In Deep Voodoo

  Table of Contents

  1 Start with a dangerous dose of curiosity…

  2 Add a dash of weakness…

  3 A pinch of revenge…

  4 A liberal dose of theatrics…

  5 A spoonful of surprise…

  6 A cup of celebration…

  7 Toss in some unexpected spice…

  8 Top with a few sour grapes…

  9 Then slice with a sharp object…

  10 Allow everything to ferment…

  11 Until it boils over…

  12 Let things simmer for a while…

  13 Then stir things up again…

  14 Keep stirring to prevent anything from sticking…

  15 Make a generous portion, because everyone will want some…

  16 Monitor concoction for deterioration…

  17 You might need to test alternate formulas…

  18 Blood makes a nice colorant…

  19 Remember to clean up the mess…

  20 Sniff around to make sure all is well…

  21 Store in a dark place…

  22 If something is rotten, you’ll smell it…

  23 Keep everything bottled up…

  24 Don’t keep things buried…

  25 Be careful—the potion has a bite to it…

  26 Stir with an olive branch…

  27 The taste might come back to haunt you…

  28 Make sure you have a stomach for it…

  29 Beware of a missing ingredient…

  30 Don’t kill it all in one sitting…

  31 If the recipe is a success, pass it on…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  By Stephanie Bond

  Cover

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  Start with a dangerous

  dose of curiosity …

  “I could kill Deke for this,” Penny Francisco said, peering with a tiny pair of binoculars through the mini-blinds that covered a window of her health food store, The Charm Farm.

  The normally sleepy two-lane Charm Street bustled with early traffic for the annual Voodoo Festival. But in between the passing cars, Penny had managed to get a good look at the Victorian house heavy with ornate cast ironwork that she had bought, refurbished, and lived in with Deke Black, attorney-at-law, until their explosive breakup a few months ago. A painting crew was methodically covering the rich color of Vanilla Milk, which she had lovingly chosen from thousands of paint chips, with what looked to be Pink Nightmare.

  She ground her teeth until her jaw ached. “Just look at what he’s doing to my house!”

  “Let me guess,” Marie, her quirky employee of six months, said from behind the juice bar, where she was refilling canisters of vitamin additives. “He’s painting it.”

  Penny looked at the woman suspiciously—many people in town had insinuated that eccentric Marie Gaston with the electric blue hair had a “third eye.” “How did you know that?”

  “I saw Lou Hall’s painting van pull up as I was coming in this morning.”

  Penny frowned and looked back out the window. “Deke’s not just painting my house—he’s painting it Puke Pink.”

  “But it’s his house now.”

  “Still. I can’t believe the historical society would allow him to paint my house pink.”

  “It helps that his mother is mayor,” Marie offered dryly. “And it’s his house now, boss.”

  “But I have to look at it every day.” Penny jammed her hand into her coarse auburn curls as frustration billowed in her chest. Moisture gathered in the corners of her eyes, but she quickly blinked it away—no more tears over Deke Black. “He did this just to annoy me.”

  “Probably.” Marie cleared her throat. “Although I heard down at the Hair Affair that, um, Sheena was planning to redecorate.”

  Penny stiffened, pain knifing between her shoulder blades. Deke’s mistress. Girlfriend. Tart. Practically everyone in the town of Mojo, Louisiana, knew about Deke’s fooling around. The fact that he had moved litigious Sheena Linder into the home he and Penny had bought together was the ultimate humiliation. “I can’t believe that I have to live over the doughnut shop and that woman will be living in my house.”

  “You live over a beignet shop. And it’s his house, boss.”

  “The bastard could have waited until the ink was dry on the divorce papers.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, maybe Sheena will fall in the shower and sue him. Lord knows she’s sued almost everyone else in town.”

  “And Deke defended her the last few times she allegedly injured herself.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I heard she slipped on a spilled Yoohoo in the Quickie Mart last week and is laid up again.”

  “As if the woman needed a reason to be on her back,” Penny muttered, her blood boiling.

