Guilt

“Just like that? Do you have time tomorrow?”

I checked my book. “Eleven a.m. works.”

“Wow,” she said. “You’re not that busy, huh?”

“Looking forward to seeing you, Holly.”

“I’m so sorry. That was bratty.”

“How’s the house going?”

“The house?”

“Remodeling.”

“Oh,” she said. “Nothing’s really happening … I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. Eleven, right?”

“Right.”

“Thanks again, Dr. Delaware. You’ve been incredibly tolerant.”

I returned to Milo’s office. He said, “No vehicles were ticketed that night. These are the theft stats, not as bad as I expected.”

He showed me his notes. Sixteen thousand GTAs in the city of L.A. over the past year. The three-month total was three thousand, eight hundred fifty-four. Of those, six hundred thirty-three were red. West-side red GTAs numbered twenty-eight. Ten of those had been recovered.

Milo got on the phone and questioned the detectives assigned to the eighteen open cases. Seven were suspected insurance scams, all from a section of Pico-Robertson, with the reporting individuals members of a small-time Ukrainian gang. Of the remaining eleven cars, one was a four-hundred-thousand-dollar Ferrari lifted from the Palisades, the other a comparably priced Lamborghini taken in Holmby Hills, both deemed improbable choices for the car Lilly Chang had seen because of their conspicuousness and the engine noise they’d generate.

The D handling the exotics was a woman named Loretta Thayer. She said, “If your witness didn’t hear a roar that set off the Richter scale it wasn’t one of those. Same for a red Porsche Turbo I just picked up that’s not in the files yet.”

Milo said, “Spate of red hotwheel heists?”

“Interesting, no?” said Thayer. “My hunch is they’re going to the same collector overseas, probably Asia or the Mideast.”

“Toys for some oil sheik’s twelve-year-old to roll around the desert in.”

“At that age,” said Thayer, “I was happy to have roller skates.”

Milo emailed photos of Charlene Chambers/Qeesha D’Embo to Thayer and two other detectives, asked them to show the images to their victims.

Thayer called back an hour later. “Sorry, no recognition.”

“That was fast.”

“Protect and serve, Lieutenant. It helps being on the Westside, everyone’s got a computer or an iPhone, I reached them electronically.”

No calls back from the other D’s for the next half hour. Milo worked on some overdue files and I read abstracts of psych articles on his computer.

He looked at his watch. “More I think about it, more of a waste of time the car angle seems. It could be unregistered but not stolen. Or Lilly Chang remembers wrong and it wasn’t even red-hell, maybe it was a scooter. Or an RV. Or a horse and buggy.”

I said, “Power of positive thinking.”

“Wanna hear positive? Time for lunch.”

“The usual?”

“No, I’m craving vegan. Just kidding.”

We drove to a steak house a mile west of the station, sawed through a couple of T-bones, and drove back to his office where he picked up replies from the remaining auto theft detectives. None of their victims recognized Qeesha but a D II named Doug Groot said, “It’s possible one of my victims lied.”

“Why do you think that?”

“The usual tells,” said Groot. “Looking everywhere but at me, too quick on the draw, like he’d rehearsed it. Also, he just gave me a feeling from the beginning. The car was a nice one, BMW 5 series, all tricked out, only a couple of years old, low mileage. But he didn’t seem that bugged about having it boosted. Made the right speech but no emotion-again, like he’d rehearsed.”

“Insurance thing?” said Milo.

“He filed with his carrier the day after I interviewed him.”

“When did it happen?”

“Nineteen months ago.”

“What were the circumstances?”

“Taken from his driveway sometime during the night,” said Groot. “It’s not impossible, his building’s got an open carport. But supposedly he’d left it locked with the security system set and I talked to the neighbors and no one heard any alarm go off. He seemed so hinky I actually ran a check on him. But he had no obvious ties to any scammers, no record of anything.”

“What’s this solid citizen’s name?”

“Melvin Jaron Wedd, like getting married but two ‘d’s.”

“This guy really twanged your antenna, huh?”

“You know what it’s like, El Tee. Sometimes you get a feeling. Unfortunately none of mine led anywhere. The car’s never shown up.”

“Loretta said nice red wheels might be going to the Mideast.”

“Two-year-old Bimmer’s nice,” said Groot, “but probably not nice enough for that. Mexico or Central America, maybe. For all I know it’s being used to ferry around Zeta hit men.”

“What line of work is Wedd in?”

“Something showbizzy. Can I ask what your curiosity is about the car and this Chambers woman?”

“She might be a really bad girl,” said Milo. “Or a victim. Or neither and I’m spinning my wire wheels.”

Groot chuckled. “The job as usual. You want to follow up with Wedd?”

“Might as well.”

“Here’s his info.”

Milo copied, thanked Groot, clicked off. Seconds later, he’d pulled Melvin Jaron Wedd’s driver’s license.

Male white, thirty-seven, six two, one ninety, brown, brown, needs corrective lenses.

Wedd’s photo showed him with a pink, squarish face, smallish eyes, thin lips, a dark spiky haircut. He’d posed in a black V-necked T-shirt. Black-framed glasses gave him the hipster-geek look of any other Westside guy working a Mac at a Starbucks table.

“Doesn’t look like a warlock,” said Milo.

I said, “More like Clark Kent at leisure.”

He ran Wedd through the banks just in case something had popped up since Groot’s search. No criminal record, a scatter of parking tickets, the most recent thirty months ago. All paid in a timely fashion.

Then he switched to the DMV files and said, “Well, looky here.”

Wedd’s new registered vehicle was a black Ford Explorer, purchased brand-new, three weeks after the theft of the red BMW. “Be interesting if he jacked it way up and stuck on fancy rims.”

He shifted to the Web, called up an image of an Explorer enhanced that way, sent the picture to Heather Goldfeder, and asked if it resembled the SUV she’d seen.

Seconds later: cud b cant say 4 sure how r u.

He sent back a happy face emoticon.

Her instant response: me 2 xoxoxo.

The landline and cell phone Groot had given for Wedd were unresponsive to Milo’s calls. No message machine on either.

He said, “A fellow who likes his privacy. Let’s invade it.”

The address was an apartment west of Barrington and just north of Wilshire. Officially Brentwood, but not