Love Can Be Murder (boxed set of humorous mysteries)

by Stephanie Bond

  "Marie said it wasn't safe to go back to the store. Half the population thinks I'm a murderer and the other half thinks I'm some kind of witch doctor." She gazed toward the shelter, where several women in colorful costumes were dancing in sync, twirling flaming batons. Today a gray-bearded man wielded the ason, walking and stomping around the peristil with a live snake around his neck, touching the foreheads of those who sought him out and occasionally pausing in mid-motion to have his picture taken by tourists.

  "You'd tell me, wouldn't you?" he said as they walked into the diner.

  "Tell you what?"

  He gestured to the bar. "Okay to sit here? We'll get faster service."

  She slid onto the stool and swiveled to face the white Formica bar.

  "If you were a witch doctor," he said, lowering himself to the neighboring stool.

  She gave him a wry smile. "I'd tell you."

  "Good." His leg brushed against hers as he passed her a greasy menu. "Because I'd want to know if I was in for some kind of supernatural experience."

  A laugh erupted from her throat even as the side of her body nearest him burned. It was a game her mind was playing on her body called distraction. Feel lust and arousal instead of pain and fear.

  "So did anything new come to light when you talked to the police?" he asked.

  "Marie's friend Melissa has an alibi, so we can strike her off the list."

  "Okay."

  "And I was legally drunk last night," she said dryly. "They think Deke might have been, too." She frowned. "The odd thing is, Deke told me he'd stopped drinking the last time I saw him at the courthouse."

  A waitress came by and took their orders—chicken noodle soup and water with lemon for her, a double bacon cheeseburger with curly fries and a bottle of Dr Pepper for him.

  "So he fell off the wagon," B.J. said with a shrug.

  "There's more. The police did find a handgun in my apartment—it was hidden in the pot of my ficus tree."

  A wary look came into his eyes. "You must have hidden it pretty well if you forgot about it."

  "I didn't know it was there. The tree was in the foyer of the Victorian. When I left, I decided at the last minute to take it with me."

  "That's ironic."

  "So I'm wondering if the gun was what Deke was looking for—if that's why he left me those frantic messages last night."

  B.J. raked his hand over the dark whiskers on his jaw. "It would explain why he wouldn't just come out and say what he was looking for."

  "I'm starting to wonder if maybe Deke was involved in something illegal, like drugs."

  "What makes you think that?"

  "It would explain the change in his personality. When I met Deke, he was so laid back. But after his father died, he became moody and edgy. He was hard to live with sometimes."

  "Don't you think that probably had something to do with him losing his father?"

  "Probably," she agreed. "But I remember him saying something after his father died—that he felt lost, that for most of his life he had resisted bad things because he was afraid of disappointing his father. When his father died...I don't know, but I got the feeling Deke was afraid he would succumb to something."

  "He did succumb to infidelity," B.J. pointed out.

  "I know," she said wryly, "but that doesn't explain how he could afford a new sports car and European suits when his practice was supposedly struggling."

  "You never asked him?"

  "Sure I did. He said he was tapping into his trust fund."

  "You don't think he was?"

  "Mona still controls the trust fund that was created for him when Deke's father passed away. And she didn't look favorably upon extravagant purchases. She wanted Deke to be classy… and under her thumb."

  "So what did his mother think about his new girlfriend?"

  "Not much, I'm sure, but Mona kept it to herself. When she stopped by the party, though, I was feeling vindictive."

  "And?"

  "And I broke the news to her that Deke and Sheena were engaged."

  He sucked in through his teeth. "I'll bet Mama wasn't too happy."

  "She tried not to react, but I could tell she was shocked—and angry."

  "Did he go out of his way to do things to annoy his mother?"

  "Not usually."

  "So were you surprised he was engaged to the Linder woman?"

  She rubbed the condensation on her water glass. "Frankly...yes. I thought they probably would live together for a while. Sheena just doesn't seem like Deke's type, not for the long run, anyway. The funny thing is, I don't think even Sheena thought she was Deke's type for the long run."

