CHAPTER 4

It’s eleven o’clock Thursday morning, and things are quiet. “I want to ask you something,” I say to Maria. “Have you talked to Loretta? Do you know if she’s out of town?”

Maria chuckles. “She could be, but I don’t know for sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“Not that you’d notice, but Loretta has been a little cocky in the last few weeks. I think she’s got a boyfriend.”

I lunge forward in my chair. “She what?”

“Don’t get excited. Why are you surprised? I’ve known that Loretta is on the lookout for a man ever since I met her. I’m glad for her if she has found somebody.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

“You’ve been around Robert Caisson too much. You sound just like him.” Maria doesn’t approve of salty language.

I tell Maria I’m going over to Town Café. “Loretta hasn’t brought any baked goods around the last few days, and I didn’t get any breakfast.” She’s laughing when I leave.

The few people in Town Café are there for late breakfast, and I don’t know any of them. Later, at lunchtime, it will be full of regulars. It’s a typical small-town café with chrome and Formica tables and vinyl-padded chairs. The walls are decorated with pictures of past football teams and members of the high school booster club. The place has changed hands a number of times, but it hasn’t changed the way it looks. It also hasn’t updated the menu, although the food quality has improved under the current owner.

I order a plate of enchiladas and use the solitude to ponder Maria’s observation that Loretta has been acting a little cocky. We get to know people so well that we don’t always look at them, and I remember now how shocked I was several months ago when Loretta showed up with a new hairstyle. She had changed her hair from gray to a kind of blondish color and stopped wearing it in tight curls. But how was it different? Straighter? I try to picture her hair but can’t. I just know she looked younger, softer.

Another change, even more startling, is that she wears slacks occasionally. She has always maintained that women ought to stick to wearing dresses. I thought she made the change because she was taking painting classes from Ellen and wanted to be able to get dirty without worrying about her clothes, but now I wonder whether it’s a sign of a basic change in attitude. There’s no reason she shouldn’t be looking for somebody to date. She’s in my age range, and some people might say we’re too old to find romance. It’s not true. I’m a good example of it not being too late to have a good time with a partner. But for some reason, it bothers me that Loretta is dating. I guess because it means I don’t get my bakery goods. That’s plain selfish.

Lurleen brings me my enchiladas. She has worked here for years, and she knows me. Usually she’s so busy she sets the plate down and speeds off, but it isn’t busy right now.

“Everything okay?” she says. “You look like you’ve got things on your mind.”

“The usual. But mostly right now I’m hungry.”

“Eat up.”

She’s walking away when Ellen Forester steps into the café. I’m surprised to see her here. She’s usually busy with art classes all day. She looks around the room, and when she spies me she hurries over.

“Don’t get up,” she says. She waves at my food. “And don’t let your food get cold. Go ahead and eat. You mind if I sit down? I need to ask you a question.”

“Of course I don’t mind.”

For a short time through the winter, relations were strained between Ellen and me. She and I had been seeing each other for a year or more, but then I met Wendy Gleason, and things took a different turn. Like Jenny said, women around here haven’t forgiven me for what they perceive as me throwing Ellen over for Wendy, but they don’t know the truth of it. In fact, Ellen had been keeping important matters from me that had a bearing on our relationship. We might have gotten over it if I hadn’t met Wendy, but I did. Ellen told me she was glad I had met someone else. I believe her.

Lurleen comes over, and Ellen orders iced tea and a cheese enchilada. She’s a vegetarian, and I like meat three times a day. That was another little glitch that I think we are both glad not to have to navigate anymore.

“I’m surprised to see you,” I say. “No classes?”

“I have to be back in 30 minutes. I stopped over at headquarters to talk to you, and Maria said I could find you here.”

“What’s up?”

She clasps her hands on top of the table and grimaces. “I don’t want to be nosy and silly, but I’m worried.”

I’ve got a mouthful of enchilada, so I nod to her to keep going.

“Have you talked to Loretta recently?”

I swallow and wipe my mouth. “Maria and I were discussing that a few minutes ago. Loretta hasn’t been around with baked goods the last few days. You know how she is, trying to fatten everybody up with those rolls and coffee cake.”

She nods. “Samuel, have you ever known Loretta not to show up when she’s supposed to?”

“The opposite. She’s never late, and she always keeps her word.”

“Exactly. Well, we had planned to go shopping over in Bobtail yesterday afternoon, and she was supposed to pick me up. She never showed up. I tried calling her, and she didn’t answer. So I did something I probably shouldn’t have done. I drove over there and went into her house to check on her.”

