Case of the Vanishing Visitor

by Shanna Swendson

  “Thanks for coming in so quickly,” Wes said when he came out to the front desk to meet me. He didn’t quite meet my eyes, which gave me the impression that he had the good grace to feel at least a teeny bit ashamed of dismissing my concerns.

  I pledged to myself that I would take the high road and not gloat about being right. “Of course. I want to help. As I’ve been saying for days.” Okay, so I couldn’t resist a little dig at him.

  He winced. “I know. Back this way.” He escorted me to his office and gestured for me to take a seat. I couldn’t help but remember my first day in town when I’d sat there to be interviewed as a possible murder suspect. Now I was a witness, which I supposed was an upgrade. He sat at his desk and turned to his computer, pulling up an electronic form. “Can you tell me about the last time you saw Florence Marz?” With a glance at me, he added, “And, yes, I know you’ve already told me. But this is the official version, so just the facts, with no speculation.”

  I went through the whole story about Thursday night at Margarita’s, giving approximate times and everything Florrie had told me. He stopped me after I told about her not showing up for the interview and not answering the phone. “Anything else from this point on is conjecture or gossip.”

  “So you don’t want to put the fact that no one else remembers seeing her or that we had a séance in case she was a ghost in your report?” I didn’t expect him to, but I couldn’t resist having a little fun.

  His eyes went wide with alarm. “Of course not!”

  “You did note that I’m pretty sure Cissy Clancy saw her at Margarita’s.”

  “I did.”

  “And you should also—”

  He cut me off. “Nope, I don’t want to hear it. I’ve got a full crew out canvassing the neighborhood near where Florence’s car was found. Anything you noticed while snooping around, they’ll surely find.”

  “Only if they know what to look for.”

  “You don’t think my officers, who grew up in this town and know just about everybody, won’t know what to look for?”

  “It depends on what they know or suspect.”

  “We’re supposed to find evidence and build a case from there, not look for evidence to support the case we’ve already dreamed up.”

  I managed not to give a derisive snort. I’d known plenty of cops who did exactly that. “Yeah, but there are some things that look totally innocent unless you know what to look for.”

  “My people know what to look for. Let’s just say that one member of that team was in the same class as Hugo.”

  It was my turn to widen my eyes. “Oh! Then they may know what to look for. And the husband is usually the first suspect when a woman goes missing, so looking up people associated with the husband is an automatic part of an investigation.” That should mean they’d notice the car in the driveway and, I hoped, the bloody handprint.

  Sure enough, a moment later Wes’s radio squawked, and when Wes responded, a crackly voice said, “Boss, there’s something out here you need to see. We’ll need some evidence collection, while we’re at it. Maybe a warrant.”

  “On my way. I’ll get the details from you in a bit,” Wes said, then cut off the radio. To me, he added, “Is there anything else you need to tell me that comes from your direct experience talking to Florence Marz?”

  “No, that’s all.” I was already on my feet, and I followed at Wes’s heels as he rushed to the door.

  When I headed to the passenger door of his police vehicle, he stopped me. “Nope. I can’t show up at a potential crime scene with a reporter in the truck with me.”

  But I noticed that he hadn’t said anything about me not being there at all. The cop on the radio hadn’t given a precise location, but I suspected I knew what he meant. They’d found the car. Before Wes had even started the engine, I was already sprinting down the street. Fortunately, I’d parked in front of the office after the morning’s excursion, so I didn’t have to go around to the garage at the back of the building. I wasn’t too far behind Wes when I headed toward Cissy’s house. It helped that I knew exactly where I was going, while I guessed he had to get back on the radio to get specifics once I was out of earshot.

  I parked on the street near the alley exit, making sure I wasn’t near a hydrant or anything else that would give them an excuse to ticket me, and ran down the alley toward Cissy’s driveway. I was panting, and I was sure my face was bright red with exertion and the heat. I kept saying I was going to start exercising more, and this reminded me that I needed to make good on that promise, especially if I was going to keep getting involved in solving crimes.

  There was already crime scene tape strung around Cissy’s driveway, so it looked like my guess had been correct. I hadn’t had a chance to call one of our freelance photographers, so I snapped some photos of the scene with my phone. If Florrie was found safe and alive by the time I went to press, this wouldn’t be much of a story, but I needed to be prepared in case she wasn’t. Mostly, I was here for my own curiosity, I had to admit.

  An officer was taking pictures of the rear of the car. Other officers were going over the outside of the car like rental agents looking for scratches they could bill for after the car was returned. Wes had arrived just ahead of me and parked in the alley, right behind the crime scene tape. He stood nearby, talking to one of the officers. After the officer finished his report, Wes glanced at me. He didn’t tell me to go away, which was a nice change of pace. “I take it the bloody handprint on Hugo’s car was what you wanted to tell me about,” he said.

  “Yep. Good work. You’re now caught up with me.”

  I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but I was pretty sure the look he gave me was withering. “And how many days did it take you to find out what we did in a couple of hours?”

  “Come on, you’ve got to admit that I gave you a head start, since you already knew some of what I found. It would have taken you longer to get here otherwise. And I was only so slow because people kept telling me I was imagining things. I had to prove I wasn’t entirely crazy first.”

