I was tool­ing down Hunt­ing­ton Dri­ve in my two-toned beige and brown 1954 Hud­son Hor­net when smoke bil­lowed from the hood. I hit the brakes; the Hud­son lurched vio­lent­ly to the right; the front tire rammed into the curb; and the engine stalled out.

I hopped out and slammed the door. The air was thick with the scent of burn­ing rub­ber as steam­ing yel­low-green coolant gushed from the Hudson’s front end and streamed along the curb to the gut­ter. I let out a long dis­gust­ed sigh.

By then the tow truck com­pa­ny occu­pied the top spot on my cell phone’s speed-dial direc­to­ry. Con­nie, my fre­quent com­mis­er­a­tor, picked up on the first ring. “That old crate’s cost­ing you a for­tune,” she said. “You ough­ta sell it.”

“No one in his right mind would buy it.”

“You did.”

“Proves my point. How long a wait this time?”

“Lester’ll be there in twenty.”

I pock­et­ed my phone and leaned against the front fend­er, brood­ing yet again about the rash deci­sion that got me into this mess. Years ear­li­er, my broth­ers and I bought a bro­ken-down 1954 Hud­son Hor­net for our dad. A Hud­son deal­er as a young man, Dad con­sid­ered the Hor­net the best car ever made. Restor­ing his Hud­son became a labor of love for him and us. See The 1954 Hud­son Hor­net.

If the sto­ry had end­ed there, I would have lived hap­pi­ly ever after, but noooo. After we bought Dad’s car, my broth­er sent me the link to an ad on E‑Bay for the sale of a 1954 Hud­son Hor­net in Los Ange­les. In the pho­to­graph it looked in near-mint con­di­tion. I made an offer con­di­tioned on an inspec­tion. My bid stood alone at the dead­line, so the sell­er and I arranged to meet in a park­ing lot in Cul­ver City.

Replac­ing a burned-out tail­light tax­es the lim­it of my auto­mo­tive exper­tise, so I hired a young mechan­ic, Brad, to go with me. When we pulled into the lot, a hulk­ing giant with a shaved head, sausage neck, and ugly scar slash­ing across his fore­head stood beside the Hudson.

Brad looked under the hood while I tried to make con­ver­sa­tion with the heavy. “You restore it your­self?” I asked.

“Man who fixed it up owes me mon­ey,” he said in a grav­el­ly voice. “You buy it, he’s off the hook.” From his angry scowl I gath­ered he planned to break the man’s legs if I didn’t fork over the dough.

“Looks okay,” Brad said, “but we should test-dri­ve her.”

“You can test-dri­ve her all you want after you pay me,” Mr. Con­ge­nial­i­ty snarled, “and there won’t be no refund.”

Stu­pid­ly, I paid him.

The radi­a­tor boiled over twice on the way home. Brad found some pin-holes and sol­dered them. It over­heat­ed again, so he slathered sealant over the whole thing.

Then the brakes start­ed pulling hard to the right. Brad fixed them. They did it again. He fixed them again. They did it again, and he fixed them a third time.

On the short dri­ves to and from Brad’s shop, acces­sories spon­ta­neous­ly fell off. A door han­dle, the radio aer­i­al, the Hud­son emblem on the grill, the winged hood-orna­ment, the dec­o­ra­tive chrome space­ship affixed to the trunk. These babies cost from 50 to 500 smack­ers each on the Hud­son Club web­site, which was the only place you could buy them.

My repair costs exceed­ed the Hudson’s pur­chase price by the time the Hud­son stalled out on Hunt­ing­ton Dri­ve that morn­ing when the fresh­ly sealed radi­a­tor boiled over yet again and the thrice-fixed brakes jerked to the right.

While I was wait­ing for Lester and the tow truck, a shriv­eled-up ancient woman limped out of the Wells Far­go Bank and squint­ed at my car. “Is that a Hudson?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She shuf­fled clos­er to it and peered in its rear win­dow. “When I was a young girl, me and Bob­by Dugan had us some fun in his daddy’s Hud­son,” she said, gig­gling like a teenager.

