“Yeah, right,” Washington said. “And I’m Mike Tyson.”

I didn’t want to say anything, but she did bear a vague resemblance to him.

“Don’t you understand? The minute we leave, he’s going to destroy the wig and our only shred of evidence will be gone.”

“Obviously on hallucinogens,” Ramirez said, shaking his head.

“Don’t worry,” Washington said, as she shoved me into the backseat of the squad car. “You’ll sleep it off in a nice comfy jail cell.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

I begged the cops to call Lt. Webb to verify my story, but they refused.

“Call him yourself,” was Officer Washington’s helpful suggestion.

Which is exactly what I did after being finger-printed and booked at the Van Nuys jail. For those of you gals planning to get arrested in West Los Angeles, that’s where they take you, all the way out to scenic Van Nuys, the Used Car Lot Capital of the World.

I can’t tell you how humiliating it was riding out there on the freeway, handcuffed in the backseat of the squad car like some sort of criminal. Which, of course, we both know I wasn’t.

What really steamed me was that scads of people were zooming past us, breaking the speed limit by at least ten miles per hour, while I—who never ever go beyond the speed limit, mainly because my Corolla has the horsepower of Mr. Ed—was the one being carted off to jail.

When they finally let me use the phone, I called Lt. Webb, but just my luck, he wasn’t in. I left a frantic message on his voice mail about Eduardo’s wig and my ignominious arrest, and begged him to call Van Nuys and explain to the cops that I was not a felon, but an innocent writer-detective.

I later found out that Lt. Webb’s six-year-old boy had fallen off a jungle gym and was rushed to the emergency room with a nasty cut. Lt. Webb had gone to be at his side while the kid got stitches. Which, I have to confess, surprised me. Not that the kid got stitches, but the fact that Lt. Webb even had a kid. Somehow I didn’t picture Lt. Webb with a family. I pictured him living alone in a sparsely furnished condo with nothing for company except a bottle of scotch and a Soloflex machine.

But the point is, he did have a little boy, and he had rushed to the emergency room. All of which explains why I spent the next three hours sharing a jail cell with a hooker named Desiree.

Nearly six feet tall in her stiletto heels and Dolly Parton bouffant do, Desiree had been arrested for soliciting in the K-Mart parking lot. Talk about your blue light specials.

I tried not to stare at her outfit. Her bustier top was straight out of Moulin Rouge, and if her miniskirt had been any shorter it would’ve been a belt.

“What’re you in for?” she asked, pushing back the cuticles on her inch-long nails.