Relatives Fearful Over Simi Man, Missing 12 Days : Search: Frank Plaice was last seen at the Elks Lodge. His friends and family say he would not have left without his insulin and dentures.

Frank Plaice would never leave his false teeth behind.

So 12 days after this steady, tidy 57-year-old accountant left his Simi Valley condominium with the lights on and his teeth out, relatives say they fear the worst.

Kidnapers or carjackers may have taken Plaice, or his car could have veered off the road somewhere, said his ex-wife, Jeanette Plaice.

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” she said. “He comes to work every day for 17 years and then one day disappears. If he didn’t want to do something or if he didn’t want to go to work, he wouldn’t have a problem saying so.”

But no one has tried to use Frank Plaice’s credit cards or bank accounts, she said, and police say they do not suspect foul play.

Plaice’s friends and family have launched an all-out search, distributing flyers and combing roadside canyons from Chatsworth to Ojai by car and plane. Despite all this, Jeanette Plaice said: “We haven’t a clue.”

Since 1971, Frank Plaice has run a small Chatsworth accounting firm that caters to about 70 clients, including about 20 Ventura County gas stations, friends and family say.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he would visit Ventura County clients in Santa Paula, Fillmore, Ojai, Ventura and Simi Valley, a route covering more than 100 miles.

On July 7, however, Plaice went home feeling sick, said Geraldine Grooms, his girlfriend of nearly five years. This was not unusual, she said, because he suffered chest pains that a doctor recently had diagnosed as severe indigestion.

He did not go straight home, she said: “I do know that from there he went to the carwash, because he was seen at the carwash in Simi Valley at 3:30.”

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After that, Plaice drove to the Simi Valley Elks Lodge, as he often did in his capacity as lodge secretary, to drop off some papers, said Wayne Myers, the lodge’s grand knight.

Myers said Plaice talked about the Polish Night dinner planned for the following evening, and mentioned something about having to drive to Ojai that night.

“He said he’d see us tomorrow,” Myers said, “And he just walked out in his normal jovial manner.”

That, his friends and family say, was the last time they saw Frank Plaice.

“This is way out of character,” Myers added. “Everybody’s very upset by it. Frank’s a good man.”

When Grooms called Plaice’s office in Chatsworth the next day to firm up plans for dinner that night, Jeanette Plaice told her that she was worried about him. Calls to his condo only reached his answering machine, she said, and he had not kept appointments with clients.

Grooms drove to his Cochran Street condo late that afternoon and let herself in, she said.

The lights were left on--something Plaice never did--and the car was gone from the garage, so Grooms watched TV and waited, thinking he would return.

“And he didn’t come back and he didn’t come back,” she said. “And then I was kind of concerned about where he had gone.”

She went upstairs. Neither clothes nor luggage was missing.

“His retainer teeth were on the counter,” she said. “We’ve been together almost five years, and I have never seen them out. He takes them out to brush them, and puts them right back in.”

So were his shaving cream and his toothbrush, which also struck her as odd because Plaice is “really mister neatnik--he puts everything away,” she said. And Plaice, a diabetic, had left behind his insulin, she said.

Grooms called police to report him missing. Police have put out a description of Plaice and his white 1994 Ford Probe through the nationwide police computer system, said Simi Valley Sgt. Andrew McCluskey. But he added, “Unless something new or fresh comes up, there’s not a whole lot more at this point we can do except keep listening for responses to our Teletypes.”

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Meanwhile, Plaice’s friends and family have continued the search, even hiring psychics who have given wildly conflicting readings about his fate.

Grooms said one psychic told her she saw no harm coming to Plaice, that he just had to get away for a while and would return soon. Another told Plaice’s daughter, Terry Wolf, that she envisioned two men coming to Plaice’s door, kidnaping him and killing him for his car.

“We were prepared to hear that, but we just want to know for sure what has happened,” said Wolf of Oak View. “This is just so unusual. It’s so unlike him. He was just here a day before he disappeared, playing with his grandson. I don’t think he would just leave without telling us.” Plaice is described as white, about 5 feet, 7 inches tall, weighing 160 pounds, balding with a graying beard and mustache. His Ford had California plates, license number 3EML767. Anyone with information on his disappearance is asked to call Simi Valley police, the family said.

Times correspondent Scott Hadly contributed to this story.