AFTER TWO WEEKS of hunting down BMW dealerships, car washes, and custom shops, Marge got a break. Jim’s Hot Rods, Dragsters, and Funny Cars took up residence on a side street off Roscoe in the industrial section of the San Fernando Valley. Sitting behind a wall of chain link topped with barbed wire, the shop included a warehouse whose windows and doors were protected by iron bars and a concrete yard littered with the exoskeletal remains of automobiles, trucks, and motorcycles. Jim’s did everything-from little jobs like custom upholstery to converting lowly soccer-mom vans into drivable pleasure palaces.
Dunn found herself surrounded by more mullets than inside an ocean and lots and lots of ponytails as well. But she gave the guys an A for their work ethic. The place absolutely roared with activity, the noise level deafening even without the three barking pit bulls chained up in front of the main office.
Jim Franco-better known as Jumbo Jimbo, due to his height more than his girth-was cooperative and articulate. He wore a gray T-shirt (probably once white) and denim overalls, grease rags sticking out of every pocket. His hands were big and callused, his nails short and surprisingly cared for. Not that they didn’t have dirt under them, but Marge could tell that the man took pains to make a decent appearance when he put on street clothes. He stood around six five and was packed with muscle. He turned to the dogs and they withered under his scowl.
“Yeah, I remember Dresden.” He looked down at Marge and made her feel short. He spoke with a voice that was foghorn low. “The guy was not only an idiot, but a tool.”
“Why do you say that?” Marge had to scream to be heard over the noise.
Jimbo clapped his hands and shouted, “Hey!” The din took a breather. “Five-minute break. I need to talk to this lady.”
The mullets and the ponytails headed inside the warehouse. Marge waited a moment, then looked way up. “I said what did Dresden do for you to call him an idiot and a tool?”
“First off, any man who forgets to put the top up on a convertible in the pouring rain is an idiot. Second, he’s a tool because that’s what he is-a middle-management dick who was trying to be one of the boys. If he’s a pretentious asshole, he should just be one.” Jim waved a disgusted hand in the air. “No big whop. We get ’em all the time. Anyway he brought in a black 330 ci that reeked of mold. I told the guys in the shop to wear face masks and to pop antihistamines. Man, it was bad!”
“What did you do?”
“Took everything down to the metal.”
“Including the seat upholstery?”
“I probably could have cleaned it up on the outside-it was leather-but I wouldn’t take responsibility for what was growing inside the upholstery. It would have always smelled and who would want to breathe that shit in. Didn’t matter. He wanted it stripped to the metal anyway. He said insurance would pay for it, but I didn’t trust the guy. I told him I’d help him collect from insurance, but if he wanted me to do the job, it would be cash and cash only. I asked for sixty percent up front hoping to scare him off, but he agreed.”
“Why did you want to scare him off? Did he give you any problems?”
“No, he didn’t,” Jimbo admitted. “Paid whenever I asked him to.”
“Did you also replace the carpeting in the trunk?”
“Everything. Dresden wanted everything to match.”
Marge winced. “That’s too bad. Nothing was salvageable?”
“Why?” Jimbo gave her a look. “Something funny happen inside the car?”
“I don’t know, but it looks like we’re never going to find out.”
The jumbo man gave her an oversize smile, exposing tobacco-stained teeth. “You know, ma’am, today might be your lucky day. The carpet in the trunk didn’t need to be replaced, but as long as we were redoing the interior carpeting, I knew we’d probably have enough square feet left over to do the trunk, too. So it wouldn’t cost Dresden extra to replace it. The car mats were a different story.”
Marge’s ears perked up. “Car mats?”
“Yeah, the car mats that go on top of the carpet. New car mats with the BMW logo would cost Dresden money. I told him that I could probably steam-clean the old ones as good as new, but he insisted on ordering fresh. What the hell? Didn’t make any difference to me except that there was a six-week wait and it took a little extra time. Shipment got mixed up or something. Anyway, I asked Dresden what he wanted me to do with the old ones. He told me to chuck them.”
“Tell me you didn’t do it.”
“Why throw away perfectly good mats?”
“Tell me you have them.”
“No, I don’t. That’s why I said it might be your lucky day. I cleaned them up and sold them on e-Bay. I got a few bucks and the customer got a bargain.”
“Do you remember who you sold them to?”
“Got it all down in my computer. She may not be happy giving back the mats. She got a good deal.”
“Either she’ll get them back or we’ll get her new ones.” Marge was writing as fast as she could. “So let me get this straight. You offered to clean the old mats and put them back in the car, but Dresden told you to throw them away.”
“Yep.”
“And you’re positive that he told you to chuck them?”
“Are you asking if I’d swear to it in court? The answer is yes. Matter of fact, I asked him specifically if he wanted me to clean them so he could keep the mats for a backup set and he told me no. He said he wanted brand-new and that I should just chuck ’em in the garbage.”
“Those were his words? ‘Chuck ’em in the garbage’?”
“Yes. That’s when I thought if they’re going in the garbage, why not clean ’em and see how they turn out?”
“And you have the woman’s name and address?”
“I do.”
“What about her phone number?”
“No phone number, Sergeant. It was a business transaction, not a date.”
DECKER FELT A strange buzzing sensation in his chest. For a split second he wondered about his heart, but then he realized that he had placed his cell in his interior coat pocket and the ringer was on vibrate. He looked at the cell’s window: Marge. “Are we happy today?”
“We are very happy.” Marge explained the situation in detail. When she got to floor mats, Decker pumped his fist and shouted “yes.” “I put Oliver on contacting the woman from e-Bay. She was out and he left a message on the machine, but we both think we shouldn’t take any chances. We’d like to drive down tonight.”
“I agree. Take along a tech to luminol. I want this as professional as possible.” Decker paused. “I hope we get something. Usually some proteins remain in the bleed-out area, but in this case, the carpets were professionally cleaned. Even if we get a little fluorescence, defense could always say it was her car, maybe she scraped her ankle and bled into the carpet.”
“I thought about that,” Marge said. “But we can counter by saying it must have been quite a lot of blood to survive a professional cleaning. Also, Dresden’s cover story is fishy-that he left the top down in a rain. It had to have been quite a downpour because the interior was not only soaked beyond redemption but infested with mold.”
“When did he bring the car in to the shop?”
“About a month after the crash.”
“So check that date against the local weather reports. Let’s see if it was raining around that time. If it wasn’t, we’ve punched a hole in that alibi.”
“I’ve already put Oliver on that as well. The weather was L.A. consistent-partly cloudy with burn-off in the afternoons. No precipitation in the area other than morning dew. I also had Scott check farther up north and east in the mountains. There was some light rain in San Bernardino, but the system passed through pretty quickly. I’m no mycologist, but for it to smell that bad, it sounds like the interior was soaked. I think Dresden took a hose and drowned the interior, trying to wash away evidence.”