Whodunit Fans Can Peruse Police Files Online

The butler did it, but did he have permission?

Fans of whodunits should turn to the LAPD’s website at www.lapd online.org/portal/insidethelapd. php, specifically, to the “Art Theft Case Files.” Some of the characters you’ll read about include:

* A young man who stole some Tibetan and Nepalese artifacts in New York and was traced to a house in L.A., where the items were found -- along with a group of potbellied pigs “rooting around in a makeshift pen in the dining room. There was hay and dirt on the floor” and, well, you can guess.

* An ex-con who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars of collectibles from an auction house but tried to throw suspicion off himself by telling police: “I go by the same code of all people who have been to the pen -- the code of honesty.” (He went back to the pen.)

* A butler in a Bel-Air estate who removed an Impressionist oil painting from its frame and replaced it with a photograph of same -- where it went unnoticed for three months. A jury later found him not guilty of theft after he maintained that when he sold the real painting (for more than $500,000), he was merely acting as the agent of the woman who lived there (the woman who had reported the painting missing).

The slippery slope of typos: Andy Serrano of L.A. spotted a sign at a rock-climbing school in Maine that was supposed to say it’s an “exciting” sport but used another word that could have negative connotations for participants (see accompanying).

Just don’t get too close to the campfire! “While traveling in Kauai,” Paul Chilkov wrote, “we noticed a sign to which my 12-year-old son, Max, responded by saying, ‘I guess nudity is OK if you have a permit.’ ” (see accompanying)

Decaf is one thing ... : On a coffee cup sleeve, C. McKenzie of Altadena saw a notation indicating that something besides beans was used to make the brew (see accompanying).

Just the thing to go with paper coffee: At a deli in downtown L.A., JoAnne Fink of Sherman Oaks reported, “The first sandwich listed on the menu board is ‘cotton’ salami. I guess it has more fiber and less fat than cotto salami.”

The world of low finance: On Don Barrett’s laradio.com site, Jerry Clark wrote: “Kmart, which had been in bankruptcy, just bought Sears. I have a suggestion for the name of the new company: Sears and No-bucks.”

miscelLAny: Chuck Panama of L.A. wonders if “management stands a chance” in negotiations with the California School Employees Assn., whose labor relations representative is named Margie Strike.