detractorslaw enforcement and insurers included. Twenty-four-hour convenience stores were constantly warned about plastering advertising posters over exterior windows. Maintaining a clear, well-lit line of sight didn't prevent robberies, but did discourage them.
The deHaven house was dark, inside and out. Jack supposed in her dash to make her afternoon flight, Belle had neglected to switch on any lamps or the exterior lights. Illumination from the solar-powered landscape lights wouldn't attract a self-respecting moth.
Odds were that tiny interior flicker he'd seen was an electronic thermostat cycling on or off. A wink of lightning reflected in a picture or in a mirror. Ninety-nine to one, it was a miserable private detective's imagination begging for an excuse to bail out of his car.
He exited the Taurus, staying to the soggy shadows. His stride was brisk, but as normal as a man could fake whose feet felt as though they'd been encased in concrete. That juke-and-weave-between-the-tree-trunks crap was for spy movies and TV gumshoes. Act like a rational, law-abiding reason exists for walking around in the soup at midnight, and unseen witnesses will assume you're just a schmuck out looking for an escaped cat.
A wide berth was given the motion-detector lights trained down on the three-bay garage doors. The soffit overhanging the solid side wall had no security devices; one lurked under the rear corner, monitoring the gate accessing the backyard.
"Contemporary rustic" was Belle's term for the joint's overall design. Jack figured the thick, six-foot fieldstone wall enclosing the back half of the property met the rustic specs, but it was almost as easy to climb as a ladder.
The moment he dropped to the other side, he crossed the line between a blow-off trespassing charge and the real, indefensible deal. The difference could cost him his license. Fictional P.I.s can afford to play fast and loose with the law. Credentialed investigators don't jaywalk, much less break-and-enter presumably after the fact.
The Realtor who'd listed the other decoy house had obtained permission from its owner for Jack's one-guy sting operation. Here, if worse came to handcuffs, Belle would lie for him. He was almost sure of it.
Jack flattened himself against the house to evade any security camera's electronic eye. Sliding sideward, his windbreaker scraped the irregular stone surfacea noise louder by several decibels to his ears than it actually was. So was the slurp of his crepe-soled oxfords sinking in a shallow gully carved by the downspout's runoff.
Progress halted at a heat-pump unit camouflaged by horseshoed shrubbery. Go around, and a motion detector would nail him. There was almost but not quite enough space to giant-step over the unit's conduits and slither behind it. From Jack's vantage point, the only visible exterior door was the metal-clad utility type that probably led into the garage.
Which begged a question he should have asked himself long before now. If he was pinned to the friggin' wall by the deHavens' security system, how did an intruder slink past it?
Answerthe brief glint of light he'd swear he'd seen inside a minute ago was an electronic thermostat control, a wink of reflected lightning, a hallucinatory figment of his imagination.
Those still unsatisfactory conclusions and stubbornness had him twisting off a branch from the heat pump's hedge. Jack retreated to the corner motion detector and waved the stick to breach the monitor's invisible electronic beam.
Nothing. A second box above the utility door scored the same nonresult. He about-faced and proceeded toward a pergola shading the terrace, thinking his suddenly airheaded ex-wife owed him huge for guarding the house she'd forgotten to secure.
In a blinding flash, the patio, yard and the family room inside lit up like a prison compound during an escape
The deHaven house was dark, inside and out. Jack supposed in her dash to make her afternoon flight, Belle had neglected to switch on any lamps or the exterior lights. Illumination from the solar-powered landscape lights wouldn't attract a self-respecting moth.
Odds were that tiny interior flicker he'd seen was an electronic thermostat cycling on or off. A wink of lightning reflected in a picture or in a mirror. Ninety-nine to one, it was a miserable private detective's imagination begging for an excuse to bail out of his car.
He exited the Taurus, staying to the soggy shadows. His stride was brisk, but as normal as a man could fake whose feet felt as though they'd been encased in concrete. That juke-and-weave-between-the-tree-trunks crap was for spy movies and TV gumshoes. Act like a rational, law-abiding reason exists for walking around in the soup at midnight, and unseen witnesses will assume you're just a schmuck out looking for an escaped cat.
A wide berth was given the motion-detector lights trained down on the three-bay garage doors. The soffit overhanging the solid side wall had no security devices; one lurked under the rear corner, monitoring the gate accessing the backyard.
"Contemporary rustic" was Belle's term for the joint's overall design. Jack figured the thick, six-foot fieldstone wall enclosing the back half of the property met the rustic specs, but it was almost as easy to climb as a ladder.
The moment he dropped to the other side, he crossed the line between a blow-off trespassing charge and the real, indefensible deal. The difference could cost him his license. Fictional P.I.s can afford to play fast and loose with the law. Credentialed investigators don't jaywalk, much less break-and-enter presumably after the fact.
The Realtor who'd listed the other decoy house had obtained permission from its owner for Jack's one-guy sting operation. Here, if worse came to handcuffs, Belle would lie for him. He was almost sure of it.
Jack flattened himself against the house to evade any security camera's electronic eye. Sliding sideward, his windbreaker scraped the irregular stone surfacea noise louder by several decibels to his ears than it actually was. So was the slurp of his crepe-soled oxfords sinking in a shallow gully carved by the downspout's runoff.
Progress halted at a heat-pump unit camouflaged by horseshoed shrubbery. Go around, and a motion detector would nail him. There was almost but not quite enough space to giant-step over the unit's conduits and slither behind it. From Jack's vantage point, the only visible exterior door was the metal-clad utility type that probably led into the garage.
Which begged a question he should have asked himself long before now. If he was pinned to the friggin' wall by the deHavens' security system, how did an intruder slink past it?
Answerthe brief glint of light he'd swear he'd seen inside a minute ago was an electronic thermostat control, a wink of reflected lightning, a hallucinatory figment of his imagination.
Those still unsatisfactory conclusions and stubbornness had him twisting off a branch from the heat pump's hedge. Jack retreated to the corner motion detector and waved the stick to breach the monitor's invisible electronic beam.
Nothing. A second box above the utility door scored the same nonresult. He about-faced and proceeded toward a pergola shading the terrace, thinking his suddenly airheaded ex-wife owed him huge for guarding the house she'd forgotten to secure.
In a blinding flash, the patio, yard and the family room inside lit up like a prison compound during an escape
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