That Voodoo That You Do

by Ann Yost

  The first thing Jessie saw upon entering Miss Letty’s parlor was Miss Letty’s body draped over a short, grape-velvet sofa. From a distance she looked a little like a starlet lounging on a casting couch. Up close she looked more than ever like the Wicked Witch of the West. Death had turned her face the color of guacamole.

  Jessie glanced away from the corpse and focused on the room. Miss Letty’s long, narrow parlor resembled a crowded antique shop more than a home. Chairs, tables, lamps, and desks littered the floor like trees in a forest. The place was barely navigable. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled each wall. There was a newspaper on the coffee table. It had turned the color of saffron the way newspapers do after only a few weeks. Curious, Jessie picked it up. It was an edition of the New York Times dated September Fifteenth. Three months ago.

  Why on earth would the spinster keep an old paper like this?

  Jessie scanned the headlines on the front page. The headliner was an anniversary story about 9/11. Further down was a piece on the city’s s garbage strike. It was the one-column headline in the lower left-hand corner that caught her notice.

  “Local Man Named in Macabre Celebrity Scandal.”

  She didn’t get a chance to read the story. A middle-aged man built like a cube, his gray hair buzzed into a conservative cut, entered the parlor from a back hallway. He strode over to where she stood with Luke.

  The newcomer slapped Luke on the shoulder and pumped his hand. Luke’s rare smile twisted Jessie’s heart.

  “Coach,” he said.

  “It’s Chief, now. I turned in my whistle for a badge. But, hell, Magic, you’re grown up now.”

  “Call me Ezra.”

  Magic?

  The older man read her confusion. He smiled. “Luke here had magic hands on the football field. By gosh, he coulda caught the sun if Zach threw it to him.” His smile faded. “And Bobby, Bobby could run like the wind.”

  Luke’s smile faded, too. He introduced Jessie.

  The chief’s gray eyes met hers. “I thought a lot of Blanche. Everybody did.”

  The words were kind. Jessie’s instinct was to like the chief. She remembered he didn’t believe Blanche had been murdered.

  Ezra Smith turned back to Luke. “It’s good to see you back here, boy. It’s time you came home.” Luke’s lips tightened. He nodded at the body. “What happened here?”

  Smith’s shrug brought his chest up to his chin. “Natural causes. Preacher’s wife found her half an hour ago. They were supposed to meet Edna at the bakery for a pageant meeting.” He glanced at Jessie. “Edna’s my better half.”

  Luke nodded. “You going to call for an autopsy?”

  The chief rubbed his hand across the stubble on his triple chin. “County don’t like to spend the money unless there’s some sign of foul play.”

  “That’s two deaths in six weeks.”

  Luke’s words reverberated in Jessie’s head. Two deaths in six weeks. Did that mean he believed the canasta witches’ theory?

  “They were old ladies, son.”

  Jessie could tell Luke wasn’t buying it. She hoped that didn’t mean he’d interfere with her investigation.

  A wrenching sob grabbed Jessie’s attention, and she recognized Eleanor Prendergast sitting on another flowered sofa, a lacy handkerchief in her hand. The preacher’s wife wore the same serviceable coat she’d had on last night, but her thin red hair was disheveled and her face was the color of rice paper.

  Poor soul.

  Jessie started toward her, but Dennis Prendergast appeared in the door and neatly shoved Jessie aside. He sat on the sofa next to his wife. He picked up her hand, but he didn’t put his arm around her shoulder or hold her close to him. Jessie’s stomach churned. She hoped the poor woman never found out about her husband’s infidelity.

  “There, there, Ellie. It was just Letty’s time. God called her home.”

  He pronounced the creator’s name like a televangelist—Gawd.

  Prendergast looked at Chief Smith. “I’ll take Ellie on home now. She needs to lie down.”

  “In a minute.” The chief knelt in front of Eleanor Prendergast, and his voice softened. “Is there anything else you can tell us? Anything you noticed?”