  The soaring pin oak tree that had first drawn her to the Victorian on Charm Street was ablaze with deep red foliage typical for early October. The glorious ruby color clashed horrifically with the vicious pink hue the painters were rolling onto the wood siding—another insult. The last time the leaves had been red—this time last year—she had been happy … mostly.

  Last summer had been fraught with stress as she had debated whether or not to clear the land they owned behind The Charm Farm to plant an organic vegetable garden. Deke had been vehemently opposed to the idea, saying he had other plans for the empty half-acre lot, but Penny had had the distinct feeling that her husband had been trying to undermine her business, which he had pooh-poohed from the beginning. When she’d first suggested that they convert the small rental house across the street that his father had given him into a retail business, Deke had made her feel foolish.

  “A health food store in Mojo?” He’d laughed until his eyes had run. “Maybe a fish and chips joint. In case you haven’t noticed, honey, the deep south really means the deep fried south.”

  Hurt, but determined to put her rusty nutrition degree and homeopathic know-how to good use, Penny had persisted. After a rocky start, her enterprise had taken off. As it turned out, the residents of Mojo preferred home remedies to fancy doctoring, and The Charm Farm’s inventory of roots, herbs, and vitamins fit the bill nicely.

  But while her business had grown steadily, the law practice that Deke had taken over from his father had started to slide. Two of his big manufacturing clients had jumped to more tony law firms in nearby New Orleans. Deke had begun to supplement his client list with personal injury cases, and supplement his diet with bourbon.

  The downturn in his business had coincided perfectly with a midlife crisis. One day he had driven home a new fire engine red two-seater Lotus Elise. That was about the same time Penny had found brochures for hair transplants in his briefcase. With new lingerie and lots of TLC, she had tried to head off what had seemed to be an inevitable affair, but in the end, terminally tanned and ferociously feminine Sheena Linder had been too much for a simple man like Deke to resist.

  Penny and Sheena weren’t complete strangers. The women had met once when Penny had visited Sheena’s Forever Sun tanning salon and asked that Sheena give her customers a flyer on the dangers of tanning so they could make a more informed decision before roasting themselves. Sheena had called her the “c” word and had thrown her out of Forever Sun, threatening to sue for trespassing and mental anguish. Penny found out later that her trip to the tanning salon had prompted Sheena to see Deke about possibly filing a lawsuit against some crazy woman named Penny Black. Apparently Deke had overlooked Sheena’s inability to figure out that her new attorney and her intended defendant shared the same last name and might be related or, in this case, married. Thankfully, Deke hadn’t filed a suit against Penny on Sheena’s behalf. Instead he’d started po
rking Sheena, and now Penny’s last name was no longer Black.

  Life was nothing if not ironic. Penny had secured the barracuda of an attorney from the city who had handled her friend Liz’s divorce. After much legal wrangling, Deke had gotten the Victorian and the property it sat on, and Penny had gotten The Charm Farm and the property it sat on. When the final papers had been signed earlier in the week, Penny had staked out the premeditated garden with pink flags. Those flags symbolized her own growth and filled her with a sense of purpose.

  And she also gained satisfaction in knowing that one day, Sheena Linder would crawl out of one of her tanning beds looking like a dried-apple-head doll. Penny’s skin, on the other hand, would still be lily white and unwrinkled … but lightly veined … and … freckled. She frowned suddenly, trying to remember why she had felt so victorious.

  Across the street, a faded green sedan pulled into her former driveway behind Lou Hall’s painting van. Probably another workman hired to do something else unconscionable to her beloved house. She started to turn away when the car door opened and a tall man she didn’t recognize climbed out. With the binoculars she could see he was long-limbed and well built. Unbidden, a spark of appreciation flared in her stomach. The man was dark-haired, dressed in boots, brown leather coat, and faded jeans that he tugged higher as he approached the steps leading to the front porch of the house. His loose-hipped walk suggested an affinity for … something other than Pilates.

