Mostly Murder Read Online Free Page B

loved big powerful toys, and he loved her to have them, too. And as an extra wow factor, he had fitted her fully equipped SUV with every tracking device known to man, as he had on her phone and computer and the St. Michael’s medal she always wore around her neck. In the past, he’d had trouble finding her on occasions when she really needed finding so he no longer took any chances. So the bells and whistles on her vehicles and personal property suited her just fine. There were times when she definitely wanted him to locate her, and the faster, the better.
    â€œYou did bring your cameras, right, Nancy?”
    â€œYeah, but I better call in the whole team and get them out here quick. This scene is going to be a nightmare to process. I don’t like this voodoo stuff, either. It scares me, and I’m not afraid to say so. Zee, what does that design in the cornmeal mean?”
    Zee shrugged, and nobody else volunteered the information, so Claire knelt in front of the victim while Nancy got out her camera equipment and started filming their every move. She stared at the etchings in the cornmeal, probably drawn with a finger or some kind of stick. Could’ve even been a knife.
    â€œOkay, this looks like two snakes to me. Drawn upright in vertical positions with large loops at the end of the tails. Look here, at the top. They’ve got heads with fangs coming out. And this looks like stars, or asterisks, maybe, in between them. And what’s that? A plus sign on the far right. See it? Or maybe it’s a cross?”
    Claire looked up at Zee, who still looked repulsed by the whole thing.
    â€œSo what’s going on here, Zee?”
    Zee shrugged again. “Don’t ask me, but Mama Lulu’s gonna know how to decipher all this ritual stuff. It probably represents a Loa. That’s a voodoo deity. I don’t really know much about voodoo shit, and I don’t think I wanna know.”
    â€œWell, I want to know.” Claire stood up. Great, now they had to deal with a voodoo killer, for God’s sake. What next? A zombie running out of the woods with a machete? She stared down at the body and realized that the poor woman in front of them might very well have been mutilated and murdered while Claire slept peacefully on the houseboat not even thirty yards downhill on the bayou’s bank. Could that even be possible? How could he have gotten the victim into the house without Claire hearing anything? Had he come in through the woods surrounding the house? Claire definitely would have heard any vehicle or boat approaching anywhere near the property, and she was a light sleeper. Surely the crime had been committed when she wasn’t there.
    Zee was obviously thinking the same thing. “You’ve been stayin’ down in that houseboat at night, right, Claire? You sure you didn’t see nothin’ or hear nothin’?”
    â€œLike I said, nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve spent quite a few nights here, and there’s no way I wouldn’t have heard somebody wandering around up here. It’s so quiet—nothing but crickets and frogs and an occasional boat.”
    â€œHe could’ve done her and set all this up during the day when you were working. When was the last time you came inside the house?” Nancy said, focusing her camera and snapping still shots.
    â€œBlack and I came out here once right after we moved to New Orleans. We came in the house then, but I haven’t been inside again since I’ve been staying out here.”
    â€œYou can stay with me until he gets back, if you want,” Nancy offered. “What’s your connection with these people, anyway?”
    Claire really didn’t want to get into that part of her personal past, but this time she was going to have to. “I lived here for a while when I was young. It still belongs to the same family. We visited them at the restaurant on their boat, the Bayou Blue , and they said