Ghost Light by Rick Hautala Read Free Book Online

So many times she’d be sure that she had cried herself out, but then another wave of sadness and the numbed hollowness of her loss would hit her again, and the tears would start to flow. It was terrible when that happened at work, when she was dealing with a customer.
    She kept telling herself that getting over something like this was going to take a longtime. Her parents had died more than three years ago, and still—whenever she thought about them—she would feel a deep pang of loss, an emptiness in her life that she could never fill. She knew that, from now on, maybe for the rest of her life, it would be this way with Debbie, too; but in Debbie’s case it was much worse because of the circumstances surrounding her death. In the week following the funeral, the police still had given no indication that they suspected foul play or were doing anything to find out what had really happened that night.
    So what the hell was the matter with the police? Cindy wondered.
    Were they simply ignoring what had happened, sweeping it under the rug just to be rid of it? Was it some unspoken rule that men didn’t arrest other men—at least other white men—for beating their wives to death? Was this some crazy male, sexist, racist thing?
    Or if they did suspect the truth, did they intend not to pursue it, concluding that Debbie—like most battered women—had somehow deserved or asked for what happened to her? Were they blaming the victim?
    If the police were suspicious, maybe they were laying low, not wanting to let on that they were still actively investigating the possibility that Debbie had been murdered.
    Maybe they were letting Alex think he’d gotten away with it, so they wouldn’t scare him off.
    At least for now, as far as Cindy could see, Alex was putting up one hell of a good front. He was playing the grieving husband and sympathetic father roles to the hilt. Several mutual acquaintances had mentioned to Cindy how Alex seemed to be trying so hard to pull his life back together, if only for the sake of his motherless children. God, it was like he’d become some kind of martyr for what he was going through, and no one seemed to realize how abusive he had been to Debbie!
    Or maybe… just maybe, Cindy thought, she was wrong about the whole thing! Maybe Alex was telling the truth. Maybe Debbie had exaggerated the problems between them, or maybe she was more at fault than Cindy was willing to admit or see. Maybe she really had died tragically in a stupid, careless accident.
    That thought often crossed Cindy’s mind, but whenever it did, she would quickly dismiss it.
    Day and night, Cindy found herself wishing she had the courage to talk about her suspicions to the police. Night after sleepless night, lying in the darkness of her bedroom, she went through it all with Harry, over and over again. As much as he tried to be supportive, he also tried to dismiss her suspicions by getting her to admit that she had never liked or trusted Alex, and that she was probably laying too much of her anger and grief onto him. She had to blame someone for her loss, he told her; and besides, it would come down to her word against Alex’s. While some neighbors might say they heard them arguing from time to time—what married couple didn’t have shouting matches now and again? Then there was the fact that Cindy hadn’t said anything right after the accident—
    No, murder!
    How far could Cindy really expect to get without any solid evidence?
    One thing Cindy had to admit that she had never liked about Alex was how smooth and calculating he could be. He had an oily charm, a superficiality about him that she absolutely hated! If he had, in fact, killed his wife, then he must have framed an air-tight alibi and covered his tracks perfectly.
    Perfectly… except for the suitcases!
    That thought spun like a whirligig in Cindy’s mind day and night. Debbie had three packed suitcases up in the bedroom, one for her and one for each of the kids.
    She