Scared Stiff Read Online Free PDF Page A

now but don’t go far.”
    The muscles in Erik’s cheeks twitch violently; his face is suffused with anger and indignation. I can tell he wants to say something more but after a few seconds he simply turns away and heads for his car.
    “One other quick question, if you don’t mind?” Hurley yells after him.
    Erik pauses but doesn’t look back.
    “Do you own a gun?” Hurley asks.
    I see the muscles in Erik’s back tighten before he answers. “I’ve got nothing more to say until I talk to a lawyer.” He continues to his car, gets in, starts it up, and peels out.
    As we eat his dust, Hurley looks over at me with a thoughtful expression and says, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Chapter 5
     
    I can hardly bring myself to consider the possibility of Erik doing such a brutal thing to his wife, but I know people often hide their true selves from the rest of us. How much can we really know about any one person? Even those closest to us, the ones we live with and love, are capable of amazing dishonesty and dark, desperate secrets. That’s a lesson I’ve learned the hard way of late, after being on the fool’s end of my husband’s deception and learning that others in the community were not who I thought they were. What terrible secrets might Erik be hiding? What secrets had Shannon been hiding? And had those secrets ultimately led to her demise?
    I know the answers lie in the evidence. With my curiosity roused, I follow Hurley back to the house. As he heads for the kitchen again, I take a slight detour and find the room I think is most likely to hold evidence of secrets: Shannon’s bedroom.
    The décor is a bit shocking. Either Shannon wasted no time in erasing all evidence of Erik from her life or Erik had quietly tolerated Shannon’s extreme feminine tastes. The bed is neatly made and covered with a white comforter fringed with lacy tatting, echoing the frilly lace trim on the curtains. The walls are rosy pink, a shade that is repeated in the striped cushions of a wicker chair, the accent pillows on the bed, and the giant rose pattern in the rug. I feel like I’m trapped inside a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.
    I move to the closet and pull open the bifold doors. Every square inch of the space is filled with clothes, all of them feminine. If Erik ever had a corner to call his own, there is no trace of it left now. Dozens of pairs of shoes are neatly arranged on the floor. I take a moment to envy the variety of styles and imagine what it must be like to be a woman of normal size. I wear a size-twelve shoe and choices are pretty limited when you get into this Sasquatch range, so there’s no Imelda Marcos thing going on in my closet. Plus there’s the whole height thing, which makes me reluctant to wear any kind of heel. I’ve been told I should embrace my height and wear it proudly. But I’m a bit self-conscious thanks to years of being asked how the weather is “up there,” and dodging “green” jokes (as in jolly giants, not environmental issues).
    With one last, longing look at the shoes, I shift the focus of my pity party to the upper parts of the closet. Two overhead shelves hold purses, jeans, T-shirts, and a couple of basic granny nightgowns. These I can relate to. But the stuff hanging on the rack is another story.
    I finger through the assortment, marveling at the petite styles and fashionable lines. Given that I’m six feet tall and weigh anywhere from one-seventy to none-of-your-freaking business, the clothes in Shannon’s closet are utterly foreign to me. I remember that she had a small side career as a local model and wonder if any of these clothes were acquired as perks of the job.
    As I work my way down the rack, I notice all the clothes at the right end are loose-fitting styles in sizes ten and twelve. The ones in the center are size eights and of a more form-fitting style, and to the far left are some sexy sixes. This variety of sizes doesn’t surprise me. I have my own collections, though my