  "You mean considering the fact she suspected you and Deke of messing around behind her back?"

  "Right. And when I saw Deke outside the museum and congratulated him, he seemed surprised."

  "Surprised that you knew about the engagement?"

  Penny bit her lip, replaying his reaction in her mind. "I thought so, but now...now I'm wondering if maybe he was just surprised."

  "As in, he hadn't proposed?"

  She shrugged. "Maybe."

  "Well, it's possible that Sheena made it up out of desperation. Maybe we're back to the girlfriend after all."

  "There's more," Penny said. "The voodoo doll that someone brought to the party...apparently the clothes were made out of one of Deke's suits."

  He grimaced. "Wow, that's blunt. So whoever made the doll had access to his clothes."

  "Right. And since I didn't do it, the most obvious answer is Sheena."

  "Did she happen to drop by the party?"

  "No, but she was at Caskey's that night, and the gift table was next to the door. I guess it's possible she put it there without anyone seeing her."

  He sighed. "But then so could anyone else who was at the bar that night."

  "They would've had to know about the party," she pointed out.

  "Did Sheena?"

  "Not from me." Then she squinted. "But I did mention something to Deke about having the party, so he might have said something to her." Sheena's harsh words about how she and Deke had talked about Penny resounded in her mind.

  B.J. nodded. "So maybe they were having problems. She threatened him, he went looking for his gun and couldn't find it. He called you to see if you knew where it was."

  "And Sheena overheard him calling me," Penny added, her adrenaline pumping. "To set me up, she gets a stake from my garden. Deke is drunk, so she's able to stab him."

  "Then she panics," B.J. said. "She finds a voodoo doll at the festival, dresses it in one of Deke's suits that she cuts up, and puts it on the gift table."

  "Then she finds me at the bar," Penny said, "and tells me Deke is looking for me. She left the phone off the hook thinking that I'd walk to the house if I got a busy signal."

  "Then she conveniently arrives home to find you standing over the body and calls the police," B.J. said.

  Penny's jaw dropped. "We solved the case!"

  But he gave a little laugh. "Just because all the pieces fit doesn't mean they're in the right place. She has an alibi, remember?"

  "She was lying in a tanning bed—that alone should be a crime."

  He laughed. "What would she gain from killing him?"

  "The assets he supposedly put in her name and in the name of her company."

  He nodded. "Pretty good. But you also have something to gain from his death."

  "What?"

  "Revenge."

  She sipped from her water glass. "That's not the kind of person I am."

  "That's the kind of person everyone has the potential to be," he murmured. Then he removed a napkin from his pocket. "There were two names on the list of people at the party that you haven't mentioned: Liz Brockwell and Wendy Metzger."

  "Friends of mine from college," she said. "Liz lives in New Orleans, Wendy in Atlanta. They came to surprise me."

  "Did they know Deke?"

  Penny nodded. "We were all in college together, but they were p
rimarily my friends. In fact, Liz didn't particularly like Deke, but I think she's kind of bitter toward men in general because of her two divorces."

  "She's the one who lives in New Orleans?"

  "Right."

  "Could she have brought the doll?"

  "I asked Liz and she said no." Penny blushed. "They, um, brought the blow-up man."

  He leaned in close to her ear. "A woman who looks like you do shouldn't have to resort to...artificial means."

  She swung her head up to see if he was flattering her, and suddenly her mouth was mere inches from his. His warm breath fanned her cheek, and desire hooded his eyes. She had the distinct feeling that if they hadn't been in a public place, they would have been going at each other. The attraction she felt for this man was crazy—it had all the hormonal earmarks of a teenage infatuation, but instead of being flush with the curiosity of sex, she was flush with the suspicion that they would be savagely compatible in bed. A current of energy passed wordlessly between them. His lips parted, and she unwittingly mimicked him, lost in the fantasy.

  The waitress reappeared, breaking the moment, her hands full, and plates in the crooks of her elbows. B.J. smacked his lips at the cholesterol-laden plate she set before him. "Looks great."

