Forty Thieves by Thomas Perry Read Free Book Online

kept at it until they had each read every bit of paper that Hemphill had given them. At eleven o’clock they went into the kitchen, where Sid poured them each a glass of scotch on ice, and then to the living room. Ronnie switched on the television and they watched the local news at a low volume while they talked. “Did you hear from Mitch or Janice today?” said Sid.
    “Mitch texted me. He wanted to know what to get Nancy for their anniversary.”
    “A new husband who knows what she wants.”
    “Nice, Sid. That’s our son. And Janice wants to know if we can fly to Chicago for Thanksgiving.”
    “Who the hell knows what he’ll be doing in eight months? What kind of life would that be?”
    “Never been my problem,” said Ronnie. “For the past thirty years I’ve been looking forward to being bored. I’m just not sure I want to go fifteen hundred miles for that and a dry turkey.”
    “Nice, Veronica. That’s our daughter.”
    They both knew they would go, and that Sid would make the plane reservations the next day, before prices began their inexorable rise month by month until holiday season. If he forgot, she would remind him. He stood, holding his glass, and took a step toward the bar.
    “Better not drink too much if you still want to fool around,” she said.
    He set the glass down on its coaster and sat down on the couch beside her. “I just don’t want to rush you.”
    “The hell you don’t.” She kissed his cheek, stood, and walked off toward the hallway to the bedroom.
    It was afternoon the next day when they drove north on the 170 Freeway toward the northern part of the San Fernando Valley. Away from the city center past the hillside houses that belonged to the rich or the optimistic were pockets of poverty that hadn’t gotten much better than they’d been before World War II, only more crowded. Beyond them were the old places that were not small ranches anymore, but still had enough land to pasture and stable horses. More and more of the land had been broken up into communities that had no reason to be built except that the population never stopped spreading outward to cover any empty space. Ronnie kept looking at the picture of the storm drain map she had taken with her cell phone in the DPW office, and then switching to the GPS map for their present location.
    “One of these streets ahead is Cobblestone Way,” she said. “Keep your eyes open for the sign, and don’t drive so fast.”
    “There’s traffic building up behind me,” he said.
    She spun around in her seat to glance at the empty road behind him. “There is exactly one car, and it’s half a mile back.”
    “Sure,” he said. “Because he doesn’t want to crowd me. Here’s Cobblestone already. Good thing I drove fast.” Sid turned and they moved slowly up the side street. The houses were all new, all two-story buildings on lots they filled almost completely. There was a miniature Tuscan villa, a Cape Cod with clapboards, a Spanish-style house, a Tudor. It didn’ttake the eye long to notice that they were all made from a single set of plans, with variations in roof material, siding, and windows to imply a variety of styles. The next series had the same selection of styles, but used a mirror image of the sequence, so the garage was on the left and the entrance door on the right.
    “This is the first possibility,” Ronnie said. “Nothing that’s here existed a year ago. The storm drains got closed in on March fifteenth, and the final stage of paving happened on April second. When James Ballantine turned up in the storm drain in North Hollywood, this was one place where he could have started. He was at work on March fourth, and was found March sixth. It would have been on or just before March fifth.”
    “Okay,” said Sid. “So I’m picturing this block on March fifth. It was raining hard, and had been, on and off, for a couple of days. If these houses hadn’t been framed and closed in yet, there wouldn’t be any