Case of the Vanishing Visitor

by Shanna Swendson

  Josie frowned. “I don’t know. Last night’s kind of a blur. I don’t remember a woman other than Lexie sitting at the bar. What did she look like?”

  I started to answer, but paused when I realized I didn’t truly remember. I’d spent the whole evening talking to the woman, and I didn’t have a clear mental image. I was sure I’d recognize her if she walked in, but I couldn’t describe her in a way that anyone else would recognize. “She was late forties, maybe. She’s got a kid in college, so that would be the right age. Light brown hair, possibly a bit of gray. Or that could have been the light. I guess her hair was short, or maybe medium-length. Not curly, but I don’t think it was straight. Average height and build, I guess. I don’t know what color her eyes were. I think she had on glasses.” Half the women in the place, including at least one of the bachelorette party members, might have fit that description. If I had to work with a police sketch artist, I’d be stumped because I honestly couldn’t remember her face. It was sort of a face-shaped blob in my mind’s eye, like when they blur the face on a photo they show in a TV news story.

  Josie shook her head. “I have no idea. We were in the weeds last night. I barely remember serving you, and I know you because you’re a regular. I’m sure there must have been someone sitting by you, but I’m afraid I can’t help you.” She glanced at Margarita, who gave her a nod, and she headed back to the kitchen.

  “Do you have security cameras that might have caught her?” I asked Margarita.

  “Sorry, no. I only have them on after hours in case of a break-in. It feels weird to spy on my customers while they’re here. The only camera’s on the cash register.”

  “So I can’t prove that I was talking to someone alive, and I can’t get a picture of her to show around.”

  “Do you think something’s wrong?” I loved that after her initial question, she was taking this seriously and not talking as though she was merely humoring me.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Wes would say I’m making a mountain out of a molehill during a slow news week, and he didn’t think this counted as a missing person case, but she seemed super excited to be interviewed, so I’m worried that she didn’t show up and isn’t answering her phone. Like I said, she’s on her own here in town, so I feel a bit responsible for her as the only person who seems to know she’s here. Women need to look out for each other.”

  “If something’s really wrong, surely her family will notice and do something.”

  “Yeah, of course.” Though I wasn’t sure. When I was interning, I didn’t check in with my parents that often. We did a regular Sunday-afternoon phone call, and if her daughter was anything like me, it meant it would be a couple of days before she might notice something was wrong. As for her husband, if he didn’t want his wife coming along on a business trip to Vegas, I doubted he’d be calling nightly to check in and would be glad rather than worried if she didn’t call him. And that was if he wasn’t behind her disappearance. Wes might have scoffed at that theory, and even I hadn’t been totally serious about it, but if he had friends and family in Stirling Mills, he might have been able to arrange something to get his wife out of the way while he had the perfect alibi of being in Vegas.

  And now even I thought I was getting a bit ridiculous about this. “I probably am blowing it out of proportion because I don’t like being stood up,” I said with a laugh.

  “Still worried about your missing interview?” Wes asked, taking the seat next to me, the one where Florrie had sat the night before.

  “Yeah, a bit,” I admitted. “I never did hear from her.”

  “Well, maybe something came up and she got sidetracked seeing all the exciting sights here in beautiful Stirling Mills,” Wes said dryly. Dropping his voice, he added, “Are you sure she was, you know, alive?”

  “I’m pretty sure. I’ve never seen a ghost eat tacos.”

  Unless they were ghost tacos, a memory of a long-ago meal. No, I couldn’t start doubting myself on this. Every ghost I’d met, I’d been sure of what they were. Jean was about the most solid and real ghost I’d seen, and even she was clearly a ghost. I didn’t think I could have dinner with a ghost without realizing it.

  “Oh well. Enough about that,” I said. “Now, what should I have for dinner tonight?” I picked up the menu and scanned it, even though I pretty much had it memorized. I felt a bit silly for making such a big deal out of this, but my instincts told me something was wrong, and they were usually good. That was how I always got the story. This seemed like a story to me, deep in my gut where my instincts spoke to me.

  Besides, what harm could a little research do?

  By the next morning, I’d almost forgotten about Florrie. After dinner the night before, Margarita and I caught the late show at the downtown movie theater, then I’d slept late and gone to the town’s diner for a big, late breakfast. After that, I headed to the grocery store to restock. I was trying to be better about eating at home because a diet of Tex-Mex restaurant fare probably wasn’t great for me. I figured if I ate veggies at home most of the time, having tacos and enchiladas a few nights a week wouldn’t kill me. And if I had food in the house, then the next time Wes was hungry and Margarita’s was too crowded for him, I could invite him up. Okay, so I’d also have to learn to cook, but I was working on that. My goal was to learn to cook one new meal a week, and I’d found some good online tutorials.

