Alabaster Bayou
Author
Kerry D Redford
Author Bio
Kerry D Redford is an author of southern based thrillers and dramas. Her first work was Memories of Home (A Celebration of Poets 1997) Depths of Madness (A Celebration of Poets 1998) A Promise Unkept (Novel-Drama 2002) The Last American Writer (Novel- Thriller 2007) The Secret World of the Flurrying Scurries (Fantasy-Children 2012) Alabaster Bayou (Novel Thriller 2014). Kerry D Redford is currently working on two new books, When Flowers Die (Novel Drama-Mystery) and Muddy Waters (Novel Drama) Kerry has lived all over the south east but currently resides in Missouri with her husband and daughter. Miss Redford strives for fiction story-telling excellence, and has made a career based on her creative creed of “Make it real enough to be believable and fictional enough to be entertaining.” Kerry D Redford puts a massive amount of her heart and soul into her work and draws most of her inspiration from life’s experiences. She has had many jobs and moved several times, all of which gave her the opportunity to know several different cultures and people. Kerry often uses different characters and accents, she will often even change her mannerisms when she is in multiple public places just to build her literary characters.
Description
“If death had a face it would be hers.”
Alabaster Bayou is the story of a sexy violet eyed creole vixen named Celestine Clemence and is set in World War 11 era New Orleans. Celestine is the illegitimate child of state Senator Dylan Vaughn, a rich political playboy who uses people and his massive wealth to get whatever he wants including Celestine’s Mother Mary Anne. Dylan Vaughn thinks of Mary Anne the same way he thinks of a possession, she’s only there for his convenience. However, unlike Dylan Vaughn, Celestine’s mother holds on to an unreal ideal of someday having a proper life with the Senator. After she starts to realize that Senator Vaughn doesn’t share her dreams of a future together, Mary Anne threatens to expose the Senator for his forbidden double life, Dylan Vaughn kills Celestine’s Mother to rid him of the problem. This in turn sets her off on a revenge seeking path. Her wickedly dominate side does not show itself right away, first she must come into her own and learn not to be afraid of herself or the rest of the world.
After Celestine kills Dylan Vaughn she discovers that she has a passion for it and her purpose in life goes from seeking justice to killing for the satisfying thrill of it all. Celestine goes through emotional ups and downs and finally becomes the full-fledged killer she can no longer deny. This story is filled with an ongoing sense of cat and mouse games with her good side and dark side in a constant tug of war as well as deep rooted secrets and forbidden passions. Alabaster Bayou gets up close and personal with an eloquent and very calculated serial killer who sees murder as a necessary art form. Celestine’s murky journey takes her from her lifelong home to far away unknown places and back again. She is cunning in her work and finds it necessary to stalk and collect pieces of each victim before she uses them to her soothing pleasures. But when pieces of Celestine’s art begin to surface from the dark waters of Black Water Bayou and Lake Pontchartrain her whole morbidly twisted secret life threatens to destroy her.
Book excerpt
Chapter One: Killer Desoto
The crimson liquid ran down her fingers past her elbows and pooled in her lap. Her skirt performed like a bowl posed to catch every drop. She sat alone in a chilled sweat on the hardwood floor next to the bed. The liquefied plasma began to thicken and turn black around her fingernails and blood stained lap. The rush was over; the thrill of making the man on the bed pay for his sins was gone. He was just another fella looking for a good time who wound up sweating his last set of sheets with her.
She had a seductive exquisiteness that allowed her to ensnare her victims with ease. She was the daughter of a black creole mother and white Cajun father and because of that she had an undeniable luster to her silky skin. Her deep violet eyes glistened from cocoa colored sockets that were embellished by long natural eyelashes. Hers was a beauty like no other, a beauty that could be used as a weapon that no man she had found yet was able to deny. Her deadly seductiveness was unmatched by any other known woman in the Louisiana Bayous. Always the postured princess, she straightened her back, brushed her blood speckled raven hair away from her shoulders and stood menacingly over her latest dupe. She licked her cherry colored lips as if she enjoyed a small taste of the life supporting sustenance she had drained from the pail motionless lover in her bed.
She reached into the nightstand drawer bedside the bed and pulled out a heavy dull needle threaded with black cotton twine. She twirled the tainted needle carefully through her fingers as she rolled her head around on her shoulders a few times and then she drug the point of the needle across the jagged ear to ear smile she had carved into his throat. She smiled wickedly as she held her index finger to his dead lips and said in a whisper, “Don’t him worry now, Celestine Clemence gonna make you sleep for good monsieur.”
