Forty Thieves (21 page)

“I’m fine,” Nicole said. “Thanks for asking.”

Ed switched on the flashlight and held its beam on the woman. “She’s not. Who is she?”

Nicole looked down at her. “She’s got a wedding ring on, so I assume she’s his wife. I’ll see if I can find her purse and check.”

She took his flashlight, went inside the bedroom, surveyed the room, and saw a purse hanging on the doorknob of the closet. She looked inside, found a small wallet, and opened it. “License says she’s Leslie Ann Kuyper, DOB June sixteenth, nineteen eighty-six. Her voice sounded a lot younger. I guess she used her maiden name.”

“I don’t like that,” Ed said.

“I know,” Nicole said. “This credit card says she’s Leslie Boylan. Like her better now?”

“No. Let’s start looking.”

“Any idea what we’re looking for?”

He said, “Anything that will tell us who his client was. An address book, other cell phones, a computer. And anything that has our name on it, or our address.”

She handed Ed the flashlight, returned the wallet to the purse, and let it swing back on its strap. “I’ll look around up here. Why don’t you start searching the first floor?”

“All right.” Ed left the room and she heard him going down the stairs. She reached into the large walk-in closet and found the light switch, then closed the door behind her before she turned it on so the light wouldn’t show through the bedroom window.

She had read somewhere that people who hid things in their houses usually hid them close to where they slept. She wasn’t sure if that applied to the whole population, but the
kind of people she and Ed had been hired to kill seemed to do things that way. They tended to be people who wanted to protect their valuables themselves, and they wanted to be able to snatch them up quickly and get out of the house before whatever they’d done caught up with them.

Nicole opened the drawers of the built-in dressers. She found a very thin pair of leather gloves that belonged to the dead woman, and put them on to search. She started with the bottom drawers and worked her way up. She looked for papers, notebooks, flash drives, disks. About halfway up in the dresser across the room she found a drawer with a false bottom. She pried it up and found the money. It was all in neat, banded stacks of hundreds, laid in evenly to form a foundation for the false drawer bottom. The cash wasn’t actually hidden, just stored as though Boylan wanted to keep the money separate and out of the way. She loaded the stacks of bills into a pillowcase and set it by the door so she would remember to take it. After that she found a gun in an upper drawer, but nothing else that was of any interest.

She saw that the woman had some pretty good jewelry, but taking it to a jewelry store to have it melted and reset would make the jeweler call the insurance companies to see if it was stolen.

She moved out to the rest of the bedroom, working with only the light from inside the closet. There was another gun in the nightstand on Boylan’s side. There was nothing that told her anything she didn’t already know. She moved to the next bedroom, the next, and the next. They were all spare rooms that had not been in use, and there wasn’t anything hidden in, behind, or under any of the furniture.

Ed looked up when he heard her coming down the stairs, and saw the pillowcase. “What did you find?”

“A drawer full of cash and a couple of guns. I left the guns.”

“Were you careful about prints and things?”

She held up her gloved hand. “Yeah. Were you?”

He held up his hand and showed her a bright yellow rubber glove. “I found these in the kitchen.”

“Find anything besides rubber gloves?”

“Just a laptop computer. We’ll never get into that. Nothing about the client. I think we’re in trouble,” he said. “Don’t leave anything here. We aren’t going to be able to come back.”

16

Sid and Ronnie Abel rode the back elevator down to the lower level of their hotel’s underground garage and got into their latest rental car. Sid drove up the ramp to the ground level and out into the side street that opened onto Calabasas Road. It was a bright, hot morning and the sun was already high in the sky. As they waited at the traffic signal, Sid said, “That was a really good bluff you hit on yesterday with Kirsten Tilson.”

“Do you mean the video?”

“That’s what I mean,” Sid said.

“Think about it. We knew before we called her that she’d had an affair with Ballantine. When we called her, she claimed she barely knew him, and yet she was willing to meet with us privately to talk about it. Something had to be motivating that.”

“Sure. She didn’t want to be embarrassed.”

“She’s a bundle of contradictions,” Ronnie said. “She’s a bit of a racist, but Ballantine’s race gave being with him a titillating edge for her. She says they didn’t like each other, but they were still seeing each other three years later.”

