“What about the witness? Have you talked to him?”

“Well, no. That’s just it. He’s never turned up, and Lisa has precious little in the way of information. ‘Old guy with white hair in a brown leather bomber jacket’ is as much as she recalls.”

“The cop at the scene didn’t take his name and address?”

“Nope, nor did anyone else. He’d disappeared by the time the police arrived. We posted notices in the area and we ran ads in the ‘Personals’ section of the classifieds. So far no response.”

“I’ll meet with Lisa myself and then get back to you. Maybe she’ll remember something I can use to track this guy down.”

“Let’s hope. A jury trial’s a nightmare. We end up in court and I can just about guarantee Gladys will show up in a wheelchair, wearing a collar and a nasty-looking leg brace. All she has to do is drool on herself and that’s a million bucks right there.”

“I hear you,” I said. I went back to the office, where I caught up with paperwork.

There are two items I suppose I should mention at this point:

(1) Instead of my 1974 VW sedan, I’m now driving a 1970 Ford Mustang, manual transmission, which is what I prefer. It’s a two-door coupe, with a front spoiler, wide-track tires, and the biggest hood scoop ever placed on a production Mustang. When you own a Boss 429, you learn to talk this way. My beloved pale blue Bug had been shoved nose-first into a deep hole on the last case I worked. I should have bulldozed the dirt in on top and buried it right there, but the insurance company insisted that I have it hauled out so they could tell me it was totaled: no big surprise when the hood was jammed up against the shattered windshield, which was resting on or about the backseat.