More reasonable, for instance, than putting stock in Jules's prediction about serpents being underfoot.
"Then it's a good thing we trust each other," he said with a wink. "What was all that business about where you grew up?"
"I don't know," she said lightly. "Detective Maynard asked where I grew up and I told him, but he keeps getting it wrong."
"Kingsville, Tennessee?"
Penny nodded but dropped her gaze. Did she truly trust B.J.? She hadn't told him everything because it would only muddy the water and implicate her further. And some secrets were just better kept. Last night had been wonderful...until he'd had to kill the snake, of course. She wanted to leave it at that.
"I'd feel better if you went with me to the city," B.J. said, nodding toward his car.
Penny glanced up at city hall next to the police station and up to Mona's office window on the third floor. "This is something I need to do."
"I can wait," he said lightly.
She looked into his eyes, saw the invitation. Fall for me...we'll have fun...for a while...
"That's okay. I might not get in to see her for a while. Besides, my employees are going to wonder what's happened to me, and I don't think I should leave town right now, even if it's just overnight."
He nodded. "Okay. I have a lot of things to run down, and I have to stop by the agency to do some paperwork. I'll see you tomorrow?"
She smiled. "Sure. Call me if the video is...enlightening."
"Will do."
But as he pulled away from the curb, she couldn't help thinking that if something on that tape would incriminate someone else for Deke's murder, she was letting the one piece of evidence that might exonerate her drive away. Then she chided herself—she was projecting her own behavior onto B.J.
It was safer to believe he couldn't be trusted rather than acknowledge that he just might be worth loving.
She sighed and walked into the city hall building, then pulled the ring that Deke had given her from her pocket—a gold ring with a black onyx cross. A family heirloom, he had said. It was a lovely piece, but she'd rarely worn rings because of her garden work. She had almost forgotten about it, rediscovering it after the phantom maid had rearranged her apartment, including her jewelry.
It was only right that Mona have it back. Maybe the woman would see it as a peace offering, would realize they had both loved and lost Deke, and that Penny had had nothing to do with his death.
She rode up to the third floor and smiled at Mona's clerk, a timid, plain girl of about eighteen. Immediately, the girl looked terrified.
"I'm Penny Francisco—"
"I know who you are," the girl said, her eyes wide.
Great—now she was scaring young girls. "Is the mayor in?"
The girl shook her head solemnly. "No...she said she'd be in, but no one's seen her."
Penny glanced down at the ring. Maybe it would be better if she left it for Mona so the woman could ponder the gesture without the pressure of a confrontation. She held up the ring box. "Would it be all right if I left something in her office? It's a family heirloom—I'm sure she'll be happy to have it back."
The girl looked around nervously, then nodded toward the office door. "Go ahead. But hurry."
Penny smiled in gratitude, then walked into Mona's spacious office, impressively outfitted with the best furniture. The woman had certainly built her own little world here in Mojo. Penny walked over to the desk and set the ring in the center where Mona would find it, then decided she should write a note. Penny scanned the desk for a piece of paper, but Mona was compulsively neat.
What was it that B.J. had said—that when people are compulsive, it's to mask something else?
She slid open a top drawer but didn't find any paper. Then she slid open a bottom drawer and jerked back in shock. The ason, the rattle that the masked voodoo priestess in the square had wielded, was lying there in a velvet-lined box. With her heart thumping against her chest, Penny lifted the rattle to make sure it was the same one. It had the same beadwork, the same little bell on the handle. She gave it a slight shake, a shiver skidding over her arms at the knowledge that the shimmy noise was loose snake vertebrae.
Fear rose in her chest. Jules had said that only the priests and priestesses were allowed to use the ason. Her hand began to shake. So that meant—
"What in the hell do you think you're doing?"
Penny turned and nearly fainted at the sight of Mona standing there, looking as if she'd just as soon kill Penny as look at her. There is a serpent underfoot. Penny wet her lips. "I...brought you something," she said, nodding to the ring box on her desk. "I was looking for a piece of paper to write you a note. I didn't mean to pry. This, um, shaker is lovely." Mona didn't have to know that she was aware of its significance. "Is it Native American?"
"No," Mona snapped, then walked over to her desk and slammed the drawer closed. "How dare you come here, how dare you come into my office and rifle through my things!" Her voice escalated to the point of shouting.
"I didn't mean to," Penny said, moving toward the door.
"Get out before I call the police!"
Penny ran out of the office, past the trembling little clerk, and left the building, shaken at the new revelation: Mona was a voodoo priestess? Had she been the masked figure who had singled Penny out of the crowd and torn off the chicken's head with her bare hands?
Could she have created a voodoo doll for her own son and left it at Penny's party? Then orchestrated the murder to frame Penny? But why would a mother kill her own son?
With her hands shaking, she called B.J.'s cell phone number, but it rolled to voice mail. After a deep breath, she dialed directory assistance for the New Orleans police department and asked for Detective Maynard.
"Ms. Francisco," he said, "this is a coincidence. Mona Black is on the other line accusing you of breaking into her office and harassing her."
Penny swallowed hard and told him what had happened and what she had found, wondering if it sounded as bizarre to his ears as it did to hers.
