“What’s not there?”
“Springfield’s there, but not the house. It’s been torn down. Attached to the construction fence is an architect’s rendering of how the new place will look, and it’s labeled THE CHEN RESIDENCE. No work has begun yet, no construction crew on site. They’re no doubt still in the permitting stage. I’ll talk to someone tomorrow.”
Rishona was a portrait of skepticism. “Jane wouldn’t sell, move, not give you a current address. It’s a violation of rules.”
The Silverman house was stoutly built, with snug masoncraft and tight joinery, but somehow the sudden storm pressed a vague draft through the dining room. In the crystal cups, the smooth and steady candle flames elongated and fluttered like serpent tongues.
Nathan said, “It would also be a violation of the rules if she changed her name to Chen and didn’t tell us. And whatever’s about to come in from Los Angeles…it’s not going to be good, Rishona.”
“Now, Nate, Jane is the last person I know who might break bad. Other than you.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Nathan said as the hard rain fell even harder, as saving four hundred bucks with a do-it-yourself repair seemed less wise by the minute. “Although I’m probably wrong, I think she might be in some kind of trouble not of her making, so bad she can’t bring it even to me.”
7
* * *
SHERMAN OAKS had a higher percentage of citizens over the age of sixty-five than most of the communities in Los Angeles County. The average household size—two—was among the lowest in Southern California. It was in general a quiet town, especially in the streets of pricy homes in the hills.
The stately house was brick with cast-work window surrounds and pediments. A pair of proud stone lions flanked the front steps, as if this were a library or courthouse, although the resident had no interest in libraries and imagined himself too clever ever to be standing before a judge in a courthouse.
Low pathway lanterns flanked the front walk. A carriage lamp by the door cast a welcoming glow across the porch. Light warmed the downstairs windows, but the upstairs was dark.
Two years earlier, at the age of fifty-four and fifty-three respectively, Richard and Berniece Branwick, who still owned the residence, had taken early retirement and moved to Scottsdale, Arizona. They had worked hard, but their extended time in the sun came courtesy of their only child, Robert, who was a great success in his chosen profession.
Jane parked across the street from the house and two doors uphill. She used the binoculars to pull the residence close, and for a while she studied the place.
No one would be stationed outside of the house. This wasn’t an area where armed security was common. If neighbors were to see a man lurking in the shadows, they would call the police. The LAPD served Sherman Oaks out of the Van Nuys Station on Sylmar Avenue; they wouldn’t be dismissive about such a report from this neighborhood.
Anyway, Robert Branwick didn’t think he needed security here, except for the standard home-alarm system to foil burglars.
If he suspected she knew this address and name, he wouldn’t be here. Not now. Not ever.
He might even be home alone, though probably not. Being alone usually made his type restless. Solitude risked self-reflection.
Two doors uphill, a house stood with no faintest glow at any window. Evidently the residents were away or out for the evening.
After putting on the black-and-silver gloves, Jane crossed the street and went to the back of the dark house, alert for a dog.
Beyond the patio lay a deep backyard. Privacy walls separated the flanking properties, but no fence defined the end of the lawn, where a woodlet rose at the brink of a shallow ravine.
The inky trees silvered with moonlight were like a forest dreamed into existence by an artist with etching needles, a black-wax ground board, and an eye for the eerie.
The property downhill of the first had a wall all the way around, concrete blocks clothed in stucco. With a small flashlight, she found her way between the stucco and trees, past a plank gate, to the wall behind the Branwick house, where she switched it off.
Here no gate offered entrance, but the wall was only seven feet high, easily scaled. At the top, she sat on the cast-concrete cap for a minute, studying the night-veiled yard and the swimming pool where the flotsam of a broken moon floated on rippling black water.
She dropped to the lawn. Circled the pool.
Pale window light fanned onto the covered patio, and through those panes, Jane could see a kitchen and breakfast area at the west end of the house. No one in either space.
At the east end lay a family room. Beyond a pair of sliding glass doors, facing away from the patio, a couple sat in a large gray sectional, watching a car-chase scene on a wall-mounted flat-screen TV. The roar of supercharged engines and pounding music penetrated the windows.
Jane ventured to the kitchen door and tried it. Locked.
The movie boomed, but in the house’s open floor plan, the kitchen lay too close to the people in the family room. If the car chase ended and a moment of silence followed just as she pulled the trigger of the LockAid, the snap of its spring and the click of the lock’s pin tumblers might catch their attention.
She went to the west wide of the house. At the midpoint of that long wall, a single French door faced onto a pocket garden where two wrought-iron chairs flanked a basin-and-pedestal fountain that was currently not operating.
No lamp brightened the room beyond the door, but an interior door admitted some light from a hallway. The room appeared to be a study: the shadowy suggestion of a desk, bookshelves, an armchair.
Jane holstered the pistol. A quick flicker of flashlight revealed a mortise lock with a deadbolt cylinder in the escutcheon.
Earlier, she’d tethered the lock-release gun to her belt with a shoelace. Now she eased its thin pick into the keyway, under the pin tumblers. When she pulled the trigger, the flat spring snapped the pick upward, throwing some pins to the shear line, out of the way. She pulled the trigger four times before the lock was disengaged.
Drawing the pistol, she stepped inside. Closed the door behind her. A study. Computer on the desk. Instead of books on the shelves, there were high-end collectible Star Wars figures.
From the back of the house came the squeal of tires, racing engines, gunfire, music scored to insist on excitement even if the visuals and story didn’t deliver any.
She eased into the brightly lighted hallway, hesitated, and moved toward the front of the house for a quick reconnoiter. From the foyer, she could see into the dining room on one side and the living room on the other, both lamplit and cozy and deserted.
Returning along the hall, she reached the kitchen doorway just as a young blond woman appeared from the family room and opened the refrigerator, back to Jane, unaware of an intruder.
The girl was dressed to seduce in tight silky pants and a midriff-baring blouse with lacework.
Jane holstered the gun, took in hand the small spray bottle of chloroform, entered the big kitchen, and moved past the archway that provided a clear view of the family room, counting on the movie to keep the attention of the guy in there.
Fortune favors the bold, except when it doesn’t.
She stepped behind the fridge browser, who was deciding which of five soft drinks to choose.
Before the blonde might have a can of soda in hand and drop it, Jane said softly, “Pepsi.”