Stephen White - Missing Persons

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 H 20.

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. Danna 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.

“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.