The Ballad of Lacey Jay
by
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Slowly, he climbed the fuzzy staircase from sleep to consciousness, memory of some innocuous dream already fading as his mind cast off its sleep shroud. Around him, the blue shadows of familiar furnishings in the windowless bedroom were more ominous than comforting. He was cold.
I must have left the window open.
Lucas Peterson shivered in the chill of the pre-dawn morning as he stumbled from the bedroom. He walked numbly out to the northern window in the kitchen/dining area at the rear of the shotgun apartment. With units on both sides of him, open windows was the only way to move any air through the old adobe fourplex.
Sure enough, the curtains billowed with the cool March morning breeze. It was another of those high-desert mornings when the temperature could easily vary 50 degrees from yesterday’s highs — or from today’s warmth, for that matter.
He pushed the aging casement down, then plodded back across the frigid linoleum and crawled in beside the beautiful blonde coed he’d met last night, and drew her towards him. She was cold, too.
“Damn, sweetheart, you’re cold as ice, but we both know you’re not frigid, right?” he said into her ear, letting his warm breath caress her coolness.
She didn’t stir.
“Are you still asleep, darlin’?”
No answer.
Raising to one elbow with a sense of déjà vu, he looked into her eyes. The pale blue orbs stared back at him, open but unseeing. Panic gripped him by the throat. The alarm inside his head left a metallic taste in his mouth. A bit of vertigo accompanied shaky knees as he swung his feet off the bed to the floor. He felt the urge to vomit.
The lifeless form of Beth Miller lay motionless in the center of the bed, the sheet and blanket partially covering her nude body.
Not again, please Lord, not again!
Six months ago, someone had killed Evelyn Billings the first woman he’d ever loved. Her violent death had devastated the second-year student at
The emotional impact on Lucas wasn’t diminished by being cleared as a suspect after a thorough interrogation and polygraph by
No, some madman was turning his carefully cultivated world upside down. A person jealous over Lucas and Evelyn would not have known about Beth. That scenario was shattered now. He was only becoming aware of the stench of flesh just beginning to decompose, the same smell that had been present when he’d woke with Evelyn’s body next to him in her bed last September.
Lucas feared he might never be able to get that odor out of his nose.
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About the Book
When Lacey Jay Autrey pens the lyrics, “Life is like a ball of yarn,” she couldn’t know how prophetic the phrase would ring. Not only will her life be entangled with the man who murders her, but so will that of her oldest daughter.
In Luke we find a tragic, nearly sympathetic figure, twisted and destroyed by the sexual appetites of his mother. He kills her and disposes of her body. Years later, the blackouts begin when Luke awakens to a dead lover in his bed.
Lacey’s older daughter, Willie Nell, heads the Investigations Department at a
Along the way, not only is the murder solved, but the reporter and her crippled, embittered kid sister revisit their past to learn that much of what they thought they knew about their dead parents was grievously wrong. From that realization and the shared pain of reliving those tragic time, they gain peace and find their roots to their natural relationship.
About the Author
Texans Larry Payton from suburban Dallas, and Barbara Jennison of
A well-known West-Texas author, Barbara is taking the lead on a prequel to The Ballad of Lacey Jay, while Larry begins the sequel, Sing a Song of Vengeance.