“She’s an ordinary liar, but you made up the imaginary sex tape,” Sid said. “You’re the champ.”

“It’s not imaginary,” said Ronnie.

“It’s not?”

“If a video doesn’t exist, then something like it does. Ballantine was a very secretive man. Why would he tell his ex-wife about the women he was seeing? Hardly. Would she even listen? Doubtful. She had divorced him, taken the kids, and moved to another city. She made a point of saying that they hadn’t spoken in three years. She must have found something among his belongings after he was dead.”

“Whatever the evidence was, Kirsten Tilson didn’t know about the other women. She really wanted to know who else was on the list.”

“Maybe she sees herself as the wronged party,” said Ronnie. “Maybe because she saw him first.”

“Interesting woman.”

“She’d be pleased to hear you say that,” Ronnie said. “She thinks so too. Just remember you’re the same age as the other directors. And her father.”

“He’s dead.”

“Yes.” Ronnie smiled. “Probably old age.”

“I’m flattered that you’re so possessive.”

“Let’s go see the next girlfriend.”

They had arranged to meet the next woman on the list in a shaded park in Burbank near St. Joseph Medical Center on Bob Hope Drive. They drove up the street scanning for her, but didn’t see a lone woman sitting in a car, and this morning the park appeared to be nearly empty. A few young women—mothers or nannies—watched small children playing, and a couple of women in hospital scrubs walked briskly along
a path together. The Abels stopped and remained in their rental car, studying the surrounding area.

After a few minutes Ronnie said, “You’re looking at the roofs of the buildings on Alameda.”

“I’m looking at everything, and so are you.”

“I’m looking for Linda Bourget. You’re looking for the people who’ve been trying to kill us. You think Linda Bourget is setting us up for them?”

“No, or we wouldn’t be sitting here. But she did choose this as the place to meet with us, and she is late.”

Ronnie looked to the right into the park, craning her neck to look over her shoulder. “Besides the rooftops, there’s a lot of traffic along the street, and there are a few ways of getting in and out of here on foot.”

“I think that might be her coming across the park from the hospital.”

They watched as a slim woman in her thirties walked toward them. She had long dark hair and an olive complexion, and she was wearing a pair of designer jeans and low sandals, with a white top with a V neck and short sleeves. She wore a pair of sunglasses that were large enough to keep much of her face from being seen, and she seemed to be looking down most of the time, studying the path her feet were following.

Ronnie focused her attention on the woman, who was closer now, walking directly toward them. She spoke softly to Sid. “Expensive clothes. Those jeans are hard to find, let alone buy. The purse cost a few thousand.”

“Let’s get out and happen to run into her so this looks social.”

They got out of their car and walked into the park, following the marked path of fine gravel, so their trajectory met hers. “Miss Bourget?” said Ronnie.

The woman didn’t speak, but she pivoted on her heel and walked with them. After a few steps she said, “You’re the Abels?”

“Yes,” said Ronnie. “Thank you for taking the time to see us. I’m Ronnie, and this is Sid.”

“I didn’t really have a choice,” said Linda Bourget. “I’ve expected this day to come, and so I’ve been preparing myself for a long time. If we can make our talk brief, I would appreciate it. I’m supposed to be at lunch with my sister. A sister is the only one you can really trust to lie for you. Anyone else might decide she’s not such a good friend after all. A sister is stuck with you.”

Ronnie began. “As I told you on the phone, we’ve been hired to investigate James Ballantine’s murder. We didn’t know very much about him, so we’re asking people who knew him to tell us what they know.”

“Okay. I’ll try to be as honest as I can,” said Linda Bourget.

“Let’s start with the basics,” said Sid. “When did you begin dating Mr. Ballantine?”

“That’s not as simple a question as you make it sound,” she said.

“I don’t understand,” said Ronnie. “When I called and told you why we wanted to talk to you, I thought you said we’d come to the right person.”

“You have,” Linda said. “I’ve waited for a year to have somebody come and talk to me about him. I thought the police would come in the first few days, but they didn’t.
Then it was weeks, and then months. I kept thinking that they had already figured out who killed James and decided I didn’t matter, but they hadn’t.”