  Still shaken by the connection she felt to this man, Penny stared down at her bowl of chicken soup. A pool of clear yellow grease floated on top like an oil slick, suffocating the noodles and little bits of carrot. "Looks...hazardous."

  "You always been such a picky eater?" he asked before taking a gigantic bite out of his two-story burger.

  She dunked the spoon into the grease and pulled it back out, cringing when the lumpy yellow stuff actually congealed against the metal. "I'm not picky—I'm health conscious." She abandoned the soup and scrutinized the cellophane packet of saltines for the sodium content. But when the aroma of his burger reached her nose, her stomach howled, and she tore open the crackers and begrudgingly bit into one. The sodium would no doubt raise her blood pressure. She could practically feel her arteries contract even as she swallowed.

  B.J. had already inhaled half his burger and was making a dent in the mountain of curly fries. She pointed her pinky in the vicinity of his well-developed chest. "Chargrilled food is carcinogenic. Free radicals are spinning through your body as we speak, looking for a healthy cell to latch onto and mutate."

  "I bet you're always the life of the barbecue," he muttered.

  "I'm telling you for your own good. I bet you don't take a multivitamin, either."

  "No, that ranks right up there with tofu."

  She dug into her purse and removed the little plastic bag that held her daily vitamin pack—twelve pills in all, two of them fairly large. B.J. stared as she swallowed them one by one.

  "You're healthy and you take that many pills?"

  "I'm healthy because I take this many pills."

  He shook his head. "That's not natural."

  "Really? So tell me, what tree did they pick those curly fries off of?"

  He grinned. "That's different. Besides—" He looked her up and down. "You could stand to put on a few pounds."

  She frowned down at her baggy clothes. "How would you know?"

  "Are you kidding? All I can think about is what you're hiding under there."

  Ignoring the spike in her vitals, she narrowed her eyes and ordered a cup of hot water for the emergency bag of green tea she carried with her; one never knew when one might need a booster dose of antioxidants.

  He laughed and continued eating. Rankled, Penny sat brewing right along with her tea. Who was he to make fun of her? The health rituals she'd developed over the past year—the meals, the supplements, the exercise programs—had given her life new structure, new meaning. Her body was a lean, mean, autoimmune machine.

  She frowned into her cup—that information probably wouldn't look very appealing in a singles ad.

  "Don't you miss it?" he asked.

  "What?" she asked, and absurdly, sex came to mind.

  He gestured vaguely toward the food all around them, the dessert counter. "The fat, the salt, the sugar. It tastes good."

  "A high-fat diet kills your libido." She regretted those words as soon as they left her mouth.

  He laughed. "Couldn't prove it by me."

  She chewed on a cracker and tried to force erotic images from her mind and back to the matter at hand. She remembered Gloria's pledge to make some calls regarding B.J. "How long have you been an investigator?"

  He shrugged. "Five years or so. My brother was a cop who decided to go out on his own. I had a job in technology that was slowly killing me with boredom, so I decided to join him."

  "You must like it," she observed, although it was obvious from his clothing—and his car—that he wasn't exactly rolling in the dough.

  "Yeah, I get to meet a lot of interesting people." He smiled at her, and she squirmed under his scrutiny.

  "Lots of damsels in distress?"

  "A few," he admitted.

  "How long will you stay in Mojo?" she asked, hoping she didn't sound as if she cared.

  "As long as I'm needed," he said, withdrawing his wallet.

  "Let me pay," she said, reaching for her purse.

  "I got it," he said, then winked. "I'll add it to my expense report. Ready to go?"

  They decided to leave his car parked in the square and walk to the museum.

  "Will you show me the way you went yesterday when you ran into Deke?"

  "Sure," she said, glad for a reason not to walk past the Victorian. They skirted the parking lot of her store, and she gazed longingly toward the door, thinking she'd stop in on the way back. At the edge of the brambly field, she looked around for the stick she'd thrown down, then realized the detective had probably found it and confiscated it as evidence. "The stakes are gone," she said. "The police must have taken them."

