Sunset Ridge was at the top of a hillside neighborhood of multimillion-dollar homes with staggering views of the Pacific Ocean. Ballard positioned the Defender a block from the house Bennett was hoping to sell. She had an angle of view between two homes that showed her the whitecaps atop the blue-black waves coming ashore below. They were the kind of waves she waited for every time she was on the water.
She lowered the back of her seat so that Bennett would not notice her as he cruised by and checked the time on the dashboard. It was 11:11 — still almost an hour before the open house was scheduled to begin. She saw this as an opportunity to engage Bennett while he was alone.
She started the car again.
55
The front door was open. Ballard pulled into the driveway, not worried about announcing her arrival. She had already locked her holstered pistol and badge in the glove compartment. She got out and locked the car.
The house did not fit with the architecture of the neighborhood. It was an adobe-style construction with a flat roof and brown clay walls rounded at the corners. It said desert, not beach. Ballard entered through the open door into a hallway that stretched straight through the house to a rear deck with a view of the Pacific.
“Hello?” she called.
She stepped farther in. The Spanish-tiled hallway branched off to the right into a step-down living room with an adobe-style fireplace and an open wood-beam ceiling. There were no sharp corners, just blunt angles.
The furnishings of the room didn’t match the architectural style. The couch and chairs were thickly upholstered in bright blues, yellows, and whites. The coffee table was glass-topped with chrome legs, and beside the couch was a standing lamp with a chrome base and stem. The wall hangings were modern rip-offs of Rothko, not O’Keeffe. Ballard guessed that the owners or prior tenants had moved out and Bennett had staged the house using furniture that didn’t quite fit. There probably wasn’t a lot of call for staging adobe houses in Laguna, and he had made do with what he had.
She moved farther down the hall.
“Anyone here for the open house?” she called.
The hall led past a staircase going down, and Ballard understood that it was what she called an upside-down house. It had been built into a hillside, and the communal spaces were on the entry floor on top and the bedrooms were down below.
Ballard came to the end of the hall, which gave onto a large living space with a den on the right and the kitchen and dining area on the left. The rear wall was all glass sliders leading to a deck that ran the width of the house. Out there was a built-in grill and plenty of space for outdoor furniture and tables. Every house had a special spot, and this deck with its unblocked view of the ocean was what would sell this place.
On a kitchen counter was a stack of fliers for the property and a sign-in sheet on a clipboard with a pen attached by a string. The box she had seen Bennett pick up earlier was open on the opposite counter. Next to the pastries were paper plates and napkins. Bennett’s briefcase and Yeti were on a kitchen island, but there was no sign of Bennett.
“Hello?” Ballard said loudly. “I’m here for the open house.”
No response. Ballard looked around and realized the opportunity she had. She quickly went to the briefcase, unzipped it, and opened it to check its contents. What she saw changed the trajectory of her plan. As she reached in, the house started to vibrate, and she knew that someone — Bennett — was opening the garage door. She quickly finished with the briefcase, zipped it closed, and headed for the deck.
Ballard unlocked one of the doors and slid it open. As she stepped out, she heard a door slam and guessed that the ocean breeze she’d allowed into the house had pushed the front door closed. She knew that should get Bennett’s attention, wherever he was.
She kept her eyes on the ocean as she stepped all the way out to the deck’s railing. She then looked down and saw a sub-deck with similar views that extended from the bedrooms below.
“Uh, we’re not open yet.”
The voice came from behind her. Ballard turned to see Andrew Bennett standing in the doorway.
“The signs all say twelve to four,” he said. “We still have forty minutes till we open.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” Ballard said. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d just sneak in for a quick look. I mean, if you don’t mind.”
“Well, since you’re already here... could you come sign in first?”
“Sure.”
She followed him into the house.
“You’re down from Los Angeles?” he asked.
“How do you know that?” Ballard asked.
“I was in the garage, tidying up, and I thought I heard a car pull in. When I opened the door, I saw you have a Galpin frame on your license plate. That’s the dealership up in Van Nuys, right?”
“Oh, yes, right.”
“I’m from up that way. I remember Galpin ads on TV from when I was a kid.”
They went into the kitchen and Ballard picked up the pen next to the sign-in sheet on the counter.
“How long have you been down here?” she asked. She wrote Ronnie Mars on the clipboard, a nod to a fictional detective hero of hers.
“A long time,” Bennett said.
She added the number of a burner phone she used on occasion for personal as well as police reasons.
“Ever go back?” she asked.
“No, not really,” Bennett said. “Unless I have to fly out of LAX, but that’s a nightmare I try to avoid.”
“I hear you on that.”
“So, I’m Andrew.”
“Ronnie.”
Ballard turned from the counter to face him. He was on the other side of the kitchen island, his briefcase on the counter between them. He smiled, and she recognized the expression from the website photo — the wide, practiced, and insincere smile of a salesman.
“So, Ronnie, tell me,” he said. “Are you looking for a full-time home or a getaway place?”
“Uh, I’m undecided,” Ballard said. “I work from home, so I could have a full-time place down here and the getaway could be up in L.A.”
“That would be perfect. What do you do?”
“I’m a writer. TV, mostly.”
“Anything I might know?”
“Probably not. It’s mostly soft-crime stuff.”
“Soft crime? What does that mean?”
“Geared toward women. Female endangerment. Unfaithful husbands. More romance than mystery.”
“Interesting. But not believable.”
“Yeah, that about covers it.”
“No, I mean you, Ronnie. Not believable.”
He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a handgun. It was a blue-steel Glock.
“Your friend warned me there would be others,” he said.
“Whoa, wait a minute,” Ballard said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I—”
“Colleen Hatteras. You housewife sleuths think you’re all Nancy Drew, and look what it gets you — a date with the devil.”
“I don’t—”
“Save it, Ronnie. If that’s even your real name.”
Ballard raised her hands as she thought about Colleen. At the end, she had apparently not revealed all to Bennett. No matter how badly he’d hurt her or scared her, she had been able to hold back and leave Bennett thinking the threat to his existence was from the amateur ranks of the internet.
“You killed Colleen,” she said.
“No, she killed herself,” he said. “She got too close to the fire and there was no choice. Blame her, not me. And now I need to know who else you’ve told about me.”