,” Cassie said.
“I’m Penny, I’m James’s wife,” the woman said as she pushed open the storm door. “Why don’t you come on inside, and I’ll go get him up. It’s about time, anyway.”
Cassie followed her into the living room and took a seat on the couch when it was offered. Penny disappeared down the hallway but was back only a moment later. “He’ll be out in a moment,” she said. “I’m not sure if he’ll be able to help you, but…”
“I appreciate it,” Cassie said. She looked around for a moment and smiled. “You have a lovely home.”
“Thank you. It suits us, and we love it in this neighborhood. Would you like some coffee or something?”
“No, thank you,” Cassie said, “I’m good.”
The two women sat and talked politely for a few moments, and then James walked into the room. Penny must have warned him about Cassie’s appearance, because he didn’t so much as blink. He walked up to her with a smile and extended a hand.
“James Alexander,” he said. “My wife says you’re looking for Ray Francis?”
“That’s right,” Cassie said. “I’m Cassie, by the way. I’m trying to find out what happened to Raymond because there was a young woman who disappeared at the same time he did, a young woman he had been trying to bully into a relationship that she didn’t seem to want. I’ve had experience in cases like that, and right now I’m working on the hypothesis that he may have actually killed her and then disappeared in order to avoid getting caught.”
James nodded. “I wondered about that, myself,” he said. “I’ve had a couple of cops and a couple of private investigators asking me what I knew about him and that girl, and I’ll tell you the same thing I told them. As far as I knew, they were crazy about each other and supposed to be engaged. Hell, Ray even asked me about being his best man.”
Cassie looked him in the eye. “Really? Did you ever meet Sabrina?”
“He showed up here with her once, but she never got out of the car. He had me walk out to the car to meet her, and she didn’t seem all that enthusiastic about it. He told me the next day she was just in a bad mood, that they’d had some kind of argument over wedding preparations or something.” He shrugged. “That’s all I know about her.”
“Okay,” Cassie said. “Did you ever see him with another woman? I don’t know her name, but I understand she had dark brown hair and was occasionally seen with him at a place called Freeman’s.”
James’ eyes widened a bit. “Yeah, her I remember,” he said. “Trying to think of her name, it was like Karen or something like that. I think the only times I ever saw her with him was at Freeman’s, and it looked like maybe they were just friends. I never got the impression there was anything going on between them, if you know what I mean.”
“Have you seen her since Ray disappeared?”
“No, I don’t think…” He stopped and cocked his head to one side as if thinking. “I take that back,” he said. “I ran into her there at Freeman’s one night, I guess it was maybe a year or so ago. She was drinking pretty heavily, I remember that. I said hello but she told me to get lost, just kept sitting there drinking until they finally had to carry her out.”
Cassie watched his face closely. “Did you happen to notice anything odd about her that night?”
“You mean her hair? She had this white streak right at the front of her hair, hung down on the right side of her face. I heard somebody ask her where it came from and she flipped him off.” He shrugged again. “Frankly, I didn’t care enough to think much about it.”
“You said you thought her first name was Karen,” Cassie said. “Any idea of a last name, or where she might live?”
“No, I’m afraid not. She’d never actually struck me as the kind of person that I’d want to spend any time around, so I never put any effort into getting to know her. Ray, he seemed to think she was pretty important, always buying her drinks and giving her money.” He twisted his face into a strange expression. “It was like she had something he wanted, so he was going to be as nice as he had to be in order to get it. Am I making any sense?”
Cassie shrugged. “If you are, it’s escaping me. Listen, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.” She handed him a business card. “If you think of anything else, please give me a call.”
James looked at the card. “You’re a battered women’s counselor?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Considering that people think Sabrina was being stalked and was probably killed, somebody thought I would be the ideal person to try to get to the bottom of this.”
He looked up at her again. “You know,” he said, “they might just be right.”
Cassie thanked him again and left the house. She got back into her car and sat there in the driveway for a few moments, making notes in the file about the things she had learned, then looking closely at it for her next step.
She’d only been at the Alexander house for a few minutes, so it was still too early to think about going to the bar. Unfortunately, Raymond Francis hadn’t had that many friends, and until she could identify the mystery woman, it wasn’t likely she was going to find anyone else who would know much about him. That would have to wait for the afternoon, when the bar would be open, and then she could only hope that someone there might remember and know the woman with the white streak in her hair.
For the moment, though, she turned to the section on Sabrina Moss’ friends. There were several listed, including both men and women, and it suddenly struck Cassie that Dex had not been one of them. It was possible that he hadn’t been that big a part of her life that others noticed him, or that they had simply forgotten about him once she told him to stay away, but Dex was the kind of guy you just noticed, and she didn’t imagine him being all that forgettable.
She looked at the list of Sabrina’s friends and picked the one at the very top. Lola Vickers was apparently one of Sabrina’s dearest, and she worked as a funeral director at one of the big funeral homes. Cassie called the number and made sure Lola was working, then asked if she needed an appointment to drop by and see her. The receptionist said that they welcomed walk-ins, so Cassie programmed in the address and headed there.
The place looked like an old mansion, and was absolutely beautiful. She found the parking lot next door and left the car, then walked around to the front of the building and through the front door.
A woman in business attire got up from her desk in a nearby office and hurried out to greet her. “Hello,” she said, “I’m Lola. How can I be of service to you today?”
She had come from Cassie’s right, and visibly flinched when Cassi
e turned to face her. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Cassie said. “Sometimes I forget how shocking I can look to people the first time. My name is Cassie McGraw, and I’m hoping you might have a few minutes to talk with me.”
Lola recovered quickly. “Certainly,” she said. “Why don’t you come to my office? Would you like something to drink, perhaps? We have coffee or soft drinks.”
“Actually, a coke or something would go down well right about now. If it’s no trouble.”
“None at all,” Lola said. She led Cassie into her office and offered her a large, padded chair right in front of the desk, then opened what looked like a wooden cabinet. It was actually a refrigerator, and she reached in and grabbed a bottle of cola, then picked up a glass from the counter and added ice. She deftly unscrewed the cap from the bottle and poured the soft drink into the glass, then turned and handed it to Cassie.
“Thank you,” Cassie said, as Lola sat down behind her desk. “Lola, I’m not here about a funeral. I’m actually looking for an old friend of yours, Sabrina Moss, though it might be more accurate to say I’m trying to find out what happened to her.”
Lola leaned back in her chair and folded her hands over her belly. “Sabrina? Oh, goodness, it’s been a long time since I’ve heard that name. Can I ask what prompted your interest?”
“Actually, I was asked to look into her disappearance by another old friend of hers. Did you happen to know Dexter Tate?”
“Dexter? Goodness, you’re just full of names out of the past today, aren’t you? Dexter used to hang out with me and Bree, he was a pretty nice guy. I always told her she should’ve hooked up with him, but I guess there was something about him that made her nervous.”
Cassie’s eyebrow went up. “Made her nervous? Any idea what it was?”
Lola looked at her for a second as if she was confused, then broke out into a smile. “Oh, I think you took it wrong,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to imply that Dexter was dangerous or anything. I think Bree just thought he was too good to be true. Now, to understand that, you’d have to understand that Sabrina always thought of herself as a black sheep. She had a little bit of a bad streak in her, the kind that made her do some pretty stupid things from time to time. While she never actually got into any serious trouble, she always had the feeling that it was just a matter of time. I think she thought Dexter was just a little bit too ‘goody-two-shoes’ for her.”