  Eleanor let out another graceless sob, and just for a second, she buried her face in her hands. Her voice shook. “I blame myself, Chief. I was the last one to see her last night, too. We came home from the festival together, and I made her a hot drink.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Tea, I think. Or maybe hot chocolate. I don’t really remember. She’d gotten soaked, and we were trying to ward off a chill.” Eleanor’s pale eyes filled. “She’d been having some problems lately, shortness of breath. She’d promised me she’d see a doctor, but I don’t think she ever did.” Eleanor’s homely face crumpled. “I should have at least walked her home.”

  “Edna said she looked upset last night. She was jumping around just about the time the storm hit.”

  Eleanor’s face twisted as if she were trying to remember. “The Christmas pageant, I think. We haven’t had enough rehearsals.” The woman glanced at Jessie. “And, of course, she was beating the drum about morality.”

  Jessie’s cheeks felt hot. She wanted to point out that she and Luke were keeping their distance in the big house, but there was no graceful way to say it. Ironically, it was Prendergast who changed the subject.

  “Chief, can’t this wait?”

  “Certainly.” Smith’s voice was gentle when he addressed Eleanor. “Thank you, Mrs.

  Prendergast.” Then he stood and eyed the pastor. “Where were you last night?”

  The question clearly caught the reverend off guard. He swallowed, convulsively. Jessie wondered why. Surely he’d expected the question. “I was at the festival,” he said, finally.

  “Did you return home immediately afterwards?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you must have been in the house when Mrs. Prendergast gave Miss Letty a cup of tea.”

  Two bright spots stood out on Prendergast’s florid cheeks. “Oh, no, I wasn’t there then. I’d forgotten. I stopped by the church to work on my Christmas Eve sermon.”

  Jessie flashed back to the moments in the closet. She avoided looking at Luke, but she felt his emerald eyes on her.

  “You must have gotten soaked in the storm,” Smith murmured.

  “I keep a change of clothing in my office. You know. For emergencies. I got home shortly after Letty had left.” He flashed a grin at his wife. “Both Eleanor and I were exhausted. We went straight to bed.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Eight thirty,” Eleanor said, with a sniff. She patted her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief. “I remember hearing the clock in the hallway.”

  Jessie avoided Luke’s eyes. At eight-thirty last night the reverend Prendergast had been up to his gonads in Lois Epps’s mouth. Did Eleanor know? Was she trying to protect her philandering husband? Or was she just mistaken? Whatever it was, she hoped Luke wouldn’t figure it out. The last thing she needed was his interference in her case, and she knew he was starting to get interested. Letty Appleby’s unexplained death raised a red flag.

  “Letty has no family,” Prendergast told the chief. “I’ll call Mort to come pick up the body, and I’ll make the arrangements.”

  “What about an autopsy, Chief?” Luke’s voice was quiet but authoritative.

  “There’s no indication of foul play,” Ezra started to say. He stopped and let out a sigh. “All right. Hold off on those arrangements for a day or two, Reverend.”

  The minister looked even more irritated. Had he hoped for a quick, no-questions-asked cremation like the one they’d done with Blanche?

  Ezra scratched his head. He flipped the pages in his spiral notepad. “You know, speaking of Mister Epps, Miss Letty spoke with me last night at the festival. Said she’d seen someone skulking outside the mortuary the previous night. You heard anything about that?”

  Prendergast s
hrugged. “You know Letty. She saw a bogeyman behind every tree.”

  “In this case she was right,” Jessie said, without thinking. “I saw a skulker, too. He was in the church parking lot. Last night. Around midnight.”

  She felt Luke’s gaze on her, and blood surged into her cheeks. Too late she realized she’d given herself away. He had to know the best vantage point, the only vantage point for watching the church and mortuary from the witch hat house was from the window at the top of the back staircase; the window that looked out onto the driveway.

  He had to know she’d waited up for him.

  She spent the short drive home trying to figure out a plausible excuse for her midnight watch, but for some reason he didn’t bring it up. Not even when they shared toast and eggs and their theories about Letty’s death.

  His question, when it came, was the last thing she expected. He leaned back in his chair, his arm outstretched on the table with a coffee cup in his hand.

  “Why’d you run out on your wedding?”