  Some neighbors had come out into the alley to watch the commotion, but one thing that was oddly missing was anyone from Cissy’s house. If the cops were crawling all over the driveway, you’d think that anyone who was home would come out to see what was going on, unless they weren’t supposed to be there and were hiding. I sidled closer to Wes and said softly, “I think someone’s in the house.”

  “And how would you know that?”

  “You talking about the neighborhood watch around here gave me a story idea, so I went door-to-door to interview people about the neighborhood watch. The curtains twitched after I rang the doorbell here, but no one came to the door, and I didn’t hear barking, so it wasn’t a dog, unless it’s a really well-behaved one.”

  He quirked a skeptical eyebrow above the frame of his sunglasses. “Really? You’re doing a story on the neighborhood watch?”

  “Look for it in the next issue.” Which meant now I really was committed to writing it.

  “If you need more sources, I think they’re all out here,” he noted, tilting his chin toward the assembled neighbors.

  I wasn’t sure how all these neighbors knew what was going on in the alley, since the houses nearby were all single-story and the backyard fences were high. Did they have treehouse surveillance platforms? Security cameras facing the alley? Periscopes? They probably had a phone tree, so they could spread word through the whole neighborhood in minutes. Whatever it was, the crowd grew. It would take a really brave or stupid criminal to target this neighborhood. There’d be no getting away with anything around here, and that probably extended beyond criminal behavior. They had to already know Cissy had a visitor, even if they didn’t know for certain who he was.

  “It’s human blood!” one of the cops at the car called out. The onlookers gasped.

  Wes nodded an acknowledgement, with a bit of a glare at the officer, probably for being too loud about that announcement, then
turned abruptly and got in his truck, which he drove out of the alley. I had a feeling I knew where he was going, so I jogged down the alley and around the corner. He must have stopped to talk to the cop sitting in the car that was already parked there because I made it to the front of the house just as he headed up the walk. I figured that if I stayed on the edge of the street, I was totally within my rights and Wes couldn’t say anything about me interfering or trespassing. I hoped I could hear anything that was said from where I stood.

  Wes rang the doorbell and waited a moment. The curtains twitched, then were pulled tight and went still. I imagined that if you were hiding out somewhere you weren’t supposed to be, seeing a police officer on the front porch would be alarming. I pictured Hugo cowering under a bed or at the back of a closet. When no one came to the door, Wes banged on it and shouted, “Police! I need you to open up.” Nothing happened. Wes turned and headed back down the sidewalk, saying into his radio as he walked, “Get someone over to the Food Mart and escort Cissy Clancy home, now. Tell her she needs to get back for something urgent.”

  “You can’t just kick the door in?” I asked when he neared me.

  “I might be able to, since we have a missing person and her husband’s car with blood on it parked here, but I’d rather keep this tidy. It’s not as though he can escape.” He gestured toward the cop sitting in the car.

  “What about Florrie? He might be doing something to her in there.”

  “I doubt he’s kept her tied up in there all this time. And would he be so worried about being caught cheating if he knew she either already knew or was dead?”

  “I don’t know. It’s hard for me to understand how the sort of person who’d say he’s on a business trip while he hangs out with his high school girlfriend might think. Maybe he just doesn’t want you to find the body.”

  “If there’s a body, it’s too late.” I swallowed a lump in my throat at the thought.

  By this time, neighbors across the street were standing on their porches, watching the goings on. Police vehicles parked on the street and a cop banging on a neighbor’s door must have been the ultimate in excitement for an active neighborhood watch group. They certainly had a lot to watch today. I thought about interviewing some of them about what they’d seen going on around Cissy’s house, but I was more interested in what was going on with the car. That was where the action was right now. I began heading back in that direction. Wes got in his truck and drove back to the alley, passing me with a wave. With a whimper, I trudged around the corner and down the alley. It was a pity Margarita’s was closed on Mondays because I’d more than earned a big plate of enchiladas with all this running around.

  The cops were still checking out the car when I got back there. They hadn’t opened any of the doors, so I didn’t know what they expected to find. This was probably where noticing that particular kind of mud or bit of a plant might come in, if that wasn’t merely a TV plot point. I took a couple more pictures. One of the neighbors approached me and asked, “Do you know what’s going on?”

  I didn’t know how much Wes wanted me to tell, but I figured it was safer to let them know at least the basics instead of letting them speculate. “A woman’s been reported missing. Her car was found near here. This is her husband’s car, and it has blood on it. He’s supposed to be in Vegas on a business trip.” I thought that was a good “just the facts” summary without any conjecture.

  “Is he here, or is he also missing?” the neighbor asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said. It hadn’t occurred to me that Hugo might also be in danger. Was Cissy some kind of bunny boiler who’d kidnapped her ex and eliminated her rival? I pictured her hijacking him as he headed to the airport. But if that were the case and he was the person in the house, he’d have come running out, begging for help, instead of hiding.

  “What the hell is going on here?” came a shout from behind me, and I couldn’t help but jump when I turned to see Cissy, still in her cashier’s uniform, standing by her car, which was stopped in the alley. My mental image of her hijacking Hugo was so strong that it took me a moment to remember it was all in my head. Maybe Wes was right about my imagination being a little too active.

