his office-he missed an important conference yesterday. He hasn’t been home, either. I went to his apartment last night-the mail and newspapers hadn’t been picked up.” The scare in her voice had become a little more pronounced. “It’s not like him to just go off somewhere without a word to me or anyone else. Frankly, I’m afraid something may have happened to him.”
“Did you check the local hospitals?”
“Every one in the city, on the Peninsula, here in the South Bay. He wasn’t in an accident or anything like that.”
Not necessarily true, but I kept the thought to myself. “What kind of car does he drive?”
“A black Porsche Cayman. I bought it for him for his birthday.”
Some birthday present. More to the point, brand-new Porsches can be targets for carjackers and their drivers targets for violent muggers. Dogpatch’s crime rate wasn’t the worst in the city by any stretch, but there were other neighborhoods not far away that had more than their share of gangs and street thugs who didn’t always confine commission of felonies to their own turf.
“Would you happen to know the license number?”
“As a matter of fact I would. It’s a vanity plate-VRDNEXEC.”
Short for “Virden Executive.” The man thought a lot of himself, all right.
“Is the Porsche the only vehicle he owns?”
“Yes.”
“Have you been to the police, Ms. LoPresti?”
“Last night, after I left David’s apartment. But they said I’d have to wait until today to file a missing-person report… something about a mandatory seventy-two-hour waiting period. The officer I spoke to wasn’t very helpful; he seemed to think I was overreacting. I wasn’t and I’m not. If David was all right, he’d have contacted me by now.”
“Since this is the last place he was seen, you might want to file a report with the San Francisco police.”
“They must get dozens of missing-person reports. Will they do something right away to find David? I don’t believe they will.”
I let that pass without comment. She was closer to being right than wrong.
She said then, “Is there anything you can do?”
“Well…”
Tamara said, “We can try, if you’d like to hire us.”
“Yes.” Immediate answer; Ms. LoPresti had already made that decision. “Yes, I would.”
“We’ll need your signature on a contract, and a retainer check.”
“I can leave now and be in the city in an hour and a half.”
“Be expecting you.”
End of conversation, without another word from me. So be it. Tamara was in charge now, and she’d never been bashful when it came to drumming up business. I don’t necessarily approve of the kind of direct approach she’d used on Judith LoPresti, but then the agency wasn’t half as successful when I was running it on solo power and antiquated methods. Once, years back, Tamara had called me a dinosaur. Right. Edging up on extinction like the rest of those lumbering creatures.
She came into my office as I was taking a swig of some of the now lukewarm coffee. “R. L. McManus,” she said.
“What about her?”
“Turns out not to be Virden’s wife and now Virden’s gone missing. Pretty funny coincidence.”
“Hold on,” I said. “He called you after he left Canine Customers.”
“He could’ve gone back.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Try to find out who the woman really is.”
“And then what? You think she did something to him?”
“Criminals don’t want to get caught, right?”
“If she’s a criminal,” I said. “And even if she is, it’s a big jump from thief to murderer.”
“Not if they’re backed into a corner.”
“Any number of other things could’ve happened to Virden. Mugging, carjacking. Even a planned disappearance.”
“With all that LoPresti green waiting for him? And after all the trouble he went to to track down his ex-wives and get them to sign annulment papers?”
“All right. Point taken.”
“McManus was the last person he saw before he dropped off the radar.”
“That we know about.”
“I say we keep investigating her.”
“Agreed. But check on the other possibilities first; see if anything turns up on Virden or that Porsche of his.”
Nothing did. Virden’s name didn’t appear on any Bay Area police blotter, either as victim or complainant, and there was no record of a black Porsche Cayman with a VRDNEXEC license plate having been in an accident or found abandoned or towed and impounded in S.F. or any of the Peninsula cities.
Tamara said when she was done running her checks, “Right back to McManus. Want me to talk to her, see what she has to say?”
“No, I’ll do it.”
“When?”
I sighed, though not audibly enough for Tamara to hear. “As soon as we have the face-to-face with our new client.”
Judith LoPresti was true to her time estimate: she walked into the agency almost exactly an hour and a half later. Attractive woman; Virden’s interest in marrying her wasn’t strictly monetary. Thirty or so, long red hair, green eyes, a model’s slender figure. Regal bearing, too, enhanced by the expensively tailored off-white suit she wore. Around her neck on a chain was a small gold cross, testimony to her faith. Very calm and matter-of-fact-you had to look closely to see the worry lines and missed-sleep smudges beneath artfully applied makeup.
We got the financial end out of the way first. Tamara had the standard agency contract ready; Ms. LoPresti gave it a hurried read-through, saying, “David was satisfied with it, I’m sure it’s fine,” signed it, and wrote a check to cover the retainer. Then we interviewed her in my office.
She had questions of her own first. “On the phone you said David called you Tuesday afternoon, upset because the woman you found isn’t Roxanne McManus.”
“That’s what he said, yes.”
“How is that possible?”
“We’re not sure yet. It’s one of the things we’ll be looking into.”
Tamara said, “But we didn’t make a mistake. I double-checked our research-it’s accurate.”
“I believe you. We researched detective agencies before we chose yours. You come highly recommended.”
Vindicated, Tamara smiled and nodded. I wondered if she’d noticed Judith LoPresti’s use of the plural pronoun, indicating Virden wasn’t as much the alpha party in their relationship as he’d let on. Probably she had. She’s smarter than I am and she doesn’t miss much.
“The report you gave David-I’d like a copy of it.”
“I’ve already printed one out. I’ll get it for you when we’re done here.”
Ms. LoPresti said, “David would certainly know a woman he was married to, even after eight years. She couldn’t have changed that much.”
“Not likely.”
“Well, then? Is this woman an impostor?”
“It’s one possibility,” I said. Better to be noncommittal at this point.
“Could she have had anything to do with David’s disappearance?”
“He’d already left her home when he called here.”
