in days. The doctor also prescribed some antidepressants. Jeremy says thank you, and so do I.”
After the group heard Jeremy’s good news, the remainder of the dinner was a lot more festive. We made arrangements to meet the kids and Lars for one more brunch extravaganza before their scheduled departure the next day, then Mel and I went home and fell into bed. It was amazing to realize how much better I slept with her there beside me. I awakened the next morning to the smell of brewing coffee. There was a note next to the pot. “Taking a run in Myrtle Edwards,” it said. “Back in a few.”
I had been thinking about Thomas Dortman as I fell asleep, and this seemed as good a time as any to continue my LexisNexis research on him. With my first cup of coffee in hand and waiting for the computer to boot up, I happened to think of something else. And so, out of idle curiosity, instead of typing in the defense analyst’s name, I typed in something else-“Richard Matthews, Mexico”-and waited to see what, if anything, would show up.
It didn’t take long. What popped up first was an article dated November 14, 2004, from the
Two weeks ago, Candace Matthews kissed her husband Richard Matthews good-bye as he left to go on his regular morning walk near their beachfront retirement home in Cancun, Mexico. She hasn’t seen him since. Although Mexican authorities say they have launched an investigation into Mr. Matthews’s disappearance, information on the progress of that investigation is difficult to come by.
“No one will talk to me,” Ms. Matthews said. “No one will answer my questions or tell me what’s going on. They seem to think he just decided to leave me, but Rich would never do that. I’m sure he’s dead.”
Richard and Candace Matthews were newlyweds four years ago when they purchased their dream home. It was a second marriage for both of them.
Richard had retired from a career in the U.S. military and Candace was a former Realtor when they met at a dance club in El Paso, Texas. They married two months later.
“It was love at first sight,” Candace said, choking back sobs during a telephone interview from Cancun. “And it still is. No one here seems to take this seriously. They act like he’s just wandered off somewhere and it’s no big deal.”
“The investigation is progressing,” says Sergeant Ignacio Palacios of the Cancun Metropolitan Police Department. “We are treating this as a missing persons situation, but so far there is no indication of foul play.”
That was as far as I had read when the door opened and a winded Mel bounded into the room. “On my way to the shower,” she said. “What time’s brunch? I’ll be glad when the company leaves. I feel like we’re just bouncing nonstop from one meal to the next.”
She disappeared down the hall. I turned back to the computer.
Richard Matthews came to the El Paso area with his first wife and daughter when he was posted to Fort Bliss as a noncommissioned officer with the United States Army. He stayed on after his retirement, even though his life here was dogged by tragedy. This is where his only daughter, Sarah, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound while a freshman at the UTEP. His first wife, Lois, spent the last twenty years of her life with limited mobility due to the crippling effects of MS. It wasn’t until after her death that Richard’s life seemed to take a turn for the better.
Five years ago, on a dare from a coworker, Richard Matthews signed up to take lessons at Tango-Rama, a short-lived ballroom dancing school where divorced Realtor Candace Sanders was a part-time instructor. The rest is history. After a whirlwind romance, the two married and spent their week-long honeymoon in Cancun. When they returned to El Paso they sold their respective homes and resettled in Mexico, where their joint real estate dollars went much farther than they would have in the States.
“This was our dream home and our dream life,” says Candace Matthews. “There’s no way Rich would just walk away from everything we’ve built together.”
Frustrated by a lack of official response, Ms. Matthews has posted a $5000 reward for information leading to her husband’s safe return.
Down the hall the shower stopped running and I heard the hair dryer whine to life as I struggled to fend off the intense sense of foreboding that suddenly gripped me. I looked back at the computer screen and double- checked the date: November 14. Mel and I hadn’t been involved then, but I did remember Mel’s returning from a week’s worth of vacation sometime late in the fall-sometime prior to Thanksgiving. I recalled that she had come back to work in high spirits looking tanned and fit and bringing with her a gift for Barbara Galvin’s son, Timmy-a huge sombrero with his name embroidered on it. Had she been to Cancun? That I didn’t know.
I called up the next entry, dated November 18:
Unidentified human remains, discovered washed up along the base of a beachside cliff near Cancun, Mexico, are thought to be those of former El Paso resident Richard Lowell Matthews, who disappeared almost three weeks ago while on an early-morning walk. While confirming that remains have been found, Mexican authorities say that a positive identification will have to await the arrival of dental records that are expected in Cancun sometime tomorrow.
Sergeant Ignacio Palacios of the Cancun Metropolitan Police Department reported that the autopsy had revealed the presence of a gunshot wound that was most likely the cause of death. The case is being investigated as a possible homicide.
Candace Matthews, former El Paso real estate agent and wife of the missing man, expressed frustration at the lack of urgency surrounding the investigation. “They didn’t even bother calling me until after they’d already done the autopsy. How can that be? With Rich already reported missing, shouldn’t they have come to me first?”
So Richard Matthews was dead, possibly of a gunshot wound. Down the hall the hair dryer switched off and on as Mel wielded hot air and a brush to force her hair into submission. In the weeks and months Mel and I had lived together I had learned to welcome the dryer’s ungodly racket. It was an audible and daily reminder of how my life had suddenly changed for the better. It announced to me and to the world at large that another person had come into my previously solitary life. This morning, though, that hair dryer felt more like a screeching buzz saw slicing into my heart.
Once before I had fallen for a beautiful but flawed woman, one who had transformed herself into a one- woman vigilante brigade for both convicted and suspected child molesters. Smitten, I had been blind to Anne Corley’s inexplicable interest in the death of a young girl at the hands of members of a local religious cult. My inability to grasp the seriousness of the situation had led inevitably to Anne’s death-and almost to mine as well.
Now history seemed to be repeating itself. Only yesterday Mel had told me that she was still haunted by learning too late of her best friend’s incestuous relationship with her father, a relationship that had eventually resulted in Sarah Matthews’s tragic suicide. Mel had told me that she still agonized over having done nothing to avenge her friend’s death. But was that true? That friend’s pedophile father had now turned up shot to death. I had personally witnessed the fact that Mel Soames knew her way around the business end of a handgun. How could I be sure she had nothing at all to do with Richard Matthews’s death, especially since there was a chance Mel had been in the same area at the time of his murder?
The hair dryer switched off permanently. The bathroom door opened, freeing a cloud of steamy air. A heady combination of fragrances wafted down the hallway. There was shampoo, hair spray, and perfume-in short, all the individual fragrances that worked together to make Mel Mel.
Guiltily, like a kid caught reading prohibited
Mel emerged from the bathroom wearing a short silky robe, the hem of which skimmed the bottom of her
