Love Can Be Murder Box Set

by Bond, Stephanie

  Besides, here she was less likely to get shot at.

  Jules Lamborne strode in, leaning on her walking stick.

  "Hello, Jules," Penny said, glancing around for Marie, hoping to get out of waiting on the spooky old woman. She wasn't in the mood for more bad mojo.

  "Bonjour," Jules offered, although her voice wasn't its usual strong warble. She climbed up on a stool but seemed to be moving more slowly than normal. "I came for my morning elixir."

  Penny spotted Marie handling another customer and groaned inwardly. "Coming right up." She filled a glass with Vigor Juice, managing to spill some on the floor in her nervousness. She set the glass in front of the old woman and reached for a paper towel. "I saw you at Deke's funeral yesterday, Jules."

  "Saw you, too," the woman said after a hearty drink. "Saw what you did to the cercueil."

  Without Marie translating, Penny was confused, but she took a guess. "You mean the casket?"

  Jules nodded.

  Penny frowned. "I didn't do anything to it. I barely touched it, and it fell. It was just an accident."

  Jules wagged her finger. "Nothing is an accident. The cercueil fell because you wished it to, or because it had to."

  "Okay," Penny said, still skeptical. She certainly hadn't "wished" it to fall, and why would a coffin have to fall?

  Jules drank the rest of the juice in one gulp, then set down the empty glass and abruptly stood to leave.

  Penny observed the woman's agitated body language. "What's your hurry, Jules?"

  "There is a serpent underfoot," Jules murmured, glancing from side to side, her eyes wide, her tongue darting in and out as if she was unwittingly mimicking a snake. "I must go—I'm weak from using my Cajun and will be susceptible to the serpent's evil." The little old woman scrambled toward the door unsteadily.

  Penny strode ahead to get the door for her. "Watch your step, Jules. See you tomorrow."

  But when the woman didn't respond with her normal "Bon Dieu willing," as she walked away, Penny bit her lip. Was Jules's age finally catching up to her? Had the woman slipped into senility? Were the voodoo festival and all the bizarre events making her more agitated, more neurotic?

  Just as Penny was closing the door, it was shoved open, catching Penny on the heel. While pain shot up her leg, she looked around to see Sheena Linder standing there in snakeskin jeans, a gold shirt, and four-inch stilettos. Her orange skin was slick with some kind of oil, her white hair as poufy and dry-looking as straw. Didn't the woman realize that when she fried her skin, she was also frying her hair? One of these days, she was going to burst into flames. "Hi, Sheena."

  Sheena planted her hands on her generous hips and glared at Penny. "I'm going to sue you."

  Penny sighed. "What for now?"

  Sheena's eyes narrowed. "Don't get smart with me, Granola Girl. Do you know what kind of pain and anguish you put me through yesterday when you knocked Deke's casket off its stand? I had to take a handful of Xanax just to make it through the rest of the day."

  Customers began to stare, and Penny swallowed her retort. "Maybe we should take this discussion into my office."

  Sheena's chin jerked up. "Okay by me."

  Penny led the way, then glanced back to see if Sheena was following her...just in time to see Sheena step in the Vigor Juice that Penny had spilled, which had seeped from behind the counter. In one awful second, Penny realized she was still holding the paper towel she’d meant to use to soak up the spill, before Jules had distracted her with all of her ramblings. Sheena had been strutting full steam ahead, so she'd hit the green Vigor Juice with maximum momentum. Her legs flew up in the air as if they'd been pulled by a rope, and she landed in a yoga v-sit, directly on her tailbone. Penny heard the crack of bone from where she stood, and she winced—that had to hurt.

  Sheena was still screaming when they loaded her into the ambulance, but all Penny could hear was the sound of her insurance premiums soaring over the moon. She did feel sympathetic for the woman...a little. But filing so many bogus personal injury claims was bound to come back and bite her sooner or later. Penny sighed. She just wished it hadn't been her negligence that had taught the woman a lesson.

