Shelter Hills Estates was one of those modern suburban housing developments that proliferate in just about every town large and small in the Greater Bay Area, elsewhere in California, and no doubt throughout the entire country. Cookie-cutter homes for what's left of the American middle class. This one, in Walnut Creek, was the upscale variety: quarter-acre lots containing large two-story homes built of stucco, redwood, and glass in an odd architectural blend of ranch and town house. They appeared to come in two sizes, three- and four-bedroom; if there were any other differences in their construction, they weren't apparent to me. The only way you could tell them apart was by their owners' preferences for color schemes, landscaping, and external alterations and embellishments.

James Cahill's residence was on a winding street saddled with the kind of cutesy name developers are fond of, Sweet William Drive. There was nothing particularly distinctive about the place. Its color scheme, which may have been the original, because there were others like it in the development, was a sort of creamy tan with medium brown trim. The front and side yards were low maintenance, mostly ornamental grasses and small plants in a sea of redwood chips — maybe in deference to the drought, maybe not. Cahill's south-side neighbor was drought conscious, at least, judging from the crusty brown remnants of what had once been a lawn. A white BMW sedan was parked in the driveway in front of a wide attached garage, a "2.5 garage" in Realtors' parlance. Meaning, I suppose, that there's room inside for two full-sized vehicles plus motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, or whatever else you might want to stuff into the .5 section.

It was a couple of minutes shy of noon when I pulled up in front. I don't usually agree to conduct a preliminary interview at a prospective client's home, but Cahill had said it was important that I come here for pertinent reasons and offered to pay the expense whether I accepted his case or not. I'd had a similar offer not long ago, from a man in Atherton, and the result had been bizarre and disturbing. From what Cahill had told me on the phone, his problem was more or less conventional — a missing wife.

The house was outfitted with an ADT wireless security system, as testified to by a panel with a sticker on it next to the door. Good for Cahill; home break-ins were all too common in neighborhoods like this. There was also a mail slot in the door, something you don't often see in modern development homes.

My first impression when Cahill opened the door was of a man under extreme strain and struggling to cope. Nervous tic at one corner of a broad mouth, dark shadows under green eyes with blood-flecked whites, a moist handshake. He looked to be in his mid-thirties and was losing what was left of his dark brown hair. There was plenty of hair on his body, though; curls and tufts of it showed through the open collar of his blue dress shirt.

He didn't seem to mind the fact that I was old enough to be his father and then some; if anything, it seemed to reassure him. Age translates to wisdom in some people's view. If only that were true in my case, I thought wryly. I've learned some things over the years, but the older I get, the more I realize just how much I don't know or understand and never will. Wise? Sometimes I feel like I ought to be wearing a dunce cap.

"Thank you for coming," he said. His voice, like the rest of him, was twitchy. "I really appreciate it. We can talk in the living room, okay?" As if asking for my approval in his own home. "The family room's a little messy. I'm not much of a housekeeper."

"Wherever you prefer, Mr. Cahill."

"The living room, then. This way."

The living room had hardly been lived in at all. That was the feeling you got walking into it — big, neat, well furnished, and neglected. Nothing out of place, nothing to alleviate the unblemished formality except a faint coating of dust on lampshades and tables.

Cahill saw me glancing around and correctly interpreted what I was thinking. "Alice and I don't use this room much. The family room, her office, mine ... it's a big house. We don't have any kids. Planned on having a couple, that's one reason we bought the place, but ... ah, Christ, I'm running off at the mouth. I'm sorry."

"No need to apologize."

"It's just that I'm nervous as hell. Hardly slept at all last night, trying to make up my mind what to do. I couldn't have gone to work today if my life depended on it." He was regional sales director for a company that manufactured small household appliances, he'd told me on the phone. "Well ... please, sit wherever you like."

He went to perch on a semi-ugly upholstered chair — autumn leaves on a pale yellow background. I sat on its mate, facing him across a glass-topped table with an arrangement of chrome bars as its base. Definitely not a room designed for either comfort or socializing. More like the kind of artificial setup you find in furniture showroom displays.

"You said on the phone that your wife has been missing for ... a week, was it?"

"That's right. Seven days. I'm worried sick about her."

"And that you filed a missing-person report with the police."

"For all the good it's done. They think I did something to her. That's what just about everybody thinks — her sister, her brother-in-law, most of the neighbors. ... But I didn't; I swear I didn't."

"What makes them all think you did?"

"Because in their minds I'm the only person who had cause."

"I don't understand. She could have left of her own free will, for one reason or another, couldn't she?"

"That's just it. No. No, she couldn't. Couldn't have left at all unless somebody took her out, and to do that they'd have had to knock her unconscious or ... worse."

"I still don't understand —"

"Alice is agoraphobic," Cahill said. "She hasn't been out of this house in over four years. Not once for as much as five seconds. She couldn't even step onto the front porch without having a panic attack."

Well, that was something new in my experience. Plenty of people have phobias — I'm somewhat acrophobic myself — but I'd never professionally encountered a severe anxiety disorder. "You didn't say anything about this when we spoke earlier."

"No, I ... no. I'm sorry, I thought it might ... oh God, I don't know what I thought. I'm such a wreck I can't think straight." He hopped to his feet so abruptly he might have been goosed into it. "You don't mind if I have a drink, do you? I don't usually drink this early in the day, or much at all, but I can really use one right now."

Despite his disclaimer, he'd already had at least one before I got there; I'd smelled the liquor on his breath when we shook hands. "No, I don't mind," I said, and I didn't as long as he stayed reasonably sober. "Better make it light, though."

"Right. I will. You want one?"

"No thanks."

He went out in long, jerky strides. The house was so still I could hear him bartending in whatever other room he'd gone into. Pretty soon he came back with a tumbler half-full of amber liquid and rattling ice cubes. The color of the scotch or bourbon was such that I figured he'd kept his promise to make the drink light. Small point in his favor. He resumed his perch, seemed about to take a long swallow, changed his mind, and made it a sip...