Missing Persons

by Stephen White

  “Of course.”

  She was in the lockbox in seconds, retrieved the front door key, and held the door open so I could precede her inside. “I don’t really like to show houses when they’re unfurnished like this one is, but…” She sighed. “I tried to get the owner to rent some things, you know, just for… The right furniture makes everything seems so much brighter and…”

  Ms. Danna had an obvious penchant for uncompleted thoughts. Regardless, I was grateful for the opening she’d just offered about Doyle. Offhandedly I asked, “Is the owner in town? Did he move to a larger house?”

  She was easing me out of the cramped entryway into an adjacent living room with scratched red-oak floors, the original single-pane metal casement windows, and an undistinguished fireplace. “In town? No, no. Not exactly. But we’re in constant touch, constant. I promise I can get a response to an offer in a heartbeat. A day at the outside. He’s motivated, he is-he’s already dropped the price once. Don’t get me wrong; I mean that in all the right ways. Do you live here in Boulder?”

  The last question was ripe with raw hope that my answer would be yes and that I might offer her the opportunity for a real estate trifecta: a buyer who purchases a home from a listing agent and then agrees to enlist the same agent to sell his existing home. Three commissions-seller, buyer, seller-and a veritable cascade of closings.

  “I do. In Spanish Hills. But I work downtown near the Mall, on Walnut, and with the traffic lately, the drive is getting…” I tried to find the right word before I settled on “tiresome.”

  Her excitement at my disclosure was palpable. A Spanish Hills listing? Although naming one of a few other even more precious local neighborhoods might have earned me an almost orgasmic response, in Boulder it didn’t get a whole lot better for local real estate purveyors than Spanish Hills. “Inventory” in Spanish Hills usually meant that there was a single home for sale. With my pronouncement that I lived on one of the rare parcels across the valley, I felt an instantaneous change in the electrical charge in the room.

  But Ms. Danna knew that she had to sell me on the house at hand and couldn’t risk my getting too sentimental about leaving my current home. She played her hand well. “Don’t I know?” she said. “That’s the beauty of living right here on the Hill. Everything is so close: Chautauqua, downtown, the greenbelt, the mountains, the turnpike, shopping. The location is so…”

  Perfect?

  I caught her staring down at my left hand and accurately predicted her next question. “You’re married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Children?”

  “One.”

  “Spanish Hills?” she mused. “It’s so pretty up there. I have clients who have waited for years to… the views are so…”

  Expansive? And the houses so… expensive. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I lived in one of the few modest homes-modest by Boulder standards-in the whole neighborhood. She’d be so disappointed.

  “Yes, it is lovely,” I said, but I was allowing my eyes to wander the recesses of the bland living room and was beginning to wonder what I’d hoped to gain by traipsing through Doyle’s empty house. I moved through an opening from the living room into an equally bland dining room. Ms. Danna followed right behind me.

  “Good size, don’t you think?” she said. “Plenty of room in here for a…”

  Table? Family gathering?

  The kitchen had been recently renovated and had a nice little built-in breakfast nook with a large window facing the yard. A compact laundry room was stuffed into what had probably once been a butler’s pantry. The quality of the remodel wasn’t congruous with the asking price for the house; the new cabinetry and appliances were the kind of warehouse stuff you might expect to find in a Boulder rental.

  Ms. Danna apparently shared my impression. “Some new countertops in here, maybe stone, or even cast concrete, and you’d need to do something with that…”

  What? I couldn’t tell. “Yes,” I said. I was beginning to recognize her real estate dilemma. She was trying to sell a house in Boulder in winter that’s main selling point was its yard. And yards don’t show too well when they’ve been stripped of all their green, and elaborate water features don’t show too well when they’ve been drained of all their H20.

  We made it through a quick tour of the two upstairs bedrooms and two adjacent cramped bathrooms. She had been correct in her earlier appraisal: The bathrooms were in need of a sledgehammer and a good designer. The master bath was lined with chest-high plastic tile in a color that resembled one of the fluids that Grace emitted from her nose when she had a sinus infection.

