Realtor Beverly Carter planned to show several houses Thursday evening, all of them in the vicinity of Scott -- population 72 -- which straddles the line between Pulaski and Lonoke counties.
At 5:30 p.m., she called her husband, Carl, and told him that she was meeting a potential client at 14202 Old River Drive.
The Carters live in Scott. So Beverly Carter was in familiar territory when she turned onto the long, gravel driveway.
At 9 p.m., Carl Carter started to worry. His wife should have been home already. He drove to the address she had given him, authorities said Friday.
Her 2014 Cadillac SRX was parked in the driveway. The home was unlocked, so Carl Carter looked around but found no sign of his wife.
Then he called the Pulaski County sheriff's office.
At least two people received messages from Carter's cellphone Thursday evening, during the time that her whereabouts is unaccounted for.
One was real estate agent Jane Carfagno, who was showing one of Carter's properties for her.
"I locked my keys in the house, and the people I was showing it to had left," Carfagno said. "I'm out on 10 acres, and it's getting dark."
Apprehensive about being alone, Carfagno said she got in her car, locked the doors and called Carter twice, sometime around 7 p.m. She hoped that maybe Carter could tell her how to get in -- through an open window or with a hidden key, perhaps.
But there was no answer.
Carfagno knew that Carter planned to show several houses that night. She said she thought her friend could maybe swing by and pick her up at some point.
A short time later, however, Carfagno received a text from Carter's phone.
"With a client. Call you back in a bit."
Carfagno texted back, explaining what had happened. "Are you in the area?" she asked.
"I'm in Lonoke," came Carter's reply.
Carfagno asked if there was a hidden key she could use to get in.
"No, sorry."
Carfagno then called her boyfriend, who picked her up.
The next morning, she learned that Carter, 49, had never made it home.
Carfagno said that late Thursday night, as word of Carter's disappearance began to spread, another person also received text messages from the missing woman's phone.
"It didn't sound like her," Carfagno said, declining to disclose the recipient or the content of the messages.
The recipient texted back a coded message that Realtors use to determine whether someone might be in trouble, Carfagno said. The code allows for an agent to ask if another is OK or for an uneasy Realtor to let someone know that she's in a potentially bad situation.
"She never responded," Carfagno said.
Investigators found Carter's purse in her car.
Friend and former client Anna Lynch said that was common for Carter when showing houses.
"She would leave her purse in the car and say, 'I would leave yours in there, too. I'm locking the car,'" Lynch recalled of the many house-hunting trips they made together.
Lynch said she met Carter through her Business Management International group. So when she started looking for a house to buy, she asked Carter to help her through the process.
"She's very fun and energetic and positive and sweet, just one of the nicest people. She went out of her way to show us everything that we wanted to see. She knew a lot about the industry, had a lot of good tips. I could tell she wasn't going to let us make a bad decision."
Carter works for Crye-Leike Realtors in North Little Rock. Managing broker Brenda Rhoads said Friday that Carter has been there for 10 years and is one of their "top producers."
"She's the light of this office," Rhoads said, adding: "She's a very loving person, a good person. We all love her and are praying for her."
According to her "about" page on the Crye-Leike website, Carter and her husband have been married 34 years. The couple have three sons and four grandchildren.
On Friday morning, sheriff's deputies scoured the area and secured the home that Carter was showing.
Meanwhile, real estate agents throughout central Arkansas converged on Scott, where they handed out fliers and begged residents and business owners to check their video surveillance systems for clues as to what happened to Carter.
On Friday evening, the sheriff's office publicly asked that landowners and farmers in the area check their properties for any sign of the missing woman.
Carter's disappearance intensified a fear already felt by many real estate agents, who often must meet with people they don't know in remote areas.
"I'm just sick," Carfagno said. "Where she was selling, that's her stomping ground. If she were leery, she would have told someone."
Real estate agents who are uncomfortable about a particular client or location often ask for someone to go with them, Carfagno said. Or they will ask someone to call and check on them periodically. Many also take the self-defense classes offered to them through their firms.
"I got a call one day from some guy talking really fast. He wanted me to email listings. It was, 'Send me this and this and this.' I sent the listings and he said, 'OK, I want to see all of these houses in the morning.'"
Wary, Carfagno said she searched the man's name online and found that someone with the same name was a sex offender wanted by the Pulaski County sheriff's office.
"Our broker sent out an email, saying, 'If you get a call from this guy, you should know about this,' Carfagno recalled. "Real estate agents work together. Emails go out if anything like this happens. You do all you can. People can be very conniving, and it's scary.
"I will no longer go out to somewhere on the outskirts of town -- in middle of nowhere -- alone," Carfagno added. "It's just not worth it."
State Desk on 09/27/2014