  Penny’s tongue lodged firmly in her cheek. What was a handsome man doing at the house at an hour when Deke was at his office and Sheena was purportedly indisposed with an injury from the Yoohoo spill? Maybe Sheena was already bored with Deke’s fumbling foreplay and dense back hair and had decided to call in reinforcements.

  The fact that the thought cheered her immensely proved just how much the nasty divorce had changed her; before she wouldn’t have wished evil on anyone, no matter what they had done to her, but now … well, now she had fantasies about Deke getting his comeuppance in a manner worthy of a regional headline. She glanced toward the phone and seriously toyed with the idea of calling Deke and inventing an emergency to bring him running home. How fitting if Deke walked in on Sheena doing the nasty with another guy in the same bed in which she had caught Deke and Sheena going at it like two greased pistons.

  She would probably never be able to get that horrific image out of her head. Now, ten months later, the detail she remembered most vividly was that the bottoms of Sheena’s feet (stuck up in the air) were dirty, and the fact that she was sullying Penny’s organic cotton sheets in the process of shagging her husband was just … well, unforgivable, really.

  Penny pressed the binoculars closer to the window, her mind spinning gleeful scenarios, all of them ending with Deke crawling back to her—not that it would do any good, but oh, the sweet satisfaction.

  The stranger’s body language was definitely suspicious as he climbed the steps, stabbed the doorbell, and waited in the shadows of the covered porch. He looked from side to side, his gaze seeming to catch and linger on the antique metal glider that she had painstakingly stripped of countless layers of peeling paint and refurbished for the porch. His good taste in furniture apparently did not extend to women, Penny thought sourly. The door opened and Sheena stood there in a pale, voluminous peignoir, a la Zsa Zsa Gabor, her orange skin glowing like a jack-o’-lantern, nary a back brace or neck cast in sight.

  Penny waited for the man to scoop Sheena into his arms, or for her to flash him some leg—or an orange boob. Instead, his posture went rigid and he appeared to say something she didn’t like. Sheena’s blond head tilted, her hip cocked saucily, and her face contorted. Then she tried to close the door, but the man wedged his foot in the opening long enough to add something. When he withdrew his foot, the door closed, and Penny imagined the thwack of the dead bolt turning as she had turned it many times herself.

  The man retraced his steps to the car, every footfall exuding frustration. Penny couldn’t get a good look at his face as he swung into the driver’s seat. Exhaust blasted out of the tailpipe when he started the car engine. He backed out of the driveway onto Charm Street and sped away in the direction of downtown Mojo. For some reason, though, she doubted the man was in town for the Voodoo Festival.

  Penny’s pulse spiked. Who was the mystery man to her ex-husband’s shack-up honey? A relative? A debtor?

  A lover?

  2

  Add a dash of weakness …

  Suddenly Penny realized that Marie was speaking. The mini-blind snapped back in place. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  Beneath her blue pixie haircut, Marie frowned and leaned into the counter. “I said are you going to let a bad paint job ruin tonight’s party?”

  Penny pulled her mind back to the moment and made her best attempt at a smile. “No. It’s sweet of you to throw a party to celebrate my divorce.” In truth, she dreaded it like a pelvic exam. People used to mourn a broken marriage—now greeting card companies offered “you’re better off without him” poetry. It all felt very sordid to her, but she knew Marie was only trying to lift her spirits. “I’ve never been to a divorce party—what will we do?”

  “Well—”

  The phone rang and Penny held up her finger. “Hold that thought.” Praying that Marie’s thought was of canceling the party, Penny shoved the binoculars into her pocket, then walked to the front counter and picked up the handset next to the cash register. “Charm Farm, Penny speaking.”

  “Penny, it’s Gloria Dalton. Is this a bad time?”

  At the sound of her divorce attorney’s voice, Penny grimaced. “Only if this is bad news.”

  “No,” Gloria said quickly. “Actually I was just … checking on you.”

  Penny blinked. “Checking on me?”

