THanks @Katie, to be clear I did get paid for the "missing guest" and it appears in my bank account now too. And i've received my notice from Airbnb that payment for the guest who checked in yesterday has been released -- right on time. This is all great news.
I still never received any follow up from the support staff, from the many cases I had opened regarding this matter. I think that's pretty weak and needs to be addressed. I've not been a member of this community long (1.5 years), but in that time all my previous experiences with support have been exemplary. And then, this. And the nature of this case, with so many people not responding to me or not doing what they said they'd do, meant I ended up interacting with several different people for this same case. In other words, Airbnb had several chances to do the right thing on this one. In the end, I had to sit on my hands like everyone else here and it was a very frustrating and helpless feeling.
I thank the community leaders here and managers such as yourself, but I feel as Superhosts holding up our ends of the bargain with respect to the ABB TOS, we have all been very poorly treated on this one.