Who Do, Voodoo?, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
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A chill of anticipation washed through me . . .
Madame Iyå rocked back and forth, shaking a small brass rattle. “We humbly ask you to send the spirit of our beloved Sophie to join us.” A full minute passed, then Madame Iyå spoke again. “Sophie is here.”
A candle popped. Shadows flickered on the walls outside of the circle. A draft swept across the floor and flickered the flames of the candles. I thought I saw a shadow move behind Jimmy and Tawny. I brushed away the sensation that someone else was in the room with us. I tensed up.
“Nola. Sophie wants you to publish her spell book.” Madame Iyå let out a deep sigh. “She wants me to help you complete it.”
Linda’s body went rigid. She clenched her hand over mine and began to rock. She spoke in a deep and insistent voice—a voice I didn’t recognize. “No. I don’t want that. My secrets have to be protected. There will be danger. No.”
“What are you talking about, Linda?” Nola said.
Linda stared across the room. “Linda’s not here, my treasure.”
“Who are you?” Nola’s words came unsteady, searching. “Sophie?”
“Not Sophie. I’m Callia.”
The back of my neck tingled. Who was Callia? Linda gazed around the circle. She stopped when she got to me. Her face had changed: the softness drained from her features. She looked tired, older. Her eyes were vacant. A small terror edged my rational mind aside. I had a fleeting sensation that someone else’s eyes were staring at me from Linda’s face.
“You have to keep my secrets safe and with my family. Your question is answered inside.” She held her eyes on mine. “Promise me.”
I nodded warily, not knowing what she meant. “I promise.”
A door down the hall slammed shut with a force so hard it rattled the windows. Tawny screamed. I jumped.
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WHO DO, VOODOO?
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / November 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Rochelle Staab.
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For the little girl on the front steps
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My warmest gratitude to Lynn Sheene and V. R. Barkowski, gifted writers in their own right and the best critique partners a girl could ask for. Thank you both for every read, every e-mail, every comment, and your unflagging support. Your friendship is a gift.
I’m deeply indebted to my editor, Michelle Vega, for seeing something special that day in San Diego and for helping me to make this book the best it can be. And a grateful bow to my tireless agent, Christine Witthohn.
My heartfelt thanks goes to the UCLA Writers Program, especially Jessica Barksdale Inclan, Jerrilynn Farmer, Lynn Hightower, and Caroline Leavitt; and to my homegirl Lesley Kagen for showing me the ropes and cheering me on. Special thanks to Berkley Prime Crime’s Rita Frangie, Diana Kolsky, and Blake Morrow for creating an amazing cover, and to Eloise L. Kinney for dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s. And finally, a big shout-out to those noteworthy folks who answered my crazy/complicated questions, opened doors, lent their support, or guided me along the path: Holly Adams, JoAn Brown, Suzanne Bank, Richard Cates, Cleo Coyle, Jeff Gelb, Captain Eric Davis—LAPD, Detective John Shafia—LAPD, Sergeant AJ Kirby—LAPD, the real Kris Bage—LAFD, Nick Light, Joelle McClure, Ed Nuhfer, Jeanne Robson, Hank Phillippi Ryan, ZS, Marty Suran, Renee Vogel, and Pat Sadowski. Group hug.
Chapter One
“Waituntil the third date to fool around? Is that another one of your superstitions? What if there is no third date?” I turned my car north off Ventura Boulevard toward Robin’s house.
“You have to make a man desire you, Liz. The longer you make him wait, the more he wants you.” Robin folded her arms. Point made.
“That’s just a game. If a man didn’t want me, why would he be dating me?” I said.
“Your stellar personality? Wait a minute.” Robin leaned forward from the passenger seat, eyebrows up with anticipation. “Is there a guy? Did someone ask you out?”
“Hell no. Purely hypothetical. Where would I meet him? I spend my social time with you. Although I love you dearly and your homemade brownies are orgasmic, I wouldn’t mind a little first-date fun with a real live man again.”
“Let me know how that works out for you, Liz. Josh and I waited, and we . . .”
