Chapter Two

The first place Raven went when she returned to Byrd’s Landing was a new restaurant that hadn’t opened its doors yet. It wasn’t the place she should’ve gone. She should’ve been visiting her foster brother, Cameron, who worked in the IT department of the Byrd’s Landing Police Department. He told her he was dealing with something heavy and needed her support. But her first day back in town couldn’t be the place that had caused so much misery.

The restaurant had a sign over the door. It was nothing fancy, just plain wood that spelled in red letters ‘Chastain’s Creole Heaven’. The restaurant was Billy Ray’s way of making it clear that he wasn’t going to let the town steal his joy. Not its love affair with crime, not the weather, and definitely not killers like Lamont Lovelle.

Billy Ray, her old homicide partner, finally had what he wanted, his own restaurant and a place for his father’s recipes of gumbo, fried catfish, and shrimp and grits. For him it would now be coffee laced with chicory in the morning along with baskets of fried peach pies instead of dead bodies and the hunt for those who did the killing.

When Raven walked into the restaurant, he and Imogene Tucker were sitting at a card table on the otherwise empty hardwood floor. What had Lovelle called Imogene as he stood with a gun pressed to her head in the backyard of Billy Ray’s shotgun house? That’s right. He called her the ‘bonus prize’. Before that, Imogene had been an investigative reporter for the Byrd’s Landing local TV station. She dogged Raven’s every step as Raven chased the town’s latest serial killer. Imogene’s singular ambition was to use the case as a stepping stone to a spot at one of the national networks. That was before Lovelle ditched the gun for a rope and proceeded to choke the ambition and life out of her. Raven saved her, but now, like Raven, Imogene was adrift. She still worked at the station as an on-camera reporter, but wouldn’t do any more investigative work. Raven didn’t have to wonder why. The trauma Lovelle inflicted side-lined Imogene.

Imogene and Billy Ray’s heads were almost touching as they bent over a magazine. The tableau looked so intimate that Raven nearly walked out. It wasn’t that she was jealous. This was Billy Ray, after all. He wasn’t her lover and never would be. They had something more special. Every day they used to wake up, shower, clip their badges to their waistbands and have their first cup of coffee before willingly placing their lives into each other’s hands.

That was enough for her.

She didn’t want to interrupt him and Imogene because they looked so peaceful. And both of them deserved peace after what they’d endured.

“Hey there,” Raven said in a soft voice.

They looked up. Billy Ray stared at her before saying, “Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes.”

“How sore?”

“I’d say going on about a year sore. Where you been?”

Raven pointed to an empty chair at the table. “Mind if I sit?”

“Nobody stopping you,” he said. “I asked you a question. Where have you been?”

Stalling, she acknowledged Imogene with an incline of her head. Imogene returned her greeting with a nod of her own, but there was a wary look in her eyes. Billy Ray gazed at Raven for a moment longer before returning to the magazine. He flipped through a few pages with pictures of tables, chairs, and other restaurant equipment.

Breaking through the awkward silence, Raven asked, “Didn’t you get my postcard?”

“I did.”

“Didn’t you see the picture of the beach on it?”

He nodded. “Saw that, too.”

“Then why are you asking where I’ve been?”

He folded his arms and sat back. “Got a postcard three weeks ago. Where were you before then?”

“Rambling, roaming, getting right.” She turned to Imogene. “How are you getting along?”

“I’m good. Welcome back.”

“Thank you.”

“You back for good?” Billy Ray asked.

She grinned at him. “Depends on what you mean by good.”

He stopped flipping pages to study her face. “I mean good as in are you done chasing ghosts?”

“Or making ghosts?” Imogene countered.

Raven waited for Billy Ray to either rescue her or join in on Imogene’s bad vibes. But instead he did nothing. He just gazed at her steadily. She draped the backpack she had been carrying over an empty chair.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” she said.

He nodded without taking his eyes from her. “I’m thinking about how to furnish it. Thinking about getting most of the stuff second-hand. Chairs. Don’t have to match. Dishes don’t, either. But I want the tables to be the same.” He held up the magazine.

“Interesting concept,” Raven said.

“Not a concept,” he said. “I don’t like being wasteful.”

