When she was done, she wandered into the dining room and looked at the stacks of food. It was mostly cookies, sugary cereals, candy, and a wide assortment of pastries, along with some jumbo bags of potato chips. Obviously, Anna McCaig had some strong cravings for junk food during her pregnancy. Eve decided it was a good thing Duncan wasn’t the one who’d been left alone in the house. He might have eaten everything.
The doorway to the kitchen was open, the door removed, and she could see the remodel was nearly done, so she went in to check it out.
There was dust everywhere. The drywall was up, and the cabinets and the stone countertops were installed. A few of the backsplash subway tiles, arranged in a herringbone pattern, were up, and she liked it. She’d also picked subway tiles for her backsplash, but a herringbone design hadn’t occurred to her, nor was it suggested by her contractor, whose expertise was cleaning crime scenes, not interior design. Was it too late to make a change?
The kitchen island, like the one in the sting house, was absolutely enormous, a second kitchen unto itself. There was no room for one like that in Eve’s kitchen and she felt a pang of island envy.
She walked to the french doors at the end of the kitchen, which opened up to a patio with a built-in barbecue grill, a small refrigerator, and a Jacuzzi. The yard overlooked the Volvo dealership on Calabasas Road and the Ventura Freeway. It wasn’t Eve’s idea of a million-dollar view.
Eve left the kitchen through an open doorway to the family room just as the attendant from the medical examiner’s office came in. He was black with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a white jumpsuit with the office emblem on the chest and holding a clipboard and a small black body bag in his gloved hands.
“It’s colder than the morgue in here,” he said. “Are you the detective in charge?”
“Yes. Eve Ronin. LASD.”
He handed her the clipboard. “I’ve got some paperwork for you to fill out.”
While she did that, he carefully picked up the blanket-swaddled baby, slipped him into the body bag, and zipped it up.
“You don’t remove the blanket?” she asked.
He looked at her like she was the stupidest person on the planet. “I don’t remove anything. That’s all done at the morgue.”
“Right,” Eve said and, trying not to look embarrassed, handed him the completed paperwork. “Just double-checking.”
“Uh-huh.” He tore off the bottom sheet, handed it to her, then picked up the body bag, holding it like a football player on the run with the ball. “I’ve been doing this for fifteen years. How about you?”
“Not as long.”
“I hope you kept the training wheels,” he said and walked out.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Duncan was already at his desk when Eve got back. Biddle and Garvey were telling him about the case they were investigating.
“The surfer was crossing PCH,” Garvey said, “which is like playing Russian roulette, and was hit by a new red Ferrari going southbound at about a hundred miles per hour.”
“Just mowed over him and kept on going,” Biddle said. “Dozens of people saw it.”
“Anybody get a plate?” Duncan asked.
Garvey shook his head. “He was going too fast. He was a red blur, like the Flash.”
Eve asked, “So how do you know it’s a new Ferrari and not an older one, or even an entirely different sports car?”
Biddle looked at her. “A couple of the witnesses are car nuts and identified it as a Ferrari F8 Tributo. It has very distinctive lines.”
“I googled it,” Garvey said. “The car has a 3.9-liter V-8 that gives it 710 horsepower and a top speed of over 200 miles per hour. The base price is $275,000, or about $1,300 per mile of speed.”
“Not many people can afford that,” Duncan said.
“You’d be surprised,” Biddle said. “There are fifty-seven registered owners in Southern California.”
“So, we’re doing this old school,” Garvey said, grabbing his jacket and getting up from his desk. “We’re going to personally visit the owner of every red Ferrari F8 Tributo in the area and see if their cars are damaged.”
“Good plan,” Duncan said.
It sounded to Eve like an excuse for Garvey to suck up to celebrities and studio executives, who were likely to be among the owners of the expensive sports car.
“Don’t forget to take selfies,” Eve said.
Garvey flipped her off and walked out with Biddle.
Eve went over to Duncan’s desk. “How did it go with Mrs. McCaig?”
“She was a mess, but I got the same story from her that we heard from the deputy,” Duncan said. “I ran into your sister as I was leaving the ER. She wanted to have a doctor look at my cut, so I scrammed.”
“Are you afraid of doctors?”
“I’m afraid of deductibles. The captain left us the list of common guests in each community in the hours immediately before and after each home invasion. There’s an overlap of about a dozen guests.” He handed her the paper.
Eve scanned the list and saw a lot of familiar gardeners, utilities, pool cleaners, and delivery services. “I might not mind him looking over my shoulder if he’s also going to do my legwork.”
“He’s just in a hurry to put this case in his rearview mirror. CSU called. They’ve unlocked the laptops belonging to Paul Colter and Greg Nagy and have mirrored the contents for us on encrypted virtual drives in the cloud. I’ve emailed you the links.”