  “What are you doing at my house?” Cissy demanded, her voice booming through the alley. It wasn’t a huge stretch to picture the breastplate and horned helmet on her. If she’d had a spear, Wes might not have survived approaching her.

  “Ma’am, is this your house?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re Cissy Clancy?”

  “Yeah. You need to see some ID to prove it? What’s going on? Why did you have me dragged away from work like some kind of common criminal?”

  “Did the officer who came to get you treat you with any disrespect?”

  “Well, no,” she admitted.

  “Did he put you in a police car?”

  “No. He let me drive myself. But it doesn’t look good when a cop comes to get you at work, right in front of all the customers. Now, what’s the emergency?”

  “Is this your car?” He gestured toward the car parked in her driveway.

  She hesitated, and I could see the calculation going on behind her eyes as she tried to figure out how much he knew and what it was safe to say. “It belongs to a friend,” she finally said.

  “Where is your friend? I need the owner of the car to open the trunk for me. Is the owner at your house?”

  Another hesitation. “I don’t know. He’s been visiting.”

  “No one has answered the door.”

  “He might have gone out.”

  “Without his car?”

  “He could have gone for a walk.”

  “Well, if he’s not here, then we’ll have to bust the trunk open.”

  “What? Don’t you need a warrant, or something?”

  “I have all the cause I need to open that vehicle, and I have a warrant on the way. But we can save a lot of time and trouble if you cooperate. At the moment, you’re not a direct subject of our investigation, but the vehicle is on your property, so you might be considered an accessory, and obstructing the investigation wouldn’t look good.”

  “I don’t have the keys.”

  “Can you get to them?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on whether he took the keys with him.”

  “Can you go see if you can find the keys? Or do I need to send an officer in to look for them?”

  “Can’t I at least ask what this is all about?”

  “You can, but I’m not going to answer at this time.” It was nice to hear that he was like that with everyone he dealt with on the job, not just me.

  Her shoulders dipped slightly in defeat. “Okay then. I’m sure he’d want to help and has nothing to hide. I’ll go see if I can find the keys.” She reached into her car and brought out a garage door opener. “You’ll have to let me past that crime scene tape.”

  Wes escorted her to the perimeter and lifted the tape for her to duck under. He nodded to one of the cops working on the car, and she walked over to Cissy. “Officer Thornton will escort you inside,” he said.

  I thought for a moment that Cissy would put up a fight. She even opened her mouth to argue, but before she said anything, she shook her head, dismissing whatever thought she’d had, and clicked the opener. The door rolled upward, revealing a garage full of boxes and old furniture. That explained the cars parked in the driveway. I wondered if anything stored in the garage was valuable enough to balance against keeping her married boyfriend’s car out in the open while he was supposed to be in Vegas. This probably wouldn’t have been happening if the car had been in the garage all along.

  Cissy and the officer made their way down a narrow path through the garage and into the house. I wondered if Hugo had known to take cover or if they’d catch him in there. Lying to his wife and cheating on her wasn’t technically a crime, but it didn’t look good for him if he was doing that while his wife was missing. It would probably look worse, though, if they g
ot a warrant to search the house and didn’t find him until then.

  They came out a few minutes later, without Hugo. Cissy reluctantly handed the keys to Officer Thornton, who handed them over to the officer examining the car. He opened the trunk, and I held my breath, dreading what they might find in there.

  “Oh my God,” the officer said.

  Chapter Ten

  Wes moved toward the car, and I instinctively took a step forward before remembering that I wasn’t allowed to go beyond the crime scene tape. I watched Wes’s face carefully as he looked inside the trunk. I was pretty sure I saw an expression of horror before he got himself under control. “Get pictures and collect evidence,” he instructed. An officer with a camera came over and snapped pictures of the inside of the trunk.

  Wes turned to face the crowd watching the proceedings, and his gaze stopped on me. “Miss Lincoln, can you please come over here?”

  Him calling me “Miss Lincoln” made me feel like my mother was using my full name, but I didn’t think I was in trouble. Someone was, but for once it wasn’t me. I ducked under the crime scene tape and approached Wes, who escorted me to the car.

  “Can you identify these items?” Wes asked me with a gesture at the open trunk.

  I couldn’t believe my luck. I was not only getting a look at the trunk to find out what was in there, but I was being asked to look, so I didn’t have to sneak around. The first thing I spotted was a purse. My mind flashed back to that night at Margarita’s and the big, slouchy bag Florrie had slung over her shoulder when she made a rapid departure. “It looks like the purse Florence Marz had with her Thursday night,” I said, feeling a bit queasy.

  One of the officers angled a flashlight to spotlight something that glittered in the trunk. I leaned closer to see an earring. “Does that look familiar?” Wes asked me.

  I couldn’t summon a clear mental image of Florrie’s face, but the big, dangly earrings she wore popped out at me. “I’m pretty sure Florrie was wearing those earrings,” I said.

  “And what about this?” Wes asked as the officer directed the flashlight beam to a single woman’s shoe.