The Hoodoo Detective

by Kirsten Weiss

  Hannah snorted. “That's spirit,” she said in a rough voice, imitating him. “It don't just come out and say so. You gotta listen with your heart, girl.”

  Riga shot her a quick glance, sensing impatience beneath the affection. “Make it right with your ancestors?”

  “He was talking to me. And about him. Old family business.”

  “Then he's really your grandfather? I thought it was just a nickname.”

  She chuckled. “Hoodoo runs in my blood on both sides. Cajun through my dad. Haiti through my mom and the old man. I didn't ask for it. Sometimes, I'm not sure if it's a gift or a curse.”

  Riga nodded. She knew all about blood.

  They had a quick gumbo lunch in the French Quarter, dining beneath lazily spinning fans. Afterward, Riga drove back to the hotel. She should have gone directly to the crew's work room, but that would entail work. Riga headed upstairs and booted up her computer.

  Franklin Turotte was easy to find. Not only was he all over the society pages, he had his own gossip blog. The most recent entry was dated the day before his death.

  One achieves freedom when one realizes life has no meaning. And one best achieves this realization after a glass of absinthe and a night with Miss P...

  Riga made a face. Ouch. Turotte's murder wouldn't be lacking for potential suspects. No society figure went unscathed. A traitor's hanging for a traitor to high society? She shook her head. Too drastic. She continued her search, turning up articles on a fatal car crash he'd been involved in. His passenger, Terry Thorton, was killed when they drove into the bayou. Drunk driving was hinted at, but he was never charged. The “accident” was five years old.

  Riga sighed. She needed to interview the people pilloried in Turotte's articles but hadn't the time for real, face-to-face interviews. Not with so many suspects. She winnowed it down to Turotte's most abused victims and tracked down their phone numbers. One eye on the digital clock by the bed, she made calls.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Jameson, this is Riga Hayworth with the Peninsula Times. I was hoping to get a comment from you about Franklin Turotte's death.” Riga had done some writing for that newspaper, once upon a time. It wasn't a complete lie.

  The people she called were all too eager to give her quotes, opening up about their relationship with Turotte. And though their judgments on the man bordered on vicious, she sensed they'd enjoyed being a part of his columns.

  No publicity is bad publicity, indeed.

  Finally, when she couldn't put it off any longer, Riga took the elevator down to the work room. Sam, Angus, and John Wolfe sat in front of a computer monitor, howling with laughter.

  “Play it again, Sam,” Angus said and laughed harder, his broad face pinking with mirth.

  Riga bammed the door shut behind her. “Let me guess. You found a good kitten video online? I know we didn't get any footage that funny.”

  Sam coughed, wiped his eye. “You're not far off.”

  “They're calling it Crazy Cat,” Wolfe said.

  “Fascinating.” Riga checked her watch, not budging from her post by the door. “So what's next?”

  Sam smoothed his face. “Actually, I think you should see this. It's going viral.”

  “You want me to watch a cat video.”

  “It's not a cat video, exactly.” Sam rubbed the back of his neck. “It's, um, you.”

  “What?” Riga strode to them.

  Angus rose and offered her his seat. She waved him down, bracing to see a shot Wolfe had caught of her half-dressed or something equally demeaning.

  “It's footage from the hotel security camera.” Sam pressed play.

  “There was a security...” Riga trailed off.

  The video was grainy black and white. She stood in the corner in front of Pen's door, texting. Her attacker appeared, shoved her, slammed her against the wall.

  The blood drained from her face. She braced her hand on the table, and it wobbled beneath her weight. Living the fight had been bad. Seeing it made her pulse beat faster, her stomach knot.

  On the video, her shoulders hunched to her ears, her hands came up, rabbit-like. She scratched her attacker's face, quick, brutal strokes. Then the screen split. A replay, Riga slashing on the right, a cat beating at a dog's face on the left. Another replay, this time in slow motion. And then it was one screen again and Riga kicked her attacker between his legs. He doubled over. Knee to the face. Fire extinguisher to the head, and she was on top of him.

  “That's not funny,” she said.

