Unreasonable Doubt Read Online Free PDF Page A

Although, at the moment, she was. “Breakfast is served in the dining room, from six-thirty to nine on weekdays. Seven to ten on weekends. Coffee’s on all day, and I put some light snacks out in the early evening, around five-thirty or six. You’re welcome to make use of the TV or the computer in the common room at any time. If you want suggestions as to places to eat or things to do, I’d be happy to help.” She smiled at him.
    â€œI’ve… I’ve been here before. But it’s been a long time. Thank you, Ma’am.”
    Ellie liked politeness in a man.
    Now, if only she could remember where she’d seen him before.
    ***
    Walt Desmond lowered himself gingerly onto the bed. For a moment he felt as though he were going to fall right through, all the way to the floor. The mattress was soft, yielding and yet firm at the same time. The duvet was thick, the cover almost blindingly white. He hadn’t slept in a bed like this since…No, he was here now. He had to enjoy every moment without remembering all he had lost. The only room left in the B&B, so the Internet had told him, was a single. He was glad of it. He didn’t want to sleep in a big bed, where memories of Arlene curled up next to him would haunt his dreams.
    The room was beautiful, although startlingly feminine to his prison-accustomed eyes. Arlene would have loved it. The duvet cover on the bed was as white as fresh snow in the prison yard before the men started trampling down the drifts. The pillowcases were a deep blue. The walls were painted pale blue and the prints hanging there featured scenes of the lake in winter. A child’s stuffed polar bear, with a blue ribbon around its snow-white neck, sat on the dresser beside tea things. A coffee pot, a small kettle, two blue-and-white china teacups, a silver tray containing packets of hot chocolate mix, sugar, packaged whitener, and several packages of cookies. The blue-and-white striped curtains were open, giving him a view of rows of houses and winding roads marching up the side of the mountain.
    Louise’s assistant had checked him into a motel when he’d been released. The room had been plain and functional, yet he’d thought it magnificent. He couldn’t really afford this place, should have stayed at a cheap motel, tried to save some of what little money he had. But, he’d learned the hard way, there was no sense planning for tomorrow. Tomorrow might well turn out to be just another nightmare. Blue, he’d read somewhere, was a calming color. Not that he needed anything to calm him down. He thought that he could lie here, on this bed, forever, looking up at the white, unmarked celling. Breakfast, Ellie Carmine had said, was from six-thirty to nine. Tomorrow morning he’d have two and a half hours in which he could decide if he wanted to get out of bed or not. Imagine, no ringing bells, no lines of sullen, shuffling men. Probably a heck of a lot better breakfast than the slop they’d served at the prison too.
    He lay back on the bed. Ellie Carmine. He remembered her. She and her husband had bought this old house and fixed it up. They opened the B&B the summer before….Her husband’s name was Daniel. Danny, she called him. Walt wondered if Danny was still around. He’d been about to introduce himself, tell Ellie they were acquainted. But he’d closed his mouth, the greeting, the reminder unsaid. Time enough to find out if people here remembered him.
    He heard the front door open and a burst of female laughter. Footsteps on the stairs. Several pairs by the sound of it. More laughter.
    Of all the things he’d missed, perhaps what he’d missed the most had been the sound of women laughing.
    He almost leapt out of his skin at a rap on the door. “Yes?”
    â€œHi, I’m Darlene, your neighbor.”
    He lifted himself, reluctantly, off the bed and opened the door. The woman was in her early sixties,