“How did you get in? Was the house unlocked?”

“I know where she keeps a key. Anyway, she wasn’t there, and it looked like she had left in a hurry. She left dishes on the table and a pan unwashed in the sink.”

“That’s odd, but there’s probably a good explanation.” Is there? I hadn’t worried when Loretta made herself scarce the last few days, but Ellen’s concern puts a different spin on it. I’ve known Loretta a long time, and I’ve never known her to be late—or to not show up at all.

“Probably, but it’s not like her.”

“Did you check upstairs to make sure she wasn’t sick in bed?”

“Yes, and I called the hospital in Bobtail in case she had an emergency, but they didn’t have a record of her coming in.”

“Did you call her cell phone number?”

“Yes, but it went to voicemail. You know she hardly ever uses it. Most of the time she doesn’t even take it with her.”

I’ve lost my appetite and shove my plate away. “Did you call any of her friends?” Although it isn’t like her, it’s possible that a problem came up at the church, and she ran off to take care of it, forgetting that she had an appointment with Ellen.

“No. It wasn’t that important. I figured she forgot, and that I’d talk to her today. I left a note asking her to call when she got home. But I haven’t heard from her this morning. Maybe I’m being silly, but I’m uneasy.”

I lay money on the table for the bill and get up. “I’m going to go talk to her neighbors.”

“Good. I wish you would,” Ellen says. “It’s not like her to be so careless.”

I start to walk away, but then I pause. “Maria said she thought Loretta might be interested in finding a . . . a . . .” The words stick in my throat.

Ellen smirks. “You mean finding a man to date? You know, it isn’t out of the question. Loretta has a lot to offer. A man could do a lot worse.”

“Has she met somebody?”

“If she has, she didn’t tell me.”

I go back to headquarters and tell Maria where I’m going, and she insists on coming along. She and Loretta are the most unlikely pals ever, an elderly white woman and a young Hispanic cop, but they hit it off as soon as Maria started working for Jarrett Creek Police Department. Loretta admires that Maria has the spunk to be a cop, and Maria admires that Loretta doesn’t mince words.

We take a squad car over to Loretta’s neighborhood, with Dusty tucked in the back. When I knock on Loretta’s door, there’s no answer. “Look at that,” Maria says, pointing to the front yard.

“What?”

“Look how droopy those plants are. She waters almost every day, and it looks like it’s been a few days since she tended to it.”

“Maybe she went out of town.”

“If she was going away, she’d ask somebody to water.”

We go around into the backyard and see nothing amiss. I peer into the garage, and that’s our first break. “Car’s gone,” I say, turning to Maria.

“Maybe something happened to somebody in her family, and she left in a hurry to be with them.” She frowns. “Still seems funny that she wouldn’t tell anybody.”

“Let’s see if her neighbors know anything.”

We leave Dusty tied up in the shade on Loretta’s porch while we go next door.

We don’t bother her neighbor to the west, Irwin McIntire. He’s deaf as a post and wouldn’t likely hear when Loretta comes and goes. Her neighbor on the other side, Sharon Page, answers the door, drying her hands on a kitchen towel. She’s in her sixties, tall and big-boned, with bright eyes and a warm smile. “Well hello, what brings you all here? Has Ken gone and killed James? He has threatened to do it so often that I expect it any day now.” We laugh. Her husband, Ken, sold his real estate business a while back, but couldn’t stand retirement. He went back to work for James Crowley, the man who bought it. I’ve heard they don’t see eye to eye on the way the business should be run.

She invites us in and gives us a cup of coffee in the living room, which has a cheery, lived-in feel to it with a sofa and chairs that seem to me to have just the right amount of wear and tear to make them easy to sit in. I ask Sharon when she last saw Loretta.

She taps a finger to her lips and looks out the big front window. “I see her pretty much every day one way or another. She works in the yard most days, but come to think of it, I haven’t seen her out there in the last couple of days.”

“Did she mention that she might be going out of town?”

A light dawns. “Yes, she did. I completely forgot. I guess it was, what’s today, Thursday? Last weekend she told me she had something to do this week. She seemed excited.”

“Did she say what it was? Was she going on a trip?”

“Let me think.” She shakes her head. “No, I don’t believe she said anything specific. Why are you asking?”

“I don’t want to alarm you because there might be a perfectly good explanation, but nobody has heard from her in a few days.”