I looked over at her. A tear tumbled down her cheek. My heart sank. The first-date discussion was my attempt to lighten the emotional heaviness on our trip back from Forest Lawn Cemetery. Despite my psychological training, I had struggled for words to console Robin as we mourned the two-year anniversary of her husband Josh’s death. Easy to remain detached when counseling a client—complicated when comforting my best friend in crisis.
I parked the car in front of her Sherman Oaks bungalow and handed her a clean tissue. A soft October breeze swept leaves across her front yard. We locked arms and strolled in silence up the path to her house.
Robin Bloom and I met in front of the sign-up sheet for fifth-grade pep squad at Encino Elementary. She was the perky blonde who couldn’t do a cartwheel. I was the plain brunette with athletic skills. We teamed up to make the team. I taught Robin the art of sideways handsprings. She taught me how to dance, put on makeup, and use hot rollers. Twenty-seven years later, we remained best friends, a bond built on loyalty, shopping, trust, tears, brownies, and being there for each other despite the distance. Between us we’d survived two marriages—hers destroyed by tragedy, mine by my husband’s infidelity. Robin raised a gorgeous daughter; I earned a PhD. No matter what, we wouldn’t lie to each other and didn’t judge—especially if the shoes didn’t match the outfit.
We stopped short under her porch light, staring. A tarot card was tacked to her front door. On the card’s black background, a beige skeletal rib cage encased a bloody heart pierced with three
“The Three of Swords,” Robin said. “It’s an omen, Liz.”
I knew what the card meant before I deciphered the anagram—heartache. The Three of Swords was part of the tarot reading my mother did for Josh the night before he died.
“It’s a prank.” I flipped it over, hoping to read “You’re invited to a Halloween party.” The back was blank. I tore the card in half and shoved it into my coat pocket. “Let’s go inside.”
I followed Robin through the house to the kitchen and tossed the halves into the trash. Robin set a plate of brownies on the table. I poured two glasses of milk and sat down, my mind on the night Josh sat at the head of this table and laughed at my mother’s predictions.
Mom had offered to read the cards for Josh’s fortieth birthday. When the layout forecast anguish and loss, Josh was certain it meant the water shortage in Los Angeles would ruin his landscaping business. He even joked about the crow—the forewarning of death—that lingered on their front lawn when we left. The next day, Josh died in a head-on collision.
Robin fell into a deep depression, obsessed with omens and the occult. Soon after, my mother stopped carrying her tarot deck around for entertainment. My distrust of the occult, ripened by a lifetime of Mom’s ridiculous predictions, turned into disgust.
I took a brownie from the plate Robin slid in front of me and broke off a piece. Baked goods were less fattening when divided into small portions. “When did you make these?”
“Last night. I couldn’t sleep.” Robin’s eyes drifted to Josh’s chair.
“We need to talk about the tarot card on the door. I’m not leaving you tonight until we do. What are you feeling?”
Robin usually teased me when I slipped into psychologist mode. But, occasionally, my emotional digging helped, and she knew it. She folded her arms and rocked. “So alone. Unprotected. Since Orchid left for college, I come home every night to this empty house and wonder if it will always be this way. That tarot card is a warning about the future, Liz. I feel something coming, and I’m scared.”
“What if you decide that the message reflects what already happened? Today, at the cemetery, we mourned the heartache of Josh’s death.” I took her hand. “You’re not alone. You have friends who love you and care about you. A random tarot card left by some clueless twit as a joke can’t control your future.”
“But why tonight? And, even if it was a prank, why that card on my door? I don’t believe in coincidence. I know it’s a sign.” Robin looked to the clock above the stove. “Damn. I forgot to call Sam. Will you excuse me for a sec?”
She dialed the phone on the kitchen wall. “Sam? Me. I’m sorry I’m late. Is she still there?” Pause. “The swallows are coming back from Capistrano.”
I stopped chewing and listened while Robin talked to her boss, Sam Collins. “What was that about?” I said when she hung up.
“The swallows?” Robin chuckled. “Nonsense I recite when Sam needs an excuse to get someone out of his house. He translates the call into whatever story suits him at the time. He just told me to meet him at the office tomorrow to work on the merger contract with him, alone. I hate keeping this secret from the staff.”
