Cafe Con Voodoo

By Heather Lyn

Lisa Emerson seems like your typical South Carolinian girl. She lives on Folly Beach, owns a successful coffee shop and she respects family ties. But she happens to have a murderous past.
After ten years of living with her father, she returns to her home after his death. It was here she killed her husband, and his girlfriend, Renee. Now it seems that Renee is back, and with quite the vendetta. Luckily, Lisa meets Anita Fox, a new resident and voodoo expert who happens to be drawn to Lisa, sensing her troubles.
It appears Anita could be the end to her problems, but when the haunting turns into more murder, Lisa is forced to question her alliances.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heather Lyn
• Release date: Jul 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476148755

Heather Lyn

Heather currently lives in Georgia with her black cat, Booger. She is interested in anything paranormal and looks forward to finishing her next book.She attended college in Georgia as a Creative Writing major and has always had a vivid imagination. She is excited to share what goes on in her head with her readers.

Book preview

For my family and the amazing friends who believed in me all along. Thanks also to those who inspired me so much in reality that they became fiction. So much love to the ones who provided me with constant inspiration and encouragement.

You know who you are.

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there. I do not sleep.

–Mary Elizabeth Frye, Do Not Stand at my Grave and Weep

Chapter One

I always hated it when he wouldn’t tell me where he was going. He would leave notes that informed me he would be very late getting in and that I shouldn’t worry myself with staying up. That bastard was always so concerned with the amount I worried. After being married seven years, I was no longer oblivious to the reality of what was happening, I was just stupid enough to think that if I could pretend it didn’t exist, it might eventually go away. Well it did go away. That is one thing I was able to ensure.

After an especially trying day at the coffee shop I owned on Center Street in Folly Beach, I came home expecting to find one of these notes. Instead, I came home to heavy breathing and the sound of a voice I didn’t recognize. I ran up the wooden steps to the bedroom I shared with Richard and immediately went into shock. There, in our marriage bed, was my husband with a very young, very pretty twenty-something that I had never seen before. Apparently, he was anxious to get to know her as well as it appeared he was in the middle of an in depth anatomy lesson.

People on crime shows always say they black out and no longer have control over what’s happening to them. They plead insanity on their court dates and people pity them and find them fascinating and scary. I don’t know if I am now in the category of such lunatics, but I do know that I felt I had no control over my body.

I let out some sort of enraged guttural sound apparently because they both came to a sudden halt and were looking at me like I was the cop that just knocked on the steamy window of their car. Richard tried to say something to me, something to calm me down I guess. Unfortunately for him, I was past the point of finding any amount of calm. I don’t remember moving my legs, but the next thing I knew, I was at the dresser near the window pulling out the .44 pistol that he had taught me how to use in case of emergency. I doubt this was the type of emergency he was trying to prepare me for, but for me, it qualified.

We kept it loaded, which I’m sure he immediately regretted. Looking back, I’m not sure if I would have been capable of loading it in my state. Regardless, it was a ready machine in my hands and my fingertips were buzzing with anxiety. He screamed for the girl to move but his warning was lost in her shriek as I locked eyes with her. We were so close, no more than five steps away from each other, and yet I felt like it would take years for a bullet to ever reach her poreless forehead. Incredibly, it took no time at all.

I exhaled as she inhaled for another scream and my finger pulled the trigger. She dropped so fast. I watched as she fell into a pile of wasted youth. I felt something well up in my throat, something close to recognition of what was happening. Richard called out to me, pulling me back into this surreal reality I had just created, and I wasted no time in pulling the trigger before I realized the extent of what I was doing.

There was so much silence after that bullet pierced his head. It was the kind of silence you could actually hear. It had a thickness to it that made me feel like I was going to suffocate in it. I went to take a step and fell down, finally realizing I was shaking violently. I wiped the gun with my shirt and placed it in Richard’s hand after crawling to him.

I called 911 and through tears I explained I had come home to two dead bodies, one of which was my husband. They told me to stay on the line and I hung up, calling my father as quickly as my fingers would allow me.