This sort of thing is a com­mon occur­rence when you own a Hud­son. Hud­sons are chick mag­nets. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, most of the chicks they attract don’t still have their own teeth. Judg­ing by the wist­ful smiles of the sweet old ladies who admired my car, myr­i­ad roman­tic trysts involv­ing cou­ples born between World Wars I and II took place in a Hudson’s roomy back seat.

“I’d give you a ride in her, ma’am,” I said, “but she’s broke down.”

“Under­stand­able. She’s near­ly as old as I am.” She touched the front fend­er gen­tly. “Thank you for the mem­o­ries,” she said in a soft voice. Still smil­ing, Bob­by Dugan’s long ago para­mour turned and hob­bled slow­ly down the side­walk to Starbucks.

Lester towed the Hud­son to Brad’s shop. He “fixed” the brakes again. Since he couldn’t find any­thing wrong with the radi­a­tor, we tried a dif­fer­ent engine coolant. On the way home, the inte­ri­or rear-view mir­ror fell from its mount and shat­tered on the floor­board. I drove to O’Reilly Auto Parts in San Gabriel to see if I could pick up a replace­ment on the cheap. The elder­ly clerk who wait­ed on me was famil­iar with Hud­sons. When I men­tioned my recur­ring boil­ing-over adven­tures, he asked if he could take a look.

Out in the park­ing lot, he unscrewed the Hudson’s radi­a­tor cap and turned it over in his hand. “This is your prob­lem,” he said. “Belongs on a Hon­da.” He rum­maged around in the dis­con­tin­ued parts room and found a 1956 Oldsmo­bile cap. “It’s sim­i­lar to a Hud­son cap,” he said. “It ough­ta work.”

It worked. Cost me $2.56. Brad’s face turned fire-engine red when I told him.

After that, the Hud­son ran great and noth­ing fell off. For about a week. We were chug­ging up Sier­ra Madre Boule­vard when the engine sput­tered. I head­ed for home in a pan­ic. Miss­ing bad­ly when I pulled in the dri­ve­way, she conked out twen­ty feet from my garage.

Mad as hell, I stomped into the kitchen and unleashed a pro­fan­i­ty-laced rant about my piece-of-crap Hudson.

“Maybe it’s out of gas,” Cindy said.

“It’s got plen­ty of gas!”

“How do you know? Thought you said the gas gauge was broken.”

“I put ten gal­lons in the damned thing two weeks ago!”

“It’s a big car. Maybe it guz­zled it up.”

“Look, I know what I’m talk­ing about! It’s not out of gas!”

“Okay, okay. I was just try­ing to help.”

Cindy’s sug­ges­tion was ridicu­lous! The Hud­son had been sit­ting in the shop almost full time since I pumped in that ten gal­lons, for pity’s sake. Just to prove I was right, I filled a five-gal­lon can at the sta­tion, poured the fuel in the Hudson’s tank, got behind the wheel, and turned the key in the ignition.

It start­ed right up.

I sat per­fect­ly still for a good five min­utes, star­ing blankly through the wind­shield, pon­der­ing betray­al, humil­i­a­tion, and the futil­i­ty of life in general.

“How’d you fix the Hud­son?” Cindy asked when I slouched back into the kitchen.

“The sol­id lifters were stuck,” I said. “I greased up the cams and lugs.”

“That’s great! I didn’t real­ize you knew so much about cars.”

“Yeah, well …”

Tak­ing care not to make eye con­tact, I retreat­ed to my home office, cranked up the com­put­er, and put the Hud­son up for sale on E‑bay.

No bid­ders. I cut the price in half. Still no action. Two more cuts brought me down to rock-bot­tom, but even bot­tom-feed­ers wouldn’t take the bait.

