Louise was kidnapped in broad daylight Saturday. Her assailant fled in a getaway car parked in the alley. She was wearing an original.
“It seems empty without her here,” said Dan Gundlach, who along with partner Bill Sylvester owns the Geez, Louise! Coffee House at East Colfax Avenue and Elm Street, where Louise has worked the corner for the past six months.
My former colleague, Jim Spencer, wrote about her in June, apparently elevating her profile and making her dangerously vulnerable.
Now all the drivers who honked as they passed her each day and the customers who brought her clothing, wigs and jewelry are as bereft as Louise’s sister, Thelma, who sits on a park bench out front clutching a bouquet of white roses and trying to conceal her grief behind a black lace mantilla.
“When I got here Sunday morning and saw Louise was gone, I was in disbelief,” said Christopher Dunn, an engineer who’s a regular at the shop. “It’s all very, very unfortunate.”
Gundlach said the kidnapper must have planned every aspect of the crime meticulously.
“I was working at the time and it happened very quickly,” he said. “He had to have been watching my every move.”
Louise, a perfect size 8, was wearing a spaghetti-strapped slip number covered in holographic eyeballs, a one-of-a kind dress from a regular customer named Wendy.
Louise was on the sidewalk, as always, holding a coffee cup and flashing that come-hither looked that signaled that Geez, Louise! was open and the baristas were hot.
It was about noon when a neighbor called to say he had just seen a man carrying Louise. Before anybody could catch him, the kidnapper shoved her into a car and sped away.
“We’ve had customers say that when they didn’t see Louise out there, they figured we were closed,” Gundlach said.
Then they saw the pink crime-scene chalk drawing on the sidewalk and the “Reward” sign out front, and came inside to join the rest of the mourners.
Louise has become a beloved fixture in the dynamic neighborhood, which includes businesses ranging from Señor Rita’s Cantina and the Cafe Africana across the street to the Happy Tails Country Club for dogs and the Cork House restaurant down the block.
“The neighborhood is perfect,” Gundlach said. “It’s beautiful and diverse. People take care of their yards and walk to the businesses around here.”
Dunn said Louise was symbolic of the whole ethos of the emerging community just a few blocks from the newest Tattered Cover Book Store.
“This is our neighborhood ‘Cheers,”‘ he said. “Everybody knew Louise.”
Once Dunn brought her full firefighter turnout gear, to which she lent her own special je ne sais quoi as passing firetrucks honked their horns in appreciation.
Other customers have brought her everything from ball gowns to bikinis, and her footwear was always fabulous.
Now, I’m no detective, but I can’t help but think that may have been the motive for her kidnapping. In addition to the eye-catching slip dress, Louise had on some to-die-for fuchsia pumps. The kidnapper obviously has a fuchsia foot fetish.
Anyway, a police report was filed Saturday, but on Monday Denver Police spokesman Sonny Jackson said he was busy with a shooting, so Louise’s kidnapping was not a priority.
Gundlach and Sylvester remain undeterred.
They’re offering a reward in an amount yet to be determined. A sign out front says they will pay for “any information leading to the arrest or electrocution or beheading of the guy(s) who stole Louise …”
It sounds harsh, I know, but as Gundlach said, Louise was the heart and soul of the neighborhood, and “a good mannequin is really hard to find.”
Maybe it was all just a prank, he said. “Maybe it’ll be like one of those gnomes that people steal and we’ll get a picture of her from Hawaii.”
He doesn’t think it’s funny though.
“We’d love to get the actual Louise back,” he said. “There’s a lot of anger and sadness in the neighborhood right now. Whoever kidnapped her should know, karma is on the way.”
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