  As my enthusiasm for the house failed to swell, Ms. Danna’s enthusiasm about her prospects seemed to go into decline, but she tenaciously held on to some hope for the finale. “The two highlights of this property are the media room in the basement, and that wonderful backyard. Which would you like to see first?”

  She didn’t wait for my reply. She hit two switches on the wall near the back door and instantly the yard lit up like a resort. My eyes were drawn to the granite waterfall that I’d seen in the dark the night before.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “Nice? Imagine the water splashing over those rocks, the sound of that stream. Fish in the pond. The birds, the flowers. In spring, I think you’ll find that it’s…”

  Breathtaking?

  “The basement?” I asked. “Where are the stairs?”

  The lower level wasn’t the same size as the upper level. The media room was big enough-I pegged it at fifteen by twenty feet-but the whole basement wasn’t even twice that size. A bland powder room, a mechanical room, and a long, narrow storage room completed the downstairs floor plan. On the top third of the storage room wall was a wide opening with a hinged lid.

  “More storage?” I asked.

  “Crawl space,” Ms. Danna said.

  “May I?” I asked, touching the handle on the door.

  “Of course.”

  I opened the awning-style lid and peered into a neat crawl space about three feet high. The floor of the entire space was lined with thick-mil plastic.

  “Radon?” I asked, trying to act like someone who was actually interested.

  She nodded. “Nothing to worry about. It’s under control. Completely. I have all the reports. It’s been mitigated to levels that the neighbors would love to have. Really, it’s…”

  Whatever. I closed the lid on the crawl space.

  “Did you see that projector in the media room?” she asked. “It’s a top-of-the-line Runco. And, yes… yes, it’s included. All the theater electronics are included. Audio, video. All of them. Denon, B amp;O. The furniture, too. I don’t have to tell you that those chairs are all recliners, and they’re not La-Z-Boys. Custom. Crème de la crème. Electronics, finishes, everything. He spared no expense down here. The owner loved his home theater, he…”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about component-wise, and I didn’t really care. I was one of those people who couldn’t imagine going down into the basement to watch a DVD so I could pretend I was sitting in a theater. I’d just as soon curl up with my wife and daughter and my dogs and watch a video on the old VCR in the bedroom.

  “Wow,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

  “Oh, I forgot, the screen…” She took my hand and led me out to the far wall of the theater. A big white movie screen was hung within an ornately carved frame of polished wood. I was guessing mahogany. “Now, don’t you touch it-fingerprints, fingerprints. I forgot who makes it-somebody good, no, somebody great. I have it in my notes. It’s the same screen that Spielberg has in his private screening room at his place in… The same exact one. It’s like… the best. I promise I have the name back in the office. I’ll get it for you. I will. First…”

  Thing? “Wow.” It looked exactly like a movie screen. Spielberg knew what he was doing.

  After what I hoped was a suitable amount of time spent staring at the blank screen, I led Ms. Dann
a up the stairs and as we walked out the front door I gave her my appraisal of the property. “It’s a little small for us, I’m afraid.”

  She was ready for that argument. “Oh, I know, I know, but the potential? You get a good architect to find a way to cantilever the upstairs a little bit and you could expand that second story in a heartbeat. Think of the covered porch down below and the views from your new master suite upstairs. Just think! You could have a deck that faces the Flatirons! And closets? Oh, I don’t have to tell you, do I? You’re a man with…”

  Vision?

  The night was cold and a bitter wind was blowing down from the north with the sharp bite of Saskatchewan.

  As Ms. Danna replaced the keys in the lockbox she made it clear that she was eager to show me a couple of other “things,” though “the price points are up a notch or two from here.” I declined, although I admit that I was curious exactly how many digits constituted a “notch” in Boulder’s hyperinflated housing market. Resigned, she gave me her card and asked for one of mine.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t have any with me.”

  It was partly true. I didn’t have any with me.

  But I wasn’t sorry.

