Free The Ghostly Hideaway by Doris Hale Sanders Page B

identity.
    After the incident at the bar in North Carolina, he
had had no choice but to get the hell out of Dodge. Sally Denham
hadn’t had any right to come on to him as she had, get him all
worked up and then try to say ‘no’ at the last minute. He honestly
had not had any idea she was only fifteen years old or that she had
been a virgin before that night. Of course, he had had too much to
drink, too, but that wouldn’t have been considered an excuse for
rape. He couldn’t even have tried to claim the sex had been
consensual; with her that young, it would still have been statutory
rape.
    He felt really bad sometimes for framing Ed Wroe,
his life-long friend, for the robbery, too. However, he had had to
give himself time to fence the stolen property and get enough of a
stake to relocate where nobody would find him. Besides, he was sure
Ed could talk his way out of it or at least convince the jury there
was reasonable doubt of his guilt. The cousin in Chicago had enough
“connections” to be able to help him fence the stolen stuff.
However, he couldn’t get a job, because it would be too easy to
locate him if he used his social security number.
    He and Bill had a good job coming up that should
last through most of the winter. Bill had asked him to come to
Fordsville and see if he could find the particular drawer and door
handles their customer wanted for the cabinets they were installing
in the apartment building that was being built. If he couldn’t find
what he needed in Fordsville, he’d have to go on to Owensboro and
try Lowe’s Lumber or Home Depot there. Yeah, things were going
pretty good. He didn’t even have to pay his ex-wife the
ridiculously high spousal support her lawyer had talked the judge
into the last time she took him to court.
    Oh, there’s the lumberyard and supply store and a
parking place right up front. Whoa! Wait a minute. There’s an SUV
that looks exactly like the one Ed drove. It even has that silly
diamond-shaped sign that said “ Twins on Board” that Norman
had given him when they found out they were expecting two babies
instead of one. Oh, shit! It has North Carolina plates, too. That
couldn’t possibly be Ed’s vehicle. Could it? Norman drove on
past but parked almost out of sight nearby. He sat hunched down in
the seat and watched the front door carefully to see who came out
to drive away in the car. There come two men out the front door
and it looks as if they’re heading for the SUV with the North
Carolina plates. No that one isn’t him; too muscular and too short.
But, damn, the other one IS Ed. How can that possibly be? Surely
I’m imagining it’s him. Maybe it’s just my guilty conscience. No,
it is definitely Ed. Now what on earth am I going to do? I wonder
where he’s living. He could be here in Fordsville or in Hartford or
in any one of a dozen other little towns. Or even in Owensboro. How would he be able to avoid running into him if he didn’t know
where he lived? He sure didn’t want Ed to see him. After having
framed him as he had, he couldn’t blame Ed for turning him in and
he sure couldn’t afford to let that happen. And he had just been
congratulating himself on how well everything was going.
    Norman made a hasty decision. He’d follow him, but
he’d have to stay at a safe distance behind him. It looked as
though they were heading out of town, so he began to tail them. The
weather was lousy; it had been drizzling all day and now it began
to come down by the buckets full. He could barely make out the
taillights up ahead. As he rounded a sharp bend in the road, they
disappeared completely. Fearing he might lose them altogether, he
sped up and thought to catch up with them any minute. When he had
gone several miles without any sign of them, he decided they must
have turned off somewhere, but where? He turned around in someone’s
driveway and retraced his route driving relatively slowly. The rain
had diminished somewhat but he still almost missed the