"So let me get this straight—you're saying that your ex-mother-in-law, the mayor of Mojo, is a voodoo priestess?"
She hesitated. "Maybe."
"And you think that she might have killed her own son and framed you for the murder?"
She wet her lips. "Possibly."
Maynard gave a little laugh. "Ms. Francisco, now I've heard it all. I thought you didn't believe in voodoo."
"I d-don't," she said, suddenly feeling as if she were unraveling.
"Ms. Francisco, I think you should leave this investigation to the police."
She inhaled for strength. "Did you talk to Liz Brockwell and Wendy Metzger?"
"Yes, we took statements from them both, including"—paper rattled in the background—"both of the women quoting you as saying on the night of the murder that you had plans for your ex-husband, and that he was going to regret screwing you over."
She closed her eyes, her mind racing back to their conversation just before Liz and Wendy had left the bar. "I only meant that I was planning to have my attorney sue him for hiding assets." She let out a frustrated cry, wondering if her friends had turned on her under interrogation. "Why doesn't anyone believe me? I didn't kill Deke—there's a murderer out there somewhere! And B.J. found a .38 slug in a tree near where I was running."
"The slug could have been there for ages," Maynard said calmly.
"Someone left a snake in my bed last night."
"Chief Davis informed me of your report."
"And?"
He sighed. "Frankly, Ms. Francisco, you could have planted that snake yourself to divert attention from you as a suspect."
Her mouth watered to mention Jimmy Scaggs, but at this point, she was afraid it would only lead to the fact that she'd pushed Sheena into the street, and where would that leave her? Besides, Jimmy didn't have a motive for killing Deke...not as much as some other people...not as much as she did.
"Let us do our job, Ms. F
rancisco. I'm convinced as soon as the forensic results are back, we'll be making an arrest. My guess is that'll be happening about Friday. Do you have any plans for Friday, Ms. Francisco?"
"N-no."
"Good. Meanwhile, stay away from Mona Black. You've got enough trouble as it is."
She disconnected the call with trembling hands and wondered if she had gone a little mad. Maybe the trauma of finding Deke and attending the funeral was just now catching up to her.
Her phone rang, and it was B.J. She answered and tried to inject a note of normalcy into her voice.
"What's up?" he asked. "How did it go with your ex-mother-in-law?"
She told him what had happened at Mona's and the conversation with Maynard.
"Are you sure of the meaning of this rattle?" he asked, sounding dubious.
"Jules told me that the ason is used only by priests and priestesses."
"Maybe in the old days," he said. "Now you can probably buy them online."
"It would explain some other things," she argued. "Like Deke's aversion to animals, for instance—maybe he saw her behead one too many chickens. And then there's Mona's general weirdness."
The silence on the line told her that her argument was weak, at best. "Maybe Maynard's right," he said casually. "Maybe you should just lie low for a few days. Go to work, stay out of your mother-in-law's way." He cleared his throat. "Or maybe you should go home and get some rest."
"Are you forgetting that someone put a snake in my bed?"
He was quiet again. "Look, I've been thinking. Maybe Chief Davis is right about how the snake got into your bedroom...it could happen."
Her heart bumped against her chest. "Okay." So he thought she was nuts, too.
"Try to relax and I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"
"Sure," she mumbled, then disconnected the call. She felt ridiculously let down that he didn't believe her, although she wasn't sure what she was asking him to believe. She hugged herself and headed toward the store, her rock in the storm. If Maynard made good on his threat, she had only two days of freedom left to get her affairs in order.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The taste might come back to haunt you...
BY THE TIME SHE LEFT the store the following day, Penny was starting to think that B.J. wasn't coming back to Mojo. He hadn't called, nor had he returned her calls. Her mind began to weave wild stories—maybe he was working undercover for the cops, building a case against her. Or maybe he was like Marie's "Kirk," a phantom too-good-to-be-true con man who went from town to town looking for adventure and easy women, then moved on when things became too complicated.
The latter seemed far more likely.
She took a circuitous route home and wound her way through the voodoo festivalgoers, ever watchful for a stray news camera. Tomorrow, Friday, would be the last day of the festival—thank God. Not that things would be getting back to normal, not for her anyway.
Gloria had called her with one bit of good news: The DNA from the blood spatters on her clothing had come back as animal blood—chicken blood, to be exact. As soon as she heard Gloria say the words, Penny remembered having walked by the peristil when an unlucky chicken had been getting its head whacked off. In the darkness, she hadn't realized that she'd been sprayed with the blood. She shuddered, still sure that it had been Mona behind the eerie skeletal mask.
But, Gloria had added, with Penny's fingerprints on both murder weapons, the link to the voodoo doll, and the fact that she'd found the body...
"I have the names of some good criminal attorneys," Gloria had said quietly. "You should prepare yourself."
And Penny was trying to; she did, after all, have some experience with this kind of thing...with prison.
"Hello."
Penny looked up to see B.J. standing in front of the door leading up to her apartment. Her heart jerked crazily—just the sight of him made her feel better in the wake of what she faced. At least he had tried to help her...had given her some very good memories.