  I walked her down the serpentine front walk to her big Lexus and shook her hand, thanking her for her time. Over her left shoulder-at the upstairs window of Mallory Miller’s house-I spotted what I thought was the same silhouette I’d seen the night before while I’d been trespassing in the backyard with Sam.

  Ms. Danna saw me looking. “Such a tragedy,” she said. “That girl’s father must feel…”

  Awful.

  38

  “Finding reality here is like looking for condoms in a convent. There might be some around, but they’re not going to be easy to locate.”

  Raoul was talking to me about Las Vegas, and about how he’d spent his day. His voice was as tired as my toddler’s when she was up past her bedtime. Raoul was an optimist by nature, an entrepreneur by character. Watching him treading water in a sea of despair was so unexpected that it felt surreal.

  The Las Vegas cops remained uninterested in Raoul’s missing wife. He had pressed them to try to ascertain at what point Diane would be considered “missing.” One detective told him that, “Given the circumstances, it would certainly take more than a long weekend. And so far, Mr. Estevez, that’s all she’s been gone. One long weekend.” The hospitals continued to have no inpatients matching Diane’s name or description. As a sign of his desperation, Raoul had hired a local private investigator who was apparently chewing up money much faster than he was uncovering clues about Diane’s whereabouts. All he’d learned so far was Rachel’s address. When he checked for her there, no one answered.

  Marlina, the woman from Venetian security, enticed Raoul to buy her breakfast at a place near downtown that was filled mostly with locals. They spoke Spanish while they ate. Raoul learned that Marlina’s brother was in INS detention in Arizona, learned how he got there-or at least Marlina’s version of how he got there-and learned in excruciating detail how Marlina felt about the whole affair, but he didn’t learn anything about what the casino surveillance tapes revealed.

  After the frustrating breakfast, Raoul moved on to an alternative avenue of investigation: The Love In Las Vegas Wedding Chapel. As he told me about it, my impression was that relating the story of what happened there seemed to relax him.

  According to Raoul’s tale, the minister of the Love In Las Vegas Wedding Chapel was the Rev. Howard J. Horton. By training he was an actor who had enjoyed some success as a young man on Broadway, even once landing the role as understudy for the lead of some Tommy Tune extravaganza. After a move to California to find fortune on the Left Coast, Horton had actually defied the odds and made a living in Hollywood until his thirty-seventh birthday doing bit parts on sitcoms and lawyer and cop shows and getting occasional throwaway lines on big-budget features. In successive years in his late twenties he had been filmed making cocktails for Sean Connery, being pistol-whipped by Al Pacino, and flirting shamelessly with Sharon Stone just before being pummeled into submission by her leading man.

  Raoul didn’t think he had caught any of those particular movies.

  The bit parts hadn’t been enough to provide the foundation for Horton’s hoped-for long-term career as a distinguished character actor, and as his face matured the parts he was being offered didn’t. To pay the bills he’d eventually gravitated to dinner theater and later on made his way to Vegas, where he did some emceeing at shows on the Strip, fell in love with heroin, heroically managed to “divorce the damn bitch,” and eventually ended up winning a thirty-nine percent stake in the Love In Las Vegas Wedding Chapel in a poker game with some locals that had started one cocktail hour on a Wednesday and ended late in the morning or early in the afternoon-Horton didn’t quite remember; it had been that kind of game-the following day.

  Horton was forty-seven years old and had been the minister of the moment at the Love In Las Vegas for almost seven years. On bad days he consoled himself that it paid the bills.

  The British accent and aristocratic demeanor that Horton employed for the tourists who came to Vegas for matrimony were pure shtick, and the slick Vestimenta suit he wore in the relentless Nevada heat nothing but costume. He’d won the suit from a gay guy from Atlanta in another poker game-that table populated, with the exception of Horton, entirely by out-of-towners-and he told Raoul a hilarious story about them both stripping down to their undies to exchange clothes after the game. Howard had given up his favorite pair of cargo shorts and a well-worn Tommy Bahama silk shirt.

  Raoul promised me that he’d get around to telling me the part about the protracted negotiation for the Atlanta man’s thong another time.