  “Call me a mother hen. I know that sometimes the finality of signing the divorce papers can pack an emotional punch.” She cleared her throat. “I just wanted to let you know that if you ever feel like talking …”

  “I’m fine,” Penny rushed to fill in the pause, realizing in flushed embarrassment that Gloria hadn’t bought all those excuses about allergies when her eyes had watered and her nose had run during consultations.

  “I know things between you and Deke ended on a sour note,” Gloria said. “If he harasses you, Penny, I’ll help you to get a restraining order.”

  The vehemence in her voice made Penny wonder if Gloria had firsthand experience with restraining orders. Penny gave a hoarse laugh. “He painted my old house pink—can you do anything about that?”

  Gloria sighed. “You know I can’t. I wish I could have gotten you the house, too.”

  “I’m happier with my business. He only wanted this place so he could shut me down, you know. All that talk about his father giving him this place and it having sentimental value was bull.”

  “Still, I’m sorry that he’s being so childish about painting the house.”

  “Well, I couldn’t care less,” Penny lied, then glanced up. Her gaze landed on Marie. “In fact, I’m having a party tonight to … celebrate my freedom.”

  “Oh. That’s … great.” Gloria made an approving noise.

  “If you don’t have plans, join us. We’ll be at Caskey’s bar on the square. The Voodoo Festival is going on, so Mojo is hopping with activity for once.”

  “Sounds tempting,” Gloria said. “I’d love to drive over, but I already have a … commitment … of sorts.”

  A date? Penny wondered. Gloria Dalton was beautiful, but emitted a general disdain for men. “Okay. Well, thanks for calling,” Penny said, trying to sound breezy.

  “Sure. And Penny … that offer to talk is always open.”

  “Thank you,” Penny said somewhat woodenly. She felt so pathetic—her own attorney pitied her. “Good-bye, Gloria.” She hung up the phone and thought not for the first time that the woman was very good at her job; she had, after all, blocked Deke’s vigorous attempt to keep the rental house. Yet it seemed to Penny that Glor
ia Dalton carried out her duties of legally dividing married couples with a certain sadness—Penny sensed the attractive New Orleans attorney had a story.

  She pursed her mouth. But then, didn’t everyone?

  “Bad news?” Marie asked across the room.

  “No,” Penny said, then exhaled and donned a cheerful expression as she walked over to the smoothie counter where Marie was working. “You were about to tell me what to expect tonight at the party?”

  Marie’s smile was secretive as she pushed a glass of yellow-colored juice toward Penny. “I have a few surprises planned.”

  Penny picked up the glass with a wry smile. “No offense, Marie, but I’ve had enough surprises to last a lifetime. I’m ready for my life to settle into a nice, quiet rut.”

  “Good surprises,” Marie amended. “We’ll have fun.”

  Penny sipped from the glass and murmured when the citrusy, almost floral-flavored juice washed over her taste buds. “Mmm, this is good.”

  “It’s my own blend. I was thinking about adding it to the menu for the festival crowd.”

  Penny narrowed her eyes. “As long as you didn’t sneak in some suspect ingredient.”

  Marie grinned. “Can I help it if my juice boosts sex drive?”

  Penny reluctantly swallowed the mouthful of tangy stuff she’d been savoring. “What’s in this?”

  “Just a little bee pollen and some ginseng.” Marie’s eyes twinkled. “And a secret ingredient or two.”

  Penny wagged her finger. “We have to divulge our recipes to our customers, Marie. And I’m afraid you wasted your love potion on me.”

  Marie sighed. “Penny, Deke put you through a horrible ordeal, but don’t let him keep you down.” She gestured wide. “Just look at your success.”

  Penny pivoted her head to take in the two large rooms they’d created when they’d gutted the rental house. She tried to view her business as a stranger might. The high ceilings had been fitted with two skylights to allow natural light to flood the space. One room housed shelves and racks of bottled vitamins, minerals, and a plethora of other natural additives in powder, liquid, crystal, and solid form, plus books, magazines, and other packaged products aimed at attaining a healthy lifestyle.