Ghost Light (12 page)

He was smiling as he leaned forward with both arms over the front seat. He craned his neck to watch the police cruiser up the road.

“Umm, yeah,” was all Cindy managed to say, but at that moment, she knew—absolutely—that Billy was on her side. Maybe it was something as simple as letting him take charge of changing the tire that had swung him around… or maybe it was that he knew they were close to their destination. Whatever it was, he seemed to have transformed into a different kid, and she was glad. At least a small amount of the pressure bearing down on her seemed to have lifted.

What or how Krissy was feeling was still anybody’s guess, but as Cindy slowed down for the toll booth and dug into her purse for some money, she promised herself that, as soon as they were settled—anywhere—she would make a special effort to get Krissy to open up to her. That was the only way they would ever going to build trust and love… if, given their situation, that was even possible.

3

“H
i, honey, it’s me. Well, we finally got here late today, but—uh, we haven’t gone out to the lake yet ’cause of a—well, because we had a slight change of plans, I guess. I miss you, but we—uh, we’re doing okay. I guess—getting by, anyway. We had a bit of a problem yesterday, but it was nothing too serious. I’ll tell you all about it next time we talk, okay? Wish you were home; I hate talking to this thing. Anyway, I—umm, well, I’ll see yah. Take care. Bye. Love you!”

The combination telephone/ answering machine gave three quick beeps; then the tape rewound for a few seconds and clicked off.

With his chin resting on the palm of his hand, Alex just stood there in Harry Toland’s kitchen and stared at the blinking green light that indicated the answering machine was still on.

“Yeah, sure!” he said. “You’re
there!
… but
where?
”

His low, measured voice gradually ascended as a wave of heat flushed his face. He clenched his fists tightly, but couldn’t stop himself from trembling with rage at just
hearing
that bitch Cindy’s voice.

“Tell me
where
the
fuck
you
are!
”

He glared at the message machine but, as much as he wanted to smash the fucking thing to bits he held himself back, knowing that it would be a mistake. The point of breaking into Harry’s house hadn’t been to trash the place, but to find out whatever there was to find out. After going quickly through all the rooms, upstairs and down, especially checking through Cindy’s bureau and closet, he hadn’t found a single goddamned thing of interest. It was getting late, and he had been just about ready to leave when he had noticed the blinking light on the answering machine and had pressed the play button.

At least he had found
something!

But the information, although interesting, just wasn’t enough. Certainly it wasn’t anything he could use.

They were there, wherever the hell
there
was, and she had plans to go to the lake, but that could be any place in the fucking United States… or Canada, for that matter, if she had the balls to cross the border with two kidnapped kids. The fact that it had taken her two weeks to get
there
, or at least in the vicinity of
the lake
, indicated that she must have driven a great distance from Nebraska, so even if he had involved the police by now, Alex realized that she and the kids were too far away for him to do anything right away.

He couldn’t do a goddamned thing until he knew where the fuck they were!

He hit the play button again and listened carefully to the message a second time, but his frustration only sharpened when he didn’t glean a single new piece of information.

“The lake… the lake… the
fucking
goddamned
lake
!” he muttered as he paced back and forth across the kitchen floor, all the while smacking his fist into his open hand. He stopped, turned and lashed out suddenly with his foot, kicking over one of the kitchen chairs. It sounded like something on the chair cracked when it hit the floor.

“Where the fucking
hell
is the
lake
?” he shouted, shaking his fists in front of his face.

This was a significant but—at least so far—absolutely useless piece of information; and it certainly wasn’t going to help him decide what to do next or even where to start looking. It was getting on toward supper time, and he considered waiting here at the house until Harry got home so he could confront him with this new tidbit of information. It might be fun just to see the expression on his face when he came through the door after a hard day’s work and saw Alex, sitting there at the kitchen table, waiting to greet him.,

Or maybe he should do a little more than that.

Maybe he should have a knife—no, a gun in hand before he played the message for Harry; then he could put the barrel to Harry’s head and force the squirmy little bastard to tell him what fucking lake his wife was taking his kids to.
His
fucking kids, for Christ’s sake!

Jesus, wouldn’t that be fun, watching the poor bastard sweat?

But it would also be dangerous and futile.

Wherever Cindy had taken the kids, Harry could easily get word to her before he could get to them… that was, unless he had some way of stopping Harry.

“Yeah,” Alex whispered, smiling as an ugly thought rose in his mind. Then he laughed out loud and rubbed his hands vigorously together. “Yeah, maybe I should just kill the douche-bag and be rid of him once and for all!”

It might even be fun
, Alex thought,
to make the bastard pay for the agony he’s putting me through.

But then again, killing Harry would be something that would be difficult—if not impossible—to get away with. In fact, it would probably be a big mistake even to let Harry know that he’d been in the house and had heard Cindy’s phone message. At least he had something! And anyway, he had the key to the house; he could get in here whenever the fuck he felt like it.

So why do anything rash?

The bottom line was, Harry didn’t have the kids; Cindy did.
She
was the one he had to find, and if anyone was going to suffer, it was going to be
her
.

He picked up the fallen chair and pushed it back against the table, then made sure the answering machine was as it had been before he had entered the kitchen. Just as he was turning toward the back door to leave, though, he heard a noise from outside. Footsteps, coming up the front walkway.

“Oh,
fuck!
” he said under his breath as, crouching low, he moved to the kitchen door and peeked around the edge of the doorjamb down the hallway toward the front door. The security chain was off. Alex’s body went rigid as he listened to the approaching footsteps, sounding louder as they came up the walkway.

Shit, is Harry home already?
he thought, feeling pissed at himself.