“No, they hadn’t,” said Sid. “We’re trying, and we need your help.”

“To begin with, we weren’t dating,” Linda said. “We didn’t have a regular, ordinary relationship.”

Sid’s and Ronnie’s eyes flicked toward each other and Ronnie said, “How was it different?”

“I was married. If I had been caught with James, I would have lost my husband and my two children. James and I met in secret.”

Ronnie said, “How did you first get to know him?”

“James and I were seated next to each other on an airplane, a red-eye from Chicago to Los Angeles. I was flying home from New York. He was flying from Bloomington, Indiana, where he was a professor. We had to stop in Chicago to change flights, but the weather was bad, so our planes arrived late, and our flight took off without us. We both ended up at the airline desk and they put us on the next flight, which left at ten thirty in the evening. The time went on and the airport started to empty out a bit. We sat and talked a little. Then he asked me if I’d like to have a drink with him. I did, we talked some more, and then our flight was announced. We said good-bye and went to the gate. When I got to my seat, I couldn’t believe it. We were both right at the back of the plane—the last seats to go—and together.”

“It must have seemed as though it was fated,” said Ronnie.

“I dismissed that thought, because I had already picked the fate I wanted,” Linda said. “It sounds crazy, but I loved my husband. We had two beautiful children, a boy and a girl.
I had a great life—exactly the life I had grown up wanting—and I didn’t want to lose it. But just this one time, I got tempted.”

“If you loved your husband, why do this?”

“It just sort of happened. The circumstances were perfect. I had already called my husband when my flight came in too late to get to Los Angeles, and said I’d be staying in a Chicago hotel and take a flight out in the morning. The replacement flight just opened up because another couple hadn’t made it to take their seats,” she said. “And James and I had been talking and we liked each other. He had that quality. He could make a woman know, without any doubt, but without anything embarrassing, that he liked her. When he looked at you, there was no way not to see yourself as he saw you—beautiful.”

“You are beautiful,” Ronnie said. “That can’t have been a surprise to you.”

“Thank you. But there was more than saying I was pretty. He made me feel fascinating. Exciting. Those are not things that I felt at home very often in those days. I was a mother with two young children and a husband who was always at work. He was a unit production manager on a television show. He made good money and had a great future, but his daily life didn’t have much to do with mine. James Ballantine made me feel like a different person. And the way we were thrown together, the universe seemed to be telling me giving in was okay. So I acted like that different person.”

“And you risked everything on a whim?” said Ronnie.

“Not on a whim,” Linda said. “Before James ever touched me I thought about what I would say and do if it happened. That was something else I learned along the way. We’re
natural sinners. Nobody had to tell me how to go about any of this. I just knew. I checked to see when the next morning flight from Chicago would arrive at LAX and planned to get a shuttle to take me home from the hotel at the right time. I planned everything I was going to do and say to get away with this before I agreed to it. And then I went with James to the hotel he’d booked for his interview visit. He went to the desk, checked in and got his room key, and I met him there.”

Sid said, “Were you ever discovered?”

“No,” she said. “Never. I did everything I could to make sure there was no way I’d get caught. James didn’t have risks like mine. He was getting rid of the people who would have blamed him. He had given notice that he was leaving the university where he worked, and had begun to let his communications with friends and relatives in the East gradually die out. He wasn’t divorced yet, but he knew he was going to be.”

“Did his doing all of that at once strike you as odd at the time?” asked Ronnie. “Maybe self-destructive?”

“I didn’t think that way,” she said. “While all of that was going on, I was thinking that it was making me safer. Nobody from his world would discover us, and blow things up. I still wanted to keep the life I had.”

Ronnie said, “I understand. There were fewer people to notice anything, so it was easier to keep things a secret.”

“I didn’t really understand it,” Linda said. “Maybe I don’t even now. He was reinventing himself, and I didn’t know why. When we met, we were both people who had lives and relationships to protect, but were just taking an exciting and brief peek into another life—not the life we should have had, or anything like that. It was just a secret world that
didn’t bring any responsibilities or failures or boredom. In it we were wild and sexy and glamorous. It was fun to visit that world once in a while, and then go back to reality. I was pretending to go to a therapist once a week, but I was seeing James instead.”