Ferguson flipped off the television. “Could have been worse,” he said before turning to look at his computer.

“He’s right,” Rena said. “They didn’t say we were a bunch of clowns.”

“Leah threw Alice and the rest of the staff under the bus,” A.L. said.

“She’s hurting,” Rena said. “Her child is gone.”

“She sounded as if she was a fan of Steven Hanzel. I didn’t get that impression before.”

“Did she say something about him?” Rena asked.

“No. But there was something in her tone when she told me that Troy and his friend Steven were in the garage. Anyway, that probably doesn’t matter. What matters is that Hanzel’s supervisor is going to blow a gasket because it really made it sound as if Baywood Bank was behind the fund-raising idea.”

“Yeah, gave it real legitimacy. I suspect people who might have been on the fence about contributing will be opening their checkbooks.”

“Maybe that was the point,” A.L. said.

Nineteen

It was after ten before A.L. and Shawn Moby entered Garage on Division. Troy was standing behind the counter. A.L. made the introductions and then asked Troy to show Shawn the basics of their computer system.

The flow seemed pretty straightforward. A customer contact led to a work order. Work was dated and timed. Parts and services were billed separately and taxed differently. Monies were received in various forms—cash, check, credit card—and applied to the work order. Notes could be entered at any part of the process. It wasn’t a full financial review, but merely a medium dive into a subset of the business. But it gave A.L. what he was looking for. And if Troy had been bothered by the request initially, he seemed fine with it now.

Maybe he was busy thinking of other things. At no point did either A.L. or Troy mention the television interview.

Once Shawn was able to download the data, they left. When they got back to their office, it took Shawn six minutes to find what A.L. was specifically looking for. There it was. Harvey Pointe’s 2018 Chrysler Pacifica had come in on Tuesday and was finished at 8:22 on Wednesday by Prider. Then he’d moved on to J.A. Shepherd’s 2012 Ford Focus that was serviced between 8:36 and 10:03.

Peitra Jonet’s 2017 Honda Pilot had been serviced between 7:42 and 9:24 by Pete Seoul. No doubt she’d been charged for the fifteen minutes for Pete’s 9:00 break.

The work order had a spot for customer name, address and phone. Very helpful.

He looked around for Rena but didn’t see her. He might as well get to it. He dialed Harvey Pointe.

“Hello.”

“Is this Harvey Pointe?”

“I’m not interested.”

“Wait,” A.L. said quickly. “This is Detective McKittridge of the Baywood Police Department.”

“I don’t give donations over the phone.”