  As I waited in line at the checkout with a cart full of unfamiliar foods from my recipe shopping list, I thought the checker looked familiar—and not because I saw her all the time at the store. I’d seen her somewhere else recently, out of context. She was tall and sturdy, the kind of woman who’d look right at home in a brass breastplate and a helmet with horns on it. Instead, she wore a baseball cap with the store’s logo on it. Bleached-looking ends stuck out from beneath the cap in a ponytail that was darker where it disappeared under the hat. I tried picturing her in other situations and not wearing the store’s uniform, and finally it struck me: She was the woman who’d come in for a take-out order around the time Florrie left the restaurant. She and Florrie had definitely made eye contact, and I was pretty sure that this woman had turned away to avoid interacting with Florrie, and then Florrie had quickly left. That more than likely meant she knew who Florrie was.

  When I got up to the register, I greeted her and assured her that I’d found everything just fine before saying, “Hey, you were at Margarita’s the other night. You came in to get a take-out order.”

  She paused in scanning my groceries and gave me a wary look. “Yeah.”

  I realized how creepy that must have sounded and hurried to say, “Sorry, it’s just that you looked familiar then, and I couldn’t place you, but now that I see you here, I realize why I knew you. I guess I should have said hi anyway, and I feel bad that I didn’t. I’m sorry about that.”

  The checker, whose name tag said “Cissy,” shook her head and said. “It’s no biggie. I see everyone come through here, and I don’t know them away from the store. I didn’t recognize you.”

  “Good point. But I think you did recognize the woman I was sitting next to. I’ve been trying to track her down. Maybe you could help me.”

  Cissy froze. She got a deer-in-the-headlights look, and I was pretty sure she was even holding her breath. Then she said, “No, I didn’t see anyone sitting by you.”

  A chill went down my spine and I had to stop myself from shivering visibly. This was the third person who’d said she hadn’t seen me sitting with anyone. Margarita and Josie had admitted that they’d been busy and might not have noticed or remembered, but I knew Cissy had looked right at Florrie and recognized her. Either she was lying or she had the same ability to see ghosts that I had and Florrie was actually a ghost.

  Pulling myself together, I said, “Rats. I needed to track her down for something, and no one seems to know her. I figured you see just about everyone in town come through here, so it was worth a shot. She must have taken off before you got there, or it was too
crowded for you to notice her. Thanks, anyway.”

  She didn’t speak other than to tell me the total and thank me for shopping when she handed me my receipt. I got the weirdest feeling that I’d touched a nerve. Was it just that she didn’t like being recognized during her free time, had she seen Florrie and had a reason not to want to admit it, or did she see ghosts and didn’t want to admit that? If it was the latter, I could totally understand. I wouldn’t tell a stranger, either, especially not in public. But I needed to know which of these possibilities was the truth. Had I seen a ghost, or was there a real woman who was now missing? The more I learned, the more I found myself doubting my own experience.

  After I got my groceries put away at home, I went down to the newspaper office. If Florrie’s husband was from Stirling Mills, there should have been a wedding announcement in the paper, and if she had a kid in college, their wedding might have been recent enough for it to be in our online archives. I fired up my computer and typed the name “Marz” in the search box.

  I got a lot of results. The Marz family seemed to be pretty big in this town. I added the word “wedding” to the search and still got a couple of pages of results. It would have helped if I’d known Florrie’s maiden name because all the headlines were along the lines of “Smith, Marz Married.” I adjusted the date parameters to rule out the last ten years, then clicked on each article until I found a notice for the wedding of Hugo Marz of Stirling Mills and Florence Rogers. It was a small article with a tiny, blurry photo of the couple, but I felt vindicated by the proof that Florence Marz existed.

  Or had existed. I supposed there was nothing to say that she was still alive. I could have been talking to her ghost. While I’d told Margarita that I’d have seen Florence before if she was haunting the restaurant, that wasn’t necessarily true. Sometimes ghosts only appeared when something was bothering them. Margarita’s restaurant hadn’t been open for too many years, and it was in an old building. Florence’s ties to the place may have had nothing to do with the restaurant. She might have appeared now because something had happened. Her husband might be getting remarried, so she was reliving being left behind when he went on a business trip. Still, I was pretty sure she’d eaten an entire meal—a real one that Josie had placed in front of her. When she left, there had still been empty plates on the bar. At least, I thought so. I could picture it in my head—or was that an image from so many meals eaten there? My mind wasn’t playing tricks on me, was it?

  I tried running an Internet search for Florence Marz and got one article from a small town in the next county. She was listed as one of the parents when her daughter was valedictorian. That was a couple of years earlier, so it wasn’t proof that she was still alive, but I didn’t find an obituary. A death might go unmentioned in a big city where only notable people got real obituaries and everyone else had to pay for a notice, but in a small town there would probably be a mention about the funeral and visitation. My guess was that she had been alive at least up to the point when that town’s last newspaper issue had gone to press.

  I shivered at the thought that even if I’d really seen her at the restaurant, she could have died Thursday night.

  “What is it?” Jean asked after drifting through the wall and arranging herself in my guest chair. “You look bothered.”

  “Just proved myself right about something. Do you know anything about the Marz family?”

  “They’re all over the place. Old German stock, which you find a lot of in this part of the world.”

  “So not part of the sideshow?” A good portion of the town’s population was descended from a sideshow that had been stranded in the town during the Depression, and a lot of those people had uncanny abilities they used in their acts and then passed on to their descendants. I’d found that many of the crimes in Stirling Mills involved those talents.