I began to think the Hud­son had become my Red Chief. In O. Henry’s short sto­ry, The Ran­som of Red Chief, a cou­ple of mis­cre­ants kid­nap a boy to extort a ran­som from his rich dad, but the kid is such a holy ter­ror the dad is glad to be rid of him and won’t pay. When the kid pre­tends he’s the fierce Red Chief, ties one of the kid­nap­pers to a stake, and sets his pants on fire, the bad guys end up pay­ing the dad a healthy sum to take him back.

I was on the verge of offer­ing a cash reward to any­one will­ing to take the Hud­son off my hands when a young cou­ple fell in love with her. They were friends of ours so I almost warned them off.

Almost.

I mean, come on, that car was dri­ving me nuts. Besides, the hus­band was a heavy equip­ment mechan­ic and had the skill to keep her run­ning, and just in case he couldn’t keep her run­ning, I gave them the Hud­son for free.

So in the end this sad tale turned out well for every­one. The loan shark got his cash. The mark didn’t get his legs broke. Brad made a lot of mon­ey. The Hud­son found a hap­py home. The young cou­ple is still over­joyed with her.

And, most impor­tant­ly, I’m over­joyed with­out her.

Post Script: Even smart suc­cess­ful peo­ple make trag­ic mis­takes. Jay Leno’s col­lec­tion of 169 cars includes a whole bunch of Hud­sons. His net worth is esti­mat­ed at $450,000,000. For now.

Mom woke me at dawn. I washed up, put on my new school clothes, and grabbed my Roy Rogers lunch box. She walked me down our dirt dri­ve­way and held my hand while we stood on the shoul­der of Route 60, wait­ing for the school bus.

It was the first day of the first grade, and I was scared. There were no pre-schools or kinder­gartens where I lived, so I didn’t know what to expect.

Mom was scared, too. Her hand tight­ened around mine when the bus came over the hill, and she had tears in her eyes when she helped me up the steps and sat me in the front seat.

The bus pulled away and rolled along towards Williams­burg, stop­ping to pick up kids at falling-down shacks, trail­er courts, and truck farms. At a run-down gas sta­tion, Georgie Thomp­son, anoth­er first grad­er, climbed aboard and sat next to me. Too scared to talk, nei­ther of us breathed a word until the bus pulled up in front of a dark hulk­ing brick build­ing that looked like a jail­house, where­upon Georgie said in a small voice, “Oh, God.”

Two sixth-grade girls were wait­ing for us on the curb. They pulled us by the hand into Matthew Wha­ley Ele­men­tary School and down a long hall through a swarm­ing fren­zy of shout­ing, laugh­ing kids. Georgie’s guide shoved him through a door on the left; mine pushed me into a class­room on the right.

Mrs. Pear­son, a short frail gray-haired teacher, met me at the door and sat me down at a table with oth­er dazed first graders. After a few more stunned kids trick­led into the room, she launched into a wel­come-to-school speech.

In the mid­dle of it, a tall stout woman dressed in Sun­day-go-to-church clothes appeared at the door.

“It’s the prin­ci­pal,” a girl at my table hissed. “Somebody’s in big trouble.”

“Is there a Ken­ny Oder here?” the prin­ci­pal asked.

My stom­ach did a backflip.

Mrs. Pear­son pounced on me and hand­ed me off to the prin­ci­pal. With a grip as tight as a pair of pli­ers, she pulled me across the hall into anoth­er class­room and plopped me down in a chair next to a boy slumped over a desk bawl­ing hys­ter­i­cal­ly at the top of his lungs.

“Calm down now,” the prin­ci­pal said to the boy. “Here’s the friend you asked for.”

The boy raised his head and looked at me. I sucked in my breath at the sight of my dread­ed child­hood neme­sis, Robert West. Once a week Robert vis­it­ed his ten-year-old cousin, who lived next door to me, and they teamed up to tor­ment me mer­ci­less­ly. Robert tried to make me cry every time he came around, and with his cousin’s help, he usu­al­ly suc­ceed­ed. I hat­ed him.