Had he been so preoccupied, wondering about where Cindy was, that he hadn’t even noticed if a car had pulled into the driveway? He turned and tried to see out into the driveway but couldn’t from where he was standing. His legs tensed as he prepared to run out the back door the instant the front door started to open.

The heavy clump of feet sounded on the steps as a distorted shadow rippled across the closed, lacy curtain. Alex shied back, his eyes riveted to the door as he waited, expecting at any second to hear the key turn in the lock and see the doorknob begin to turn. Then the mail slot lifted open, and a handful of envelopes showered onto the floor. With an ear-grating clang, the slot dropped shut as the shadow shifted silently away.

“Christ,” Alex whispered hoarsely. “Just the mailman.”

He eased himself up straight and shook his hands to relieve the tingling tension. Then, laughing softly, he walked over to the front door and kicked at the pile of mail. It was mostly bills, from what he could see. He was about to leave them there when one return address caught his eye. He bent down and picked up the envelope, holding it at arm’s length as he read the address aloud.

“Midwestern Bell… hmmm.”

Sliding his forefinger under the flap, he quickly tore it open and scanned the enclosed sheets. On the third page, he saw a string of calls credited to Harry’s phone credit card number. Running quickly down them, Alex noted their points of origin—Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.

“Well all right,” he whispered. “At least it’s a start.”

He had no doubt who had made these calls, and the pattern was obvious: Cindy was driving east with his kids. If these calls had been made a week ago, before the billing date, then—obviously—she had arrived at her destination. Without a map in front of him, he didn’t know what other states Cindy might have traveled through, but at least he now had something tangible. If he could wait another month until the next billing came, he could take a look at the return number and pinpoint exactly where Cindy was calling from. It was just going to take patience, and Alex knew he had plenty of
that!

Chuckling to himself, he slid the telephone bill back into its envelope, folded it in half, and stuffed it into his pants pocket, thinking—
What the hell? Why not let Harry get a few late payment charges?
He jumped and spun around on his heels when the telephone in the kitchen suddenly rang. Moving quickly, he went back into the kitchen and stood stiffly beside the counter while he counted out the second, third, and fourth rings. Then the answering machine clicked on.

“Hi. You’ve reached 9924. If you got the right number, you also got the wrong time. You know what to do. Leave a message after the beep, and well get back to you as soon as possible.”

Alex was tempted to answer the call. At worst, he could pretend it was a wrong number, but he decided against that and waited while the machine wound ahead. After a few seconds—seconds that filled Alex with a tight, winding tension—the machine let out another irritating beep. Then, after another second or two, a woman’s voice began to speak.

“Hi yah, doll-face: The plane just landed here in Chicago, and I already miss you. Look, doll, I’m sorry about not getting out to see you yesterday afternoon, but I was way too busy, getting packed and all. I just couldn’t get away. Honest, I wish I could have seen you again before I left. Ummm, just thinking about you makes me feel so-o-o horny. I hope you don’t find a replacement for me while I’m away.”

She paused a moment and laughed a short, sniffing laugh. Alex had no idea who this woman was, but one thing he knew—this sure as hell wasn’t
Cindy’s
voice.

“But don’t worry, honey-bear, I trust you to save yourself for me; but—well, them’s the breaks, I guess. Oh, it’s just that I miss you so much already, and it’s going to be a long, long week. I wish I could’ve backed out of going to this damned convention in the first place! Believe me, I tried, but my boss was being a real dick-head about it. You know how he can get. So anyway, we’ll just have to wait until after I’m back, okay? I know you’re disappointed. Believe me, I am, too, but my flight gets back next Friday, a week from tomorrow, and you know, I was hoping we coul—”

The answering machine suddenly clicked off and beeped once, cutting her off in mid-sentence. Again, Alex felt like smashing the shit out of the machine as he stood there and stared at it numbly, watching the tape rewind.

“Goddamn!” he shouted, shaking his hands in frustration. It didn’t take much for Alex to figure out that Harry must be getting a little action on the side. “Come on, tell me more! Tell me more!”

It had just been starting to get interesting when the woman—whoever she was—got cut off. He couldn’t imagine the woman who could bring herself to call pudgy, balding Harry Toland “doll-face” and “honey-bear.”

The machine stopped rewinding. Alex huffed with frustration as he shook his head and stared at the silent telephone. “Well, well, well,” he whispered, sniffing with laughter. “I’ll be goddamned, you old son of a bitch! I never would’ve thought you had it in you.”

He knew Cindy was on her way to “the lake,” and this chick had been calling from Chicago. While this was all very interesting, especially considering that this was the “perfect family” that was trying to get custody of his kids, the phone message still hadn’t given him anything he could use.

He didn’t jump or shout with surprise when the telephone started ringing again. His only reaction was a tightening in his stomach and a slow, sly smile that spread across his face. After four rings and the same, lame message, the woman’s voice started talking again.

“Hi, honey-bear. It’s me again. I don’t know what happened there. We got cut off somehow. Probably the damned hotel switchboard operator. Anyway, as I was saying, my flight gets back on Friday—not tomorrow, but next Friday, around one o’clock in the afternoon. Write it on your calendar, okay? I was thinking, just for old time’s sake, you know, that we could meet one last time out at the Buzzy Bee. My car will be parked at the airport, anyway, just across the river, so I could drive straight over there after the plane lands. I could be there—oh, say two-ish. What do you think? That’d be a nice welcome home for me. I know, pretty soon we won’t have to sneak around like this, but I thought it would be fun to have one last fling at
our
place, you know? Give me a call sometime during the week and tell me what you think. Call me a dozen times during the week. You can reach me at the downtown Hilton Towers in Chicago. I’m in room 1237. I guess I’d better go now. I hope I hear from you soon. Bye, now… I miss you.”