“Some things need getting rid of,” Raven said.

“Is this us talking in code about Lamont Lovelle?” Imogene said. “Is this how you do it when you shoot someone down in cold blood?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Raven answered.

“Lamont Lovelle was killed about a week ago,” Billy Ray said, his voice flat. “Shot down while crossing the street some place up in northern California.”

“That’s interesting.”

“You telling me that you don’t know?” Billy Ray asked.

“I’m telling you that I don’t care.”

“Did you do it?” Imogene challenged.

Raven tilted her chin at the scars around Imogene’s neck.

“How are those healing up, Imogene? Did the doctor tell you that those marks will be permanent? Try cocoa butter. Maybe they’ll fade.”

Imogene touched the tips of her fingers to the scars around her neck. She shot Raven a dirty look and stood up, the chair scraping loudly against the dark floor. “I’ve got to go to work.”

Raven watched as Imogene slammed out of the restaurant.

When she was gone Billy Ray said, “That wasn’t necessary.”

“She’s got nerve being so judgmental,” Raven breathed. “You two friends now?”

“She’s been coming around since I got out of the hospital, checking on me.”

“I bet.”

“It ain’t like that,” he said.

“You mean she’s trying to get a statement? An exclusive? Writing a feature article on the cop who was almost burned to death by a serial killer?”

He laughed roughly and touched the ridge of keloid scar that ran from the corner of his right eye and disappeared into his hairline. Compliments of Lamont Lovelle. “No, not that either. She’s not up to anything, not my girlfriend, she’s just a friend.”

“Somebody better tell her that.”

“Did you kill Lamont Lovelle?”

“Did you want me to?”

“I hate it when you do this.”

He closed the magazine, pushed the pork pie hat he always wore back on his head and sighed.

“You really want to know?” she asked.

He looked at her for a long time. She held his eyes and thought about how she used to look deep into her own eyes every morning in the bathroom mirror. One green, one blue eye, just like her father’s. And she thought now about what she used to see in them, her father beating and later stabbing her mother to death, and after that a trail of killings that still haunted her dreams.

What did Billy Ray see in her eyes? Did he see Lamont Lovelle through a rifle scope walking across the street to the Quiznos like he did every day for lunch? Did he see Lovelle come closer and closer before his shirt flowered red with blood? And did he see him collapse in the middle of the street, cars around him, horns howling in the bright afternoon sun? Billy Ray stared at her a few more seconds, and then finally, he grimaced.

“No,” he said. “I really don’t want to know.”

She inclined her head to acknowledge the statement, picked up her backpack and placed it in her lap.

“So, what you up to next?” he asked.

“I’m not going back if that’s what you mean. The chief can pound sand. I’m done with the job. I want a new life.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Teaching, maybe, high school.”

“You still at the apartment?”

“No,” she said. “Lease ran out. Oral left me his place. I’m thinking about moving out there. In the meantime, I’ve got some rooms over at Mama Anna’s.”

“Oral’s place doesn’t sound like a new life to me,” he said, his handsome face serious. “That sounds like you jumping both feet back into the old one.”

She remembered Oral and his house with the purple wisteria winding around the porch posts and spilling over the pergola. She remembered the wide rooms, the hardwood floors of the warmest mahogany, and his garden, cherry tomatoes growing wild and untamed, and yellow cucumbers the shape of apples. Just thinking about the place made her smile. Oral was the man who supported her after her father was arrested. Her being in his house felt right.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Billy Ray prompted.

“As long as I can get the blood off the walls.”

“Why you always like this, Raven?”

She leaned toward him. “You don’t understand, I’m not always like anything anymore. I’ve changed,” she said. “And I’m serious. I’m going to clean up that place and get it livable again. It’s not fair that Oral’s place sits empty. Lovelle took Oral away from me, but I won’t let him take his house away from me, too. Oral loved that place too much. In the meantime, I’m going to get my teaching credentials and start over.”

“Here?”

“Here,” she confirmed.

He grunted. “Must’ve spent a lot of money out there rambling. How are you going to make a living in the meantime, especially enough to get back to college?”

“I’ve got some savings,” she said, before breaking out into a wide smile. “Besides, I’m hoping you can help me with that.”