Blue Light by Night
Page 1
Praise for the Author
Blue Light By Night, a Layton Shayne Mystery
“There is a lot of suspense and the reader will be doing some guessing. There is also eroticism here and I commend the author on how he managed to work the themes so that everything comes together. I could see that he spent time thinking this story out.”
Amos Lassen Reviews
“This is a thrilling, suspenseful mystery. His ability to spin a tale of mystery, comedy and romance is obviously a talent that I am really beginning to treasure. —fast becoming one of my favorites writers of mysteries and the paranormal.”
Multi-tasking Momma’s Book Reviews
For Love of: Tangi
“A very entertaining read. I was cracking up because it seriously was funny.”
On Top Down Under Book Reviews
Other Novels by Gerald Lopez
Dueling Divas
an Avondale Story
Dead Men Tell Tales
a New Eden Tale
Green Eyes Cry, You Die
a Layton Shayne Mystery
For Love of: Tangi
Blue Light by Night
a Layton Shayne Mystery
Gerald Lopez
Originally published
under the pseudonym Antonio
Copyright © 2013, 2014, 2016 by Gerald Lopez
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the publisher and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art Copyright © 2013 by Gerald Lopez
Acknowledgments
To Mom and my best friend J. C. for teaching me about the power of faith. To John and the others who helped me edit this work. And to Rock whose input and editing help is always greatly appreciated.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1—The Start of Things
Chapter 2—Catch of the Day
Chapter 3—A Bang-up Affair
Chapter 4—Surprises and Answers
Chapter 5—Meeting New Friends
Chapter 6—Blue Light by Night
Chapter 7—Impressions
Chapter 8—Family Time
Chapter 9—Unexpected Opportunity
Chapter 10—Sneaky as a Snake
Chapter 11—Night Moves
Chapter 12—Love and Duty
Chapter 13—Orleans Bound
Chapter 14—My Rewards
Chapter 15—Excerpts From a Life
Chapter 16—A Fun Day Out
Chapter 17—Meeting Mother
Chapter 18—The Boss Man
Chapter 19—Mysterious Evening
Chapter 20—Source Material
Chapter 21—Below Stairs
Chapter 22—Jessica Time
Chapter 23—Honest Conversations
Chapter 24—Explosive
Chapter 25—Captured
Chapter 26—Safe Places
Chapter 27—Gathering of Allies
Chapter 28—A Matter of Faith
Chapter 29—Trying Terrain
Chapter 30—The Island
Chapter 31—Rescue
Chapter 32—Preparations
Chapter 33—Final Battle
Chapter 34—Friends and More
Chapter 35—Time to Go
Chapter 36—Toward the Unknown
Chapter 37—Revelations
Epilogue
Contact the author
About the author
Other books by Gerald Lopez
Blue Light By Night
A Layton Shayne Mystery
Chapter 1
The Start of Things
The heat was rising inside me and I was so hot that all I wanted to do was rip my clothes off till I was naked to the wind… nonexistent wind that it was. I settled for just unbuttoning the blue plaid cotton shirt I was wearing so that it hung open on my wet chest.
Damn! It was stupid of me to have driven my dad’s old truck down to Louisiana. Sentimentality be screwed! I smacked the steering wheel with the palm of my hand. Great time for the truck’s air conditioning to go out—with me on my way to the location of a new case. I brushed back a loose, wet strand of hair from my face and felt a drop of sweat hit my nose.
Looking ahead, all I could see was yet another bridge constructed over one more desolate, smelly swamp. First, it was a novelty seeing all this water, at least for a midwest guy like me. The round, wide, onion-shaped bottoms of the cypress trees fascinated me for a while, but the water they grew out of seemed dark and ominous. In my research on the area I’d discovered the trees were called bald cypress trees. I was on my way to the St. Martin Parish region of south Louisiana to work for a client I’d only spoken to on the phone. Maybe not the smartest thing I’d ever done, but the money was good… real damn good, and I needed to get out of town anyhow.
My life had gotten off-kilter a year ago when I’d found my lover of ten years in bed with my twenty-year-old nephew. The scene popped into my mind and I recalled everything without even trying.
* * * *
I’d come home early from being on a case, expecting to see the two of them working somewhere on the property but they were nowhere to be seen. The minute I entered our two-story farmhouse I heard them.
“Oh, yeah, baby, that’s the spot,” my nephew said.
I walked quietly up the stairs to our bedroom.
“I’m close, babe, I’m gonna—,” that was him—my lover.
My hand was clenched in a tight fist, all my seething rage going down toward it. I kicked open the door and entered the room.
“Unc!”
“Layton!”