"Hello, yourself. Have you been waiting long? I took my time walking home, it's such a nice night."
"I've been here a while," he said, his voice thick. "Thinking."
Something had changed, something for the worse. Her chest tightened with apprehension. "Do you want to come up and talk?"
"I think I should."
They walked up the stairs and into the apartment, the mood solemn. Penny took off her coat and sat on the couch. "What?"
B.J. bit into his lip, his eyes intense. "You didn't grow up in Kingsville, Tennessee."
She looked at her hands and sighed. "No, I didn't. And I didn't grow up in Kingston or in Kingford."
"And your last name isn't really Francisco."
"No...it's plain old Frank. Penny Frank. I had it changed when I was sixteen."
"The year your mother went to prison."
She nodded again, the pain and shame welling up in her chest. "That's right."
"Nobody around here knows?"
"No...not even Deke knew." She gave B.J. a little smile. "I told him and everyone else that my parents were dead, which was half true."
"Your mother is in prison—"
"For murdering my father," she finished. "Yep. And my two older brothers are in prison—drugs, armed robbery." A little laugh escaped her. "I'm from rotten stock."
"Don't say that," he murmured.
"It's true. See—you already think differently of me. Imagine what will happen when the police and the D.A. and everyone in town finds out." She stood and walked to the window and stared out over the crowd, which seemed more subdued tonight...or maybe it was just her. "This information will be the nail in my coffin for the prosecution."
He came over to stand next to her. "No one can hold you responsible for the things your family did."
"I know, but it will make a difference." She shook her head. "I feel as if somehow I've brought this on myself."
He frowned. "How?"
"By lying, by trying to block out that part of my life. By denying my mother's very existence." Her chest ached with misery. She choked, and he pulled her into his arms, kissing her so gently that tears squeezed out of her eyes.
"Make love to me," she whispered. "Tonight I want to forget everything."
He undressed her slowly, kissing every inch of skin as he exposed it to the air. When she was nude, he kneaded and suckled her breasts until the tips were rigid and singing with pleasure. Then he knelt and kissed her flat stomach down to her thighs until she quivered for more. He thrust his tongue into her folds, flicking at the jewel of her essence until she pleaded with him to end her suffering and make love to her. "I want you inside me," she murmured.
He flung off his clothes in record time. She tried to memorize the lines and the textures of his lean, muscular body and his rigid sex, shiny with his desire for her. He pulled her to the couch, straddling his lap. She lowered herself onto his shaft slowly, then took him fully in one final motion. Their moans mingled. She adjusted to his fullness, then began to ride him slowly. He put one hand on her hips to guide her, and with the other, he stroked her, kissing and licking her breasts. Her body was one long nerve ending—every breath, every nip, every caress intensified. He seemed to know intuitively where and how she wanted to be touched. She fell against his chest in a powerful climax, clenching her feminine muscles to maximize the pleasure for both of them. His breath rasped out, and he ground her down on him, uttering his own guttural groan of release.
She sighed against his neck, feeling gratitude...and love. It was false love, she knew—infatuation. But she clung to it like the desperate woman she was.
As if he sensed her urgency and her fear, he made love to her twice more before dawn, each time more emotionally and physically gratifying for her than the last. She had never enjoyed this kind of physical connection with Deke, nor with any other man. They didn't even have to talk to communicate what they wanted. She thought about his mouth on her breast, and it was already there. It was a magical
night, with no voodoo in sight.
It was only after she stepped out of the shower the next morning that she remembered to ask about the videotape.
He was already dressed, and he refused to make eye contact. "It's amateur quality. Deke with...two women. Bondage type stuff, soft core. Can't see the women's faces and there's no sound, so it doesn't help us. If we turn it over to the police, we'll have to explain how we got it." He finally lifted his gaze. "But you can decide."
She nodded, surprised that the information didn't hurt her. Maybe she was numb; maybe she was shutting down, preparing herself, as Gloria had said.
But then she looked at B.J. and realized that no, she wasn't numb, not by a long shot.
Penny cleared her throat of emotion. "Gloria told me I'll probably be arrested today."
His lack of reaction told her that he already knew. Maybe his brother still had contacts at the New Orleans P.D. "I'm sorry," he said, then lifted his gaze to hers. "I thought I'd be able to uncover something that would keep you from having to endure an arrest."
She feigned nonchalance. "Now I understand how people can be convicted on circumstantial evidence."
He reached her in two strides, his face stricken. "Don't say that—don't even think it. Gloria will help you find a good attorney. You can offer to take a polygraph test."
Penny pressed her lips together. "But I wasn't truthful about where I grew up or my family history, and the incident of me pushing Sheena into the street is bound to come out. Plus..." She stopped, her eyes welling up.
His eyes darkened with concern. "Plus what?"
"Plus...maybe on some subconscious level, I did want something terrible to happen to Deke." She bit into her lower lip to stop it from trembling.
He raised his finger to her mouth. "Shh. You wouldn't be normal if you didn't have thoughts of revenge against someone who lied to you, who betrayed you." He wet his lips. "Especially when that person was supposed to be someone you trusted most."
Love Can Be Murder Box Set Page 52