  “Twenty five thousand hits and counting say it is,” Wolfe said. “And the video was only posted this morning.”

  “How did it go up at all? Did the hotel release this? Did you?”

  “Of course we didn't. And the hotel is clueless.” Sam's voice was soothing, as if talking to an animal or small child. “But like it or not, the video is out. You can't take it back.”

  “Why not?”

  “This isn't actually a bad thing,” Sam said. “You come off looking pretty good.”

  “That's not the point!”

  “Look, you were clearly the victim, and you turned the tables on your attacker. People love that. And the crazy cat thing, that's more a critique of the man who attacked you than it is of you.”

  She tensed, her body warming. “Also not the point. That's a video of me. I didn't give anyone permission to post it online. And it sure wasn't funny when that monster attacked.”

  “Riga—”

  “Oh, forget it.” She needed to shut up before she lost her temper. “So are we done with Mean Streets? Can we finish up our own show?”

  “Ah, no. I got a call from the Mean Streets field producer. They want us to meet them at your hoodoo hit man's house in forty minutes.”

  Chapter 8

  Riga gripped the iron fence surrounding the hoodoo hit man's house, an ocher-colored two-story with white trim. Gazing at the bald patches in the lawn, she ran her hand along the fence’s pineapple finials. They were warm to the touch, dusty, their bars casting slanting shadows in the afternoon sun. A lattice-work of green-tinged wrought iron surrounded the home’s porches, overflowing with potted ferns and palms.

  She couldn’t quite believe the police had invited her here. She’d found the body. The cops shouldn't want her anywhere near his house. Now she had a name at least – Harold Howdini. It had to be an alias.

  “Can you check your sound?” Angus pressed a headphone to his ear.

  Riga felt for the box clipped to the back of her belt and pressed a button. “How's this?”

  He gave her the thumbs up.

  The Mean Streets van screeched to a halt on the street, men spilling out, cameras at the ready. The cops’ sedan pulled in behind them.

  Riga's phone rang. Turning from Dirk, swaggering up the cracked sidewalk, she pressed the phone to her ear.

  “It's Ash. I'm here. Where are you?”

  She gave him the address. “I'm with the film crew. Crews.” And she hadn't told them Ash would be coming. She rubbed her palm on the thigh of her slacks. Sam would be okay with it.

  “I'll be there in fifteen minutes.” Ash hung up.

  “Ash is on his way,” she told Sam.

  He raised his eyebrows. Ash had been on their first shoot, at Lake Tahoe, and they knew each other.

  Long tossed his jacket in the car and walked to them, rolling up the cuffs of his white shirt. He angled his head toward the Mean Streets camera. “This is where our vic from the restaurant – or your hoodoo hit man – lived.”

  Dirk nodded. “And now we get to see whether your theory pans out, if there's any sign of the occult at his place.”

  “If he kept anything at his house.” The dark, dead eyes of the windows seemed to stare, and she shivered. She'd checked the property values in the Garden District and guessed this one was worth a couple million. Whatever the man had done, it had paid well.

  “If there's nothing inside...” Dirk gave the camera a steely gaze. “You've hit a dead en
d.”

  “How long have you been waiting to use that one?” Riga asked.

  Sam bit back a smile.

  Shaking her head, she followed the Mean Streets crew to the porch, waiting while the cops unlocked the front door.

  Detective Long swung it open. “A team has already been through here once, but be sure not to touch anything. Not without gloves at least. And I don't suppose you've got any.”

  Digging in her bag, Riga snapped on a pair. “Semper paritus.”

  She brushed past the detective into the entryway. A chandelier dangled from the high ceiling. Dust motes spiraled in the light streaming through the narrow windows beside the door, rimmed with pale green trim.

  The Mean Streets cameraman jostled past, walking backward, and Dirk came to stand next to her.

  “Nice place,” Dirk said. “Too bad our vic can’t enjoy it.”

  “Let's see what he did enjoy.” She walked through an archway into a sitting room. The room had the feel of an open house, immaculate and unlived-in. Wing chairs and sofas in inoffensive pastels angled towards each other atop a matching pseudo-oriental rug. No photos on the side table – just a row of antique, green bottles with heavy, rounded bases. No cabinets for storage. Before she'd married Donovan, de-haunting homes for sale had been her bread and butter. This one looked staged.

