Bailey assured our security detail of DA investigators that we could go it alone today. We’d be in her car and in decent places when we were out in public. A tail wouldn’t make us any safer. They checked in with their lieutenant, who’d agreed. I felt their despair at having to miss out on more time with us, but I was confident they’d console themselves with a second choice-say, for instance, clogging.
By the time we left, it was almost noon. That should’ve meant smooth sailing down the 101 Freeway, especially since we were heading northbound. But for some reason the traffic was even worse than usual. Getting stuck in traffic on a Saturday afternoon never ceases to confound and irritate me. What the hell is everyone doing out on the freeway on a Saturday? For the next half hour, in typical L.A. fashion, we crawled northbound, inch by inch.
We rode in silence until Bailey cleared her throat. “Have you said anything to Toni about…?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“Are…ah…are you going to tell Drew?” she asked, uncharacteristically hesitant.
Because they were going to be alone in a quiet place for a while and she didn’t want to slip and tell him anything I didn’t want him to know. There was so much to appreciate about Bailey.
“I’ll tell Drew pretty soon.”
“And don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll never tell.”
“I know.”
“I’d never waste my time with Drew talking about you.” She grinned.
Bailey exited the freeway and headed west on Ventura. Ten minutes later, we turned onto Valley Vista and drove up the winding road, watching the address numbers. Halfway up the incline, I saw it.
“There.” I pointed, indicating a little brick house with white shutters on the right.
Small yet meticulously maintained, it was on a fairly secluded plot, set at least fifty feet back from the street and partially blocked from view by mature peppertrees. I could definitely see how this place would be a perfect fit for someone who wanted privacy.
Bailey parked and we followed a bricked path to the front door. A tasteful, well-polished brass knocker was placed just above a tiny eyehole. Bailey stood within view of the peephole and banged the knocker twice. At first, I heard nothing. But as I concentrated, I thought I detected Beethoven’s Seventh playing somewhere inside the house.
Bailey looked toward the driveway, and I followed her gaze. A red Prius was parked there. A likely indication that Nina, or hopefully Lilah, was home. Bailey banged the knocker on the brass plate a little harder this time. I leaned in to listen. I thought I heard the low thump of footsteps approaching on a wood floor. Seconds later, the thumping stopped.
“Who’s there?” said a woman’s voice, muffled by the heavy-looking door between us.
Bailey pulled out her badge and held it up to the peephole. “Bailey Keller, detective with the LAPD.”
“You alone?” the woman asked.
“No,” Bailey said, moving to the side.
I stepped in front of the peephole. “Deputy District Attorney Rachel Knight. We’re here to talk to you about the burglary,” I said.
The door swung open.
“Well, it’s about damn time,” said the woman.
Nina Klavens, who, it turned out, really was Nina Klavens. And ninety years old if she was a day.
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.