  "Or the tourists," B.J. said.

  He was probably right—they were probably already listed on eBay.

  She led the way through the brush, stumbling a couple of times on exposed roots. B.J. took her arm and helped her across, but his warm hand was so distracting that she was even more unsteady. When they reached the fence, she frowned at the wire that had been wrapped around the separated areas of the fence, effectively blocking entry to the other side. "Someone patched it up, probably Tilton."

  "Tilton?"

  "He's Hazel's son. He does odd jobs around the museum."

  B.J. stepped up to the vine-covered fence and craned his neck to look at the towering Archambault house. "So that's the voodoo museum?"

  She nodded. "Come on, we'll walk around front."

  They backtracked to the sidewalk and walked to the front of the museum. Despite the fact that the day was sunny, the temperature around the tree-shrouded house was always ten degrees cooler than it was anywhere else. Fall leaves clogged the yard, the walkway, and the steps, lending to the spooky appearance of the rundown mansion. Penny gave B.J. some history of the place, including a few bits of the more exotic lore. He studied the house and the landscaping as they walked up the steps behind a small group of tourists, then he surveyed the tall, red-stained door and pushed it open. Penny shivered as she walked through, once again overcome with the feeling that the house had the ability to consume her.

  Inside, the atmosphere had been set with low lighting and thick candles behind hurricane globes. The furniture was dark and heavy, the windows tall, the curtains ornate. Murals adorned the ceiling of each room. At first glance, they seemed soft and almost biblical, but upon closer scrutiny, then depicted scenes of torture and sacrifice, each more disturbing than the last. The mural in the entryway showed a man wearing a blue robe with his hands raised to a group of white-robed followers. The man looked angelic and noble, but behind him was a pit of demons, seemingly ready to snatch the followers as soon as they neared.

  "Nice," B.J. murmured wryly.

  A heavy commercial floral fragrance hung in the air, a not-so-successful attempt to hide
the unpleasant scent of mothballs. A carpeted runner spared the creaky wood floors from heavy foot traffic. Hazel stood behind a counter, dressed in a loose black dress, smiling and pleasant, describing the tours to the people who were ahead of them. Then she handed off the group to one of several high school students who worked at the museum during peak times and looked up, her expression immediately turning to concern as she came out from behind the counter.

  "Penny, my dear." She hugged her briefly. "I'm so sorry about Deke."

  "Thank you. And I want you to know that I had nothing to do with it," Penny felt compelled to say to her friend.

  "I know that," Hazel said, then she bit her lip. "I have to warn you—when that detective came around this morning, I told him you said you'd run into Deke here yesterday, and he got all our security tapes."

  "They've already questioned me about it. It's fine." She introduced Hazel to B.J. "He's in town looking for a missing friend and was hoping you could help."

  "Certainly, if I can."

  B.J. showed her the flyer of Giselle Taylor. "The dispatcher at the police department says she remembers this woman asking for directions to the museum this time last year."

  "Last year?"

  "During the festival," Penny added.

  Hazel winced. "My memory isn't what it used to be, but let me take a look." She pulled reading glasses from her pocket and studied the flyer, but shook her head. "I'm sorry—I don't remember her. So many people come through here in a year's time, I can't remember them all."

  "I understand," B.J. said. "Thank you. Do you mind if I look around? I'd be glad to pay for a tour."

  Hazel gave them a conspiratorial wave. "Go ahead. Penny knows her way around." The woman then turned her attention to another group of people who had come in.

  Penny smiled up at B.J. "Do you want the nickel tour or the full-blown experience?"

  He grinned. "Full-blown."

  She took him from room to room, describing the murals and the exhibits of costumes, implements, a few wax figures and a few stuffed goats and chickens (compliments of Lewis Taxidermy). The voodoo displays told the stories behind the myths of the voodoo of Africa and Haiti—the black magic, the human sacrifices, the zombies—but always left the door open for the idea that any dark, horrific thing was possible in the underworld of voodoo.