  Just before the ambulance door closed, Penny noticed Sheena's pants—snakeskin. Penny's body tingled. Jules had said there was a serpent underfoot...had she foreseen the accident?

  "It couldn't have happened to a nicer person," Marie said sarcastically, watching the ambulance pull away.

  "Careful," Penny said. "If she takes my business away from me in court, you might be working for her."

  Marie made a face.

  Penny wet her lips and tried to inject a casual note into her voice. "Jules was in this morning, and she wasn't making sense to me."

  Marie frowned. "Jules is the smartest person I know. What did she say?"

  "She said a serpent was underfoot."

  The young woman shrugged. "That just means she thinks that evil is all around."

  "But then she said she had to leave—that she was weak from using her Cajun and was susceptible to the serpent."

  "So she thought she was susceptible to the evil."

  "From speaking Cajun? Did I misunderstand?"

  Marie bit her lip, then shook her head. "No...in that context, Cajun isn't a person, or a language, or even a culture. The word can be more loosely translated to mean magic. Jules was weak from using her magic." The woman wagged her eyebrows, then walked back inside the store.

  Penny pressed her mouth together—just what had Jules used her magic on? A voodoo doll? Hadn't Jules offered to put a hex on Deke? And Jules had been in the square Friday night—perhaps she was the one who had placed the doll on the table at Caskey's. And she had been at the funeral home yesterday, when the casket had practically leaped off its stand....

  No. Penny shook her head to rid it of nonsense. There was no such thing as voodoo or black magic.

  She stared at the pink house, and B.J.'s words about wishing they could get in to look at the crime scene came back to her. Sheena would be in the hospital for a while, so what better time to snoop around? He had returned to New Orleans yesterday to drop off some items at a lab, and he'd said he'd be back soon. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and hesitated. Was she calling because she wanted to tell him about the house being empty, or because she missed him?

  She closed her eyes and groaned, and her phone rang.

  When she saw his number pop up, her heart lifted higher than it had a right to. She flipped down the mouthpiece. "Hello?"

  "It's me," he said. "I miss you."

  Surprise and pleasure sparkled through her chest. "So come back," she said breezily. "I have a job for us." She explained about the house.

  "I was planning to come back this evening," he said. "But I'll bring my cat burgling clothes."

  She smiled into the phone. "Are you a master of disguise?"

  "If the situation calls for it," he said, and for some reason, his admission niggled at her.

  "Where shall I meet you?" she asked, changing the subject.

  "At your place," he said. "We'll walk to the house after dark. Wear all black clothing. Preferably form-fitting."

  She laughed, then disconnected the call, mystified over her reaction to the man. And had she, in Jules's words, "wished" him into calling her?

  "No," she said aloud. "There's no such thing as magic, voodoo, or witchcraft."

  Steeled with resolve, she marched back into the store and drank a glass of Hot Voodoo Sex. Two of them, in fact.

  * * *

  "I can't believe he didn't change the locks after the divorce," B.J. muttered as they entered the house through the back door. "That's rule one."

  A whining noise sounded, a warning to disengage the security system before an alarm went off. She punched in a code, and the whining noise stopped.

  "Rule number two," he said. "Change the code on the security system."

  "Lucky for us, Deke was a creature of habit," Penny whispered into the hu
sh of the house.

  "You don't have to whisper," he said.

  "Sorry," she said. "I've never broken into a house before." The latex gloves felt strange and cold on her skin.

  "Which way to the office?"

  Using her loaner P.I. penlight, she led the way through the foyer and up the stairs, her pulse ratcheting higher with every step. At the top of the stairs, she pointed. "There."

  He opened the office door and walked in. Penny hung back, the idea of seeing the room again, of visualizing Deke's body on the floor, overwhelming.

  "You don't have to do this," he said.

  "No...I'm fine," she lied and followed him inside the room. The bloody rug was gone and the room was relatively neat, without the disarray she recalled. She exhaled.

  "Do you remember any files being on the desk or being open?" he asked.

  She squinted, thinking back. "No, sorry."