  No way was she going to tell him about the humiliating scene at the Happy Taco. “Cold feet. We were really more friends than anything else.

  In the end, it seemed kind of silly to involve tulle.”

  “But you’d accepted his proposal.”

  She should tell him it was none of his business, but the words seemed to fall out of her mouth. Maybe she needed to confide in somebody.

  “My dad owns a business—Maynard Properties, Inc. He needs to retire for health reasons and well, because my mom won’t speak to him until he does. Kit is Dad’s first lieutenant, and married to me, he could take over the whole shebang.”

  Luke leaned back in his chair and squinted at her. “So this wasn’t about friendship. It was about business.”

  She shrugged, on the defensive. “Being in love is no guarantee of a successful marriage.”

  “You got me there.”

  A charged silence filled the room until Luke spoke again.

  “Okay, Jessie. So what really made you run?”

  The man saw way too much, but Jessie had confessed enough. “Turned out I hadn’t read the fine print on the marriage contract.”

  Chapter Seven

  The low-flow pressure of the shower spray didn’t do much to wash away Luke’s fatigue. It didn’t relax him, either. He was on edge. He tried to convince himself it was being back in Mystic Hollow, back where he could run into Crystal, where all the old pain of the failed marriage would pile on top of the new pain of losing Blanche. But it was more than that.

  He was way too intrigued by Blanche’s great-niece. And that way, he knew, lay madness.

  He wished it were only physical, but he couldn’t fool himself. She was only a couple of years shy of thirty, but she carried a curious innocence, as though she’d missed the most important life experiences. And she had that warm heart. He knew he made her nervous, yet she’d waited up for him last night.

  Then there were the sparks between them. But Luke was never getting serious about a woman again. No way. He’d never want to hurt anyone the way Crystal had hurt him. Especially not Blanche’s great-niece. He needed to focus on his mission.

  Unfortunately, his mission was watching out for Jessie Maynard.

  He turned off the water and grabbed a towel. The rough terrycloth rubbed against him, reminding him of the way she’d ground herself against him last night. His body shot into launch mode. Well, damn. He thought he’d bought a little relief with his visit to the roadhouse.

  Guess he was wrong.

  He stared into the mirror, but he couldn’t focus on his face. It was definitely time for a run.

  Last night’s storm had swept away the clouds, but the temperature had dropped. He wondered if there’d be snow for Christmas. He hit the pavement on Cobblestone Lane, circled St. Michael’s, and turned left on Peach Street. Minutes later he pushed out gusts of visible air as he pounded out a run in the fields outside of town.

  He’d run daily in Germany but since Blanche’s death and his return to the U.S., he’d fallen behind. It felt good, invigorating. He picked up the pace hoping to clear his mind, but his thoughts kept returning to the same thing. If Letty had been murdered then maybe Blanche had been murdered, too. Her phone call had sounded deadly serious but not urgent. She’d asked him to come home. She’d asked him to keep an eye on Jessie. He’d understood on some instinctive level there was more to it, but what? Had Blanche known she was in danger? How the hell had she figured Jessie would show up?

  Luke pounded out a few more steps. He was used to unanswered questions. He was used to waiting for the answers to appear. He just wasn’t sure he could handle sleeping in the same house as Blanche’s elfin great-niece.

  Not that he’d slept there yet.

  He jerked his thoughts back to his foster mother’s death. If, as the old ladies claimed, Prendergast had killed Blanche, the question was why? To shut her up? And what about Letty? The woman never let grass grow under her feet. If she’d unearthed a secret about Prendergast, it had to have been last night. Now she was dead.

  Coincidence? He didn’t think so.

  Something niggled at the back of his tired brain. He concentrated on his breathing and let it come to the surface. Finally, he had it. It was the lie. Eleanor Prendergast had lied about the time her husband got home last night. Why? Spousal loyalty? Had she long since reconciled herself to his philandering? Did she have any sense at all that she might be married to a murderer?