  She walked into the dining room. Clean plates were centered upon rose and green placemats on a mahogany table. “Are you sure someone lived here?”

  Detective Short appeared at her elbow and flipped open a notepad. “A bachelor. Lived alone. Probably didn't use these rooms much.”

  “How long did he live here?”

  “Bought the place five years ago.”

  A tug beneath her solar plexus drew her through a door, down a hall, and she found the kitchen – slate-tile floors and white cabinets, black quartz countertops flecked with blue. Her skin buzzed, a ripple of magic – dark and light. She checked under the sink, pulled out a box. “Roach chalk.”

  Wolfe backed up against the Dutch door, camera to his eye.

  Short bagged the box. “Doesn't make him a hoodoo practitioner. Or tie him to the other murder.”

  “No,” she agreed.

  “And if he was into hoodoo, wouldn't he keep the chalk with his other magic stuff?”

  “You found other magic stuff?”

  He shook his head.

  She looked inside the refrigerator. It, at least, was well stocked. Beer, eggs, expensive cheese, butter. The freezer was packed with frozen dinners. Riga opened a tall cupboard. A spice rack had been built into the door. Rows of glass jars filled with herbs and powders ran from top to bottom. She turned the jars, reading the labels.

  Dirk strolled into the kitchen, cameraman in tow. “Was he cooking up anything spooky?”

  “Parsley, sage, rosemary, rue, angelica root, calamus root, silverweed... I think we've found our hoodoo paraphernalia,” she said.

  Dirk shrugged. “Herbs? So the guy liked to cook. I'll bet you could find the same stuff in my kitchen.”

  “Potassium nitrate?” Riga lifted out a jar of white powder. “I might believe that if his freezer wasn't packed with frozen meals. The only thing this guy was cooking up was hoodoo tricks and jinxes.”

  Dirk shrugged. “Sounds thin to me.”

  Remnants of past magic sparked through the kitchen, raising the hair on her arms. “It's The Purloined Letter – he hid the evidence in plain sight, where no one would think to look.”

  “Purloined letter?” Sam walked into the kitchen.

  “An Edgar Allan Poe story,” she said, knowing he already knew the answer. But the cameras were rolling, and she had to explain for the audience. “One of the first detective stories. You could say Poe started the genre of the hero private investigator.”

  “Now you're just showing off,” Dirk said.

  “What's potassium nitrate used for?” Detective Short asked.

  “It's also known as saltpeter,” Riga said. “And it's a common ingredient in hoodoo magic, though it can also be used for preserving food. But put together with these other ingredients, this looks like a hoodoo kitchen.”

  “But you said it could be used for preserving,” Dirk said. “Maybe he liked making jam.”

  “Find me some jam, and we'll talk.” Riga stalked past him, found the hallway and a curving staircase.

  Detective Long leaned over the upstairs banister and peered down at her. “Bedrooms are up here.”

  “Find anything?” She climbed the stairs, Wolfe at her heels.

  Long pointed at an open door.

  Wolfe followed her inside a pastel blue bedroom with white molding. The furniture was heavy, antique, but simple in design.

  She trailed her fingers across the rough, white coverlet, and caught a flash of tangled bodies – black and white – of sweat, of sex.

  The walk-in closet was half empty and held only men's clothing. She extended her senses, but felt nothing more – no tugs of magic, no premonitions, no chills or changes in air pressure that might signal the introduction of the supernatural, another world.

  Slowly, Riga walked to the tiled bathroom. The shower door was clear glass, heavy, expensive. On the soap dish was a pink razor.

  “There was a woman here,” she called over her shoulder.

  Long materialized in the doorway beside Wolfe, and the cameraman took two steps back, trying to capture a better angle.

  She pointed at the razor.

  “Maybe he liked to shave in the shower,” the detective said.

  The cell phone in her pocket buzzed. She drew it out. A message from Donovan: FLIGHT DELAYED. ON MY WAY. BE SAFE.