Dad was one of the most successful and well respected judges in South Carolina and I knew he would have answers. He arrived moments after the police did and everything after that is a whirlwind of questions, hugs, concern and apologies.

The officers all had known me since I was young. They had attended my wedding and calmed my father’s fears that I was too young to be married. They saw me as an adopted daughter of sorts, and I saw them as my way out.

In 1992, DNA testing was still not quite what it is today, and on that rainy October night, the last thing anyone was thinking was that I was a suspect. They ruled it to be a murder suicide, based on the entry point of the bullet Richard acquired. Apparently, when he saw me raise the gun, he must have turned his face. The bullet hit him in the temple, exactly where he would have placed the gun to inflict his own death.

Richard’s parents tried to find other answers, but they never found enough evidence to prove anything other than the explanation provided by the local authorities. His dad, Gregory Emerson was a lawyer and his mother, Amy, owned a small antiques store in Atlanta. While Richard and I may not have had the ideal marriage, on the outside we looked like we couldn’t have been happier.

His mother knew I loved antique books, especially if they were full of poetry. She always sent the best ones to me instead of selling them and that was one of the highlights of my marriage to her son. His father liked me, but not as much as his wife did.

He was polite when he came around or if I answered the phone instead of Richard, but he never went out of his way to get to know me. They died a few years after Richard’s death and those that knew them said they died of a broken heart. I’m not sure if that’s really possible, but I did feel extremely guilty over it. To be honest, I felt more relief than guilt though. I was always afraid his dad would figure me out and send me to prison. I liked to think of myself as a tough cookie, but with my thin frame, and my long, naturally wavy blonde hair, I didn’t feel like I could handle prison life.

I wore glasses, mostly for reading, but I could just picture a very grumpy gorilla-like inmate bullying me in the cafeteria and breaking them over my chocolate pudding. I was fair-skinned with freckles along the bridge of my nose. I liked poetry and coffee, not prison fights and illegal substances. Therefore, I felt like I had some closure when I learned they had passed.

Richard was a very successful manager of one of the five star hotels in the area, and he had always shown promise as a successful businessman. We had met while I was in Central Carolina Community College. I had always loved coffee and was attempting to broaden my horizons by studying culinary arts. I was doing pretty well, but in September of 1985, all of my priorities changed.

A group of my friends had convinced me to come with them to a bar one Friday. It had been a long day full of tests and a drink was sounding pretty good. I chose an open seat at the bar and found myself next to one of the most handsome men I had ever seen. He noticed me at the same moment and immediately introduced himself as Richard Emerson. I asked if he was related to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and he shocked me by quoting, A chief event of life is the day in which we encountered a mind that startled us. I couldn’t believe he knew Emerson’s work. Before I could compliment him, he continued, It would appear I’ve just had a chief event in my life. A pretty girl who knows poetry is a rare thing. My name is Richard, and you deserve a drink.

Chapter Two

That was all it took. Here was this attractive man, quoting one of my favorite writers, and then buying me a drink. I had never been in love, but this felt very close to what lovers describe. We got very drunk that night and exchanged dreams. I told him I wanted to own a restaurant, and he told me he wanted to be filthy rich and buy me everything I wanted. I laughed at his confidence, but I liked it enough to agree to a date the next week.

I can still remember when he picked me up after my last class. He drove a sports car and he looked like a movie star with his dark hair and mysterious eyes. He took me to a restaurant on the beach and we danced to a live band and kissed like we had known each other our whole lives.

That was the first of many nights together. He always paid for our meals, he always opened doors for me, and he never once forgot to kiss me good night. After about six months of this, he proposed and I said yes.

My parents were more concerned than furious when I told them I was dropping out of school. They wanted me to be successful and independent. I told them I wanted to be loved. I told them that was success. They informed me I read too much poetry.

We had a small wedding and we moved into the beach house in Folly Beach where I would later end his life. Life is a funny thing, isn’t it?

