Her neighbor on Kanan Dume Road ambled over one morning and invited them to his birthday party. He was about to turn seventy-seven.
He liked Caroline. She reminded him of his granddaughter, although when he considered the reasons why, nothing came to mind.
He chalked it up to an easily overlooked mannerism.
And he liked her cooking. Caroline often had him over for dinner.
That first dinner when he asked her what she did for a living and learned she was a professional car thief, he couldn’t have been more complimentary. He told her he hoped she had a generous fence, which she assured him she did.
Her neighbor on Kanan Dume Road figured it was best to swipe expensive cars from rich people because they all had more cars than they needed. Most of them never grew attached to a car enough to matter.
Caroline learned he was quite wealthy himself, an heir to the Don Lee fortune. How ironic, he mentioned, that most of his money and some of hers came from the sale of Cadillacs.
Now and then, she would go over to his cabin, even more secluded than hers, as if mislaid behind an old cluster of golden-cup oak.
His place was small without feeling cramped. A smoke-stained stone fireplace with massive andirons took up most of the rear wall.
Over the fireplace hung a Winchester .30-30 of undetermined vintage.
Flimsy red upholstery on his plump chair had been faded by decades of sunlight. Originally a pattern of longhorns, the images had long ago washed out into a vague montage of thin silver and crimson threads.
He saw no need to hide threadbare patches on the arms with antimacassars.
For unknown reasons, he had seen fit to cover what was presumably a ragged ottoman with a small Mexican rug. It was woven from thick wool in a pattern of red and yellow diamonds.
