Not an Autobiography
Introduction
Author
Bio
About the Author
Barbara DeShong is a psychologist in private practice and consulting, primarily as a keynote speaker. After an early book on stress, she dodged the insanity and long
Barbara DeShong Ph.D.,P.C.
hours of the writing world for the insanity and broken bones of showing horses.
She credits her current writing style to "having unexpectedly dismounted and landed on my head too many times without a helmet." A blend of doing psychotherapy and writing humorous fiction is a perfect fit for her.
"I love stories and I am constitutionally incapable of staying out of other peoples business."
Currently, Barbara is proud to call The Lone Star State her home.
Front
Cover
When psychologist Jessica LeFave is summoned to profile the killer who drove a spike through the heart of the notorious Bernice Jackson, she has a deeply personal reason to be excited.
Bernice Jackson, dubbed the biggest liar in Texas had plenty of enemies.
She'd soared to the top of the Lone Star State's celebrity lists by shamelessly re-writing treasured historical events into wildly successful soft-porn novels and movies. But the piece of history Jessica cares about is that Bernice had been a psychiatry patient of her husband's at the time of his death.
Since watching her husband dragged from the bottom of Lake Austin - a Hilton receipt and another womans wedding rings in his pocket - Jessica has been a little crazy; obsessing over his files, even stalking patients with dodgy reputations. No one but Jessica believes her husband was murdered.
On her own, Jessica immerses herself in the bizarre movie-making family starring a doped-up basket case son, a daughter on a death-wish eating binge, and the ghost of Bernice Jackson who'd pushed her obsession with seeing herself as young and beautiful beyond any psychotic dream.
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CHAPTER ONE
Jackpot. Finally, the prize. Two patients found with spikes driven through their hearts.
This was it. The crossover I've begged for, prayed for, the reason I haven't stepped on a sidewalk crack in ten months. Every minute of every day since my husband's body was dragged from the bottom of Lake Austin - whiskey in his veins, a Hilton receipt and another woman's jewelry in his pocket - I've lingered behind the curtain of real life. A ghost, scouring the crowd for a monster.
In my fist I clutched a list of David's psychiatry patients. He'd been edgy about someone on that list the afternoon before his death. Even frightened. Neither the alcohol found in his bloodstream nor the unfamiliar rings in his pocket matched up with the man I knew and loved.
Of course, this is just the point the police tried to make: that I didn't know my husband as well as I thought I did. According to their report, David died in a drunk-driving accident on a road far from the hospital where I claimed he was working. What wasn't in the report, but was accepted as fact by everyone but me, was that David was hurrying home from a tryst with his mistress.
The police - along with everyone I know - think I'm crazy. They think I'm obsessed, clinging to the fantasy that David and I had a good marriage. If you knew all the screw-ups on my love/sex dance card, you might think I was crazy too. Or line up with my sister the Baptist and say that after what I did, I deserve what's happened.
I fingered the diamonds in the left front pocket of my jeans. David's billfold, still damp, had plopped first out of the coroner's brown envelope onto the yellow Formica counter. Then two quarters, a five-carat engagement solitaire, a dime, three pennies, and a diamond-studded wedding band. My husbands final personal effects.
Now about the couple with the spikes....
CHAPTER FIVE
The Chief, still talking low with the new arrival at the mansion's gleaming copper doors, turned away as I walked past him into the house.
The caller ID on my phone screamed for a return call, but I couldn't pass up a chance to be alone with the people whose life and death, just maybe, connected up to David's murder.
I stepped into the bedroom and viewed the dead couple as a set. Had Harrell and Bernice been happy? The two looked about as fit as most middle-agers working for a living: unremarkable faces, thick at the waist. Bernice's hair showed an eighth of an inch of white at the scalp, then a sharp switch to brass foil curls. Harrell's hair was a natural iron shade and plentiful. Had they been trucked in from a plane crash, I'd have guessed them to be a working-class couple who'd had their nails done for the first time to go on a cruise their children saved up to give them for their anniversary. There was a sweetness about them that made no sense given what I'd learned through rumors and the tabloids.
The Chief's quick footsteps slapping on plastic jerked me back to the present.
"Sorry about the interruptions," I said.
Don didn't acknowledge my apology or slow down until his face was eighteen inches from mine. He squeezed a cylinder of papers in his fist, then spanked the tube against his thigh.
Uh-oh.
Lt. Roback had followed the Chief back to the bedroom and posted in the doorway as if expecting me to make a run for it. Which wasn't a real bad plan.
"Okay, Doc," Don started, his jaw set and his eyes firing straight through me. He smacked the rolled papers against his palm. "You want to explain why you didn't tell me you were at the party here last night?"
"You would have traded me for someone uninvolved."
"Yep."
Don sighed, looking more disgusted than surprised. "The part about you not knowing the victims, is that true? Or are these folks your aunt and uncle and you're waiting for just the right moment to tell me?"
"I did not know Harrell and Bernice Jackson. They had movie star wannabes circling them all evening. I wasn't introduced."
The Chief put up his traffic control palm. "What's really going on here, Doc?"
"David..."
"Oh Holy Mother of God."
"Wait. Please..."
Don dropped his eyes to the floor and kicked the base of the bed. Then he fired his high beams right into my soul, burning away the fog of defensive justifications I'd planned.
Blood surged upward, heating my face. "Okay, it's true. Bernice and maybe some of the other Jacksons were patients of David's"
I'd gone too far this time. Don stared out the atrium doors to the patio, rolled up the guest list, and stuffed it in his back pocket. "You've never sandbagged on me before. Consider yourself bounced."
"You have to hear me out." I shifted from one foot to the other. "This time is different. This time I can help you."
"How?"
"There's something very sick going on in this Jackson family."
"Isn't that why people go to a shrink?"
"Exactly. And Bernice Jackson picked David. He tried to help, and now they're both dead."
"Not even close to good enough."
"What if David is dead because the killer wanted to bury a non-lethal but still shameful personal sin?"
"Where are you coming from on this?"
We stood silent for a full minute, the splashing water across the bleak room suddenly roaring in my ears.
"Haven't you ever screwed up really bad, Don? Haven't you ever done something so far over the line, you'd do anything to take it back? Something so outrageous you wanted to run away, start your life over? I'm not saying so bad you'd kill someone, but so bad you lay awake, night after night, sick with shame and fear?"
"No, Doc, not even close."
"Well, I have."
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Combine learning with having a good time.DeShong has won many national speaking awards.Because she has the new book out, she's lowered her fees.SeeMysteryShrink.comand all will be revealed.Groups: National conferences in all areas of education; hospitals, school districts, family therapy conferences, national professional and business organizations and associations., numerous family gatherings where her skills holding an audience are regularly unappreciated.
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The LeFave Mysteries
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MysteryShrink writes tales and shrinks heads in Texas. Central mostly, but there have been memorable jaunts to the border... the border fiascos in TOO RICH and TOO THIN...those are autobiographical.
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News and special announcements
09/09/2009
Launch Party
Thanks everyone. The launch party was a blast. Steven King might have celebrities running around his launch parties but he couldn't have more fun than I had thanks to all my wonderful and talented friends.
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More to come...
"GREAT Texas Mystery! ... I did not want to put it down."
"A Wild Romp Through Texas... with characters who will stay with you for a long time"
"...a solid and highly recommended read for mystery lovers of any sort."
"This light-hearted and quirky murder mystery is full of laughs and chuckles."
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Echelon PressISBN: 978-1-59080-641-8 (1-59080-641-7)
©2009-2011 Barbara DeShong
