“No, sir, I’m not. I’m telling you that we now have what we think is a reasonable explanation for that evidence.”

“Well, I’d love to hear it.”

Bosch took two folded pieces of paper from his jacket pocket and opened them. One was a photocopy of the car wash receipt Pelfry had found. The other was a photocopy of Harris’s time card, also from Pelfry.

“Mrs. Kincaid, you drive a white Volvo station wagon with license plate number one-bravo-henry-six-six-eight, correct?”

“No, that’s wrong,” Richter answered for her.

Bosch looked up at him for a moment and then back at the woman.

“Did you drive this car last summer?”

“I drove a white Volvo station wagon, yes,” she said. “I don’t remember the license number.”

“My family owns eleven dealerships and parts of six more in this county,” her husband said. “Chevy, Cadillac, Mazda, you name it. Even a Porsche store. But no Volvo franchise. And so what do you know, that’s the car she picks. She says it’s safer for Stacey and then she ends up . . . anyway.”

Sam Kincaid brought a hand up to cover his lip and held himself still. Bosch waited a moment before pressing on.

“Take my word for it about the plate number. The car was registered to you, Mrs. Kincaid. On June twelve last year that car, the Volvo, was washed at Hollywood Wax and Shine on Sunset Boulevard. The person who took the car there asked for the daily special, which included interior vacuuming and polish. Here’s the receipt.”

He leaned forward and put it on the coffee table in front of the couple. They both leaned down to look at it. Richter leaned over the back of the couch for a look.

“Does either of you remember doing that?”

“We don’t wash our cars,” Sam Kincaid said. “And we don’t go to public car washes. I need a car washed I have it taken to one of my stores. I don’t need to pay to — ”

“I remember,” his wife said, cutting him off. “I did it. I took Stacey to the movies at the El Capitan. Where we parked there was construction — a new roof being put on the building next to the garage. When we came out the car had something on it. Like little spots of tar that had blown onto it. It was a white car and it was very noticeable. When I paid the parking attendant I asked him where a car wash was. He told me.”

Kincaid was looking at his wife as if she had just belched at the charity ball.

“So you got the car washed there,” Bosch said.

“Yes. I remember now.”

She looked at her husband and then back at Bosch.

“The receipt says June twelve,” Bosch said. “How long after the end of school for your daughter was that?”