“Who else knows he’s selling half of the agency?”
“Just the owners of Artists Incorporated, Sam, you and me.”
We talked into the night until yawns punctuated our sentences.
Robin called early the next morning. “The phone rang at midnight. When I answered, no one was there. Another warning from the beyond.”
“The beyond doesn’t telephone,” I said. “Did you piss off someone?”
Finally, a laugh. “I’m the pillar of diplomacy,” she said. “No one.”
“Okay, then you’re dating someone else’s man?”
“Really? When would that happen? As you know, you’re my only date lately,” she said. “The widow and the divorcée, doing the town one dinner or bad movie at a time.”
When she got home Saturday from the office, Robin found another tarot card tacked on her door. “The Five of Cups.” Her voice trembled over the phone. “Who’s doing this to me?”
The Five of Cups was the second card in my mother’s reading for Josh.
“Call the police,” I said. “The hang-up and those cards are harassment.”
Robin phoned back later to tell me the Van Nuys desk officer agreed to put in an extra-patrol request. She spent the evening at home, decorating cupcakes. Sunday afternoon, she baked a five-cheese macaroni casserole and invited my mother and me to dinner.
Sunday at seven, with my mother, Vivian, chattering at my side, I turned onto Robin’s block. The quiet Sherman Oaks neighborhood was settled in for the evening.
“Since your father retired, he spends more time on the golf course with his old LAPD buddies than he did when they were working homicide together,” she said.
“I’m glad for him, Mom. He looked so rested and happy tonight.”
“Well, he always brightens up when he sees you, dear. He favors you. I don’t think I’d ever see any of you if you would have, God forbid, joined the force like your brother, Dave, did.” She pointed a finger at me. “Which reminds me. You know, your brother, Dave, arrested a gang of cultists last year. Maybe the tarot cards on Robin’s door are part of another cult-initiation rite, training runaways to harass without getting caught. Or worse. Liz, there are spookeries and secret cults all over the Valley,” my mother said.
I took a deep breath and gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles went white. I rolled my eyes at the initiation-rite theory. And Mom always said your brother, Dave, like I didn’t remember I had a brother or his name was Dave.
“I know about the cult arrest, Mom. I was here. Remember?”
“Of course I remember,” she said, checking her soft-pink lipstick in the visor mirror and brushing back a strand of white hair. “But you were so upset by the divorce—you were distracted.”
“I wasn’t distracted and I wasn’t upset. I was clear-headed for the first time in fifteen years. You were the one who was upset.”
“You broke Jarret’s heart. I wish you two would talk.”
“I broke his heart? As if he had a heart to break.”
My cheating, drinking ex-husband knew every button to push in my mother’s celebrity-loving psyche. He still worked her like he worked rookie batters who faced him on the mound at Dodger Stadium.
“Forget about Jarret,” I said. “I’m concerned about Robin. Please don’t get her all stirred up about the meaning of those cards tonight. She’s vulnerable and scared.”
“Dear, please don’t make dinner a therapy session. I want to see the cards. Robin told me it’s an unusual deck. Maybe I’ll recognize it.”
I slowed near Robin’s house, vowing we’d find the identity of the card-tacking delinquent before I ate my way up a size.
“Park there.” My mother pointed at the only space on the block.
When we got out of the car, I saw another tarot card on Robin’s door. My fists clenched with anger. We walked toward the two-bedroom bungalow, stopping under the porch light to stare at the picture of a skeleton, hands cupped over empty eye sockets, howling off the black background, with blood spurting through the finger bones. Five sword blades pointed up from beneath.
Mom threw her hand to her chest. “Oh dear Lord. The Five of Swords.”
Robin opened the door, but her smile dropped as she followed our gaze to the card. She darted inside and returned with a baseball bat in her hand. I pulled the tarot card off the door.
“I’M WATCHING YOU” was scrawled across the back.
Robin elbowed past us toward the sidewalk. She looked up and down the street, then turned to me, her voice harsh. “Did you see anyone when you pulled up?”
“Not a soul.” Crap—bad choice of words.
The three of us searched behind the bushes landscaping the front of the house. A crow cawed from the corner of the yard.