  "What about the file he had when you saw him at the museum?"

  "Blue," she said. "I think it was an accordion file."

  For over an hour, they looked through drawers and file cabinets, but they came up with nothing.

  "Maybe the police took the file," she offered.

  "Could be. Did your ex-husband have a secret hiding place—other than the ficus tree?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know—the drawer you wouldn't necessarily want people to open after you're gone."

  She started to shake her head, then she remembered the place where she had once found some nudie magazines. "The garage."

  They backtracked through the house. "Nice woodwork," he mused, shining his light on the crown molding.

  "Thanks," she said. "I refinished most of it myself."

  "I shouldn't be surprised, but I am."

  "Why?"

  "Because you're...resourceful," he said.

  His words were smooth and velvety in the darkness, strumming her libido...or maybe it was all the voodoo juice she'd drunk.

  She opened the door leading to the garage, closed it behind them, then flipped on the overhead light. "No windows," she explained, then walked past Deke's red Lotus Elise and Sheena's yellow Miata to a metal toolbox that Deke had bought one weekend when he'd been feeling particularly ambitious. But Penny had used the toolbox more than he had, thus finding the stash of girlie magazines. She opened the bottom drawer, then lifted out the tray that held wrenches of all sizes imaginable. Underneath it were magazines and videos, but not the more innocent, pinup kind she'd found before.

  "So Deke was a kinky guy," B.J. said.

  "Not with me," she murmured, picking up an S&M video picturing a man having his bare bottom welted with a leather strap. The rest of the items were more of the same and worse, with a particular lean toward spanking and punishment by lashing. Near the bottom, they found a plain video case with no markings.

  "Looks homemade," B.J. said. "If it's something the two of you did—"

  "It isn't," she assured him.

  B J. put the tape in the bag he'd brought along, then held up the magazines by the spine and gave them a shake. "Just checking for notes or letters," he said, but he didn't find any. "Let's hope the tape tells us something." They replaced the items and closed the toolbox. On the way out, B.J. stopped to look at Deke's car.

  "I hated that thing," she said. "And now it seems petty."

  He crouched down. "Was Deke a bad driver?"

  "Yeah," she said. "He loved to talk on the phone while he was in the car, and he drove way too fast. Of course, when your mother's the mayor—"

  "You don't have to worry about speeding tickets," he finished.

  "Exactly."

  "Looks like he hit something," B.J. said.

  Penny leaned down to look, then stared at the crumpled fender. Waves of recognition rolled over her, colliding with denial. The little car the voodoo doll was holding...the crumpled edge of the casket...

  "What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."

  She jerked back and stepped into a garden tool organizer, toppling it with a mighty crash.

  B.J. winced and reached for the tools to right them, but Penny fled, back to the foyer, back to where she could breathe and assimilate. But everywhere she looked, she imagined evil spirits hanging in the corners, just waiting for her to let down her defenses enough to—

  "Hey."

  She screamed, then realized it was B.J. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm a little freaked out."

  "Let's go," he said quietly, "then you can explain. If the neighbors heard us, they might have already called the police."

  She nodded and followed him to the back door, where she reset the alarm and they made their escape. During the three-block walk to her apartment, they kept to the inside of the sidewalk to escape notice as much as possible. Using careful words, she explained about the smashed Hot Wheels car, the bent casket, and the crumpled fender.

  B.J. was quiet for a few seconds. "And you're telling me there's some kind of supernatural connection between the three things?"

  "Don't you think it's too much of a coincidence?"

  "Not if the alternative is believing in voodoo."

  When they approached the square, the beat of the batri drums was so loud to her she clapped her hands over her ears; the dancers so frenzied she had to look away; the stench of the smoke and animal blood so offensive her stomach roiled. She ran to her apartment door and up the steps, distantly aware that B.J. was behind her.

  Once in her apartment, she dropped onto the couch and pulled her knees up to her chest, rocking to hold back the wall of tears that pressed on the back of her eyes. She felt desperate.

  "Hey, it's going to be okay," B.J. soothed, sitting next to her and drawing her into his arms.

