Sanctuary in Chef Voleur

She could be lying in a bed or on a pallet on a cold floor, her breathing labored, her paper-thin skin turning more and more sallow as the time since her last dialysis treatment grew longer. Without the life-giving procedure, the toxins that her diseased liver couldn’t metabolize would kill her within days, if Billy Joe hadn’t killed her already.

Her once-beautiful mother, still young at forty-two, was an alcoholic. She’d been as good a mother as she could be, given her addiction, while the liquor had systematically destroyed her liver. By the time Hannah was sixteen, she had become her mom’s caregiver.

Right now, sitting in the bright diner with the mug of hot coffee in her hands, she couldn’t even remember how she’d gotten into Billy Joe’s car, peeled out of the driveway or gotten on the interstate. Her only thought had been to run as if the hounds of hell were behind her. All she remembered was that desperate need to stay alive so she could find her mother.

A few minutes ago, four hours and almost two hundred miles later, she’d been forced to stop because she was about out of gas. She took a swallow of hot, strong coffee. What was she going to do? Go back to Dowdie, Texas, where Sheriff Harlan King was already suspicious of her and her mother? He’d been called twice in the past few months, once by neighbors and once by Hannah herself, complaining about her mom’s and Billy Joe’s screaming fights. Two years ago, he’d nearly busted her mom for possession of marijuana.

She thought about what he and his deputies would find this time. Her brain too easily conjured up a picture of Billy Joe, lying in a puddle of his own blood on the floor of the garage, her mother, missing with no explanation, Hannah herself gone, with brand-new tire skid marks on the concrete driveway, and who knew what kind of evidence of illegal drugs in the garage, on Billy Joe’s body, even in her mom’s house.

She couldn’t go back.

The sheriff would never believe her. He’d arrest her and send her to prison and one day they’d find her mother’s body in a ditch or a remote cabin or an abandoned car, and people in Dowdie would talk about Hannah Martin, who’d killed her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, and how quiet and friendly she’d always seemed.

It was a catch-22. If she went back, all the sheriff’s emphasis would be on her, and they probably wouldn’t find her mother until it was too late. But if she didn’t go back, then it might be days before anyone knew her mother was missing. Either way, she was terrified that her mom’s fate was sealed.

She put her palms over her eyes, blocking out the restaurant’s harsh fluorescent lights. She’d spent the past twenty-four hours begging Billy Joe to bring her mother back home. She’d sworn on her mother’s life and her own that she wouldn’t tell a soul, that she would do anything, anything he wanted her to, if he would only bring her mother back home so Hannah could take care of her.

But Billy Joe had been cold and cruel. He’d pushed her up against the wall of her bedroom and told her in explicit detail what he would do to her if she didn’t shut up.

At that moment, Hannah had begun to devise a plan to follow Billy Joe to where he was holding her mother. But now, Billy Joe was dead.

Hannah’s eyes burned and her insides felt more hollow and scorched than they’d ever felt before. Her mother was her only family, and she had no way to find her. Pressing her hand to her chest, Hannah felt the loneliness and grief like a palpable thing.

She picked up the mug and drained the last drops of coffee, then slid out of the booth and went to the cash register. A girl with straight black hair and black eye shadow that didn’t mask the purplish skin under her eyes gave Hannah a hard look along with her change. “You want a place to sleep for a couple hours?” she asked.

Hannah shook her head.

“No charge. There ain’t a lot of traffic tonight. I’ll give you the room closest to here. You don’t have to worry about anybody bothering you.”

“Thanks,” Hannah said, “but I’ve got to get to—” Where? For the first time, she realized she had no idea where she was going. Or where she was. “Where am— I mean, what town is this?”

The girl frowned. “Really? You don’t know? Girl, you need some rest. You’re about ten miles from Shreveport.”

“Louisiana?” Hannah said.

The girl angled her head. “Yeah.... You sure you don’t want to sleep awhile?” She paused for a second, studying Hannah. “You can park your car in the back. Nobody’ll see it back there.”

Hannah shook her head as she took her change. “Thanks,” she said, giving the girl a tired smile. “That’s awfully nice of you, but I’d better get going.”

“Where you headed?”

Hannah stopped at the door and looked out at the interstate that ran past the truck stop, then back at the girl. She’d driven east, but she had no idea where she was going or what she was going to do when she got there. She had to have a plan before she went back to Dowdie. Otherwise all she’d accomplish would be to get herself arrested.

