Detective Defender. Marilyn Pappano
please, let’s talk about this. I’ll get you a place to stay. You can get a good night’s rest, tonight I’ll cook your grandmother’s gumbo, and in the morning we’ll have beignets and coffee and straighten all this out.”
Paulina’s gaze took on a scornful cast as she spun around to face Martine. “You don’t believe me, do you? You, with all your voodoo and charms and black-magic curses—you think I’m crazy. I knew Tallie would doubt me. She and Callie never had half a brain between them. And Robin...she always thought I didn’t have half a brain, either. But you—you make your living off this stuff, you’re surrounded by it all the time, and you think I’m crazy.”
“I don’t, Paulina, I don’t think you’re crazy at all. I just want—I want to understand it. I want to know what’s happened. I want to wrap my head around it. We can do that together and maybe even find Robin. Just come back to the shop with me. Come on, we’ll talk it all out and—and find some way to make things right, okay? We always made things right, didn’t we?”
Stiffening, Paulina gave her a haughty stare. “You think I don’t remember your lying-your-ass-off voice? So innocent and sincere that every adult you used it on believed every word you said?”
Heat flushed Martine’s face. She hadn’t realized when she slipped into the voice, but she’d recognized it by the end of her little speech. Her best friend Evie called it her dealing-with-psychos voice. A popular French Quarter psychic, Evie had her own version, the tourists-wanting-their-money’s-worth voice.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” A screech rushed up from the fog that hid their feet, making them both jump. An instant later, an angry little dove flew up into view, hovered for a moment to chitter at them—they must have interrupted his dining on whatever scraps he’d found below—then darted off.
At the same moment, Paulina darted off, too. She moved fast and silent, either sure of her footing or not caring if she took a wrong step. Martine watched her go, tugged her coat even tighter and headed back to the shop.
* * *
Jimmy DiBiase didn’t have the typical wanderlust. He had no desire to travel to every state in the union. He didn’t like flying enough to want to spend hours in the air to tour Britain, France, Italy or Greece. He didn’t care about China or India or Vietnam or any of hundreds of foreign places he’d never been. He’d been born and raised within spitting distance of the Mississippi River, and he was happy to stay within that same narrow range.
But he did like moving.
When he woke up, he knew automatically that it was Wednesday, and without looking at a clock, he knew it was too early for him to be awake, for which he could thank the person calling his cell. He knew it looked like another grim, dreary day, and he needed to take a leak, but he didn’t know where the bathroom was because, not for the first time in his life—or even this year—he didn’t know where he was.
First things first. He picked up the cell, setting it on the table next to the mattress. The mattress and the box spring were the only other furniture in the room, and the tile seemed to radiate out from them in dark shiny waves. Shoving his hair from his face, he answered the call as he sank back under the covers. “What time is it?”
“Five fifteen.” The voice belonged to Jack Murphy, the homicide detective he worked with most often, and he sounded as unready to roll out of bed as Jimmy. Understandable when he had a beautiful wife curled up next to him. “Spare me the complaints, James. We got a case.”
“How’d we get a case when our shift doesn’t start for nearly two hours?” Jimmy sat up and swung his feet to the floor, then saw the wall of windows on the other side of the room. This was his new apartment. He’d seen it only once before and never in the dark, but there was no mistaking all that glass eight stories above the ground.
“Personal connection,” Murphy said. “I’ll pick you up in five.”
“I’m at the new place.”
“I’ll be out front.”
The call ended, and Jimmy thought for about ten seconds about stretching out again, but there was nothing in the world he loved as much as his job—not even sleep when his head was thick and his ass was dragging. Add in Murphy’s personal connection to a homicide case, and he moved fast enough that he was standing on the sidewalk when Murphy pulled to the curb.
Jimmy slid into the passenger seat, angling the computer away to give himself some space. He fastened his seat belt and reached for the travel mug of steaming coffee in the holder nearest his seat. A carefully wrapped muffin sat on top of the cup—carrot and walnut, by the smell of it. Evie Murphy was a princess among wives. Murphy was damned lucky to have her.
Jimmy’s behavior in his one and only marriage had proved he didn’t deserve any kind of wife. The way he’d treated Alia must have seriously pissed off the gods; judging by the sorry state of his relationships since then, it seemed they were done with him.
With his dark hair standing on end and his tie looped around his neck instead of tied, Murphy was stoic and silent, not yet awake. He drove through the freaky, patchy fog, following empty streets past houses where outdoor lights cast dim halos. It wasn’t raining, but everything was wet, and the dampness helped the cold penetrate deeper into a person’s bones. Jimmy hadn’t even begun to warm up until his muffin was gone, he’d downed half his coffee, and a swirl of ghostly blue and red emergency lights ahead announced their destination.
“A cemetery?” He glanced at Murphy. “You volunteered me for a case in the middle of the night at a cemetery that looks like a set for Halloween 47: Everyone Dies?” Then he realized he hadn’t shown the courtesy of asking about the connection. “Do you know the victim? Does Evie?”
“No.”
“Favor to family?”
“No.”
“A former employee? A neighbor? Parents of one of your kids’ friends?”
Murphy parked near the other vehicles and shut off the engine. He pulled on gloves before picking up his own coffee. “The only thing the victim had on her was a prepaid cell phone that had made only one call—to Charms, Notions and Potions.”
Jimmy blinked. He was familiar with the business name. He’d worked half his life in the French Quarter and spent the other half partying, celebrating, crashing or living there. The cutesy name belonged to a shop owned by Martine Broussard, Evie’s best friend, where up front she sold tourist stuff: good luck charms, candles, voodoo ritual kits, how-to books and worry dolls, along with the usual New Orleans T-shirts, coffee mugs and mass-produced voodoo dolls. In the back room she offered the serious practitioner stuff. Her market for that was mostly local. Tourists rarely ventured through the door separating the two rooms.
Family friendship aside, Jimmy wasn’t sure he would have dragged himself out before dawn to Halloween 47 just because the murder victim had called Martine’s voodoo shop. Maybe she’d wanted directions. Maybe she’d been looking for a love potion or an Obatala candle for self-purification, or maybe she’d wanted to know if the bar across the street whose name she couldn’t remember was open yet.
Not that it mattered. Murphy had wanted the case, and they had it. Now it was time to get out of the car, wander into the cemetery and start working it.
The cars belonging to the officers assigned the initial call and those of the crime scene technicians were parked along the street. Bright lights had been set up some fifty yards away among the graves, and a canopy had been erected to protect the body from the elements. As Jimmy buttoned his overcoat, he noticed it was starting to rain, just small half-hearted drops, as if the fog had worn itself out and was liquefying in the sky.
He’d spent a lot of time in cemeteries—investigated a few murders that took place there, attended plenty of victims’ funerals to see who else showed up and even gone to a few funerals for friends or distant relatives. Cemeteries didn’t normally creep him out, but there was something about this scene...the weird weather,