Bayou Corruption Read Online Free PDF Page B

place. The lacy things she’d picked out at the tender age of fourteen. Her heart hiccuped.
    She lifted the picture sitting on her bedside table. Her parents. Oh, how she longed for them to be with her today. Her mother, always on an assignment with the newspaper, had a camera looped around her neck. Would Alyssa ever measure up to her mother’s expectations? Standing beside Momee in the picture, her father smiled down at his wife with love and adoration in his eyes. Could Alyssa ever find someone who’d look at her like that?
    Oh, I miss you both so much.
    Tears filled her eyes. She blinked several times, refusing to go down the path of her past. Not today. She had to move forward. But here, where memories assaulted her every moment? At least in Shreveport she had a life—a promising career, a nice apartment, a normal church life. Lagniappe offered her nothing but the memories of how much she’d lost—her parents, her childhood, all sense of normalcy.
    She grabbed her sneakers and slipped them over her socks. Fastening on her watch, she noted the time. Lovely. She’d barely have time to chug a cup of coffee before she had to go to the sheriff’s office. At least she could smell the strong java.
    A half pot awaited her in the empty kitchen. Without Grandmere and her sisters, the house was entirely too quiet. Too still. As if holding its breath in anticipation of something. Alyssa’s heartbeat quickened. She jerked the glass pot free from the warmer and poured a cup. Her hands trembled. Coffee splashed onto her hand. She jumped, hitting the carafe against the porcelain sink. The pot shattered with a loud crash. Glass and coffee spilled into the sink, on the counter and onto the floor.
    Couldn’t anything go right?
    The blame lay with the bayou. Didn’t everything? When her parents had died and she’d been forced to leave New Orleans, her family’s involvement in voodoo had given her schoolmates every reason in the world to hate her. To ridicule her, to torment her every school day. Now she could even smell the destruction in the air, lurking to wreak havoc in her life again. But she’d matured, wised up. The bayou wouldn’t beat her down this time. Alyssa stiffened her spine and went about passing a mop.
    The front door slammed. Alyssa tossed the dish towel into the open washer before CoCo called out, “Al?”
    Alyssa gritted her teeth against the nickname. Better than Boo at least. If only she could make her sister understand Cajun wasn’t a real language—only a mix of several different ones.
    CoCo cleared the kitchen threshold, her long curls held captive by a ponytail at the nape of her neck. “Good, you’re up.”
    Why not just state the obvious? “Of course, I’m up. I have to be at the station in twenty minutes.” She felt as if her nerves rested outside her body.
    â€œI know. Listen, I’m going straight to the hospital to relieve Tara.” CoCo studied Alyssa. “Unless you want me to go with you?”
    â€œNo. It shouldn’t take long to give my statement. I’ll meet you at the hospital.”
    â€œOkay.” CoCo moved to the counter as Alyssa swung her purse over her shoulder and strode toward the door. “Where’s the coffeepot?”
    Alyssa chuckled under her breath and escaped the confines of the house. Wind tickled her long bangs against her forehead. Leaves danced on the breeze, twisting and turning and carrying the scent of the bayou. The stench. Alyssa ducked into her car as quickly as possible.
    The torrential downpour had made the roads so muddy that going more than twenty miles per hour could ditch a car faster than greased lightning—like last night. Alyssa parked the car, straightened her shoulders and strode into the building nearly covered with kudzu.
    Chaos had taken over the sheriff’s office. Phones rang unanswered, several men dressed in jeans milled about, and