Robert stopped cry­ing when he saw me and clamped his sweaty hand onto mine. I tried to jerk free, but he held on like his life depend­ed on it. He scoot­ed his chair clos­er to mine and grabbed my arm with his oth­er hand. I couldn’t make him let go, so we sat like that until the prin­ci­pal final­ly returned, dis­en­tan­gled me from Robert, and took me back to my class.

“Thank you, Ken­ny,” she said. “You’ve been a big help to your friend.”

Inside my head I screamed, “He’s not my friend! He’s a big dog turd!” But out loud all I could man­age was a meek “Okay.”

I don’t remem­ber the rest of the day except that Mom hugged me for a long time when I got off the bus, and lat­er when I told her about Robert, she laughed so hard she cried.

The first grade turned out to be fun for the most part – sto­ry­time, craft time, nap time. Recess was the best. They turned us loose on a play­ground that would qual­i­fy as a killing field under today’s safe­ty stan­dards. No plas­tic slides, rub­ber mats, or guardrails, and a fall from the giant iron jun­gle gym’s mon­key bars held the promise of per­ma­nent paral­y­sis, if not out­right death.

Mirac­u­lous­ly, I didn’t get hurt on the play­ground. As it turned out, a much greater men­ace lurked on the school bus. Our bus car­ried kids in grades one through twelve, and the big kids bul­lied the lit­tle ones. I was espe­cial­ly afraid of a teenag­er I’d heard talk­ing to oth­er boys about wash­ing his hands in the blood of a deer he’d killed and stran­gling chick­ens just to hear their pan­icked death-squawks. I was care­ful to stay away from him, but one day when I got on the bus the only open seat was behind him.

He turned around and smiled at me with a wound­ed look in his eyes, sad and hurt, but mean at the same time. He reached over the seat, wrapped his hands around my throat, and began to choke me. I don’t know if the oth­er kids didn’t notice or just didn’t care, but none of them did anything.

I clawed at the boy’s wrists, but his grip only tight­ened and his sick smile grew wider. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t scream.

Pol­ly Craw­ford was a fat ugly eighth-grad­er with dirty hair who smelled bad. No one liked her. That’s why the seat next to her was emp­ty when I got on the bus.

“Let him go,” Pol­ly said.

The boy squeezed hard­er. My vision began to fade.

“I said let him go!”

“Shut up,” the boy said.

Pol­ly slapped him as hard as she could. He let go of me and lunged at Polly.

I must have faint­ed because the next thing I recall is lying on the floor, cough­ing and gagging.

There was a big fight. The dri­ver, a William and Mary stu­dent, stopped the bus, threw the boy off, picked me up, sat me beside Pol­ly, and drove on as though noth­ing had happened.

Where I lived you had to be tough, even as a lit­tle boy. For the rest of the year I sat beside Pol­ly every chance I got and avoid­ed the boy as best I could, but I didn’t report him to the prin­ci­pal or any­one else. I didn’t even tell Mom and Dad about him.

As a coun­ter­bal­ance to that god-awful trau­ma, the first grade pro­duced one of the most impor­tant learn­ing expe­ri­ences of my life. One after­noon Mrs. Pear­son arranged our chairs in a cir­cle and asked us to share sto­ries about our fathers’ jobs. The first kid said her dad was an engi­neer at VEPCO. A boy’s dad worked for Chesa­peake Bank. And so on. No one’s dad did any­thing inter­est­ing, and the sto­ries about them were dead­ly boring.

When Mrs. Pear­son called on me, I start­ed to say my dad sold cars, but a strange feel­ing came over me and I fell silent.

“Ken­ny?” Mrs. Pear­son said.

I looked at her blankly.

“What does your father do for a liv­ing?” she said, try­ing to get me back on track.

The strange feel­ing swelled up inside me. “My dad dri­ves air­planes in big races every Sat­ur­day in Rich­mond,” I said.

The kids perked up.

“Your dad races air­planes?” the boy next to me said, awe-struck.

“Yeah. He almost crashed in the last race.”

Every­one stared at me, wide-eyed.

