Missing Persons Read online

  “Diane always does things that other people don’t think she’ll do. It’s who she is.”

  It was another accusation. And it was right on target. “I wish I’d listened to her. I’m sorry.”

  Raoul had no time for my mea culpas. “Had she talked to this person, yet? This mother?” he asked.

  Before I replied I used a moment to recall the specifics of my last conversation with Diane. “When we talked, she told me that she’d found her, tracked her down. I don’t know whether or not she actually spoke with her. I think that’s what she was going to tell me when she got outside. She said it was important.”

  “You know what patient it is, don’t you, Alan?”

  My impulse was to hesitate, to cover my ass. To my credit, I didn’t. I mouthed a simple “Yes.”

  “You know who the mother is, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re going to tell me.”

  “You know how this works.”

  Raoul was the husband of a psychotherapist. Spouses of mental health professionals know the rules. He said, “This is Diane we’re talking about. You are the one who had better know how this works.”

  I tried to deflect him, to steer him back to the current crisis. I said, “I don’t even know where’s she staying. Where do you stay when you’re there?”

  He took a deep breath. “I try not to go at all if I can help it, but where faux Italian is concerned I prefer the Bellagio. The fountains are… something. She’s at the Venetian,” he said, confirming my suspicion. “She likes the canals. I take her to Venice, I take her to St. Petersburg, I take her to Amsterdam; it turns out the canals she likes best are inside some vapid casino in Las Vegas.”

  “I’ll try her room and call you back.”

  “You’ve tried her mobile?” he asked.

  “A few times.”

  “Merde.” I recognized the move from Catalonian to French. The man could curse in more languages than anyone I knew. He never cursed in English, however. Not in my presence.

  “It’s probably nothing.” I didn’t believe my own words. I said it because it was just one of those things that people say in circumstances like those.

  While Raoul was still on the line, I pulled Lauren’s cell from her purse and punched in Diane’s mobile number. After three rings someone answered.

  A female voice, not Diane’s, said, “Yeah? Who is this?”

  Speaking into both phones simultaneously, I said, “Hold on a second, Raoul. Someone’s on her cell.”

  “Go on,” he said. “Allez!”

  The voice on Diane’s phone demanded, “Who’s Rule?”

  The lilt of the woman’s voice triggered some clinical trigger in my brain. Instinctively I went into therapist mode, specifically I went into psychiatric-emergency-room therapist mode. My voice calmed, my hearing sensitized for the unexpected. Psychologically speaking, my weight was on my toes; I was prepared to change directions in a heartbeat.

  “This is Dr. Gregory, may I speak to Dr. Diane Estevez, please? You answered her phone.”

  “Well, she’s not home.” The woman laughed. “No one’s home. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Not being home? This is about as far from home as I get. So there.”

  I considered the possibility that I’d dialed Diane’s number incorrectly and that I was simply being confused by the lottery of errant connection. Then I heard the familiar frantic calliope riff of a slot machine jackpot and I knew that what had happened wasn’t a simple wrong number. This woman was in a Las Vegas casino and she was holding Diane’s phone in her hand. Why?

  “The phone you’re holding belongs to a friend of mine. Do you mind if I ask how you got it? Did you find it?”

  “The doctor? It belongs to the doctor? Rule? Dr. Rule?”

  “Yes.” I let it go. I didn’t want to try to explain to this woman who Rule, or Raoul, was, or wasn’t.

  “Well,” she said. “I would guess he’s out playing golf.” She laughed again. Her cackle was sharp and high-pitched-the yelp of a distressed tropical bird. You wouldn’t want to be sitting in the vicinity of this woman in a movie theater during the screening of a half-decent comedy.

  “That’s pretty funny,” I said in a voice intended to convey that, against all odds, I found her act cute. “But I’m actually being serious. Where exactly did you find my friend’s cell phone? It’s important. She’ll want to know when she… thanks you.”