  "I think I'm losing my mind," she whispered, reveling in the warmth of his skin, the comfort of his body. "There's no such thing as voodoo, I know that."

  "Someone is trying to scare you," he said, stroking her back.

  "Someone is trying to make me look crazy. So no one will believe me."

  "I believe you," he said earnestly, then lifted her chin with his fingers. She looked into his eyes and clenched her jaw against the feelings that swelled in her chest. Falling in love with someone so quickly, and under such duress, was as false as voodoo.

  He kissed her, gently at first, then harder when she responded, until their tongues lashed feverishly. He pulled her onto his lap and ran his thumb over the peak of her beaded breast. She closed her eyes and arched into him, clutching at his back, pulling at his clothing as desire pooled in her midsection.

  Their clothes came off slowly until a pile of black fabric lay on the floor and they were completely nude, lying mouth to mouth, sex to sex.

  "You're beautiful," he said on a breath, then lowered his head to take a rigid nipple into his mouth while caressing her other breast.

  Incredible sensations exploded in her body as his mouth traveled over her skin. His erection surged against her thigh, and she reached down to stroke the length of him. He moaned and lowered his hand to her stomach, then lower, to tease her wet folds, and she nearly came apart in his arms.

  "Easy," he whispered. "Take your time."

  He massaged the most sensitive part of her until the stabs of pleasure became swells of bliss, carrying her higher until she cried out and thrashed against his hand. At the pinnacle of her orgasm, he thrust inside her, taking her to another plane of excitement and complete stimulation. He began to move slowly, allowing her to set the pace. She opened her knees to give him full access to her body, grasping his lean hips to pull him even more deeply inside. He kissed her, plunging his tongue into her mouth, and laved her breasts until she thought she would come from the prompting of his tongue alone.

  They found an easy, long rhythm, taking pleasure in the breadth and width of every stroke, clenching and relaxing, each glide of their bodies more pleasurable than the last. When the tremor of another orgasm rose and swept her away, she cried out his name and contracted around him. He sh
uddered and thrust deep, wedging their bodies together until the shared vibrations subsided.

  Penny wanted to stay in that rosy, languid place of recovery, when the body is too weak to do anything except feel, for as long as possible. But too soon, sounds from outside her window began to cut through the pleasant sexual haze, and the aroma of Benny's Beignets overrode the scent of their satisfied bodies. Gingerly, B.J. shifted until she was lying next to him. "That was tremendous," he murmured into her ear.

  "Mm-hm," she said, her eyes barely open. "Let's go to my bed."

  He grinned. "I thought you'd never ask."

  "Carry me?"

  He laughed and stood, then pulled her to her feet and threw her over his shoulder. "This isn't what I had in mind," she said, hanging upside down and being jarred with every footfall into the bedroom.

  Still holding her, he leaned over and pulled down the covers. "Penny...do you have a pet snake?"

  She scoffed and smacked him lightly on the behind. "No, but I'll adopt yours for a while."

  But he didn't laugh. "I'm not kidding. Don't move. Where's the light?"

  She froze, her heart thumping wildly. "B-back up."

  "I'm going to have to set you down."

  He backed up, hit the light switch, and swung her to her feet in one movement. But when she tried to stand, she nearly fainted from the head rush. She blinked the bedroom into focus and wished she hadn't.

  The only thing more scary than seeing the man you love face off with a full-grown venomous snake is seeing the man you love naked facing off with a full-grown venomous snake.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Stir with an olive branch...

  "WELL, THAT WAS A BIG waste of time," B J. said as they left the police station.

  "Allyson doesn't trust either one of us," Penny said. And she had to admit, in the light of day, the allegations that someone had broken into her apartment and left a snake in her bed were pretty outrageous, especially with new locks and no signs of forced entry. Allyson had said in that infuriatingly reasonable voice of hers, since the snake's fangs had been removed, it was more likely that one of the snakes from the peristil had escaped and climbed up a tree to her balcony, then crawled in through a window.