Written by RF Wilson – This is the first installment in a five part series. Part One.

Thursday, 9:00 a.m.

The storms which passed through the night before had left the morning air as clean and crisp as the detective’s white shirt. He had to maneuver among fallen tree limbs to find a clear parking space in the small, suburban, business park. When he entered the offices of the real estate firm of Nyswanger and Rivers, he announced himself to the receptionist, holding his ID badge for her to see.

“Detective Winston Fair, ma’am.”

As the only African American detective at the Sheriff’s Department, he was familiar with the hesitant look he got. His well-pressed dark-gray suit, cowboy hat and hand-tooled boots added to the dissonance many people experienced on meeting him.

The receptionist, Dorothy Greenwald, according to the triangular name plate on her desk, called Marie Nyswanger to the front. A woman Fair guessed to be in her early fifties, professionally dressed in a gray skirt and white blouse with sensible black heels, came out to greet him.

After introductions, Marie said, “I presume you’re here about Phyllis. She never returned from showing a house up on Pressley’s Branch yesterday afternoon. She’d never not show up without calling. And with that terrible storm we had last night, I’m scared to death. The Sheriff’s Department said they’d send somebody to check it out.” The woman was breathless when she stopped speaking.

“I spoke to the deputy who went out,” Fair said as he pulled a small notebook out of an inside jacket pocket. “He arrived about nine o’clock. The house was locked and there was nobody around. Said it was a good thing nobody was up there because one of those old oaks came down, right across the driveway. If anybody’d been at the house when that thing fell, they’d never have gotten past it to get back down the mountain.”

“But, she had been up there,” Marie said.

“Then she must have left in time,” the detective said. “Did you talk to her while she was there?”

“No. I haven’t spoken to her since she left here with the potential buyer.”

“What time was that?”

Marie looked to the receptionist. “Dorothy? Do you remember when they left here?”

“I think it was about three. I remember worrying about her getting back here for her five o’clock appointment.”

“And you haven’t heard from her since she left here,” Fair said.

“That’s right,” Marie agreed.

“So, you don’t know for sure that she ever got to the house.”

Marie looked at the detective as if she’d not considered this before. “I guess not. Now you’ve got me more worried, detective. Her daughter hasn’t heard from her. She hasn’t called in. She has appointments this morning and she’s always in the office early to get ready for the day.”

“What can you tell me about this buyer. He’s the last person that we know saw her.”

“His name is Tom . . . Dorothy, what’s his last name?”

“Tom Daltry.”

“Yes. Mr. Daltry. I remember.”

“You met the man?”

“Yes. Briefly. Just an introduction.”

“What do you know about him?”

“He was Phyllis’ client. Dot? Do you know anything?”

“You mean other than that he was very good-looking?”

Fair thought he detected Marie give her a ‘now Dorothy’ frown.

“I think he rehabs houses,” Dorothy said. “That’s why he was interested in the old place.”

“How would you describe him?”

“Oh, maybe six-feet, average weight I’d say. Trim. He was wearing a ball cap. Had dark, kind of curly hair, what I could see of it. Good-looking, like I said. I’d guess in his 40’s.”

“You recall what he was wearing, besides the ball cap?”

“Jeans and a denim work shirt. Interesting, now I think of it, that he wasn’t wearing boots. I would have expected him to have on work boots of some kind. I’m kind of a boot snob so I notice those things. He had on some kind of sporty athletic shoes. Your boots are very nice, by the way.”

Fair felt his face get warm. “Thank you. Do you have a phone number, address, any other identifying information for this guy?”

Dorothy poked on her keyboard. “Phone number. No address.”

The detective asked, “Have you tried to call him?” He saw Marie’s glance at Dorothy, Dorothy’s shrug in return.

“Stress of the moment,” Fair said. “It’s interesting how it clogs our brains. Is there anybody else who might know something? I take it she’s not married.”

“She’s a widow.”

“Boyfriend?”

Marie hesitated before saying, “No.”

“You don’t sound sure about that.”

Now the real estate firm partner’s face reddened.

“This is going to sound terrible, I know. But, Phyllis has spent time with a lot of different men since her husband died.”