They tried to cover themselves with the sheet that had been thrown onto the floor beside the bed. But I grabbed the end of it and pulled it off them. They were naked in front of me, their cocks still dripping cum. All I felt was seething anger rising inside me. I grabbed my nephew’s arm and threw him out of the bed; he stumbled and landed on the wood floor. I picked him up and pushed him toward the doorway.
“Hey my clothes are in there, Unc!”
“Get the hell out of my house,” I said. “Now!”
He ran naked down the stairs and I heard the front door hit the wall like it always did when someone slammed it. I looked at my lover of ten years with a mixture of anger, disappointment, and pure shock. Neither one of us spoke for a moment, then he tried to come toward me with his eyes imploring me to do or say something, but what?
“Leave, now,” I said. “Don’t bother with your clothes, just go.”
“But where will we go?”
“Go,” I said in a commanding voice he knew well and would obey. It was a voice I’d used often in my military days. The bed still reeked of their lovemaking. I walked to the corner window, pushed back the curtain a little and looked down at them naked in front of the house. The two people that meant more to m
e than anyone else in the world had just betrayed me in the worst way possible. My shoulders ached and my chest hurt from the tension of the moment. I inhaled deeply, grabbed the sheet from the bed, opened the window and threw it down to them.
“Sleep in the barn with the other animals!” I said to them as they caught the sheet and scrambled to the barn. Undoubtedly they’d screw some more in there. My head hurt, I should’ve left them naked to deal with the unjust world which had dealt me a cutting blow. I walked downstairs to take something for my head. While in the kitchen I thought of my parents and of my dad. Right then I made an important decision. I raised the glass of water I’d just gotten and wiping a tear from my eye spoke my last words in that house.
“Here’s to you Dad, you were a better man than me to put up with life here. But I can’t stay in this place anymore… it’s just not worth it.”
With those words, I walked back upstairs and packed my belongings. There was no time for me to feel anything, just time enough to go through the motions and not think about it, them, or anything but getting the hell out of there.
* * * *
Since then I’d just been floating around, taking cases here and there, merely doing what needed to be done. I was living life on automatic. Not really living, just existing or being. At least I recognized what I was doing with my life and some people say that’s the first step to improving your circumstances. How does the old saying go? “Physician, heal thyself.” This is what I was doing by taking a case that took me far from home. Healing myself by getting away from a life that I needed to leave behind for my own health and happiness. Even now, I still had to remind myself not to think about ‘it’. Not to think about finding the two of them together in my bed on the family farm that I’d worked hard to keep afloat as a young man when nobody else gave a damn. When I was older my job as a detective helped keep us from losing the place while the ex worked the place full time. Forget it and them, I’m well rid of them all. That’s why I made the probably foolish decision to sign the farm over to my nephew for a measly hundred grand. Money he had to borrow from his mother, my sister. Oh, she hated ‘queers’ like me and my ex, but she’d be damned if the farm was going to anyone but family. In time, she would do her best to get rid of my ex or any other guy that would go after or dare to be with her son. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad decision on my part, since selling the farm bought me my freedom from all of them. Back home was a battle that this ex-soldier knew he could never win.
My cousin Ronnie had let me stay with him and his wife while I was getting my life together. I didn’t care much for alcohol and had never even tried drugs, so all that left was moping around feeling sorry for myself. To be honest, I wasn’t particularly good at that either. My biggest problem was that I didn’t have a plan for my life, and a soldier—even one turned civilian—was no good without a plan. That skinny kid Ronnie, twelve years younger than me, was always telling me to have faith that things would get better. Other times he’d tell me to have faith in people. Some days I didn’t even have faith in myself and my abilities, how could I have faith in anyone else? Seeing a sign for the turnoff to Shelby I shook my head to snap back to reality. I told myself to think of this as the road to a new life. It was time to make an effort to leave the past far behind me as if it had all taken place in another universe.
My client had informed me that Shelby was a place of no real consequence and that most maps don’t even show it. The small town was just a pit stop on the way to bigger cities like New Orleans. The four-lane road I turned onto became two lanes and views of the swampland changed into views of sugar cane fields then back to views of swamps. Leaning back in my seat I stretched my legs and enjoyed the feel of the flip-flops between my toes. They always felt so sexy to me for some reason—besides, lightweight cotton shorts and flip-flops were the only reasonable choice of clothing in this heat. On both sides of the now bumpy road were live oak trees covered in spanish moss. The trees were so large they canopied the road and helped block out the sun that was beating down relentlessly. The shadows of the tree limbs on the sun-bleached road looked like long, thin ghoulish arms leading me in—into what I wondered. I shuddered involuntarily, a bit spooked by it all. A little farther at a crossroads I spotted a small convenience store. It was housed in an old wooden building raised up on cement blocks. An inviting shade was provided by two large, moss-covered live oaks on either side. The front of the building had an open porch with thin, spindly posts holding up a metal roof that was rusty and had seen better days. The whole place looked as if it would collapse just by someone blowing on it, but I desperately needed something to drink and this place would have it. The truck tires made crunching noises as I pulled into the gravel lot and parked.
