CHRONICLE OF A DISAPPEARANCE FORETOLD

The signs were everywhere. There was trouble at the San Antonio home of Brad and Suzanne Simpson. But when the mother and real estate agent went missing after a public fight with her husband at the exclusive Argyle club, a tony Texas enclave began to wonder if it had looked the other way for too long. Was discretion the true culprit in the still unsolved case?

- MICHAEL J. MOONEY

From the road outside, the Argyle is shielded by tall cedar elm trees, dense privet shrubs, and NO TRESPASSING signs with the private dining club's logo-a fierce boar with tusksabove the words VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED. As temperatures in San Antonio begin to dip and the brush outside thins, though, the property housing this exclusive club in the toniest part of town becomes slightly more visible. The club itself is a stately 170-year-old, three-story colonial mansion, with a tall, photogenic staircase leading up to the entryway and a spacious veranda wrapped around the top floor. In the 1850s the building was the headquarters of a horse ranch that stretched for miles.

"Lavish entertainment was the rule, and visiting celebrities, including Robert E. Lee, traditionally stayed at the Argyle," according to the club's website. "During the War Between the States, the Argyle served a grimmer purpose as an arsenal?" Today the Argyle is the sealed-off province of some of the wealthiest, most influential, and most mediaaverse families in Texas, one of the most elite and most private members-only social clubs in the South.

It's also one of the last places Suzanne Clark Simpson, a popular real estate agent and 51-year-old mother of four who lived just down the road, was seen in public.