  Riga stared at the text, chest weighted. She cleared her throat. “There's no mirror in the shower. That's a woman's razor.”

  I'LL BE WAITING, she texted back.

  She returned to the bedroom, opened the bureau drawers. The right drawers were empty. The left were filled with men's socks and briefs.

  Long's footsteps were muffled on the thick rug. “Any signs of the occult?”

  “Not here.” She went to the window and stared out at the street. The hoodoo hit man had confined his activities to the kitchen. Easier cleanup, and the stove was there. It was what she'd have done, though she couldn't remember the last time she'd actually brewed a potion. A jar of salt set in moonlight to cure was as far as she usually went in that direction. “Why am I here?”

  “What do you mean?” Long asked.

  “I don't understand why you've brought me here. You didn't seem to put much stock in the hoodoo hit man theory.”

  “Not until I learned Turotte was at the restaurant where he died.”

  “At the... The hanging victim was there? When the hit man was killed?”

  “We don't know he was a hit man.”

  “He said he was.”

  “People say they're a lot of things.”

  “He wasn't lying about the hoodoo,” Riga said. “The man who attacked me in the hotel, did he say what he was after?”

  “He's not talking. Probably just a mugger.” Long gazed at the bed. “No wife, no kids. What a crummy life.”

  The room suddenly felt close. “I need some air.” She walked downstairs, onto the front porch. Two kids rolled past on skateboards, wheels rattling, dreadlocks flying behind them.

  A male voice whip-cracked. “Riga!” The bodyguard, Ash, strode through the gate. If there was such a thing as a perfect body, Ash had it. Impossibly tall, with long, powerful muscles, he took the three steps to the porch in one stride.

  His toffee-color eyes flashed with annoyance, a spark against his dark skin. “You shouldn't be out here, not alone.”

  Wolfe opened the door, stuck his head out.

  “I wasn't alone,” she said.

  Ash flicked a dismissive gaze over the cameraman, but he extended a hand to Wolfe.

  “Good to see you again,” Wolfe said.

  Ash grunted a response.

  Wolfe shifted the camera o
n his shoulder. “So what brings you to New Orleans?”

  Ash jerked his head toward Riga.

  “Not everyone on the crew knows,” Riga said. “We've actually joined up with another reality show, Mean Streets—”

  The bodyguard's eyes lit. “Not with Dirk Steele?”

  “Yeah,” Wolfe said. “He's inside the house.”

  “No shit. Dirk Steele.” Ash looked longingly toward the door.

  “Come on in.” Riga sighed. “I'll introduce you.” She wasn't sure how. If Dirk knew she'd brought a bodyguard, he'd either laugh his ass off or throw a tantrum because he didn't have one. Mean Streets had gotten her into two crime scenes possibly connected to the Old Man, and she didn't want to lose access.

  Inside the foyer, Ash stopped, whistled.

  Sam hurried downstairs, his chinos making swishing sounds as the hems brushed together. “Ash! Thanks for coming.” He gave Riga a significant look. “I wasn't sure when you'd arrive, but I've told the crew you'll be hanging around until that little problem with my ex resolves itself.”

  One corner of Riga's lips crooked upward in rueful admiration. Sam had anticipated the potential problems with Dirk and provided his own cover story for Ash's presence. But that was why he was the field producer. He knew how to manage people, keep things running smoothly. It was a talent she admired. Diplomacy had never been her strong point.

  Dirk and Detective Short strode from the living room. Dirk's cameraman hurried around them, camera glued to his eye.

  “There's been another murder,” the detective said, catching Riga's eye. “This time in the French Quarter. It's occult, like Turotte's. You up for this?”

  Riga took an involuntary step back, a coldness striking her core. “Are you sure?”

  Dirk's mouth twisted. “I think we'd know a murder.”

  “I meant about the occult connection.” The Old Man couldn't have struck again, so soon, not when she'd been watching his hotel all night.

  Long trotted down the stairs. “Decapitation. The head was put on an altar of sorts. Same weird symbols.”

  Riga swallowed, her throat thickening.

  Another murder.

  And she'd done nothing to stop it.