We hit Bud’s Body Shop first. Bud and two others hadn’t seen a Mercedes SUV, green or otherwise, so we drove over to Lou’s Auto Body on SE Railroad Street. And hit pay dirt. Lou was a one-legged guy in a wheelchair who no longer did body work, but his son and two employees did.
Lou was sixty-five years old, with spindly arms and a pot gut, white whiskers. He’d gotten on Medicare two months ago, and was elated to have dumped a health care plan that had been costing him an arm and a leg. He pointed to the missing leg, told us he’d given it as last year’s premium. Nice.
“Nine hundred fifty dollars a month with a ten-thousand-dollar deductible. Sonofabitchin’ ACA was about to bankrupt my ass,” he said. “Affordable Fucking Care Act, my limp dick. Washington’s full of imbeciles. So what kin I do for you?”
“Lookin’ for a Mercedes SUV,” Ma said. “Green, didn’t look like it needed painting, but it might’ve been brought in and painted white anyway.”
“Yep. Did that. Pretty weird deal, lemme tell you.”
Ma and I looked at each other. Ma was smiling. I might, later, but I was still too surprised to smile. I was a hell of a fine gumshoe. Remarkable, really. If I’d had feathers, I would’ve preened, turned my head all the way around, and pecked mites off my back. This was great. We’d been looking for a green SUV, but the son of a bitch had turned white.
“Lady said she didn’t care for green,” Lou said. “So why’d you buy a green one, I asked her? She told me she’d bought it off some guy for peanuts so between that and a new paint job she’d still come out ahead. Me, I’d have kept the green. Car wasn’t a year old, paint was in perfect shape, but she wanted it white, so, hell, I’ll take her money. Charged her twenty-four hundred bucks. She paid it without battin’ an eye.”
“Do you have the charge slip?” Ma asked.
“Nope. She paid cash.”
“Cash. That seem right to you?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been in this business forty years. I’ve seen cash before.”
“Was anyone with her?”
“Like who?”
“Like anyone.”
“Didn’t see anyone. She came in alone.”
“When was that?”
Lou couldn’t remember. He wheeled himself into his office and thumbed through a pile of receipts, pulled one out. “Brought it in just last Thursday.” He shook his head. “What’s today? Wednesday? Wasn’t all that long ago. My damn mind’s going. Can’t remember much of anything these days.”
“How about the VIN number?”
“Got that,” he said. “Change the color of a car, law says I gotta take down the VIN number, report it to the DMV.”
“Uh-huh. Knew that. What state were the plates?”
“Nevada. Don’t know why she didn’t get it painted in Reno, Sparks, Carson. I asked, but she said she was visiting her sister up here and she’d be around a couple of days, so why not here? Me, I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, so I took her money.”
“Who’d you report the VIN to?”
“Nevada DMV, of course.” He gave Ma the VIN and she typed it into her cell phone.
Ma turned to me. “Hell. If I’d thought about a color change I might’ve picked up on this in Reno. I’ll have to remember this.” To Lou she said, “This place got Wi-Fi?”
“Yep. So’s I can roll around, stay connected.”
“Mind if I get in?”
“Nope. The password is ‘BABS by Lou.’ ”
“BABS?”
“Bad Ass Body Shop. Don’t tell anyone ’round here or they’ll start cloggin’ up my Internet.”
“Don’t you worry, doll.” She hustled out to the Eldorado, came back with a laptop, and got online with Nevada DMV using her investigator’s access. “Ah-hah,” she said. “VIN for that SUV is registered to Mary Odermann, but now it’s got the color as white, not green, so they changed it. Hell. I shoulda been checking that every couple of days for all those cars.”
“Live and learn, Ma,” I said.
She gave me a dim smile. “Yep. I missed that one.” She turned to Lou. “What’d this woman look like?”
He thought about that for a moment. “Let’s see . . . seems I remember dark hair, kinda long, dark glasses, even here in the shop, and she had on some kinda hat with a big brim.”
“How tall?”
“From down here in this chair, hard to tell. Five seven to maybe five ten. Fairly tall side of average.”
“How old did she look?”
“Somewhere in her thirties. Doubt if she’d hit forty yet.”
“Thin, fat?”
“Thinnish. Not heavy. Good figure, what I could see of it.”
“Round face or thin? Moles, anything like that?”
“Don’t really know from round or thin faces. And I didn’t see anything like a mole anywhere. Probably wouldn’t anyway. I don’t generally take note of that kind of thing. If she was missing an arm or leg, I’d’ve seen that, probably bought her a drink.”
“Fingernail polish?”
He tilted his head. “Yeah. Saw that when she counted out a bunch of bills, paying for the work. Sorta red, with some kinda design on the nails like they do nowadays.”
“How long was the car in for painting?”
“Day and a bit. She came in right about noon. We were eating lunch. We got right on it, had it painted by five, had it drying under heat lamps all night. She picked it up that next afternoon, Friday.”
“So she spent the night here in Bend.”
“Must’ve, yeah. Probably at her sister’s.”
“Got an address for the sister?”
“She didn’t give one.”
“Phone number?”
“Didn’t leave that either. She said she’d be back and that was that. Acted in a hurry. Kinda tight-ass.”
“Did anyone here in the shop drive her anywhere?”
“Nope. She said she’d phone her sister, have her come pick her up.”
“Did you see that happen?”
“Not me. Might ask one of the boys, though. I don’t get around so good, so I didn’t go look outside when she left.”
Ma turned to me.
