Tragic Magic Read Online Free

to dealing with TV reporters like Kimber or any other type of paparazzi. Talk to them, say a little too much, or give the wrong impression, and your name, face, and/or sound bite would be instantly captured and transmitted to the far corners of the world where it would probably remain floating in cyberspace until the end of time.
    Carmela stepped into the shadows and watched as Kimber Breeze bulldozed her way through the crowd and right up to a woman who was wrapped in an expensive-looking white trench coat and sobbing into a hanky. Kimber flashed her megawatt smile at the woman, then thrust her microphone
into the woman’s face. But the woman gave a terse shake of her head and turned away.
    Not to be defeated, Kimber tried again. This time a uniformed police officer stepped in to intercede. Carmela could hear Kimber’s angry protests all the way over here and wondered who the woman was. Maybe Melody’s silent partner? The woman who’d put up all the money for Medusa Manor?
    “Hey,” said Ava, at Carmela’s elbow now. “We should get out of here, yeah?”
    Carmela agreed. “Now that the media’s on the scene, it’s really gonna get crazy.”
    “And nasty,” said Ava. “That piece of blond trash is Kimber Breeze, isn’t it?”
    “Afraid so,” said Carmela as she and Ava slipped down the sidewalk toward her car. Another TV van had just screeched to a halt, and now those people were jumping out like rabid paratroopers, shouldering lights and cameras, hoping to capture some grisly footage for the ten o’clock news.
    “Turning into a circus,” noted Ava, as they climbed into Carmela’s car.
    Carmela backed away gingerly from a white van that was tucked a little too close to her, nosed away from the curb, then negotiated a tight U-turn. As she was about to pull away, Carmela saw Edgar Babcock standing on the boulevard talking to one of the newly arrived TV reporters. Carmela noted that Babcock looked slightly harried in a tensed-up, in-the-middle-of-a-murder-investigation sort of way. He also looked as handsome as ever. Touching her brake, she eased over to the curb. “Hey,” she called to him.
    Babcock looked over at her and raised his eyebrows in acknowledgment. He held up a single finger to the reporter, then strode over to talk with Carmela.
    “I can’t stop by tonight,” were his first words.
    “I understand,” said Carmela. She knew the job came first. Especially this job.

    “Call you tomorrow,” he told her.
    Carmela nodded. She was just starting to pull away when she called back to him. “Hey.”
    Babcock stopped in his tracks.
    “If Melody was already dead,” said Carmela, “why would her killer set her body on fire and toss it out the window?”
    Babcock looked thoughtful for a few seconds. “Don’t know,” he replied. “Maybe . . .” He shrugged, searching for words. “To scare you?”

Chapter 3
    “Y OU don’t have to heat up that delicious andouille sausage gumbo just on my account,” Ava told her. “But I’m glad you are.” She lounged on one of the cane chairs that were bunched around the dining table in Carmela’s French Quarter apartment. The charming one-bedroom unit was situated directly across the courtyard from Juju Voodoo and Ava’s own apartment tucked directly above it.
    “Cooking’s no problem,” said Carmela. “You look like you need a little fortification and I’m absolutely starving.” She glanced down at Boo and Poobah. The two dogs were milling about excitedly, trying to be enticingly cute. “You two have already eaten enormous dinners,” she told them. “You’re done for the night. Finished. Kaput.”
    Boo, a red fawn Shar-Pei with an expressive, wrinkled face, stared up at Carmela with pleading eyes that said, Please! I’m so hungry, almost on the brink of starvation! Poobah, a shaggy black-and-white Heinz 57 dog with a ragged ear,
lay down quietly, happy to let Boo carry on her hard lobbying for extra helpings.
    “How about a mystery