Written in Stone (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

at Millay. “Do you want to hang out before your shift starts?”
    “Only if you’re willing to let me kick your ass again at Don King Boxing,” she said and he instantly agreed.
    Seeing that their party was breaking up, Olivia experienced a fleeting moment of panic. With her friends gone, she’d also have to go home. There, in the quiet house, she’d throw open all the windows and listen to the murmur of the surf curling into the shore. She’d flop on a deck chair and wait for the moon to climb higher in the indigo sky. And, whether she wanted to or not, she’d picture Willis’s face over and over again. She’d see him talking, laughing, gesticulating. And inevitably, she’d relive his fall, the feel of his burning skin, his final whispers.
    Pushing the memory aside, she told her friends she’d see them tomorrow night and waved off their attempts to pay for their meals.
    Rawlings didn’t leave with the others, but his body language betrayed his restlessness. Olivia watched his fingers drum against his beer glass as his gaze flickered between the boats and her face.
    “What are you thinking?” she asked him.
    “That I’d like to know exactly what happened to Natalie Locklear.” He scooted his chair closer to hers and reached for her hand. “I’ve been trying to piece together a connection all day. I’ve got nothing and I’m tired, Olivia. The Nick Plumley case wore me out. Wore me down. I can handle petty crime, like women ramming into tourists driving orange Corvettes”—he gave her a sly smile—“but I’m man enough to admit that I’m not ready to see this town and the people I care about torn apart again.”
    She nodded. She felt fragile too. And now she had Hudson’s bizarre vision to add to her list of concerns.
    “On the other hand,” Rawlings continued, “I think we’re being pulled into the middle of something. The coincidences are piling up and you know I don’t believe in coincidence. For my own peace of mind, I need to be sure that a healthy, twenty-one-year-old man truly died from accidental causes. I need to read the facts relating to his mother’s death. And I want to know everything there is to know about this casino deal.”
    Olivia ran her fingertips over the knuckles of his hand, tracing the ridges and the fine lines crisscrossing the skin. “Are you going to the station?”
    “I am.” He finished his last swallow of beer and brought her hand to his cold lips, kissing the soft flesh of her palm. “Will you be all right?”
    “I will. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Olivia gave him an encouraging smile as he stood up. She didn’t watch him leave, preferring to keep her eyes locked on the sky. All traces of orange and gold were gone, replaced by a luminescent shade of blue purple. A bright star hung just above the tallest boat mast, and Olivia stared at it until fatigue washed over her. Suddenly eager to escape the din of the restaurant, she paid the bill in cash and went inside. Haviland was dozing in the manager’s office.
    “Home, Captain,” she whispered to him. He rose slowly, yawning, and followed her to the Range Rover.
    Entering her quiet house, Olivia opened the back door and gave Haviland the go-ahead to run to the beach and revel in the night air. She sat on a deck chair with her MacBook on her lap and searched for a photograph of Natalie Locklear née Mitchell.
    It didn’t take her long to find a website link devoted to former winners of the Miss Lumbee title. Olivia began scrolling back in time, starting with the full-color image of last year’s crown holder, and carefully examined each of the dark-eyed, dark-haired girls. As their photographs passed by, she noted how the straight hair and subtle makeup of the nineties gave way to the highly teased hair and sequined gowns of the eighties. Then the winners from the seventies appeared, looking younger and more innocent than those from the twenty-first century.
    Olivia was discouraged to find that the photos became grainy and rather out of focus as the years descended. By the late sixties, the quality was so poor that the girls, with their long, black hair and white dresses, looked more like ghosts than beauty queens.
    “I must have passed her,” Olivia mused aloud and scrolled the page until she could see the winners from the late seventies again. She found Natalie’s picture all the way to the left.
    She’s a Lumbee Charlie’s angel
, Olivia thought, studying the girl’s feathered hair