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 El Paso Herald.
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 Cancún, 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 Cancún. “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 Cancún 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 Cancún. 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.
It probably only looked like a lack of response, I thought. What was actually going on was no doubt a spasm of legal infighting across jurisdictional boundaries—not the least of which was the international border. That would immediately translate into investigative paralysis. Mexican authorities, wanting to underplay anything that might adversely impact the tourism industry, were probably stalling for all they were worth, just as the guys in Aruba did when that teenage girl went missing.
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 Cancún? That I didn’t know.