Written in Stone (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

slight smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Olivia understood exactly how she felt and examined her nails before Rawlings could see how satisfied she was over how things were turning out. But he was shrewder than she thought.
    After asking Mrs. Cimino to wait in the shade until he interviewed the Corvette’s passenger, Rawlings pointed a stern finger at Olivia. “I cannot condone your behavior, Olivia. I suspect you saw the child get injured and, acting impetuously and without consideration for anyone’s safety, used your vehicle as a battering ram.” His eyes flicked over the front of her Range Rover and he seemed amazed by the lack of damage, but his look of disapproval quickly reappeared. “I’m going to have to write you a citation.”
    “Fair enough,” Olivia said and lowered her voice to a soft, husky whisper. “Is that all you’ll do to punish me?”
    If Rawlings was taken aback by the question, he didn’t show it. “Next time I come over, I’m bringing my shackles.” He winked, slid his sunglasses back on, and headed over to speak with the doctor and his mistress.
    Olivia returned to the sidewalk and exchanged small talk with the Cimino family. They were just discussing the best way to enjoy a filet of flounder when the doctor marched around the front of his car and slapped the blonde across the face. The sound reverberated and the crowd held a collective breath, stunned.
    The blonde covered her cheek with her palm and began to sob. Rawlings rushed to her side with the alacrity of a much younger man. He had the physician on the ground and his wrists cuffed before the other cops moved a muscle. Kneeling on the asphalt, Rawlings murmured to the doctor until the man became docile and still. Passing him off to one of his officers, the chief approached the blonde and offered her his hand. She grasped it, sagging against his wide chest.
    Olivia’s previous aversion toward the woman vanished, and she pitied the doctor’s mistress. She’d changed her body, her face, her hair, and her style of dress to please her companion. He’d rewarded her with a weekend trip to a seaside hotel, a string of belittling remarks, and at least one slap in the face.
    “Poor thing,” Lori Cimino echoed Olivia’s thoughts. “Jerks like that are everywhere. I almost ended up with a guy like that. You get trapped into thinking you can’t do better, that you aren’t worthy of respect. Or happiness. It takes a strong woman to just walk away, to believe that you can make it on your own.” She glanced at her husband, who was holding their daughter in his arms and planting loud, smacking wet kisses on her neck and shoulders while she giggled in delight. “By the time I met Tony, I knew who I was and what I wanted, but some women never get to that point.”
    Olivia considered Lori’s words. She too had known women who’d deliberately invited destructive men into their lives and then spent their days bemoaning their situation. It had once been impossible for her to comprehend why these women didn’t leave the louts, but she now knew that people were often anchored to negative relationships by fear.
    Her fingertips reached for the starfish pendant. Was it fear that kept her from responding to the witch’s summons? Olivia shook off the notion. She was scared of nothing.
    Picking Rawlings out of a group of policemen, she knew that this was no longer the truth. What she felt for him truly scared her.
    * * *
    Back at her low country–style house overlooking the ocean, Olivia showered and changed into a navy sheath dress and a long Paloma Picasso silver chain necklace. The starfish pendant was tucked underneath the neckline of the dress, but as Olivia stood in front of the bathroom mirror applying bronze-tinted eye shadow and a ruddy beige shade of lipstick, she pulled out the gold starfish and stared at her reflection.
    “Mother,” she whispered and closed her eyes. She sensed that the images she’d stored of Camille Limoges were romanticized, and she didn’t dwell on the rose-colored memories too often, but there were moments when a montage of pictures would play across the movie screen of her mind and she intentionally got lost in them.
    Right now she was remembering having been caught by a late autumn thunderstorm when she was six years old. In the aimless, dreamy manner of a lonely child, she’d walked far down the beach, all the way around the Point where she could no longer see the roof of the lighthouse.