  “I’m playing slots. Two machines-I always play two machines. It was in the tray on the left when I sat down. Or is that the right? I get my lefts and my rights mixed up, especially when I’ve been drinking, and I’ve been drinking. Who the heck are you?”

  I played the doctor card. “I’m Dr. Gregory.”

  “You out playing golf, too?” She laughed again. I had to hold the phone six inches from my ear to provide a cushion from the intensity of the din.

  Diane had dropped her phone on the way out of the casino. That was the explanation for everything. That was why she hadn’t kept her promise to call me back as soon as she was outside the casino. That was why she hadn’t been answering my repeated calls to her cell phone.

  Simple. “You’re in the casino at the Venetian?”

  “You wanna bet?” She laughed. “Or, I… wanna bet. I guess I’m the one who’s betting.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Michelle. You know about Harvey Wallbangers?”

  “A cocktail, right?” I reminded myself to be patient. Corral her, I thought, don’t lasso her.

  “Ver-y good. Nobody here knows how to make ’em. Nobody. I order one and I keep getting Tequila Sunrises. Can you imagine? I don’t like the red stuff, I like the yellow stuff. In the tall bottle? You know what I’m talking about?”

  “How many have you had?”

  “Three, or… not-no, four.” She paused. “Four. Not counting this one. Oops, this one’s almost gone, too. Do you know how hard it is to make any money playing nickel slots? Well, it is. Even if you max your bets, and I do sometimes, I really, really do, it’s like… when you win you still just get… well, nickels. Is that fair?”

  “So you’re playing nickel slots at the Venetian?”

  “I am.”

  “Are there any casino employees around, Michelle? Maybe right behind you? Somebody in a uniform, someone making change or… serving cocktails, or something? An attendant?”

  “Yep, there’s one right there-how’d you know? Is there a camera on me? Am I like on one of those TV shows or something?”

  “Could you please give my friend’s phone to the person who works for the casino? Tell him I would like to speak with him?”

  “Her.”

  “Her. Fine.”

  “Here,” she said to somebody, possibly the casino employee, but certainly not to me. “Some doctor named Rule or… Gregory or something lost his phone while he was playing golf. Here, you take it, go on. I don’t want it anymore. I need more nickels.”

  A heavily accented voice-Caribbean? Jamaican?-said, “What you need, ma’am? Change?”

  And that was the end of that call.

  “Raoul, you still there?”

  “Of course.”

  “Diane doesn’t have her phone with her. Some drunk woman in the casino found it, just turned it over to a casino employee. The call died. I’ll try calling back again in a minute. Diane must have lost her phone.”

  “At the Venetian?”

  “That’s what the woman said.”

  Raoul said, “I’ll call her room. Keep your line open in case she calls you.”

  “Of course. Raoul, I’m sure it’s okay. There will be a simple explanation for this.”

  He’d already hung up.

  Diane had lost her phone. Raoul would call her hotel room and find her sitting on her king-sized bed lambasting somebody from hotel security about the casino’s inefficient lost-and-found procedures. That’s what I was telling myself. No big thing.

  In my heart that’s what I didn’t
believe. As innocuous as the events sounded-a friend failed to keep a promise to call another friend for less than an hour-my heart told me that something sinister had occurred.

  You really need to hear this, she’d said. Diane would have found a way to call.

  I tried Diane’s cell one more time. Without even a single ring, my call was routed to voice mail. I left a simple message, “Hey Diane, it’s Alan. Still trying to reach you in Vegas. Give me a call. I’m getting a little worried. Raoul is concerned, too. Call him.”

  I surmised that the casino employee who possessed Diane’s phone had killed the power and that Diane’s phone was programmed to send power-off calls to voice mail.

  I walked down the hall to find Grace and Lauren asleep together on our big bed. One big spoon nestled protectively around one little spoon. I adjusted the comforter so that it covered both of them, flicked off the lights, took the bedtime volumes away from the pillows, and kissed them each on the head before I retraced my steps back to the kitchen counter. I’d carry Grace from our bed into her room later on.

