Beneath Everything by Suzie Carr

Author:Suzie Carr [Carr, Suzie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sunny Bee Books
Published: 2017-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Frenchy opened her front door with five grocery bags hanging from each arm. She nudged the door shut with her heel before looking up and noticing the cable wires dangling from where her flat-screen television should’ve been hanging.

She dropped her bags of eggs, tomatoes, and other dinner fixings. Cans of white beans and tomato soup rolled across the wooden floor where her area rug from France should’ve been.

She scanned the room, taking inventory. Johnny’s electric piano and Gibson guitar were gone, and the grungy recliner that still stunk of antiquated times when people smoked pipes and watched The Three Stooges, gone. Someone also stole the picture that Johnny’s grandfather had painted for them of the lake house in Banner Elk.

She circled towards her dining room. “The wine rack and vintage wines. Oh my God, and the camera?”

Panic swam fast, drowning her in a swift and furious rampage of vulnerability. She dashed up the stairs to her bedroom. Her beloved Sleep Number bed. Gone. Yet the television still sat on top of the nightstand, cables secured.

She heard a noise. She stood still and the hum of silence that followed deafened her.

Click.

She glanced at the open window and saw the string from her mini-blinds hitting the frame.

She sighed. Then, something dreadful planted itself.

The robbers could still be in the house.

She dashed down the stairs and back into the foyer, tripping over her grocery bags and cracking the eggs as she pulled open the door. The muggy summer air suffocated her. She stood alone in her front yard panting like an overheated dog.

She peeked into the garage window. Everything was gone.

A knot sat in her stomach, pushing all senses south. She reasoned out that maybe the robbers collected junk the same way Johnny did. Surely, they could use all those rusty wrenches and gaudy stolen street signs for something better than dust collectors in a double bay garage. Right?

A troublesome question trampled through her mind, one that pushed her to the edge of reason in search for logic. Who would steal the stained coffee mug with Johnny’s name on it other than someone with that identical name and thirst for grime?

The unsettling answer crawled into her heart like a tiger on the hunt for weak prey, slow, assertive and focused on one thing—to eat the beating heart right out of her.

They fought the night of Jolene’s party when Frenchy begged Johnny not to go on that vacation with a group of strangers he started to call friends.

They had settled it.

Right?

Frenchy trusted her gut as one would trust an umbilical cord to provide life-sustaining nutrients. The guitar, the piano, the flat screen, the bed, all of it Johnny wanted.

A sickening buzz short-circuited its way up her throat and into her head where it zapped her with horrific intensity. Maybe he had a logical explanation. Maybe he hired people to paint the house. Maybe he orchestrated that as a prank, teaching her one of his many life lessons.

She reached into her pocket for her cell, and called her husband.

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