She set the mike on the edge of the stage and then bent and gave a hug to a silver-haired man in the front row, recognizable as Dane Collins, the bereaved husband. From this position in the back of the room, Stone could catch only a glimpse of Collins’s profile before the man looked forward again, but Stone determined to get close enough, perhaps during the reception following, to study the face and get to know it.

A video began to play on two large screens on either side of the stage. Stone gave it his full attention because it was a collection of scenes from Mandy Collins’s life. The first clip was a grainy, scratchy film—the original had to be Super 8—of Dane and Mandy, two kids barely in their twenties, performing on a truckbed before what appeared to be a company picnic, pulling white doves out of sleeves, from under silk handkerchiefs, from an audience volunteer’s hat, out of nowhere. Stone noted Mandy’s hair in curls, medium length, and her figure youthful, slender.

As the video played in the sanctuary, Mortimer continued recording photos in the foyer and noting when they may have been taken: Dane and Mandy’s wedding in June 1971—beautiful bride, long hair in graceful waves and lacy ribbons; Dane and Mandy with his folks and her father, 1975, Mandy looking about the same.

Stone edged halfway down an aisle and found a seat as he watched a grainy VHS recording from somewhere in the 1980s: Mandy in an evening dress, hair magnificently coiffed atop her head and jeweled earrings dangling, drawing laughs from an audience as she fumbles with two narrow tubes, a glass, and a pop bottle on a table. “Now, you put this tube over the glass and this tube over the bottle and they will magically trade places …” The tubes go out of control, producing a bottle where the glass should have been “… Oops! You weren’t supposed to see that! …” then producing bottles, bottles, and more bottles. “No no no, let me try that again!”

Mortimer recorded a 1990 photo of Mandy in jeans, shirt, and baseball cap with her aging father and two llamas. Mandy was thirty-nine at the time and still looked great: big smile, engaging eyes, neck-length haircut.

Somehow the video historian found a clip of Dane and Mandy appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.That had to be prior to 1992. Mandy could have been entering her forties or still in her late thirties; it was hard to tell.

“Now, I’ve seen you do this,” Carson was saying, sitting behind his host’s desk and holding a Rubik’s Cube. “And of course there’s a magician’s way of solving it instantly, a magical effect, but you can solve a real one—”

Mandy, in the chair closest to Carson, gave a playful nod, “Uh-huh,” which got the audience stirring and squealing. Dane sat in the next chair, exuding full confidence. Ed McMahon sat to his right.

“How long does it take you?”

“Depends on my fingernails.”

“Well, how are they?”

She looked. “About right.”

“Less than a minute?” Carson offered her the cube.

Mandy rolled her eyes, but the audience cheered and goaded her and she took it from him.

Carson, a magician himself, assured the audience there was no trickery involved; the cube was genuine. He said “Go” and clicked a stopwatch, the audience counted down as her fingers became a blur, and she held up the solved cube, every side totally one color, in thirteen seconds. Not a world record, but good television.

Mortimer was especially interested in the family photos, the informal shots of Mandy the gal: Mandy and Dane on a fishing trip, holding some admirable salmon they’d caught; on a bike trip, although the helmet and sunglasses made Mandy’s features hard to see; a later promo photo commemorating Dane and Mandy’s thirtieth year in show business presented plenty of detail: the laugh lines around her eyes, the subtle lines in her face, the glint of white in her blond hair. The big-eyed smile was still there, just as in the photos of Mandy at eight, at twelve.

The video was a mother lode of information showing facial expressions, mannerisms, vocal tones, reactions. In an HD clip from only a few years ago, Dane was levitating Mandy a good twenty feet above the stage at the MGM Grand when she suddenly woke up from her magical hypnotic state, looked at the stage lights, and observed, “Boy, talk about dead bugs!” and produced a portable hand vacuum from nowhere. Her playful smile came through the video as well as it must have reached the back rows in that theater, and the rest of the illusion was a well-timed, well-planned catastrophe for her husband.

Mortimer finished up by surreptitiously recording the signatures in the guest book. It didn’t take long.

Stone finished up by requesting a copy of the video from the tech in the sound booth.

They stayed for the reception afterward, but only long enough to apprise themselves of Dane and Mandy Collins’s circle of friends and peers. They slipped out quietly, before they could be noticed enough to be introduced to Dane Collins.

chapter

8

Dane limped off the plane at Spokane International and found this once-familiar piece of ground where Mandy grew up was suddenly, strangely unfamiliar. He and Mandy came to visit regularly until her father passed away in ’92. After she sold the ranch in ’98 they still returned simply because it was Idaho and Mandy loved Idaho. When they came here recently to scout out a new place to call home, it felt like home.

But this trip felt entirely first-time.

He’d bought one ticket, packed one bag, carried only one boarding pass. There was no one to wait for while going through security and no one to wait for him. He had no one to meet in any particular place when he came out of the restroom and no one to keep in touch with by cell phone; he bought only one Starbucks coffee and a blueberry muffin for only himself. There was no one to watch their stuff while he walked around and no one to walk around while he watched their stuff; he went through doors first with no one to open them for.

While waiting for his one bag to slide onto the carousel, grief overcame him as it often did, on a schedule all its own, unpredictable, unavoidable. Maybe it was standing here alone, picking up one bag. Maybe it was the memory of her calling her dad from this very spot to let him know they’d arrived. Maybe there was no reason at all. Grief just came when it came, worked its way through, and receded quietly until the next time. That was the way it worked.

On the other side of the carousel, Mr. Stone and Mr. Mortimer stepped through the waiting bodies to pluck up their bags. They had shed the cool, pretentious look of Las Vegas and put on duds that said laid-back, outdoorsy Idaho, but they weren’t feeling it yet.

Dane’s rental car had a GPS. He punched in the address of the Realtor in Hayden, Idaho, and the route popped up on the screen. I-90 most of the way, very easy. He remembered it from the last time they were here.

The last time, theywere here. Theywere on their way to close the deal when the wreck happened.

“Well, let’s get it done,” he said to himself and to her as he turned the key in the ignition.

Mandy had had a better room the past few days, thanks to Bernadette, who recommended it, and Dr. Lorenzo, who okayed it. It wasn’t a whole lot different from the room she had in intensive: the bed was a mattress on a wooden box with no metal parts, the light fixture was a breakaway design that would not bear the weight of anyone trying to hang herself, and the door could be locked from the outside only. Two nice differences were that the bed had no restraints installed and that Nurse Baines and Dr. Lorenzo saw no need to lock the door—as long as Mandy kept it open and gave them no cause to decide otherwise. So she had moved up in the world, sort of, with a bit more freedom and trust, but at the same time, anyone standing at the nurses’ station could take just a few steps away from the counter and see right into her room.