Shreveport, Louisiana. She wasn’t quite sure where in the state Shreveport was, but there was one place in Louisiana she did know. Chef Voleur, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

She recalled a photo her mother had given her a long time ago. It was a picture of two young women, arm in arm, laughing. Her mother had always talked about Chef Voleur and her best friend. We loved that place, Kathleen and me. That whole area around Lake Pontchartrain, from New Orleans to the north shore, is a magical place. She stayed, and I wish I had. Living there was like living in a movie.

She made a vague gesture toward the road. “This is I-20, right?”

The girl nodded.

“I’m going to a town called Chef Voleur,” she said. “To visit a friend of my mother’s.”

“You know you’re going to get there around three o’clock in the morning, right?” the girl said dubiously.

Hannah waved a hand. “My mom’s friend won’t care.”

Hannah prayed that her mother was right about the place being magical. Maybe things would be better there. They certainly couldn’t get much worse. Could they?

As she walked back to Billy Joe’s car, Hannah scanned the nearly empty parking lot, looking for the large maroon sedan that must have belonged to the man with the red tattoo, but she didn’t see any sign of it.

Chapter Two

Just like the girl at the truck stop had predicted, Hannah wound up in Metairie at 3:00 a.m., unable to hold her eyes open any longer. She found a small, seedy motel that she figured wouldn’t push the limit of her credit card, checked in and managed to sleep a little—in fits and starts, interrupted by nightmares of finding her mother just as she was breathing her last breath, or worse, leading the killer to her.

Around eight, she got up, showered and dressed, then sat down on the bed and dumped the contents of her purse. Like her mother, Hannah carried everything essential, valuable or meaningful in her purse. And like her mother, she wasn’t sentimental, so most of the bag’s contents were practical, except for two items. One was a photo her mother had given her years ago. The second was a sealed envelope.

Hannah picked up the envelope. With the traumatic events of the past couple of days, Hannah had totally forgotten about it. Looking at the words scrawled across the front made her want to break down and cry, but she didn’t have time for that. So she carefully placed the envelope back in her purse and picked up her wallet.

She pulled the fragile, dog-eared photo out of a hidden pocket. It had to be thirty years old and was of her mother and Kathleen Griffin, her best friend. On the back it read, “Kath and me at her house.” In a different hand was written “sisters forever,” and an address in Chef Voleur, Louisiana.

Hannah looked up the address and took note of the directions. She was about to head out when her cell phone rang.

When she looked at the display, her heart skipped a beat. It was the Dowdie, Texas, sheriff’s office. Hannah’s already queasy stomach did a nauseating flip, the result of too little sleep, too much coffee and the image of Billy Joe’s blood in her head.

She stared at the display, not moving, until the phone stopped ringing, then she dropped the phone back into her purse. There was no doubt in her mind why they were calling. They’d found Billy Joe’s body. But how could she talk to them? What would she say? How would she explain to the authorities why she had run away to South Louisiana after witnessing a murder if she couldn’t explain it to herself?

It took her about half an hour to drive to the address written on the back of the photo. It was across the street from a pizza place. With the photo in her hand she walked up to the building, hope clogging her throat.

A small voice deep inside her asked why she thought that talking to her mother’s old friend would help her find and rescue her mother back in Texas.

She had no idea. Except that her only other choice was to trust Sheriff King to believe her, and she’d been taught at her mother’s knee that authorities couldn’t be trusted. Sheriffs. Police. Lawyers. They were the people who took children away from their mothers and placed them in foster care. They threatened sick people with prison for using marijuana to relieve the debilitating nausea associated with cancer and other diseases.

* * *

SHE KNOCKED ON the heavy wood door, then realized immediately that her tentative rapping probably couldn’t be heard by anyone inside. So she rapped a second time, harder.

For a long moment that probably spanned no more than eight or ten seconds, she stood there listening and heard nothing. As she lifted her hand to rap again, she heard soft thuds on the other side of the door, as if someone was walking on a hardwood floor in socks or barefoot.

Standing stiffly, not quite ready to believe that she’d actually found her mother’s best friend, Kathleen, she waited for the door to open.

When it did, it was not a pretty, dark-haired woman with even, striking features and a beautiful smile who stood there. It was a man. He was tall and lean and he had the same even, striking features but they were distorted in a scowl. And he had a cell phone to his ear.

After a brief, dismissive glance at her, he scanned the hallway behind her. Once he’d assured himself that she was the only one there, he said, “Hang on a minute,” into the phone. “I’ve got to deal with somebody at the door.” His tone was irritated and impatient.

Private investigator MacEllis Griffin kept his expression neutral as he eyed the young woman from the top of her streaked blond hair to the toes of her clunky sandals.

“What is it?” he growled. She stood there looking at him with all the apprehension of a kid called to the principal’s office. Only she was no kid and he was no schoolteacher.