Read Online House of Secrets - v4 by Richard Hawke - Free Book Online Page B

empty. He pushed himself out of the tiny chair and went inside for a freshener. Once there he decided against it. Instead, he went into the living room and dropped onto the green leather couch. He realized he was exhausted. The doctor had warned him about this, the possibility of sudden fatigue. Andy felt as if his bones and muscles had turned to water.
    The Sunday
Times
was on the coffee table. The front page was dominated by the news — if that’s what it could really be called — of Vice President Wyeth’s growing difficulties. Andy had glanced at the paper that morning, primarily to see if his name had cropped up in any speculative sense concerning the crisis. It hadn’t. From outside, the sounds of raised voices and agitation drifted into the room, but Andy’s focus was elsewhere. His eyes ran across the newspaper like a pair of lasers. Over the three days since his stealth exit from Shelter Island, he had done his best to keep away from any coverage of the horrible bludgeoning death of the attractive thirty-four-year-old public relations executive at her family’s beach house on Shelter Island. Andy knew this behavior was the same as poking his head into the sand.
If I don’t see it or hear about it, it didn’t happen
. Thankfully, the growing press interest in the vice president’s situation had kept the story buried more deeply than it might have normally been.
    But there it was, in the local section: Joy’s face, alongside the article about her murder and its investigation. Tears rushed to his eyes when he read that Joy was to be buried the following day. He dabbed away the moisture and continued to scan the article. Now that he had lifted his head momentarily from the sand, there was a specific piece of information he was anxious to find out. In his heart, he already knew it. Unless the Suffolk County police had been trained at Ringling’s Clown College, surely they would have figured this one out.
    And yes, there it was.
     
…authorities are seeking at least two men in connection with the public relations executive’s murder. Aside from the evidence of forced entry by way of the bedroom’s rear door additional evidence suggests the presence in the bedroom with Ms. Resnick of a second individual. Police have collected blood and hair samples and are…
     
    “Andy?”
    Andy’s head jerked up from the paper. Christine and Michelle were standing in the doorway. They both looked miserable. All the lift in Christine’s face was gone; her eyes looked haunted. Michelle looked even worse. She was crying uncontrollably, her tears trailing down alongside her sniveling nose.
    Andy’s stomach clenched.
They know
.
    He released the paper and rose dreamily to his feet. His knees didn’t want to work properly. He felt as if the world outside the windows was spinning at blurring speed.
    Michelle croaked, “Daddy.”
    Christine took a deep breath, closing her eyes for an instant. She looked as if tears were on her way, too.
Here it comes
, Andy thought.
The future is a complete void
.
    “Doc is dead. He just collapsed.”
    Andy heard the words. But their meaning did not immediately register. Someone opened the sliding glass door in the kitchen and Andy became aware of the uptick in agitated noise from the backyard.
    Michelle came running toward him. Andy released his breath, not even aware until that moment that he had been holding it. As he stepped forward and opened his arms to receive his bereft little girl, he felt a twinge in his stomach.
    It was a most hateful twinge.
    It was relief.
     
     
     

 
     
    R obert Smallwood knew a thing or two about angels.
    As a child, he resembled an angel, or at least according to his mother he did. A large and doughy child, his wide, cornflower-blue eyes seemed to cover half his face. His slightly oversize head was perfectly round — like a pumpkin — and his hair remained fair and silky, soft ringlets that circled his scalp not unlike a halo.
    By the time of his