Penny pursed her mouth. “I admit she’s a little … quirky.”
“You’re referring to the blue hair?”
“That and she has this boyfriend, Kirk.”
“And?”
“And he’s a nebulous, superman phantom. She goes on and on about how much money he has, and all the different things he does. He’s a pilot and a scientist and a big game hunter—”
“A hunter? Where does he live?”
Penny shrugged. “He supposedly has houses all over the country.”
“But you’ve never seen him or talked to him?”
“No. I don’t even know his last name. And they seem to correspond primarily by e-mail.”
“So you think she’s fallen for a pathological liar in a chat room?”
“That or maybe he doesn’t exist at all.”
“Ah. Does she have mental problems?”
Penny gave a little laugh. “Not that I’m aware of, although people have hinted that she has a third eye.”
“ESP?”
Penny shrugged. “So people say, although I’ve never seen any evidence of it, and Marie doesn’t talk about it.” Tingling with embarrassment, she told him what Marie had said about her friend Melissa bragging that she’d slept with Deke. “Melissa was at the party, and she was in the diner this morning when you and I had coffee.”
“The girl could have been lying about the affair,” he said quietly.
She looked at him with gratitude … and resignation. “Maybe … but probably not.”
He sighed. “Okay, so she’s someone else who might have had a motive if she and Deke argued. Maybe she’s pregnant.”
Penny winced.
“Or maybe she’s the other woman that Sheena seems to think Deke was involved with.”
Penny touched her temple. “My head hurts. How do you do this for a living?”
He smiled. “It’s easier when you’re not in the middle of everything. Back to Marie—did you say that Steve Chasen has a crush on her?”
“I think so. He’s been coming into the store regularly, and although she’s always ignored him, they seemed to hit it off at my party.”
“So he was only there because of her?”
She nodded. “In fact, I was surprised that he showed up, because others might have seen it as some kind of betrayal of Deke.”
“Love trumps principle every time,” B.J. said wryly. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you sure you don’t have a boyfriend?”
The moisture left her mouth. “Not the last time I checked.”
“Have you gone out with anyone since you and your husband split up?” He lifted his hand. “It might be important to the investigation.”
Her face flamed. “I … no. I’ve been … busy.” And she wasn’t about to admit that the only man who had asked was scruffy Jimmy Scaggs.
“Were you still hung up on your ex?” he asked mildly.
“No,” she said, too quickly.
“It’s okay if you were. It sounds as if the split caught you by surprise.”
She looked down at her hands. “It did,” she admitted. “But I was trying to get on with my life.” She had considered Sheena to be a cliché, but wasn’t she a cliché as well? The signs were there, but she hadn’t seen it coming.
“It must have been hard in a small town, running into your ex all the time.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t see Deke that much after I moved out, mostly when we were in court.” And when she’d seen him come and go from the house if she happened to have been looking out the window of her store. With her binoculars.
“So I was going to be your ricochet lay?”
“Pardon me?”
He grinned. “You know—sex on the rebound.”
She blushed furiously and her breasts tightened against her will. Thinking about what might have happened between them couldn’t be good for her cortisone level.
“That’s a lot of pressure on a guy,” he said, then mischief lit his eyes. “But I enjoy a challenge.”
Desire danced in her midsection. Just talking about their missed opportunity raised her temperature. If only she’d followed her baser instincts that night… . Thrilled to change the subject, Penny sat forward in her seat and pointed. “This is Hairpin Hill.”
“Compared to most of the flat land around here, this is a mountain.”
“It’s actually a landfill,” she said. “For decades, Mojo was the repository for a lot of the trash coming from New Orleans. Several years ago, someone decided to cover it up, plant grass and fast-growing trees, then divide the land into lots.”
“Amazing,” he muttered.
She was quiet as they drove another quarter of a mile up the curving road, his earlier, provocative words winding through her head. She glanced at his rugged profile and felt a corresponding tug on her senses. The man was so damned appealing. With great difficulty, she forced herself to focus and pointed. “That’s where I stopped running to catch my breath, then I heard the shots.”
He slowed. “From what direction?”
She gestured, then he continued driving. A few turns later, they drove into Diane Davidson’s subdivision, Garden Willow Heights. The houses were numbingly similar, the street names disorienting in their sameness—Willow Street, Willow Court, Willow Circle, Willow Way.
Penny’s first impression of Diane Davidson’s house was that she was trying to fit in with her neighbors. The little ranch house and lawn were painfully neat, the landscaping plants perfectly spaced like soldiers in a battalion, the porch furniture placed at precise jaunty angles. But the serene image was shattered by the words Get Out Witch painted in red on the pristine white siding.
“Looks like the woman’s got her own problems,” B.J. said as he parked on the street near the end of the driveway.
“Tasteless prank,” Penny murmured. “This voodoo festival has everyone stirred up.” They climbed out, then walked up the concrete driveway and stepped onto the shallow porch. “The paint looks relatively fresh.”
B.J. rubbed his finger against the paint, then frowned and raised his finger to his nose. “This isn’t paint—it’s blood.”