  Except he didn’t think Dennis Prendergast was a murderer. He was too shallow, too visible. He didn’t blend. But if he hadn’t killed Blanche and Miss Letty, who had? What about Prendergast’s buddy, the cuckolded undertaker? Luke had only met him once, but he’d seen no humanity in Epps’s eyes. Had he killed the old women to keep them quiet about his wife’s affair? Or was there something else going on at St. Michael’s?

  Despite the plummeting temperatures, sweat trickled down his face and slid under the gray cotton jersey. He was panting now, heaving and blowing like an overworked horse. Maybe he should have tried harder to get some sleep. He pictured Jessie asleep up in the tower room. She’d be soft, flushed, warm under the quilt on Blanche’s four-poster. Was she wearing a skimpy nightie bought for her honeymoon? The image sent a bolt of longing through Luke’s tired body. He stumbled, his rhythmic stride interrupted. He kept on, refusing to give in to the discomfort.

  Drenched with sweat, his breathing hoarse and labored, he re-entered town from a different direction. Gradually he realized he was in a familiar neighborhood. This was Third Street.

  Luke stopped dead in front of a two-story brick colonial. He knew he should keep walking to cool down, but he couldn’t seem to make himself move. The same ruff of yew bushes separated the porch from the lawn. The wooden swing still hung from the beams on the front porch. The porch itself looked weathered, probably from the endless train of would-be suitors who never gave up trying to woo Crystal. That should have been a clue. If she’d loved Luke, she’d have turned everyone else away.

  There was a lighted evergreen wreath on the door and a late model van in the driveway. The garage door started to move. Luke’s heart shot up into his throat. He didn’t want to see Crystal’s folks. He told his feet to move but nothing happened. He was rooted in the street; rooted in the past.

  A young woman with glasses and a snow suited baby on her hip stepped out of the garage. An unfamiliar young woman. She waved at him and called out. “Merry Christmas!”

  Luke couldn’t get enough air in his lungs to answer her.

  The Wetheringtons had moved. He wouldn’t see Crystal after all.

  He finally started to jog but without any destination. It really was over. The dreaded confrontation wouldn’t take place. He was free of his ex.

  He didn’t feel free.

  He looked up to see Zach’s old truck parked in Francie’s driveway. Jesus. He’d forgotten all about Francie’s accident. He mounted the front steps and pounded on the door.

/>   Zach appeared at the door. He looked like he’d aged ten years overnight.

  Luke stared at his friend. “Is she all right?”

  Francine must have heard him. She called out from the back of the house.

  “Luke? Is that you? Come back here and see me.”

  He sprinted past Zach and down the short hallway to find Francie’s bedroom. She was sitting up in bed dressed in puke green scrubs with an afghan pulled over her legs. Luxuriant red hair lay limp on her shoulders, and her face was Kabuki white except near the left temple where there was a bruise the size of a silver dollar. He sat down next to her.

  “What happened, honey?”

  “Don’t jostle her. She’s got a concussion.” Luke ignored the man who filled the doorway.

  “I’m okay,” Francie said. She described what had happened blaming her own clumsiness. She was clearly trying to keep Zach out of it.

  Luke nodded. “So he threw you on the floor.”

  “Pretty much.” Francie’s chuckle turned into a groan.

  “Don’t make her laugh, Tanner.”

  Christ. Luke shook his head at the other man’s possessiveness. Maybe there was hope for this relationship, but at the moment Francie needed a break from her guard.

  “The big guy here seems a little tense,” he said, putting his arm around Francine. “How about we give him a break. Jessie can come and sit with you.”

  It was the perfect plan. It would give Luke a breather, too. If Jessie was with Francine, she couldn’t get herself into trouble.

  “I barely know her. I can’t ask her to do that.”

  Luke waved away the objection. “She likes to be needed.”

  ****

  The Trumpet Voluntary jerked Jessie awake. The morning light slanted into the tower room at the same angle it had when she’d gone to sleep. She glanced at her watch and groaned. She’d tossed and turned and she’d only been asleep about twenty minutes, just long enough to relive the costume closet scene in a highly erotic dream.

  She punched “speak.”

  “Whoever you are, I hate you.”

  “Hey baby. You sound soft and sexy. Forgiven me yet?”