Ideas bub­bled up so fast my mouth could bare­ly keep pace with my brain. I put Dad in a blue plane shaped like a cig­ar with wings, small­er than the oth­ers, but sneaky fast, dip­ping, ris­ing, zig-zag­ging, and soar­ing. The kids were on the edge of their chairs when Dad lost pow­er and had to use the gaso­line choke to restart the engine and pull the plane up off the ground just before it crashed, and they were hang­ing on my every word when Dad opened the throt­tle, steadi­ly gained on the oth­er planes, caught the leader at the end, and won by a nosecone.

After the kids stopped cheer­ing, I looked at Mrs. Pear­son. Her mouth was hang­ing open. A chill went up my spine. She knows it’s a big lie, I thought. She’s going to yell at me.

But she didn’t yell. Instead, she said, “That was a won­der­ful sto­ry, Ken­ny, and you told it well.”

Then she called on the girl to my left, whose father was an accoun­tant. While the girl droned on about keep­ing track of bills, Mrs. Pear­son smiled at me. I smiled back, and a bond formed between us that inspired me long after I left her class.

That was my first sto­ry; it was real­ly fun to tell; and it set me on a long wind­ing path that even­tu­al­ly led to Whip­poor­will Hollow.

Sev­er­al months ago, almost sev­en decades after Dad won that air­plane race, my deep well of sto­ries final­ly seemed to have run dry. I tried hard, but noth­ing good came forth. With more than a lit­tle sad­ness, I stopped writ­ing and told Bob­bye to let my blog go qui­et­ly into that goodnight.

A few weeks passed. Then Against All Odds cried out to me. Turn­ing Points came along soon after­wards. The Down­fall fol­lowed. Now this one. As I close it out, I hear more ghost-voic­es whis­per­ing from the bot­tom of that deep well.

The time to quit may come some­day, but it seems I’m not there yet.

Post Script: “There is no greater agony than bear­ing an untold sto­ry inside you.” Maya Angelou

On a cold clear day in Jan­u­ary 1987, Wen­dell Blake was pick­ing up trash in Siev­er Manufacturing’s Los Ange­les plant park­ing lot at 9:30 a.m. when he heard the grat­ing sound of met­al scrap­ing against met­al and looked up to see a tall man he rec­og­nized from com­pa­ny town-hall meet­ings, walk­ing between cars four rows away, lean­ing toward the car on his right with his arm down at his side. The scrap­ing sound stopped when the man came to the rear of the car. He walked on through the lot to a gray Mer­cedes, climbed in, and drove away.

Although Blake hadn’t actu­al­ly seen the man’s hand come in con­tact with the car, he was cer­tain he had keyed it. A clos­er look at the car con­firmed his con­clu­sion. A deep scar ran along its side from head­light to taillight.

It took Blake an hour to muster the courage to report what he’d seen to security.

The fol­low­ing week, Siev­er fired James Lock­hart, its Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer, for van­dal­iz­ing an employee’s car. Lock­hart denied scratch­ing the car and sued Siev­er. My law firm rep­re­sent­ed the com­pa­ny, and I was assigned to defend the case.

Lockhart’s per­son­nel file glowed in the dark. He received uni­form­ly excel­lent per­for­mance reviews through­out his 36 years with the com­pa­ny, climb­ing the cor­po­rate lad­der steadi­ly to become its sec­ond high­est-rank­ing exec­u­tive with a half-mil­lion-dol­lar annu­al salary.

Joyce Aguilar owned the scratched car, a blue 1984 Chevro­let Caprice. It was unmarked when she parked it in the lot the morn­ing Lock­hart walked by. Five employ­ees had report­ed van­dal­ism of their cars in Siever’s lot since the fall of 1986, all scratched in the same man­ner as Aguilar’s Caprice. All the employ­ees, includ­ing Aguilar, worked in low-lev­el jobs. None of them had ever dealt direct­ly with Lockhart.

Lockhart’s work cal­en­dar con­firmed he left the build­ing the day in ques­tion at 9:30 a.m. to attend an off-site meet­ing and he was present at the plant when the oth­er five cars were keyed.