Her heart beat a tattoo against her breastbone. “Blood?”
“Probably animal blood. Someone’s trying to scare her.”
Penny glanced around the serene neighborhood, the perfect little houses, housing perfect little people.
Perfectly evil?
B.J. rang the doorbell twice, but several minutes passed with no answer. “Looks like she’s gone.”
“She could be too afraid to come to the door,” Penny offered.
B.J. pointed to the flattened newspaper in the driveway. “Looks like she backed over it when she left. My guess is she went to buy white paint.”
Penny turned and started to walk back to the car.
“Wait for me in the car,” he said, then disappeared around the side of the house.
Penny was instantly nervous. What was he doing? She glanced around to see if Diane Davidson’s neighbors were peering out their windows, expecting someone to come bounding out any second, demanding to know what they were doing snooping around the witch’s house. She climbed back into the messy car and slumped down in the seat, then picked up the voodoo doll she had rescued from her store parking lot, shaking her head at the cryptic note. Some people truly believed that a pinprick could actually set real life events into motion.
She turned her head and stared at the violent words scrawled on Diane Davidson’s house. And some people truly believed that Diane Davidson had some kind of otherworldly power, else they wouldn’t be trying to run her out of town. Did Diane and other people have the ability to incite events using mere words and thoughts?
B.J. came around the side of the house and casually stopped to cup his hands around his eyes and look in one of the windows. Then he strolled toward the car, his mouth pursed, as if he were whistling. She was struck anew by the athletic way h
e moved, the informal command he had over his body and his surroundings. Despite his relaxed bearing, she knew he was taking in everything, scanning, memorizing details.
She was torn—grateful that he seemed to be going to such lengths to find answers, but afraid that she was relying on him too much, too quickly. With quiet resolve, she reminded herself that she was ultravulnerable at the moment, fresh from losing Deke and desperate to prove her innocence. It was only natural that she was attracted to B.J. In fact, her desperation was the only thing that explained the attraction—under normal circumstances, she’d never be attracted to a junk-food junkie whose wardrobe seemed to consist of jeans and concert Tshirts and whose car was cluttered enough to conceal a grab bag of weapons.
She remembered the green stiletto, and her thoughts ran rampant as B.J. approached the car. For all she knew about him, the woman who belonged to the shoe could be in the trunk. Maybe he kidnapped and murdered women, then approached their families and offered to look for them. Maybe he—
The door opened and he swung inside. “Diane Davidson’s neighbors have reason to be nervous, but not because she’s a witch.”
“Why then? Did you find something?”
“A gun rack in her living room that houses some pretty impressive weapons.”
Penny gasped. “Do you think she was the one shooting at me? But why?”
“Maybe the shooting is somehow connected to your ex. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe it wasn’t even Diane Davidson doing the shooting, but it’s worth looking into.”
The ring of her cell phone startled Penny. She fumbled for a few seconds before locating the Call key. “Hello?”
“Penny? It’s Gloria.”
And the woman seemed to be hyperventilating. “What’s wrong?”
“The police want you to come back to the station.”
Penny’s heart stuttered in her chest, and her gaze flew to B.J.’s. “Has there been a new development?”
“Chief Davis says they have you on video yesterday morning threatening Deke.”
19
Remember to clean up the mess …
“Well, Ms. Francisco,” Detective Maynard said with a smile, “here we are again.”
Penny felt the gaze of everyone in the interview room—Maynard, Gloria Dalton, and Allyson Davis—upon her. Allyson stood, leaning against a wall, arms crossed over her chest. The smug look on the woman’s angular face, combined with the greenish cast to her attorney’s face, made the vise around Penny’s chest tighten. Ridiculously, she wished that B.J. were in the room with her. A television on a roll-around stand sat in the corner of the room. On the table sat a brown paper bag marked Evidence: D. Black Homicide. Beneath the table, her knee began to bounce up and down.
“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” she said, her voice thready.
Allyson leaned forward. “Is that a confession?”
Penny frowned. “No, of course not.”
Gloria put her hand on Penny’s arm. “My client means that she’s here voluntarily to answer your questions. She doesn’t have anything to hide.”
Maynard’s mouth pressed into a flat line. “You weren’t completely honest with us before, Ms. Francisco.”
Penny balked. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“We found your fingerprints in the bedroom of Mr. Black’s home.”
“Considering that Penny used to live there,” Gloria said, “it’s only logical that her fingerprints are all over the house.”
“But these fingerprints were on a photograph of Mr. Black and his girlfriend, and they contain the same type of glittery material that was on your hands last night.”
Penny’s lips parted in panic—she’d forgotten about the photograph. Damn that metallic makeup. How damaging (and pathetic) would it be to admit that she’d broken the photograph on purpose? “I … yes, I was in the bedroom.” Moisture gathered on the nape of her neck. “When I walked by, I saw that the picture frame had fallen off the dresser. I, um, picked it up and saw the glass was broken.”
Maynard squinted. “So you didn’t break the glass in a fit of rage?”