  The phone chirped in my hand. I caught it after half a ring.

  Raoul. He said, “She’s not answering. Quin merder.”

  It was my turn to curse. I’m not multilingual; I said simply, “Shit.”

  27

  “I tried her cell again,” I said. “I think someone turned it off. The call went straight to voice mail.”

  “That’s enough for me. I’m going to call hotel security,” Raoul said. “Get them on this.”

  “Get them on what?” I asked, gently. “You’ll tell them you’ve been unable to reach your wife for an hour? So what? In Vegas terms that’s an eye-blink. You know what the security people will say: She met somebody she knew, got distracted. She met somebody she didn’t know, got distracted. She went to a show, went to a club, went for a walk, found a hot slot machine or a hotter craps table, went out for a meal, went out for a drink. So she’s been gone for an hour? Nobody’s going to care. Not for an hour, not for a day. Maybe not even for a week. Not in Las Vegas.”

  “They don’t know Diane. I do. You do, too. This isn’t like her. If she said she was going to call, she would’ve found a phone. She would’ve called.”

  “But that’s the point. They don’t know Diane. To them, she’s just a tourist who lost her cell phone. Big deal.”

  Stubbornly, Raoul said, “I’m going to call hotel security.”

  “Okay,” I said. I knew that were I in his shoes I would want to do something, too, no matter how futile.

  “Write down my hotel number here.” He dictated it. “Call it if you hear from her. I’ll be on my mobile.”

  I curled my tongue against the roof of my mouth and forced just enough air through the gap to cause a high-pitched, low-volume whistle to emerge. Emily, the big Bouvier, responded immediately. I could hear her lumbering in my direction from the other side of the house. The sharp tips of her nails click-clacked as she made the transition from carpet to hardwood. I knew that Anvil, the miniature poodle, would follow her. He’d follow not because he found my whistle alluring. He’d follow because whatever Emily found alluring, he found alluring.

  In our tiny neutered dog pack, Emily was the alpha-Amazon and Anvil was the eunuch slave.

  The dogs waited impatiently while I pulled on a jacket and stuffed the cordless phone from the kitchen into one pocket and Lauren’s cell into the other. We all crashed together heading out the front door.

  Emily ran immediately across the lane toward Adrienne’s house. For her it was like visiting extended family. I stage-whispered to her that everybody was in bed; she apparently didn’t care. Anvil peed copiously in the dust before he loped off in the same general direction.

  Raoul’s version of my predicament was simple. In his view I possessed information that might help him find his wife. Sure, he’d been married to a psychologist long enough to know that the information he wanted was privileged. Realistically, of course, he didn’t care. Who in his position would?

  The fact that I’d already revealed that the information had at least a tangential tie to Hannah Grant’s unfortunate demise would only aggravate his insistence that I breach confidence and tell him what he wanted to know. But what he also didn’t know was that the patient of Hannah Grant’s whose mother was in Las Vegas was Mallory Miller and that the reason for my anxiety over Diane’s sudden vanishing wasn’t only because I was concerned that it might have something to do with Hannah’s death, but also because I feared it might have something to do with Mallory’s disappearance.

  I’d already decided that, ethical or not, as soon as I felt that Diane had been sucked into that vortex I’d tell Raoul whatever I knew.

  It wasn’t the way the rules were written. But so be it.

  Ten minutes outside with the dogs and I was getting cold. It was apparent that Emily-she didn’t get cold until wind-chill numbers were in double-digit negatives-was eager to head down the lane on her usual evening jaunt, but I feared that kind of walk would yank us out of range of the cordless phone so I forced both dogs to roam the area between our house and Adrienne’s. Emily found some smells that were compelling and she adapted. Anvil hung around close by. Raoul called back just as I was coaxing the reluctant dogs back inside the front door.

  “Hi, Raoul?” I answered. “You hear anything?”

