Authorities with pickaxes, shovels and cadaver dogs dug through the floor and walls of a popular Lomita restaurant, trying to solve a 16-month-old mystery surrounding the disappearance of the cafe owner's wife."At this point we believe she is buried beneath the restaurant," said Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore. "We are excavating parts of the restaurant. We expect to be there for some time."The excavation at the Thyme Contemporary Cafe in Lomita is the latest in a series of twists in the case that included a police pursuit last week that ended when the cafe's owner, David Viens, jumped from a cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes.Viens survived the fall but suffered critical injuries. L.A. County Sheriff's Department detectives booked him Monday on suspicion of murder. Viens, 47, was arrested at Harbor UCLA Medical Center, where he is recovering from his injuries."Mr. Viens dove off a 100-foot cliff to avoid talking to our detectives, and that is somewhat telling," said Bill McSweeney, chief of the Sheriff's Department's detective bureau.Authorities said information gathered during the investigation led them to the cafe, but they would not provide more details.Viens' wife, Dawn, went missing on Oct. 18, 2009. Viens later told police that she walked away from the restaurant and never returned. But authorities say he never reported her missing. Rather, her family and friends went to police three weeks later.Some time later, Viens remodeled the cafe, adding new floors and walls that investigators now believe may conceal his wife's body, officials said.Thyme Contemporary Cafe is one of four locations where investigators served search warrants. Authorities suspect Viens' wife may have been killed at the couple's former home in Lomita, where they recently found signs of blood on a bedroom wall.Viens fell under suspicion shortly after his wife's disappearance because of what authorities called his inconsistent statements. He told detectives and friends that they should look for her in the mountains because she liked going there. But investigators were skeptical because her wallet, cellphone and other personal belongings were left behind. Investigators learned from witnesses that Viens had thrown most of his wife's clothing and personal items into the trash behind the restaurant.Suspicions grew when Viens' girlfriend took over his wife's job at the restaurant and moved into his home.Before he jumped from the cliff, Viens apparently spotted deputies watching him and sped off in a car, authorities said. In the parking lot of the Point Vicente Lighthouse, Viens and his girlfriend got out of the car and became involved in a scuffle, Whitmore said. After deputies tried to break up the struggle, Viens ran and jumped from the nearby cliff to the beach.Authorities began distributing fliers this week, asking possible witnesses to come forward. ||||| Crews work Wednesday morning removing bricks from the back patio of the Thyme restaurant in search of the body of Dawn Viens. Chuck Bennett/Daily Breeze 
 
 Investigators armed with shovels began digging up the floor of a Lomita restaurant Tuesday, searching for the body of a woman missing for 16 months. Digging continued this morning. 
 
 A cadaver dog alerted detectives of a possible location were Dawn Viens 39, might be buried at her husband's restaurant, Thyme Contemporary Cafe, sheriff's homicide Lt. Dave Coleman said. 
 
 Detectives, who on Monday arrested Viens' husband, David, on suspicion of murder, said they had received information that Dawn Viens' body might be entombed under concrete at the Narbonne Avenue eatery. 
 
 The search was focused on the rear portion of the restaurant, where a restroom and a patio area are located. 
 
 "It is mind-boggling if we find her here and he has been coming here every day running his business with the knowledge she's buried here," said Dayna Papin, Dawn Viens' sister, as she stood watching detectives carry bags of dirt excavated from the restaurant. 
 
 Detectives served a search warrant at the restaurant, along with other locations associated with David Viens, including his mother's Lomita home, his brother's plumbing business in Gardena and the home he shares in Torrance with his new girlfriend. 
 
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 Papin for 16 months has wondered what happened to her older sister, who worked in the restaurant with her husband. Last week, after a Daily Breeze article reported that David Viens was a "person of interest" in his wife's disappearance and that detectives had found blood spatter on the walls of their former Lomita home, David Viens jumped from a Rancho Palos Verdes cliff. 
 
 Viens, who has a criminal record that includes drug trafficking in Florida, survived the 80-foot drop and remains hospitalized in serious condition at County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Described as sedated on Monday when detectives tried to talk to him, he was more lucid on Tuesday, Coleman said. 
 
 Investigators again went to the hospital. Prosecutors are expected to charge Viens with his wife's slaying as soon as today. 
 
 Coroner's investigators focused their digging Tuesday on areas of the restaurant that underwent remodeling shortly after Dawn Viens disappeared. David Viens broke down a wall and expanded into a neighboring business that once had housed a dog grooming business. 
 
 During an interview with a Daily Breeze reporter in April, plumbing work was under way in the area of the building where the search was occurring Tuesday. Viens said at the time he could not afford to put up a reward to find his wife because of the renovation costs. 
 
 Friends and Papin reported Dawn Viens missing a few weeks after she disappeared without a trace. Her husband told them she had walked away with her Louis Vuitton bag after he urged her to go into drug rehabilitation. 
 
 But she vanished without her Jeep and cash she had stashed with a friend in the event she ever did leave her husband, who was described as controlling and who did not let her see many people. 
 
 As time passed, Dawn Viens' cell phone contract ran out and there was no movement on her bank accounts. Her husband, detectives said, never made any contact with them to help find her. 
 
 "He looked me in the eye and said, `You know I didn't have anything to do with this,"' said Papin, who confronted David Viens on her sister's birthday last March 16. "He kept saying, `She left, she left."' 
 
 Friends said Tuesday was the 499th day of her disappearance. 
 
 "He was my friend," said Karen Patterson, who, with her husband, Mike Wade, often socialized with the Vienses. "It's tragic he did this to my other friend." 
 
 Investigators have not revealed what they believe happened to Dawn Viens and how she was killed. 
 
 As Papin, Patterson, Wade and a crowd of spectators watched, forensic detectives carried tables, outdoor heaters, umbrellas and pavers from the restaurant before carrying out bags of dirt into the late afternoon. 
 
 "I never thought something like this would happen," said Mary Rodriguez, who works at a dentist's office where Dawn Viens was a patient next door to the restaurant. The dentist has supplied her dental records to investigators. 
 
 Papin, who believes her sister is dead but holds a tiny hope that she is not, said her father and two brothers are following the search on the Internet from their homes in Vermont and Florida. Family members hope to find her remains and bury Dawn Viens properly. 
 
 "I haven't been sleeping well," Papin said. "I'm hoping they find her, wherever it may be." 
 
 larry.altman@dailybreeze.com
– Police are ripping apart a restaurant in Los Angeles County looking for the body of the owner's missing wife. David Viens, who runs the Thyme Contemporary Cafe, has been arrested on suspicion of his wife's murder, the Los Angeles Times reports. Viens expanded the cafe and added new floors and walls shortly after his wife disappeared 16 months ago. Soon after local newspaper the Daily Breeze reported that Viens was a murder suspect and blood was found on the walls of the home the couple shared, the 46-year-old restaurant owner jumped off a cliff following a police pursuit. "Mr. Viens dove off a 100-foot cliff to avoid talking to our detectives, and that is somewhat telling," said the chief investigator. Viens survived the fall.