Blake had worked for Siev­er for six years as a Cus­to­di­an in the Main­te­nance Depart­ment. His per­son­nel file was unre­mark­able: aver­age rat­ings, no com­men­da­tions, no dis­ci­pline. He had nev­er inter­act­ed with Lockhart.

I could find no motive for Lock­hart to van­dal­ize Aguilar’s car or for Blake to lie about him.

Ward Dun­ham, the CEO, made the deci­sion to dis­charge Lock­hart. “Blake was afraid he’d be fired for going against Jim,” he told me. “I admired him for com­ing for­ward, and I believed him. When I met with Jim, his angry denials didn’t ring true. Under­neath his defen­sive­ness, I sensed some sort of prob­lem. I tried to get him to open up, but that only made him angri­er. If he’d admit­ted the van­dal­ism, we might have been able to work some­thing out, but he wouldn’t give an inch. I felt I had no choice but to let him go.”

I ques­tioned Blake in Siever’s con­fer­ence room. A short stocky African Amer­i­can man, push­ing forty, dressed in grease-smudged kha­ki work clothes, he answered my ques­tions in a halt­ing voice for an hour. I couldn’t shake his story.

His answer to my last ques­tion was telling. “Why did you come for­ward, Mr. Blake?” I asked. “Why didn’t you lay low to stay out of trouble?”

He gave me a tired look. “The next car he scratched would be my fault much as him.”

I believed Blake.

I took Lockhart’s depo­si­tion. Six­ty-two years old, six-feet-four with a mane of gray hair, dressed in a blue suit, white shirt, and yel­low tie, he was a por­trait of integri­ty. He said he’d worked long and hard to build a suc­cess­ful career at Siev­er. “The idea that I’d throw it all away to van­dal­ize someone’s auto­mo­bile is ludicrous.”

I believed Lockhart.

Some­thing had to give. Either Blake was mis­tak­en or Lock­hart was men­tal­ly ill. It wor­ried me that Blake hadn’t actu­al­ly seen Lockhart’s hand press­ing a key against the car. I had Blake take me to the park­ing lot and walk me through the inci­dent. The facts and cir­cum­stances seemed con­clu­sive. Based on what Blake saw and heard, Lock­hart keyed the car.

I hired a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor to comb through Lockhart’s back­ground. The first from his fam­i­ly to go to col­lege, he joined Siev­er as an entry-lev­el man­ag­er and excelled in every job he held as he rose to the top. He’d been hap­pi­ly mar­ried for 34 years and was active in church, com­mu­ni­ty, and char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions. If he was men­tal­ly ill, he hid it well.

Since I couldn’t con­vince myself Lock­hart was lying even though Siev­er was pay­ing me, I fig­ured unbi­ased jurors might give him the ben­e­fit of the doubt. To avoid that risk, I decid­ed to try to take the case away from the jury.

The law of wrong­ful dis­charge was evolv­ing in Cal­i­for­nia. Some courts implied a com­pa­ny could fire an employ­ee only for “just cause,” an objec­tive stan­dard. Oth­ers held that a dis­charge deci­sion was law­ful if it was made in good faith. Under that stan­dard, Lockhart’s ter­mi­na­tion might be law­ful if Siev­er sin­cere­ly believed he keyed Aguilar’s car, whether or not he real­ly did it.

Cit­ing that case law, I filed a motion ask­ing the judge to enter a judg­ment in Siever’s favor as a mat­ter of law with­out a jury tri­al because there was no evi­dence Siev­er fired Lock­hart for any rea­son oth­er than its good faith belief he van­dal­ized Aguilar’s car.

As I wrote the brief in sup­port of the motion, I couldn’t answer the ques­tion that had nagged me since I took the case: Why would a pow­er­ful exec­u­tive risk his career and good name to scratch the car of an employ­ee he didn’t know?

At the hear­ing, while the judge grilled me about the lim­its of the good faith stan­dard, I noticed him star­ing at Lock­hart, sit­ting in the gallery. My nag­ging ques­tion trou­bles the judge, too, I thought. Con­vinced through­out oral argu­ment that I was going down in flames, I was shocked when the judge grant­ed my motion.