  “Not from Diane. Security’s not going to help. I’m in a cab on the way to the airport. I’ll be in Vegas in a couple of hours.”

  “You’re sure that’s a-”

  “Yes, I am. You didn’t hear from her?”

  Raoul’s interruption shouted at me that his usual unflappable civility was developing fissures. “No,” I said.

  “Sometime tomorrow morning, if I’m not waking up next to my wife, I’m going to want to talk to this patient’s mother, Alan. Be prepared to help me find her.”

  “Raoul, I-”

  He hung up.

  “-will do whatever’s necessary.”

  28

  Diane’s husband was wealthy. She didn’t work the long hours I did. She didn’t have to.

  On a typical weekday before eight in the morning my car would’ve been the first to slide into the parking spaces beside our office building. That Tuesday should have been no different. On a typical Tuesday morning, Diane would show up at around 9:00, or 9:30. That Tuesday should have been no different.

  She’d told me on the phone the evening before that she’d already canceled her appointments until Thursday. Still, given the events at the Venetian, the driveway felt empty without her Saab, the waiting room felt empty without her patients, and the offices felt empty without her laugh.

  Raoul had called me near midnight the night before from the room he’d checked into at the Venetian after flying to Vegas from San Francisco. He had a suite fit for the doges overlooking the Rialto Bridge, but he didn’t have any good news to report. Diane hadn’t phoned him. The fact that she hadn’t at least left a message on Raoul’s cell was unprecedented between them. When one of them was traveling they always talked at the end of the day-always. When they were traveling separately they always talked at the end of the day.

  After a lot of cajoling, and a five-hundred-dollar incentive, Raoul had finally persuaded a housekeeping manager to agree to check Diane’s room for him. The manager wouldn’t give Raoul the location of her room, but reported back that there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary, nor was there any indication that she’d been there since late that afternoon. No phone calls had been placed on the hotel room phone since midafternoon. The minibar was untouched after it had been replenished midday. The housekeeper who cleaned the room reported that she’d finished the evening turndown service around 6:30. From all appearances, no one had disturbed the bed or bath linens since that time.

  The casino attendant who’d been given Diane’s cell phone by the drunk woman who played nickel slots and inhaled Harvey Wallbangers had promptly turned it in to the casino’s lost-and-found department.<
br />
  Diane had not inquired about it.

  Raoul had also begun what he anticipated would be a long, difficult process of badgering the hotel security officers to review the casino security videotapes for the time that Diane was walking across the gaming floor talking with me on her cell phone. He assumed that hotel security cameras videotaped every square inch of the casino twenty-four hours a day. Security was resisting his pleas to review that section of the tapes.

  Their argument? What his wife did when she was in Las Vegas was her business, right? Not her husband’s, right?

  He was European, he understood. Right? They can’t very well start showing videotapes of what one spouse does in their casino to another spouse, can they? Would that be fair? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?

  Raoul knew that it was hard to disagree, unless you knew her.

  Raoul knew her. I knew her.

  Venetian security didn’t know her. The identity of the person she’d run into as she walked across the casino floor? Venetian security thought that was her business.

  How had she lost her cell phone? Venetian security thought that was her business.

  Had she left the casino at all? Her business.

  What else had Raoul accomplished by midnight Colorado time?

  He’d called all the hospitals in a ten-mile radius of the Strip, searching for even the barest hint that his wife might have been treated or admitted that evening. He’d learned nothing that helped.

  He’d called the Las Vegas police, seeking any indication that the local authorities had crossed paths with someone who even vaguely resembled his description of Diane. He’d learned nothing. He’d called American Express to see if he could get a list of charges she’d put on her card in the previous twenty-four hours. A supervisor would speak with him in the morning.

  He’d tipped the concierge at the Venetian a hundred bucks to find a twenty-four-hour copy shop that could blow up and print a hundred copies of the photograph of Diane that he kept in his wallet.