Hurricane House by Sandy Semerad Read Free Book Online Page B

even Loughton’s picture in the heart-shaped frame sitting on top of the white marble bar.
    She studied the blond-haired, blue-eyed photo of her unfaithful husband. Roxanne was right. He’ll never change. Lord knows, she’d tried. She’d even attended a support group of women married to womanizers.
    Womanizers, she learned, see women as the enemy. They think a real man must control, manipulate and deceive. Like the rapist, the womanizer seeks power and superiority. Many of these men had fathers who escaped their families through work, divorce, or alcohol.
    The landline rang, drawing Geneva’s attention to the caller ID. It showed a Washington, D.C., area code. Rather than answer, Geneva slammed Loughton’s picture against the bar.
    “Hi, Gen honey,” Loughton announced after the beep. He paused, as if waiting for her to answer. When she didn’t pick up, he pronounced her name in syllables as he often did when she displeased him. “Ge-nee-vah, keep an eye on that hurricane and call me. Everything is going great here. I can’t wait to tell you about it. I miss you. I love you.”
    Geneva shot his voice a bird. Loughton was incapable of loving anyone. No surprise, he often quoted a famous racecar driver: “If you’re feeling safe, you’re not going fast enough.”
    Dee was his pit stop, an entertainer’s applause, sex without intimacy. Geneva was the home stretch, the cross necklace he wore, the spare tire in his trunk.
    She heard her cell phone vibrate in her purse like a little mouse being electrocuted. She knew without looking Loughton was calling again. At the same time, someone knocked at her front door. She walked over, looked through the peephole, and saw a man in a hooded slicker.
     
     
    Chapter Seven
     
    Gerry, Alabama , Maeva’s Home
    I scooped up the scattered mail from the floor, opened the door, and waved to mailman Bobby. “Thanks,” I yelled. In this rain, Bobby could have easily left the mail in the box at the curb. Instead, like a gentleman, he’d dropped it in the chute Mom had installed when Dad could no longer walk.
    I opened the top letter.
    Internal Revenue Service
    Small Business and Self-Employed
    Dear Maeva Larson:
    Your federal income t ax return for the year 2004 has been selected for examination...
    I held my breath and reread the letter, thinking the IRS made a mistake. Then, I remembered what Adam once said, “You need to hire someone other than ‘deaf as a stumpkin Lumpkin’ to do your taxes.”
    I knew I couldn’t rest until I checked the returns my eighty-year-old accountant Lawrence Lumpkin prepared against my own records. Mr. Lumpkin had been doing my family’s taxes since I could remember, and I trusted him.
    I remembered I’d stored most of my receipts in the attic, but not the 2004 information, a tough year after Adam’s death. I’d left those inside the Silverado after writing everything down for Mr. Lumpkin and sending him my mileage log. I was on the road more than I was at home, and I thought it made sense to take the receipts with me. Good thing, I hadn’t given everything to Mr. Lumpkin. His home office burned to the ground last year. Soon after the fire, his son and daughter placed him in a retirement home.
    It took me a while to wrap my mind around going through all those receipts. First I decided to do an Internet search to see if Tara Baxter’s death had any similarities to others in the Florida Panhandle. Adam had told me about a website that featured missing persons and mysterious deaths, and I decided to check it out. I needed to relieve my doubts and make sure Tara’s death didn’t involve foul play. The thought she might have been murdered had plagued me ever since I discovered her body. Call it intuition.
    In surfing the web, I found what I suspected, but hated to see: two women from the Panhandle had mysteriously disappeared in the last few months.
     
     
    Chapter Eight
     
    Paradise Isle, The Pink Palace
    R oxanne Trawler adjusted the