“Can you provide me a list of names?”

Marie turned toward Dorothy with a grimace. Dorothy said, “I can give you a few. I can’t say it’s all of them.”

“What period of time are we talking about?” Fair asked.

“Two years, give or take.”

“And this guy she showed the house to wasn’t one of the guys she’d been seeing?”

Dorothy said, “I didn’t get the impression she knew him.”

“Okay,” Fair said, closing his notebook and putting it back in his pocket. “I’ll check him out and go up to the house.”

Dorothy gave him directions to the house as well as the code to the agency’s lock box.

Detective Fair was almost to the door when he turned around and asked, “Whose vehicle did they take?”

“They took his truck,” Dorothy said. “He said it would probably do better than her Honda on the road up there. I think it would have done fine, myself. But it is a steep and not always well maintained.”

“How do you suppose this guy . . .” He pulled out his pad again, looked at his notes. “Daltry. How this guy knew what the road up there was like?”

The two women shrugged. “Maybe he went up earlier to check the place out, to be sure it was worth going up with a real estate agent,” Marie said. “That’s not unusual. Maybe he’d even been up there before he called us. Saw the For Sale sign.”

Fair nodded. “And you don’t think that she could have just run off with the guy? She of the many boy friends.”

Marie glared. “Of course not. She was – is – a mature, responsible woman. She wouldn’t go running off with some, well, she wouldn’t run off with anybody.”

The detective’s gaze shifted between the two women. “Can you describe the truck?”

“I didn’t see it,” Marie said. “Dorothy?”

“I got a glimpse of it. An old pickup. Blue. That’s all I can tell you.”

Back at his cruiser, Fair put the address on Pressley’s Branch into his GPS to use later that day. He was not happy with the assignment. The place from which the missing woman supposedly had disappeared was to hell-and-gone in the northeast part of the county, an area not known for hospitality shown to the law in general, much less to African Americans. But, that was true for many places in the county – in the country for that matter – and he was a team player even if not everybody on the team welcomed the opportunity to play next to him.

Thursday, 10:00 a.m.

The sergeant at the front desk called, “Hey, Cowboy,” seeing Detective Winston Fair walking into the Sheriff’s Department headquarters. When he had first come here from Durham, the nickname was meant to be disparaging, this city black man wearing hand-tooled boots and a ten-gallon hat with his gray suit. When his colleagues became aware that he was, in fact, a native of the county and owned horses and a ranch, attitudes shifted about the cowboy thing. He was, however, the only African American detective in the department. The degree to which he was treated as an outsider varied, but few of his colleagues warmly embraced his presence. Fair believed that, with a few exceptions, they were a group of racists although it rarely came at him directly. At least not while he was in the office.

He called the number he’d gotten for Tom Daltry. No answer. No machine. No voice mail. He found a Tom Daltry in the White Pages, but that man’s wife said he was 87 years old and had Parkinson’s Disease. At the major home repair and building supply outfits, places where you’d think a guy into rehabbing houses would be known, no one had heard of a man by that name, although the description Fair gave them fit about half the contractors in the area.

In spite of it being a largely rural county, the sheriff’s department’s vehicles were built more for speed than navigating the terrain of the southern Blue Ridge Mountains. Debris flung by the storm slowed his way up Pressley’s Branch Road. Gray clouds spread across the sky like a dirty flannel blanket, threatening to turn nasty again. Coming around a bend, Fair saw the massive fallen tree. The root ball was as tall as he was, an oak, the detective thought, that had probably been there before white people arrived on this ridge. It had stood directly in front of the old house, about thirty feet into the yard and now lay across the gravel driveway. For the trek across the still-wet and littered grounds, he changed into a pair of boots more used to work than the highly polished ones he wore in town. As he was slipping them on, he thought about the real estate office receptionist’s comment about Daltry’s boots not looking like those that belonged to a guy who did construction. Maybe the guy had an assortment, like himself.

Twenty yards from the house, he saw a man sitting on the steps, a small man, maybe a boy, someone who looked like he could have been there forever.

“Wondered when y’ud show up,” the person said.

The man was short, not more than five-four, Fair thought, a little, chubby, gnome-like figure.

