NINE LIVES

A Lake Pontchartrain Mystery

Frank Say

Copyright 2011

All rights reserved – Frank Say

Smashwords Edition

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return toSmashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

To Maria & Stephan, the source of all my imagination

“I think there is only one God. Oh, there are gods

everywhere, in the hallowed hills, in the wind and the sea, in the very grass we walk on and on the air we breathe and in the bloodstained shadows, where men…wait for them. But I believe there must be one God Himself, like the great sea, and all the rest of us small gods and men and all, like rivers, we all come to Him in the end.”

Mary Stewart, Merlin Trilogy

Prologue

An early spring shower, that had been brief but vigorous, was now ending. The clouds were beginning to part, letting broken rays of sunshine stream down from the sky onto various locations. The sky had been overcast for most of the day, but now gave way to smaller, more tranquil clouds, as the rain subsided. Color was slowly making its way back to the world on this March day, albeit delayed from the seemingly endless winter that stubbornly held on longer than it should have. This valiant reprieve of Mother Nature did not go unnoticed, and was taken in gratefully by a woman who had been caught up in paperwork for much of the day. She took a moment to pause and watch the changing skyline, from her kitchen window. She had set aside two hours today to grapple with those dreaded, overdue bills. As her four-and-a-half-year-old son amused himself in another room, she set to work on the monotonous paperwork on the kitchen table. She set it out in assembly line fashion, ordered by dollar amounts and priority. All things considered, she felt she was making great strides. She kept an eye on her son