Celestine then proceeded to stitch five “X’s” across the mouth of her dead lover. The lifeless man on the bed is David Leboux, a man with an insatiable appetite for the flesh as well as an ongoing affair with any whiskey bottle he could get his hands on. David Leboux was the unfortunate salesman who had sold Celestine her latest automobile. A special ordered 1940 midnight black Desoto with crimson interior. Celestine’s mile long legs and vivid violet eyes made it impossible for David to take his eyes off of her upon their first meeting. She strutted around the car lot with a tantalizing walk and swanky red hat that was cocked to one side as if to just show enough of her charms to mesmerize. Her painted red lips glistened with a diamond shine in the sizzling Louisiana sun.
“Those lips couldn’t sparkle with more glitz if they had been simonized.” David muttered to himself as he watched Celestine slowly stroll around the car lot.
David smoothed down his oily salt and pepper hair then straightened his tie. He was ready to approach the magnetic woman with luscious stockings and sexy gloss black pumps who was wondering around the lot.
“Let me guess,” David said in his best pitch voice. “You are looking for the perfect automobile to buy for your husband?” Goddamn please let her be single. He thought. The last time David got a girl to pay him some attention was in the backseat of one of the cars in the rear of the lot. Everything was going fine until the woman’s swamp logger husband showed up and tore the door right off that new convertible DE Luxe. The man damn near ripped off some of David’s southerly region with it. The whole incident could have cost David his job had he not rigged the whole thing up to look as if vandals had done it. With the war kicking up in high gear, loosing ones job wasn’t advisable. Nonetheless, it had somewhat of an effect on David’s skirt chasing tactics. He wound up with two broken ribs a busted nose and a broken ear drum by the time the man was done exacting his pound of flesh from him. Even though David’s boss bought the whole vandalizing story he had staged, he was suspicious of his ragged employee’s appearance. David decided no matter how desperate he got, he would just assume visit the cat houses hidden in the underground of the French Quarter than touch another man’s woman. God be praised if this one’s unattached. He thought.
“No I’m just buying for myself monsieur.” Celestine answered politely as she arched her back and poked out her hip to take a more tantalizing stance. This one could be fun. She considered for a moment.
“Well it looks as if I got myself a good ole creole girl here.” He winked at her while he quickly undressed her with his eyes. David could just imagine what sweet perfection was hidden under the skin tight dress she had on.
“Is that a problem?” She asked as she dabbed her sweaty face and neck with a black lace handkerchief.
David could hear his boss screaming about selling to a woman like her from the recesses of his mind. He had that little part at the base of his skull that rattled with wrenching pain every time his too proud cracker boss got going.
“We can’t sell to her kind, if we do then we’ll piss off our white customers because we served a colored woman and then we’ll piss off the colored for serving one of them and making a profit instead of turning her away so she has to buy from her own kind.”
That fucking cracker still thinks the south is gonna rise again. When it comes to David’s boss he found it hard to hold the man in high regard. It didn’t matter what color the person’s skin was, if it was a skirt he was interested and if it was a man with money he was still interested but for different reasons on both counts. It was all an opportunity to gain what David cared about the most, sex and money. The world turned on both of them and he didn’t care where either one came from as long as he could get his hands on both. He happily replied to Celestine with a smirk of confidence.
“If you got the cash baby then I got the time to sell to you. Let me ask if you got your eye on anything special?”
“I haven’t spotted what I’m looking for yet.” She softly answered with a wave of her handkerchief.
“We mostly got nothing but 39’s in here but, if you tell me what you had in mind I’m quite sure I can get it for you.” David smiled big as he hoped to keep the young woman’s interest. Every time Celestine looked away he couldn’t help but study her body up and down. What he wouldn’t give to rip that cherry red dress from her body and satisfy the longings he had nagging at him for months. David hadn’t had a real woman in almost a year, and the pin-up girl magazines in the bathroom weren’t doing the trick any more.
This dame was different than the others he was always pursuing. David could see the thrill in taking it slow although he fantasized about being with her in a rushed sultry way. No hurrying to the “quick hump” as David usually referred to it. That wasn’t the way to do it with her at all. She was special; there was something about her that was unlike other women. He had to have her no matter what he had to do to get her. Despite his long dry spell, she was worth the wait and the chase. For now his plan was to use his sale-able charm as part of the chase and then maybe he would have her right where he wanted her very soon.