“And why are you wondering?” Fair asked, as he displayed his badge.

“’Cause ‘a them,” the man said.

“Because of who?”

“Them who was here yesterday.”

“And what do you know about them?” Fair asked.

The gnome smiled, more of a grin. “They done disappeared.”

“And who were ‘they’?”

“Don’t rightly know. Came up in a truck. Went in the house. Came out. Drove out. Disappeared in the storm.”

“Disappeared how in the storm? You don’t think they just drove away, went somewhere else?”

“You don’t know about the place, do you?”

“No, I don’t know anything about the place except that a man and a woman were up here yesterday and they are now among the missing. And your name is . . .?”

“Shandor. Shandor Squires,” the man said, taking a sweeping bow as if he were on stage. “Spelled like it sounds.”

“Well, Mr. Squires. What is your relationship to this house? What were you doing here when the people who were in the truck – a man and a woman, I presume?”

Shandor nodded enthusiastically.

“ – when the couple were looking over the house?”

“I keep a eye on the place.”

“For whom do you keep ‘a eye’ on the place? The real estate agency? The owners?”

“People.”

“People? What people?”

“People,” the man repeated.

Fair gave up that line of questioning and asked, “What did you mean about me not knowing about the place?”

“Cursed, you know. Hainted. Why nobody live here no more.”

Fair let that sit a few seconds, before he asked, “Did the couple looking at the place know you were around while they were here?”

Shandor shook his head and smiled. “Don’t believe so.”

“Where do you live, Shandor?”

The little man pointed a thumb towards the trees behind the house.

“The woods?”

Shandor nodded.

“Can you be a little more specific? Do you have an address?”

The man shook his head again and smiled.

Maybe he really is a gnome, Fair thought.

“So, you have no idea what happened to the man and the woman who came up here to look at this house. Is that right?” After Shandor nodded, the detective said, “I’m going to search the house. I need you to stay out here.”

“Been inside. Nothing’s there.”

“You’ve been inside?”

Shandor nodded. “Nothing there. I look all around. Nothing. Nowhere.”

It was then that the man’s accent came through. European, eastern European, maybe Slavic. And now, he thought, we have a compromised scene. It may or may not be a crime scene. Although, if there really was nothing there, it might not matter. But what would this creature know about what was important? And how did he get in the house?

A path had been cleared through the debris on the porch to the front door.

“You stay out here, alright?”

Shandor smiled.

The lock box that should have held the front door key was open with no key inside. Fair turned the door handle, pushed it open. Closing the place up had not been on the mind of whoever had been here. Mud had been tracked in across the threshold, leaving footprints inside. Two sets, one larger than the other. Man and a woman, Fair assumed. Wan light filtered into the living room through the trees still standing. He pulled a small flashlight from a suit pocket, shone it around the vacant room. The ceiling and walls were water stained.

A door in the kitchen opened onto a set of stairs.

“Shouldn’t go down there,” Shandor said.

“What are you doing in here? I told you to stay outside. And what do you mean, I shouldn’t go down there.”

“Shouldn’t.”

“Yeah. I heard you. I shouldn’t go down there. Why not?”

When Shandor shrugged, his shoulders rose to his ears.

“You stay up here,” Fair said before descending gingerly, following the slim beam of his flashlight. Nothing in the basement appeared unusual for a house like this – a furnace, a water heater, wash basin, an empty book shelf. The basement was, in his estimation, exceptionally clean.

The detective returned to the kitchen and, moving methodically through the house, up to the second floor, thinking, nice old house at one time. Wainscoting, crown molding. Touches you’d more likely expect in a town home than one out here in the country. He wondered who owned the place, who built it, when.

The back yard looked like places you see on TV news, devastated by tornadoes. Fair clambered over and around limbs and branches and another good-sized tree near the house, surprised the house itself had been spared. Maybe saved by the spirits alluded to by the little man, the guy who seemed to think he was Fair’s new best friend and who continued to smile at him while he followed the detective around. He walked down the driveway, past the huge fallen oak, on his way to the cruiser. Whatever tracks a truck might have left had been washed away. Shandor was on the front steps waving goodbye as Fair got into his car. The detective returned the gesture.

