Ceremony (Spenser Book 9) by Robert B. Parker

Author:Robert B. Parker [Parker, Robert B.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780307874269
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Carol Sloan was just beginning to sing when I regretfully snapped off the radio and climbed out of the MG. I got a Speedo gym bag out of the trunk and went up Fairfield and down the alley behind the buildings and counted until I was behind Amy’s. There was a small yard with a cast-iron fence around it, a gate that closed off a parking space, three green plastic trash barrels with lids, and beyond the little yard the French doors that I’d seen from the inside.

I stepped over the low fence and went to the French doors. They were locked. I knocked on the door and then smiled and waved through the glass at the empty living room. That was for anyone watching. Then I made a gesture at the doors, nodded, and set down my bag. I took a thin chisel and a hammer out of it and began, quite carefully, to chip away the glazing compound around the frame of one pane in the French doors. The pane next to the latch. The process took maybe half an hour. The putty was old and dried hard. When I had it cleaned away, I put the hammer and chisel back in the bag and got out some long-nosed pliers and a screwdriver with a thin head and pried out the little V-shaped wedges they use to hold the glass in place under the putty. I got them out without bending them badly and put them in the bag. Then I took out a roll of adhesive tape, tore off a length, pressed about half of the length against the loosened pane, used the other half for a handle, and prying carefully with my screwdriver, I took the pane out without breaking it. I put it down out of the way and reached in through the opening and unlatched the French doors. With the door ajar I put the pane back into the frame, tapped the glaziers’ wedges back into place, got out a can of glaziers’ putty, and reputtied the pane into place. When I was done, you’d have to be very alert to notice it had happened. Then I put my tools back in the bag and picked up the bag and went into the living room and shut the door behind me and relocked it.

The house was as neat as I remembered. I took off my coat and laid it over a chair and walked through once to make sure it was empty. Walking quietly, listening hard, my gun offering a reassuring weight in my right hip pocket. I’d probably burgled a hundred homes in my life, but it was always the same, the tense feeling of intrusion. Uncertain, concentrated, full of tiny building sounds that you only heard when you were breaking and entering. And always in part listening for the distant siren getting louder. There was no one home.

Back in the living room I started to search. I took my time, one room at a time.

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