He helped me buy the building that I would convert into Empty Cup Coffee Shop. That business was and still is my baby. It was such a simple space that encouraged friendship, knowledge and general happiness. It was a place that allowed me to witness friendships begin and love blossom. It even let me witness people fall in love with words as they browsed through some of the poetry books I kept in the reading area. People came in from all walks of life. Writers, painters, businessmen and prominent women of the community alike all became regulars. People practically lived in the book nook corner and elderly women begged me for the recipes I used for my cakes and muffins. It was so much more than a job for me, it was my life. It was not only my career, but my stress reliever. When I opened in the mornings, it didn’t matter that my husband was unfaithful. All that mattered was the smell of espresso beans and the smiling customers that told me about their lives while waiting on their orders.

After Richard’s death, I considered leaving. I thought about moving out west and starting a new life, but it was too hard to think about leaving Empty Cup. I did at least temporarily move out of my house while the bedroom was re-carpeted and redecorated. A friend of my late mother was an interior decorator, and she basically did it all for free. I moved in with my dad during this process and it became obvious he needed the company. Mom had died a few years earlier, and he was having a lot of trouble coping with it.

I decided that I should stay with dad a little longer, and that turned out to be ten years. I still owned my house, but I lived full time with my father. Five years into living with him, he became very ill and we learned he had cancer. They found tumors in his leg and had to operate.

Richard collected antique sports cars, and his parents had allowed me to keep them after the incident. I sold all but one of them to pay for all of dad’s surgeries. A few community members that knew dad well helped too; they felt they owed him something just for knowing him. That was just the effect dad had on people; they felt lucky just to know him. The one car I kept was a 1966 Corvette Stingray Convertible. I had never cared much for cars, but as soon as he had showed me that particular cherry red vehicle, I knew I would never be able to part with it.

Dad put up a good fight, but the cancer always came back and in September of 2002, he finally lost the battle. I stayed in his house until his lawyer and I had sorted through everything and we were able to sell the home.

Moving back into the house I had shared with Richard was much harder than I thought it would be. I was here almost every day even while living with dad, but I never had to stay inside long enough to really deal with it. As I was unpacking clothes and toiletries, I broke down. I sat on the floor of my bathroom and cried for two hours. I was a murderer. I had killed my husband and his mistress. She was so beautiful. She was so young.

I had learned through the cops who had worked the case that her name was Renee Fields. She was 22, a few years younger than I was at the time. She worked as a secretary for a law firm and lived alone. She had graduated from the College of Charleston and she seemed to have been pretty well known. Apparently, they had met by chance at a party and it was an ongoing relationship. Of course that was just hearsay from friends that reporters interviewed hoping to figure out who might want them dead. While the police had accepted it was a murder/suicide, his family created enough rumors to keep the reporters talking for months. Of course, they never could find scorned lovers or jealous friends, and they never had enough suspicion to blame me. Really, I think they just saw me as weak. I couldn’t really blame them. Sometimes I would look at myself in the mirror and wonder if I really had done it. I finally stopped torturing myself with that, and eventually, everyone just seemed to quit looking for any other answers.

I have nightmares about what happened all the time. I can still see her face so perfectly. She was tan and had freckles across the bridge of her nose, like myself, but also along her slender arms. She had long wavy brown hair, but unlike mine, which was usually frizzy and required aid from a curler, hers was sleek and perfect as if she had stepped out of a shampoo commercial.

Coincidentally, when I walked into the house that night, she had sounded like she was in a shampoo commercial as well.

She had the biggest blue eyes I had ever seen. I can remember the way she looked at me so clearly and how she still seemed to be looking at me even after she quit breathing. Sometimes, women that resemble her come into Empty Cup and I nearly have a nervous breakdown.

I go for walks sometimes along the beach and am convinced that when I turn around I will see her there. I can’t say I feel guilt for killing Richard. A broken heart can convince you not to feel a lot of things, but I think about Renee often. I wonder what she was like. I wonder how such a pretty girl could be okay with the fact that she was sleeping with a married man, and how she got wound up in the situation to begin with.

I’m curious to know if it helped her conscience to