When he was back in cellphone range, he called the real estate office. Dorothy told him they still hadn’t heard anything from Phyllis. He got a contact name and number for S&S Protection, the company that provided security for Nyswanger and Rivers and the rest of the offices in the small complex.

Thursday, noon

At the S&S offices, it took two techs and himself, all squinting narrowly at videotape, to come to agreement about the license plate on the old blue truck. Fair traced its registration to D&D Associates with a post office box in Charlotte. A dummy company he assumed. Tom Daltry was a phantom.

Back at the department, he corralled Sergeant Waylon Timmons, resident computer geek and, by far, the smartest guy on the force. Fair didn’t understand why the guy was a cop. But then, a lot of people wondered why Fair was a cop, too.

“I want to find out if other middle-aged women, possibly real estate agents, in Western North Carolina have gone missing in the past year or so.”

Timmons said he’d see what he could do.

The detective was outside Captain David Pennington’s office when the head of the Investigations Division called to him.

“Need to talk to you, Fair.”

When Fair entered the room, Pennington asked him to shut the door causing the detective’s internal temperature to raise several degrees. It was not lowered when the Captain told him to take a seat.

“Sheriff wants me to give the missing lady case to Reese.”

Fair considered this. On the one hand, he hadn’t been happy at the outset that he’d gotten the case. On the other, it felt like a slap, as if he’d failed at something.

“Why?”

“Because he’s the senior detective in the division.”

“As he was when the case was assigned to me.” To Fair’s mind, Detective Ernie Reese was the most racist man in this cesspool of everyday racism and he suspected race was an issue here. “So, what’s going on? Missing persons cases aren’t usually assigned to the most experienced detective in the department. This some high-profile person, something like that?”

“In fact, the missing woman’s partner, Marie Nyswanger, is the Sheriff’s wife’s sister.”

“And . . . what? She doesn’t want a, you know, a nee-grow, handling it?”

“Don’t play that race card with me, Fair. I’m not sure what it is, but I talked him out of it.”

“So, why’d you even mention it to me. Just to get my blood boiling?”

“I brought it to your attention to suggest that it’s a high priority for the Sheriff.”

“This is day one, Captain. We got the call last night. I got the assignment this morning.”

“I know, Fair. I know. Just sayin’.”

“And I wish people would stop saying, ‘just sayin’.”

Fair crossed the hall to Detective Ernie Reese’s office, got the man’s attention by knocking on his door frame.

“What’s up, Fair?”

“I suppose you know the Sheriff thinks you should be honchoing the missing lady case.”

“I heard.”

“Not happening right away, so I thought you might be able to tell me something about the little man who was up there.”

“Little man?”

“Don’t go all coy one me, Detective. This guy was waiting for me up there. Told me the house up there was haunted – ‘hainted’ was the word he used. Shandor something.”

“Oh, yeah. Shandor Squires. There’s a band of gypsies up there, you know?”

“Gypsies? You mean, like fortune tellers, that kind of gypsy?”

“Yeah. Gypsies. They kind of float around out there. We’re pretty sure they’re dealing pot and probably methamphetamine but we never find anything. We’ve found their camp a couple of times and let the property owners know they’re squatting. Nobody ever presses charges against them so there’s really nothing we can do.”

“Gypsies, huh. I’d have expected hippies, you know, Rainbow people. But gypsies?”

“Yeah. Weird, huh?”

Fair read the look on Reese’s face. It was what he saw in people who were holding something back. He heard his own desk phone ring and excused himself.

 

“You were right about other disappearances,” Sergeant Timmons said. “Three with the same M.O. All single women. One thirteen months ago; one six months ago; the last three months ago. All in their forties.”

“How come we haven’t heard about these?”

“None of them in this county. But not far away. Berryville, Martinton, Marburg.”

“And those are all in different counties from each other. They ever find bodies?”

“Nope. Well, not from what I can tell.”

“It may not be the same guy involved with all of them. And if it is, we don’t know if he murders them, then carts them off, or abducts them and then murders them. Hell, they may all be alive somewhere,” Fair said.

