“Hello?” Eve called out. “Anybody here? I’m a police officer with a search warrant.”
The air inside the house was still and undisturbed. She was certain that nobody was home.
She walked through the kitchen to the living room, which was dominated by a huge flat-screen TV, electronic gaming equipment, and an elaborate stereo system. The leather-upholstered furniture looked new.
Eve continued down a short hallway to one of the two bedrooms. The first one was being used as an office, and the shelves held more packing and mailing materials as well as handbags, wallets, belts, and various accessories from Gucci, Chanel, Vuitton, and other major designers, boxes of Air Jordan shoes, and assorted jewelry. There was a stack of mailing labels on the desk, a printer, a wireless touch pad, and a foam wrist rest for a missing computer.
She picked up one of the mailing labels. The return address was a Reseda PO box on Vanowen and the company name was It’s A Steal.
Cute.
She pocketed the label. Duncan came in and said, “What do you bet all of this stuff is stolen goods?”
“I’m certain of it.” Eve showed him the mailing label. “Cocky, aren’t they?”
“Not anymore.”
“There’s a printer but no computer. She must have taken it with her.” Eve spotted a shredder beside the desk and pulled out the bucket. It was full of confettied paper and bits of other material she couldn’t identify. “I wonder what this is.”
Duncan looked over her shoulder. “Let’s get CSU to look at it. They probably can’t put any of it back together, but at least they can tell us what it was.”
He started sorting through the drawers and papers while Eve used her phone to take pictures in the office and throughout the house. She’d learned the hard way the importance of documenting a scene, that what might first appear to be an insignificant, mundane detail could break a case.
In the master bedroom closet, Eve discovered two tank tops from Brandy Melville, a box of unopened burner phones, and a carton of bullets.
Duncan put in a call to CSU to come over to process the shredder basket, the bullets, and all the stuff in the office that were likely stolen goods.
Eve asked the LAPD officers to stick around until the CSU got there, and then she and Duncan got into the Explorer to head to Paul Colter’s house.
After Duncan radioed the dispatcher to let them know where they were going, he turned to Eve and said, “Sherry Simms drives a new Mustang. I saw the lease statement.”
If Sherry didn’t go to prison, Eve thought, she could become a Reseda midlife crisis wife. All she needed was a pierced nipple, if she didn’t have one or two already.
“We can put out an APB on her car, track her phone, and attach an alert to her credit cards so we get notified when she uses them.”
“No, we can’t,” he said. “We have no grounds for the warrant.”
Eve held up the mailing label and waved it at him. “It’s A Steal?”
“That won’t convince a judge. Sleeping with a home invader doesn’t make her an accomplice. We can’t prove yet that she’s committed any crime. And if she’s smart, and I suspect she is, she’s not going to use her phone or her credit cards.”
“At least she didn’t wire the kitchen door to a bomb.”
“I saw that movie, too.”
“Is that why you had me go into the house alone while you went to call the dispatcher?”
“Of course it was. I’m eighty days from retirement,” he said. “If I’d opened the door, there definitely would have been a bomb.”
CHAPTER SIX
Eve pulled up beside the LAPD patrol car parked down the street from Paul Colter’s Sherman Oaks house and rolled down her window. There were two uniformed officers inside. One Asian, one African American.
“Any activity?” Eve asked, eyeing the house. It was in the flats of Sherman Oaks, south of Ventura Boulevard, an area that was once part of Van Nuys until the residents seceded in the 1990s and joined their more affluent neighbor. The name change alone doubled the property values of the ranch-style homes almost overnight.
The Asian officer shook his head. “Just an Amazon delivery. A woman I’d say is in her sixties answered the door and accepted the package.”
His partner spoke up. “That’s probably Estelle Colter. I ran the address. The house belongs to Alan and Estelle Colter.”
“Thanks,” Eve said. “We’re going to serve our search warrant. You mind watching our backs?”