Guilt By Degrees

65

Thirty minutes later, after getting an earful of the slipshod job the police had done investigating her burglary, we were finally released from Nina Klavens’s clutches.

“Assuming we did find her Hummel collection in some report, how’d we be able to tell it was hers?” I asked. “Don’t all those little kids holding umbrellas and watering cans look the same?”

“Ask me, because I’m a collector,” Bailey replied dryly. “Besides, I wasn’t the one who offered to look for it.”

We got into the car and belted up. “If I hadn’t, we’d still be in there.”

“So we’re down to the auto theft,” she said. “Give me the info.”

I pulled out the report. “Victim, Alicia Morris. No description, no DOB. Address in…Hollywood, on Fountain Avenue, east of Fairfax. Apartment J.”

Bailey turned right and headed toward Mulholland Drive. Eventually we landed on Benedict Canyon, which would take us from the San Fernando Valley to the west side of town. The canyons are older roads where trees and greenery have had plenty of time to mature, creating a canopy that filters what little sunlight penetrates the hills. The homes lining the road range from overbuilt and grandiose to charming and rustic. Though the ride was more picturesque than the freeway, it took just one slow-moving car to back up traffic for miles. Luckily, today we were the ones out in front. We flew all the way down to Sunset, where we headed east, then took La Cienega south and ended up on Fountain Avenue. When we passed Fairfax, Bailey slowed and I watched the numbers, searching for the address, listed as 7300 Fountain Avenue.

“Wait, slow down,” I said as we neared Fountain and Martel. I read the sign on the building at 7300 Fountain. “Morman Boling Casting?” A casting agency. Not Alicia Morris’s-or anyone else’s-residence.

Bailey and I exchanged a look. “Maybe the numbers go down and then up again,” she suggested.

We continued east, but by the time we’d passed Kat Von D’s High Voltage Tattoo at La Brea, the numbers were still descending.

“Fountain dead-ends just past Gower and picks up again at Van Ness. If the numbers don’t start going up by then, we’ll call it quits,” she said.

We hit the dead end, made the jog, and picked up Fountain at Van Ness. The numbers continued to fall. When they kept falling after we’d passed the La Fuente Sober Living facility, I’d seen enough.

“Give it up, Bailey. It’s a bogus address.”

“How long ago was the report made?” she asked.

I looked at the date. “Four and a half years,” I replied, knowing what she was thinking. “We can confirm this with the permit office, but I didn’t see any building that looked like it’d gone up in the last four years or so.”

“Agreed.” Bailey sighed. “It’s bogus.”

She pulled over and parked. There was a fire hydrant and a tow zone right ahead of us. But she wasn’t even an inch over the line. She was that distracted.

I tossed out another possibility.

“This wouldn’t be the first victim to give a bum address for personal reasons,” I suggested. “Maybe she was growing pot in her closet and didn’t want the cops to show up unannounced.”

“She’d still have given a phone number,” Bailey said. “There wasn’t one.”

I checked the report again. She was right.

“Maybe she wanted the car to stay stolen so she could collect on the insurance,” I offered. I beat Bailey to the punch and looked to see if an insurance company was listed. “No insurance shown here, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

Bailey was silent, her expression intense. “Except it does,” she said. “I checked with the DMV, and there was no insurance on the car. It was kind of a junker. An old Audi.”

“Probably wasn’t worth insuring,” I remarked.

The traffic light just ahead of us turned red, and I watched the line of cars come to a stop. The closest was a red Ford Focus with a bumper sticker that said, NAMASTE, BITCHES. A sticker on the rear window added, I DON’T DO NICE. I looked inside the car to see the badass who was advertising. It was a soft, round-looking woman in her fifties.

“Are there any cars registered under Lilah’s maiden name?” I asked.

Bailey nodded slowly. “An Audi,” she said, her voice stretched tight. “But the license and registration don’t match.”

A no-match on the license and registration should’ve ended the matter, but Bailey kept staring out the windshield.

“Then what’s the big deal?” I asked. “There must be thousands of old Audis out there.”

“Yeah,” Bailey said. “But I wrote down the license and registration of Lilah’s car.” She pulled her notebook out of her jacket pocket, flipped to the page, and handed it to me. “Check it out.”

I looked at the numbers written in her notebook, then pulled out the report. Then went back to the notebook again.

The license and registration for both cars was just one number off. It could’ve been a coincidence. The hairs on the back of my neck told me it wasn’t.

“What happened to Lilah’s car?” I asked.

“I just got the report back,” Bailey said. “According to the DMV records, a guy named Conrad Bagram reported it stolen-”

“Stolen?” I sat up.

“Yep.”

“So he bought the car from Lilah, and then it was stolen?” I asked.

“He had it on consignment,” Bailey replied. “Bagram owns a gas station and body shop on Sunset Boulevard near Highland and sells cars on the side. The ‘King of Sunset.’”

“When’d the King report it stolen?”

“Two days after Alicia Morris reported her car stolen,” Bailey said.

“So Alicia Morris doesn’t want the cops to know her address or phone number,” I said.

“But she does want them to know her car was stolen,” Bailey replied.

I frowned. “So the car exists, but Alicia Morris doesn’t?” I wondered.