“Possible. Doubtful.”

“I know. But it’s not too much of a stretch to think the most recent one could still be alive.”

“Possible,” the Sergeant said again, without conviction.

 

Fair swiveled back and forth in his desk chair. A sometime-smoker, he never carried cigarettes but now wished he had one. Although most farmers had gotten rid of their tobacco allotments, this has remained tobacco country and he still would rather smell nicotine in the air than some “environmentally friendly” fragrance pumped in from God knew where. A phone ringing in the background returned him to the present. He checked his own phone for the number of Nyswander and Rivers, punched the green button.

After the receptionist gave her opening spiel, he said, “Dorothy, this is Detective Fair. I was wondering what you could tell me about the owner of that house out on Pressley’s Branch.”

“Marie actually knows more about that than I do. I’ll have her give you a call.”

Five minutes later Marie Nyswander was on the line. “Dorothy says you want to know about the owner of the house. As you might guess, it’s owned by the Pressley family.

“How long has the house been on the market? It’s in rough shape, looks like it hasn’t been inhabited for some years.”

“When old Mrs. Pressley died, about six years ago, Zeno, the eldest child, tried to sell the place himself, then took it off the market for a while, then came to us. So far, it’s been a lot more trouble than it’s been worth.

 

Thursday 2:30 p.m.

A voice deep, rich, with a mountain twang, answered the phone, “Pressley.”

After identifying himself, Fair asked if the man knew about the disappearance of two people who’d been up at his house.

“First I’ve heard of it,” Pressley said.

In his mind, Fair could see the man leaning back in a desk chair, toothpick in his mouth. He explained the circumstances, then asked, “What do you know about that little man, Shandor Squires, supposedly lives in the woods up there?”

There was a pause, one that Fair thought was due to the man preparing an answer.

“How long you been working for the sheriff?”

“Six months.”

“Well, detective, you’ve got a lot to learn. There’s a biker gang up there. Been there for a generation or so. Supposedly, it was originally a Gypsy camp – ”

“I heard about them.”

“Yeah. Anyway, then this biker outfit found them, and took over. There’s still a few gypsies left. Shandor’s one of ’em.”

“Are they on your property?”

“I suspect, although I think mostly they’re on state forest land. Sheriff knows about ’em. Every sheriff has for the past twenty-thirty years. Tried to roust them years ago, but they kind ‘a disappeared into the woods. Now, they probably have an arsenal out there. If the law tried to move on them now it’d be like that Waco fiasco with those Branch Dividians.”

Fair had a faint recollection of the federal siege of a compound full of some religious nuts back in the early ’90s. “So, what do they do out there?”

“Grow pot, make methamphetamine. I’m sure the sheriff gets his cut. Wish I’d get some. But it’s kind of live and let live. We don’t bother them, they don’t bother us.”

Fair had a liberal view of drugs, thought pot ought to be legal, thought too many young black men were in prison on penny ante drug charges. Meth was a different matter.

“Anyway, you wanted to know about the house,” Pressley said. “The original one was built around the mid-1700s and burned around the turn of the century. The present one was built in the early 1800s. Been a lot of fixin’ up over the years. That fancy woodwork is kind of new.”

“Looks like it’s fallen into disrepair.”

“You don’t have to tell me, detective. If you found me, you may also know that I’ve got some siblings who aren’t the easiest to work with. Don’t wanna spend no money on the place.”

“How long has it been vacant?”

“Since my mother died. About six years ago.”

“Inside, the place looks pretty clean.”

“Yeah. We had an auction up there a while back and then disposed of what didn’t sell or none of the kids wanted. It’s been nothin’ but a hassle, I can tell you that. Havin’ to maintain that road, trying to keep the place from falling down.”

And not doing a very good job of it, Fair thought.

“Speaking of the road,” Fair said, “are you aware there’s a tree across the driveway up there?”

“Nope. Hadn’t heard that. See what I mean?”

After ending his call with Zeno, Fair doodled on his desk calendar, working out what to do next. He wanted to get a fix on the Daltry guy, wondered if he could be in cahoots with the bikers. Seemed like a long shot, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. And, if the guy was a serial killer, they didn’t have much time to find the Rivers lady. It might be too late already. He buzzed Captain Pennington.

