Read Online Gallows Hill by Lois Duncan - Free Book Online

sermon by our esteemed Reverend Morris. My barrister father has bestowed upon me a double-tipped tongue."
     
    "You'd think I'd have learned that by this time," Kyra said. "Still, you never cease to amaze me. When will we hold the first session?"
     
    "As soon as possible," Eric said. "We don't want to lose the momentum. And guess where we're going to have it? In your father's apartment!"
     
    "You're what? Kyra exclaimed. "Now, wait a minute, Eric! That's going too far! If Dad ever found out—"
     
    "He's not going to find out," Eric said. "According to Sarah, he spends all his time at their place. She likes the idea of putting one over on your father. She's going to sneak the apartment key off his key chain and have it duplicated. Then she'll put the original back. Hell never even miss it."
     
    "But what if he happens to go over to the apartment while you're there? He doesn't go there often, but you can never tell."
     
    "There'll be no chance of that if he's spending the evening with you," Eric said. "You get to pick and choose when you want to be with him, so pick the nights we're going to be using the apartment."
     
    "It makes me nervous," Kyra said.
     
    "It shouldn't," Eric told her. "Even if we do get caught, you won't get the blame for it. Nobody even knows you were part of the fortune-telling scheme at the carnival, and they're certainly not going to guess you're involved with this."
     
    "Why is this so important to you?" Kyra asked him. "It's not like you need the money. Your dad gives you anything you want."
     
    "Not this," Eric said. "Only you can give me this."
     
    "If you get caught—"
     
    "I'll talk my way out of it like I always do. That's half of the fun. Come on, Carrot Top, be a sweetheart. I need you for the info."
     
    "All right," Kyra said with a sigh. "But please, be careful. Make sure everything in the apartment is put back just like it was. Don't start taking risks just to test Dad and see if you get caught."
     
    "Would I do that?"
     
    "Yes, you might. What I'm telling you is Don't. No matter what you say, if Sarah gets caught, she's not going to take it alone. She'll make the most of a bad thing by dragging me down with her."
     
    She placed the receiver back on the hook and went into the living room, where her mother was seated in her father's recliner. The wineglass in her hand was filled to the brim, although Kyra recalled it as having been almost empty at the end of dinner. Obviously it had been refilled from the decanter on the coffee table.
     
    "Was that your father?" Sheila Thompson asked immediately.
     
    "No," Kyra told her. "It was Eric. He just wanted to chat." She paused and then, pained by the disappointment on her mother's face, offered her a consolation gift. "Guess what happened today to Rosemary Zoltanne? She dumped red-hot tomato sauce all over herself."
     
    "Can't that woman cook?" Sheila responded contemptuously.
     
    "Obviously not if she can't hang on to a cook pot."
     
    "Was she injured badly?"
     
    "It was bad enough so that Dad had to take her to Urgent Care."
     
    "I know I should say 'Poor thing!' or something of that sort," Sheila said. "It's the Christian thing to be sorry when people get hurt, and you know how important it is to me to live by Christian values. But I'm only human. It's impossible to feel sorry for a woman who takes advantage of an argument between husband and wife to deliberately break up a happy family."
     
    "I know," Kyra said. She sat down on the arm of the recliner and slipped her arm around her mother's shoulders. "Hang in there, Mom, we're not beaten yet. Dad will come back. He always has before."
     
    "But this time it's different," her mother said. "This time there's that woman!"
     
    "She won't last," Kyra said reassuringly. "This is his home, and we're his family. He's riot going to leave us."
     
    "What does he sec in her? Is she pretty?"
     
    "Not as pretty as you are."
     
    "Does she have a career?"
     
    "She did, but she