“Like I said, she told me she had something to do, but whether it was going out of town or. . .” She bites her bottom lip. “Now I don’t want to be foolish, but I remember when she told me, something struck me funny. Or different anyway. I’m trying to think what it was. Oh, I know. I told Ken that she seemed like a young girl. Her eyes were all sparkly. I told him I wondered if she had met a love interest.”

“Ever seen any men come to visit her?”

She flushes. “Goodness, no. Loretta wouldn’t like to have a man come to her house unless she knew him really well. You know what I mean.”

I do know what she means, because Loretta is even skittish for me to come into her house alone, and we’ve known each other for years. She was very kind to my wife Jeanne when Jeanne was in her last days, and I feel like we got to know each other better than most.

I thank Sharon for the information and ask her to call if she sees Loretta.

When we get back to the car, we both pause and look back toward Loretta’s house. “What do you think?” I ask. I have a feeling Maria feels the same way I do—that Sharon’s information was helpful, but we’re still worried.

“It’s not like her.”

“Ellen Forester told me where Loretta keeps a spare key,” I say. “I think we should go inside and look around. We have probable cause.”

Maria nods. “You do that, and I’ll water her yard. Wherever she’s gone, she’s going to be unhappy if she comes back and her flowers are dead.”

I retrieve the key from under a flowerpot on the screened porch. When I go inside Loretta’s house, I feel like the place disapproves of me being there without her. It’s deadly quiet and smells a little musty, the way houses get when they are shut up for a few days. I go into the kitchen and take a long look at the unwashed dishes in the sink. There’s not much—a couple of small plates, a coffee cup, and a spatula. On the stove, there’s a skillet that looks like it hasn’t been washed either. It is absolutely not like her to leave the dishes undone. Why would she leave in such a hurry?

In the back of my mind is a possibility no one likes to contemplate, but when we get to a certain age, it is one of the health issues we have to consider. Is it possible that Loretta’s mind is slipping and she simply forgot a few things? I can’t believe that she would forget so much all at once. Forgetting the date with Ellen to go shopping in Bobtail, forgetting to tell anyone where she was going, and leaving the dishes undone. I could see one of those things happening, but not all of them at the same time. I’ve seen absolutely no sign that Loretta is slipping mentally. Something made her hustle out of here, leaving her work unfinished.

On the countertop, there’s a loose-leaf, page-a-day calendar, not the tear-off kind. The day showing is Monday, three days ago. Either she forgot to turn it to Tuesday or she went away Monday. Monday has a note that says, 10:30—Ladies Circle Meeting. I flip back a day and see that Sunday 4:30 is circled, but with no note about what was going on then. On Tuesday, 2:30 p.m. is circled, again with no indication of what she was doing. I flip back a few more pages and see lots of notes with times circled, all saying what is happening. Those two are the only ones that have no hint as to what she was going to do at that time.

Loretta keeps her phone numbers on a hanging pad next to her wall phone. The numbers for both of her sons are at the top of the list. Her younger son lives out in North Carolina, and Loretta wouldn’t have driven all the way out to see him—or at least I don’t think she would have. But the older son, Scott, and his family live out in the hill country, and she could make that drive easily. I hesitate before I dial Scott’s number. If she isn’t there, it’s going to alarm his family for me to ask whether they know where she is. Maybe I should wait a little longer. But for what? I dial the number, and the voicemail kicks in with the voice of Loretta’s daughter-in-law. I’ve met the daughter-in-law, Marcie, a friendly, well-kept woman. Loretta likes her “fine,” although I think Loretta mostly likes that she gave her grandchildren.

I leave a noncommittal message asking her to call me about “a quick question.” Ellen said she went through the house to make sure Loretta hadn’t left any signs of where she might have gone, but I go through it again. Her bedroom is tidied, the bed made and all the clothes put away, but the closet door is ajar. I approach it and ease it open, hoping I won’t find anything unexpected. Everything looks in place, but I notice that there are a few empty hangers. One hanger is on the floor, as if she took the clothes off in a hurry and didn’t notice that it had fallen. Then I look up at the top shelf. She keeps small suitcases on the shelf, and there is a gap between two of them. Wherever she is, she packed a bag.

In the bathroom, I find more evidence that she left on her own. There are gaps in the neat row of items on the counter. Plus, there’s no toothbrush in the holder, and no toothpaste sitting out or in the medicine cabinet.

I don’t know why she didn’t tell anybody she was going away, but it’s obvious that she left under her own steam. I feel a weight lift off my shoulders, and I laugh to myself thinking how outraged Loretta will be if she happens to come home now and find me snooping in her house.