  “You promise?” I said.

  “Absolutely,” Raoul assured me.

  In a city where visitors were primed to expect spectacle, Horton’s wedding show at the Love In Las Vegas was a whisper of sophisticated, or faux-sophisticated, understatement. At the Love In Las Vegas, tourists who were so inclined could be married, not by an Elvis impersonator or a cross-dressing reject from Cirque, but by an ex-patriot British lord who seemed intent on bringing his interpretation of a little bit of the best of the Church of England, whatever that was, to the Nevada desert.

  While Raoul waited to get a few minutes alone with the Rev. Horton so he could ask some questions about Diane and Rachel Miller, he had to choose between frying outside in the parking lot in the he-was-told unusual-for-January ninety-three-degree heat or sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of the chapel and observing the nuptials of a young couple that had driven all the way from Spraberry, Texas-that’s just outside Midland and not too far from Odessa-to tie the knot in Las Vegas.

  The engaged had written their own marriage vows and brought a cassette of the music they wanted played during the ceremony. Her vows ran onto three legal-sized yellow tablet pages.

  His didn’t.

  The bride wore white-an ill-fitting empire-style dress with a long train that her second cousin had scored at the Filene’s Basement annual everything-for-$299 wedding dress running-of-the-bulls in Boston. The bride was twenty-two, but didn’t look it. She was as innocent as the prairie, and her face was full of the wonder that every woman’s face should have before she weds for the first time.

  On the final stretch of Highway 95 into Vegas she’d made a valiant attempt to memorize all the vows that she had penned onto the yellow legal pad on the haul from Spraberry to El Paso on Interstate 10, but during the actual ceremony she’d had to consult her notes every few seconds during her long recital of eternal love.

  In his retelling, Raoul generously wrote it off to nerves.

  Her betrothed was twenty-six years old and was dressed in a tuxedo jacket he’d borrowed from his sister’s husband, a ruffled-front tux shirt sans tie, and clean-and pressed-Wranglers. His hair, greasy from all the road time, was combed into a mullet that was as sleek and shiny as the skin of an under-refrigerated f
ish. This was his third marriage and his second wedding in Las Vegas-he was once widowed and once divorced-and by demeanor and practice he was a love-honor-and-obey-till-death-do-us-part kind of groom. By history he apparently wasn’t exactly a love-honor-and-obey-till-death-do-us-part kind of husband, but he’d promised his fiancée repeatedly-including once during the ceremony-that all that rutting was behind him.

  The groom’s self-written vows were an obviously plagiarized, parsed version of the popular standard. Raoul’s impression was that the guy would have been better off just allowing Rev. Horton to do his almost-Anglican-cleric thing. But, Raoul noted, the bride didn’t seem to be at all offended by her husband-to-be’s lack of vow-writing prowess.

  The wedding music, which was played over and over and over again in a toxic loop, consisted of a single upbeat song by Shania Twain with a lot of uh, uh, oh s in the lyrics. Raoul couldn’t quite figure out the romantic relevance of the tune, but the cumulative weight of the pure repetition of the uh, uh, oh s eventually rendered him willing to accept the silky voiced singer’s implied warning about whatever the hell it was. By the time the ceremony was over and the newlyweds had kissed and kissed again and walked hand-in-hand down the aisle toward the desert inferno that awaited them outside, Raoul knew just about all he wanted to know about the couple from Spraberry whose wedding he had just helped celebrate, and he also knew he never wanted to hear the damn uh, uh, oh song again in his life.

  Ever.

  “He may have divorced ‘the bitch’ but Reverend Howie still sleeps with her cousin,” Raoul said to me. “He drinks a bit, and then he drinks a bit more. We spent most of the afternoon at the kind of saloon the Vegas Chamber of Commerce doesn’t want tourists to see. That’s when I heard his life story and got all that fascinating background on the happy couple from west Texas. Have to give the guy credit, though-Howie knew I was paying but he got the same crappy well-scotch he drinks in that bar every day. He didn’t ask the bartender to dust off the single malts just because I was running the tab.”