After telling his superior about the other missing women, Fair said. “I know it’s not been twenty-four hours yet, but I think we need a BOLO alert on the couple and a press release.”

“The couple?”

“Yeah. The guy known as Tom Daltry and the Rivers lady.”

“How do we know they didn’t run off together?”

“We don’t. But there are three unsolved disappearances in the past couple of years of single women the same age as Phyllis Rivers. All in Western North Carolina. It seems like we ought to let people know about this guy and the risk there is to single females going off with him.”

“Yeah. Or we could be setting up some kind of panic. The press gets a hold of it, they’ll be all over us. We can do the be-on-the-lookout alert, but hold off on a general alarm.”

 

Thursday, 3:00 p.m.

Dorothy, the receptionist at Nyswander and Rivers, had given him the home and work phone numbers for Phyllis Rivers’ daughter. The work number was the main county library. He asked for Connie Rivers.

“This is Detective Fair with the Sheriff’s Department –,” he said when she got on the line.

“Have you heard something?” she asked, cutting him off, her tone a mix of worry and excitement.

“No, I haven’t. Sorry. I wish I had. I was hoping you’d talk to me about your mother.”

There was a pause before she said, “I get off at five. I can meet you at my house at five-thirty, unless traffic is terrible.”

 

Thursday, 5:30 p.m.

Fair was parked at the curb when Connie drove up. A neat perennial garden bordered the front yard. Inside the small, tidy, bungalow he declined an offer of coffee or tea.

“Something stronger?” she asked.

“Probably not appropriate,” he said.

After some introductory chit chat, the detective asked, “What are the chances your momma ran off with this guy?”

“Ran off with him? Are you serious?”

“Yes. I imagine you’ve thought of that possibility. I understand he was a good-looking dude.”

“You think my mother would run off with some guy because he was good-looking? Hell, she has good-looking guys hitting on her every day.”

“Every day?”

“Maybe not every day. But she meets a lot of guys, you know.”

“Okay. Where does she spend her time when she’s not at work?”

“Listen. I’m sorry you can’t have a drink, but I’m going to have a glass of wine.”

From the other side of a counter dividing the kitchen from the living room she said, “My mother likes to socialize. She frequently goes out for drinks after work with Dorothy from the office.”

“Not Marie?”

“Marie? You kidding? Marie is about as straight arrow as you can get. Married for twenty-five years. She and mom are good working partners because they compliment each other. Marie’s the all-business type, and my mother’s, well, you might say, looser. She kids around with clients. She thinks work should be fun. It took her awhile to recover after my dad died, but when she did, she figured all you have is what’s here today. You might as well enjoy yourself. I love my mom. But sometimes I think she may get a little too loose, if you get what I mean?”

“With men?”

Connie shrugged.

“So, I repeat my first question. What are the chances she just decided to run off with this guy. To heck with the job. Heck with everything.”

Connie smiled. “Kind of romantic, isn’t it. And mom is a big romantic. But, really? Running off with a guy she just met? Leaving Marie in the lurch? She may like to have a good time, but she’s always been very responsible, always taken care of business. She raised me by herself. Became a partner in a real estate firm. You don’t do those things and just run off . . .” Her voice trailed away.

“Well, you know,” Fair said, “I’ve got to think of all possibilities. And, as unlikely as it may seem, that’s one of them.”

Look for Part Two next month!

• What secrets will Detective Fair discover about the “haunted” house on Pressley’s Branch?
• Will Phyllis Rivers suffer a “ghostly” fate?
• Why does the sheriff seem reluctant to spread the word about Phyllis’ disappearance?”
• Check back for the answers! The author is headed to the west coast, to, um, gather material for more stories.

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RF Wilson writes in Asheville, NC, where he lives with his wife, Beth Gage. He is the author of the novel, “Killer Weed,” recently published by Pisgah Press. His short story, “Accident Prone,” appears in the anthology “Carolina Crimes” published by Wildside Press, which has been nominated for an Anthony Award as Best Mystery Anthology of the Year.