  “They predate the sideshow, but there’s no telling who might have married into the family. Did you get a good lead?”

  “Just looking into that woman who didn’t show up for the interview. No one else seems to have seen her, so I was making sure she was a real person and that she was alive. You haven’t run across a Florence Marz in the afterlife, have you?”

  “I don’t chat that much with other dead people. The living are a lot more interesting. You think someone did away with this woman?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just bored and looking for something to investigate. Her maiden name was Rogers, and she said her parents were from here. Does that name ring a bell?”

  “That’s another family who’s all over the place. No particular person stands out to me. You really think there’s something to this?”

  “It sounds crazy, but I feel like something has to be going on here.”

  “You’ve got good instincts, kiddo. There’s no shame in listening to them.”

  She floated back through the wall, and I allowed myself a little smile. Jean was a demanding boss. That small amount of praise was as good as getting an award.

  So, if I needed to follow my instincts, what did I need to do? I’d proved that a Florrie Marz existed, and the information I’d found matched what she’d told me. That meant I hadn’t imagined a conversation at the Mexican restaurant. There was no way I’d have dreamed up those details on my own. It didn’t seem as though she was dead, unless she’d died very recently, so that was the next thing I needed to prove, that she’d been alive when I’d talked to her.

  I grinned when I realized I had an easy way to do that. Margarita may not have had cameras in the restaurant, but Jordan had put security cameras on all the buildings he owned in the downtown area. Wes had remarked on the lack of parking, which meant that unless Florrie had been very lucky, she would have had to walk down Main Street to reach the restaurant. Jordan probably had video of Florrie coming and going.

  I should have thought of this earlier. It would be easy to prove she existed.

  Chapter Four

  Jordan lived in an apartment over the coffee shop he owned, right across the street from Margarita’s, while his new mansion was being built on the edge of town. His office was in the same building, and he was such a workaholic that he was probably at his office on a Saturday afternoon. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that he spent the day watching his downtown security cameras for signs of tourists. That was probably how he’d caught me heading to Margarita’s on Thursday night. Jordan was seriously invested—literally—in the future of the town.

  As I expected, I found him in his office, and while he wasn’t sitting in front of the bank of security monitors I’d envisioned, he did have a large monitor on one side of his L-shaped desk showing the input from all the cameras in a grid. “Hey, Lexie,” he greeted me. “Any interviews? I think I saw a couple of strangers on Main Street awhile ago.”

  I took a seat in his plush, modern guest chair, which promptly threatened to swallow me as I sank into its cushions. I might need a winch to get out. Not that I’d want to for awhile. It was really comfortable. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I did meet someone who’s visiting town, and she called it a vacation, though she’s house-sitting, so she couldn’t talk about accommodations.”

  He sat up straight, suddenly alert. “Really? Someone’s vacationing here?” If he was surprised, that ruled out the theory that he’d kidnapped her to show her the sights. Not that I’d been serious about that, but it was good to be able to definitively rule out yet another theory.

  “Yeah, and she agreed to an interview. She was excited about it. But then she didn’t show up, and she hasn’t been answering her phone.”

  His delight quickly turned to alarm. “She’s missing? Have you called the police? We need to make sure she’s okay. Something happening to a tourist would be terrible for the town’s reputation.”

  “And for the tourist.”

  “Well, yes, of course. Making sure she’s okay is the first priority.”

  “I don’t think anyone grabbed her off the street, if that’s what y
ou’re worried about. And, yes, I did check with the police to make sure there hadn’t been any wrecks, or anything like that. Something else could have happened, though. She mentioned that the place where she’s house-sitting has a pool, and I’m worried about someone swimming alone, without anyone there to notice if she’s in distress.”

  I could practically see the relief flooding through his body at the idea that the town might not have a lurking strangler preying upon visitors. “Oh, yes, that would be bad,” he said, though he sounded elated.

  “I don’t know who she’s house-sitting for, so I can’t check on her,” I continued, building up to my pitch. “I was wondering if maybe you got her on one of your cameras when she was entering or leaving Margarita’s. If I could get a picture of her, someone might recognize her, and I might be able to track down who her friend is or where she’s staying.” Jordan wasn’t in on the secret about me seeing ghosts, so I couldn’t tell him why I really wanted to see the video. I hoped my alternative explanation worked.

  It must have, for he swiveled in his chair to face the monitor with the security feeds. “Sure. Do you know when she went to Margarita’s?”

  “Thursday night.”

  He tapped out something on a keyboard, then asked, “What time?”

  “I think she arrived around six and left at maybe half-past eight.”

  He tapped something else, and one of the grid squares blew up to fill the screen. It showed the front door of Margarita’s. People moved in and out in double time, looking like they were in an old silent movie. I reluctantly forced myself out of the embrace of the comfortable chair and moved to lean over his shoulder to watch. I saw myself approach and enter the restaurant. “It must be coming up,” I said. “She got there not long after I did.” He slowed the speed, and I held my breath as I watched the time stamp on the screen move. It was just about time. She should be there at any moment.