I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror. My shoulder-length, sandy-blond hair was wet and looked darker than usual. The straight, long hair hung limp on my forehead and over my ears on the sides. Brushing my hair back I was rewarded with a handful of sticky sweat. The light dusting of short golden hair in the center of my chest and abs was wet and glistening. Grabbing my handkerchief, I quickly wiped up the sweat on my chest and forehead before buttoning up the last two buttons on my shirt. Removing my sunglasses I looked at my eyes in the mirror. Bright, turquoise-blue eyes without the untanned, white skin around them that revealed the tourists in the area. I had a tan from working on the farm back home and loved wearing flip-flops, so I didn’t have to worry about those signs giving my non-local status away. My friends from the south often joked about the pale white or sunburnt feet of northern tourists in flip-flops, as well as the untanned white skin around their eyes from wearing sunglasses. Finally I opened the door and stepped onto the white gravel parking lot.
As I walked up the two steps to the porch they creaked. The screen door at the store’s entrance also creaked when I opened it. Once inside, I looked around before I spotted the cooler containing bottled water and soft drinks at the rear—I grabbed two large bottles of water. Heading to the checkout counter at the front of the store I noticed a thin, older, Black woman leaning against the counter with a large plastic bottle of tea in her hand. She was hard to miss in her bright, multi-colored turban, or head gear which I couldn’t properly name. Her outfit fascinated me with its ‘electric’ purple, floor-length skirt with multi-colored sequins at the hem, and lime-green, loose-fitting, long-sleeved blouse with sequined lace cuffs. She had a large deck of rust-red cards in one hand. After putting her tea down, she picked one card up and held it my way.
“What d’ya see in the card, boy?” she said.
Before I could respond, the scruffy-haired, dark-bearded clerk behind the counter spoke. His face was bright red and covered with acne. The only redeeming feature he had were his clear green eyes.
“Don’t mind Miss Lucy here. There ain’t nuthin’ on those cards to see. It’s just a game she plays.”
I placed my waters on the counter, took out my wallet and sent a smile Miss Lucy’s way. “Hey, man. Put the lady’s tea on my bill, too.”
The lady gave me a look which said she didn’t take kindly to my offer to pay for her drink.
“You ain’t ‘my man’! You ain’t gotta be payin’ anythin’ fer me.”
“Well then, I respectfully take back my offer. I didn’t mean to insult you, Ma’am.”
Miss Lucy took two dollar bills from her small, multi-colored change purse and put them on the counter. The clerk handed her some change and she walked out of the store, giving me a long look as she left.
“Crazy old dame,” the clerk said. “It don’t pay to try an’ be nice to some people.” He handed me my change before continuing. “Ya’ have a good one, man.”
“Will do. You, too.”
Walking toward the door I opened one of my waters and took a deep refreshing drink. Two more customers walked in talking and carrying on. One curious thing I noticed, they were speaking in broken English, but not with Louisiana or Creole accents. That was something I hadn’t expected. Outside on
the gravel, I poured some of the cool water over my head and ran my fingers through my hair, ending by brushing it back again with my hand. I let out a deep sigh of contentment and heard loud laughter. I heard Miss Lucy’s voice before I saw her.
“You’re one crazy fucka!” She said, then laughed.
“And I look like wet shit, too. I know.”
Turning around I saw Miss Lucy sitting at a picnic table under one of the live oaks. An iridescent purple Cadillac was parked in front of it. Too fancy to be hers, then again, maybe not. The color certainly suited her. It would be easy enough to find out the answer later. Miss Lucy waved me over and began shuffling the red cards she had in front of her. The cards which the clerk ‘thought’ were blank. In the sunlight at certain angles they sparkled silver and gold. I walked past the Cadillac and stood in front of Miss Lucy, who with a hand motion beckoned me to sit.
“What did ya see in the cards, boy? Ain’t everyone that can see what’s in ‘em. Just look at that ignorant shit clerk in there. But you did see. And what was it ya saw?”
I took a long drink of water before answering. “A lion rearing up on its hind legs.”
“He’s the rampant lion come to clear the path, leavin’ nothin’ behind but destruction.”
“That’s a nice thought,” I said, sarcastically.
“T’ain’t bad for you. He’s come to clear the way for you with your dealings in this place.”
She laid the lion card down on the table and went back to shuffling the cards. I went into detective mode now.
“I noticed something, Miss Lucy. No one around here, including yourself, speaks with a Creole or even a Louisiana accent.”