S Is for Silence

about spilling the beans. If I’d talked to him a day earlier, he might not have said a word. It was a lesson I needed to keep in mind: People change, circumstances change, and what seems imperative one day becomes insignificant the next. The reverse is true as well.

    My VW was returned within the hour, my tires looking as crisp and clean as brand-new shoes. In addition, I saw that someone had treated me to a complimentary car wash. The interior now smelled new, thanks to a deodorant tag hanging from the rearview mirror. I caught sight of Steve Ottweiler as I was pulling out and gave him a wave.
    Heading west on Main, I realized I wasn’t that far from the neighborhood where Sergeant Schaefer lived. I took the next right-hand turn and circled back, parking out in front of his house as I had on my earlier visit. When he didn’t answer my knock, I followed the walkway around the side of the house to the rear, at the same time calling his name. He was in his workshop and when he heard my voice, he peered out the open doorway and motioned me in.
    I found him perched on a stool with a miter box and clamps on his workbench. He’d cut lengths of framing and he was gluing them together. Today he wore denim overalls, and his white hair pushed out like foam from under a black baseball cap.
    “I expected to find you working on a chair.”
    “I finished that project and haven’t yet started on the next. These days, I’m so tied up with hobbies, it’s lucky I don’t work or I’d never fit it all in. What brings you this way?”
    “I thought I’d give you an update.” I told him about my tires, my call to the sheriff’s department, and my subsequent visit to Steve Ottweiler’s shop.
    “Sounds like you’re making someone sweat.”
    “That’s my take on it. The problem is, I have no idea who or how.”
    “Tell me what you’ve done and maybe we can figure it out.”
    I filled him in on my interviews, starting with Foley Sullivan, saying, “I hate to admit it, but I thought Foley made a pretty good case for himself.”
    “Sounding sincere is a speciality of his. What about the others?”
    “Well, the people I’ve talked to fall into two categories: those who think Violet’s dead—you, me, and her brother, Calvin—and those who think she’s alive, namely Foley, Liza, and possibly Daisy. I’m not sure where Chet Cramer stands on the question. I forgot to ask.”
    “Too bad we can’t just put it to a vote,” he said. “I can see how Liza and Daisy ended up in the same boat. Neither wants to entertain the idea that Violet’s gone for good.”
    “Maybe we’re the cynics, assuming she’s dead when she might be alive and well and living in New York.”
    “Can’t rule that out.”
    I went on down the list, telling him what Winston had confessed about seeing Violet’s car.
    Schaefer said, “I’ve been thinking about that car. Couple of us old retirees get together for dinner once a month and talk about the old days. I was telling them about you and what you’re up to. The one fellow worked Auto Theft, and he said if the Bel Air landed in a junk yard, the VIN might have been stripped off and switched to another vehicle. You want to make a stolen car disappear, that’s how you go about it. The beauty of it is it then allows you to register a stolen car as salvage. You claim you bought some old clunker and fixed it up and who’s going to be the wiser? They call ’em ghost cars. Any rate, next day I phoned the SO and had one of the deputies read off the vehicle identification number from Violet’s Bel Air.”
    “You had that?”
    “Oh, sure. Chet Cramer gave it to us in one of the early interviews. I called up the Sacramento DMV and had them do a computer search. They show no record of the VIN. Dang. For a minute, I was hoping for a hit, but the car’s never surfaced, which sets me back to the notion it was shipped overseas.”
    “You’re assuming the number Cramer gave you was correct,” I said. “All he had to do was alter one digit and the computer would spit it back as a no match.”
    “That’s a troubling possibility. You’ll be careful?”
    “I will.”
    “And keep me in the loop.”
    I assured him I’d be doing that as well.

    I stopped at a delicatessen and picked up some sandwiches and Cokes, then took Highway 166 out of Santa Maria until it intersected New Cut Road. By now the route was familiar and I drove with only half my attention focused on the road. With the balance of