A fit of rage? In hindsight, it had been more like petty spite—which was even more humiliating. “No, I didn’t break the photo in a fit of rage,” she said, her voice stronger.
“So if you picked it up, why was it still on the floor when we found it?”
“I don’t know,” she said, getting the hang of lying.
“So you weren’t upset with your ex-husband last night when you entered his house?”
“No,” Penny replied.
Maynard picked up a remote control and aimed it at the television. The screen erupted in static fuzz, then a grainy black-and-white picture appeared, unrecognizable. Trees? A section of a house?
“What is this?” Gloria demanded.
“You’ll see,” Allyson said, the tone of her voice bordering on gleeful.
Suddenly something appeared on the screen—something moving. A person, walking, down a path. Wearing overalls, carrying a stick. “That’s me,” Penny murmured.
“Where?” Gloria asked.
“At the museum.”
“What museum?”
“The voodoo museum next to Penny’s store,” Allyson offered. “She was trespassing.”
Penny scoffed. “Is that what this is all about? I squeezed through an opening in the fence to deliver some mail that wound up in my box by mistake.”
“Keep watching,” Allyson said.
Penny squirmed, her eyes glued on the television. It looked as if the camera had been mounted on the eave at the rear of the Archambault mansion, pointing up the side of the house where she’d walked yesterday morning. She watched herself turn, then Deke appeared on the screen.
Her heart jerked sideways to see him alive and well, unaware that he had only a few hours to live. He stood still, and she walked closer to him. The body language wasn’t lost on her—he would have walked away had she not engaged him in conversation. They exchanged words—she remembered having made a crack about Sheena, and he had accused her of being jealous. Then he turned away, and she raised the stick she held and shook it at his back.
Her stomach plummeted as she watched herself stride after him, her mouth moving angrily—it was, she remembered, when she’d asked him why he’d painted the house pink. His body language, as opposed to hers, was calm and controlled. He turned toward her, the camera registering her face and his back. They talked for a few seconds, then her expression turned to one of pleading. It was when she had asked for his help with Mona, she recalled. But Deke shook his head, clearly dismissing her. They exchanged a few more words, then she leaned into him and said something, her body language aggressive before she turned and walked off camera. Deke spoke in her direction, then he turned and walked toward the camera until he disappeared from the screen.
When Maynard stopped the tape, tears stung Penny’s eyes. Without the audio, she saw what everyone else in the room must: She looked hostile and vindictive.
Allyson put her hands on the table and narrowed her eyes. “What do you have to say for yourself, Penny?”
“It wasn’t the way it looks on tape.”
“You didn’t know Mr. Black was at the museum?” Maynard asked.
“No—the museum wasn’t even open yet. I went to drop the mail in the door slot.”
“So why was Mr. Black there?”
“He said he was there on business. He was holding a file folder. Deke’s father handled all the museum’s business, and Deke took it over when his father died. He has a key to the office.”
“On the tape, it looks like the two of you were arguing.”
She pressed her lips together to regain a measure of calm. “Deke chided me for slipping through the fence, I made a comment about him painting the house pink, then he told me that Mona was going to have the city council stop me from planting the garden I needed to grow my business.” She gestured toward the television screen. “We had words, then I asked for
his help with Mona.”
“And what did Deke say?” Allyson asked.
Penny’s throat constricted. “He said … no.”
“And you were furious?”
“No … I was … hurt, I guess.”
“Because he chose yet another woman over you?”
The woman was hitting below the belt. “Maybe. But I wasn’t angry enough to kill him.”
“What about the club you threatened him with?”
Penny pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “It was a stick I picked up in case I ran into a snake as I crossed my property.” She looked at Maynard. “You were there this morning—you saw how wild the underbrush is. And I didn’t threaten Deke. He’d made some crack about me being jealous, and I was … irritated.”
“Irritated?”
“That’s right,” Penny said. “And that’s all.”
“So you weren’t jealous?”
Penny shook her head. “Not jealous. Just … sad, I guess.”
“And you wanted to get even?”
“No,” she said with as much conviction as she had in her. “Like I said, I wanted us to be civil. I even congratulated him on his engagement.”
Allyson backed up, but her tongue was in her cheek. Penny could tell she didn’t believe her.
“And how did Mr. Black respond?” Maynard asked.
“He seemed surprised.”
“Surprised that you knew of the engagement?”
“I suppose.”
“The video is hardly incriminating,” Gloria cut in. “All you have is a divorced couple running into each other, and Penny just told you what happened.”
“So you still maintain your innocence?” Maynard asked Penny.
“Absolutely. Either this was a random act, or someone is trying to frame me.”
“Speaking of which,” Gloria said, “did you ask the officers where they found the handgun they allegedly removed from Penny’s apartment?”
“Yes,” Allyson said. “It was hidden beneath the dry moss around the bottom of a potted tree.” She angled her head. “Does it ring a bell now, Penny?”
Penny’s eyes went wide. “The ficus tree … it was sitting in the foyer of the house. I took the tree with me when I moved out.” She glanced from face to face. “I had no idea about the gun. Deke must have put it there.”
In Deep Voodoo Page 16