Lockhart’s lawyer was shocked, too. His Notice of Appeal hit my desk with light­ning speed.

While the appeal was pend­ing, the pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor found an obscure mis­de­meanor con­vic­tion against Lock­hart. In July, 1986, a Nordstrom’s store clerk caught him try­ing to shoplift a shirt and pair of slacks tucked under his jacket.

The sim­i­lar­i­ty to the car van­dal­ism was strik­ing, a pet­ty crime Lock­hart had no rea­son to com­mit. That clinched it for me. As Ward Dun­ham had sensed, some sort of emo­tion­al prob­lem lurked beneath Lockhart’s image of right­eous probity.

It was too late to add the con­vic­tion to the record on appeal, so I put it in my pock­et. If we were reversed and the case went to tri­al, I hoped to pull a Per­ry Mason and hit Lock­hart with it on the wit­ness stand.

I didn’t get the chance. The appel­late court three-judge-pan­el ruled in Siever’s favor and Lock­hart didn’t appeal the deci­sion to the Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court. His years of ser­vice and age qual­i­fied him for a sub­stan­tial pen­sion despite his dis­charge, so he aban­doned the case, took his retire­ment ben­e­fit, and moved to north­ern California’s wine country.

The case was closed. I’d secured the desired result, and Siev­er was pleased with my work. All was right with the world.

Then came the sur­prise that haunts me still. Over a six-week peri­od in the spring of 1991, three months after Lock­hart left Los Ange­les, some­one van­dal­ized four cars in Siever’s park­ing lot. All were keyed in the same man­ner as the 1986–87 inci­dents with a deep scar run­ning from head­light to tail­light. One of the four cars scratched was Joyce Aguilar’s Chevy Caprice.

“I’m cer­tain Jim van­dal­ized the first set of cars,” Ward Dun­ham told me. “As far as I’m con­cerned, that shoplift­ing con­vic­tion removes all doubt. This new wave has to be the work of a copycat.”

I wasn’t so sure. Two things wor­ried me: our case against Lock­hart turned on a sin­gle eye wit­ness; and the odds against dif­fer­ent unre­lat­ed van­dals ran­dom­ly tar­get­ing Aguilar’s Chevy Caprice four years apart seemed astro­nom­i­cal. “It might be a good idea,” I told Dun­ham, “to watch Wen­dell Blake and Joyce Aguilar for a while.”

Siev­er put Aguilar and Blake under covert sur­veil­lance at work. They did noth­ing sus­pi­cious. Time passed. No new inci­dents occurred. Siev­er dropped its inves­ti­ga­tion, and the 1991 van­dal was nev­er identified.

Thir­ty-five years after I first opened the case file, I still wor­ry that I helped destroy an inno­cent man’s career. Search­ing for reas­sur­ance as I wrote this, I found a sur­pris­ing num­ber of con­vic­tions of high­ly suc­cess­ful peo­ple for com­mit­ting sense­less small crimes. Most noto­ri­ous­ly, the actress, Winona Ryder, shoplift­ed clothes and jew­el­ry from Saks Fifth Avenue. Most of these peo­ple suf­fered from depres­sion and repressed anger. Maybe Lock­hart was such a per­son. If so, he betrayed no hint of it when I took his depo­si­tion in 1987, and in pho­tos of his eighty-eighth birth­day par­ty post­ed on an old Face­book page, he still looked like a paragon of virtue, con­tent and at peace with himself.

Who com­mit­ted these crimes? Lock­hart and a copy­cat? Blake? Aguilar? Or some­one else? Mad­den­ing­ly, I’ll nev­er know for sure. Lock­hart died peace­ful­ly at home in 2016 at the age of 91, tak­ing the truth with him to his grave.

Post Script: To pro­tect the priv­i­lege, I changed a few of the less impor­tant facts and the names of Lock­hart, the com­pa­ny, and its employees.