Love Can Be Murder

asked.
    "Penny Francisco," she corrected.
    "You're on live with Kenner on WYNO news radio—will you give us a statement on the murder of your ex-husband?"
    Her mouth opened and closed as her mind spun. Of course the media had gotten wind of Deke's bizarre death. In a small town like Mojo, murder was big honking news.
    "Ms. Francisco, did you put a hex on your ex?" the man demanded. "Do you have some kind of mystical power?"
    She squinted. "What?"
    "Did the voodoo ceremony that you performed on your husband have something to do with the festival that's taking place?"
    "Ex-husband," she muttered on an exhale. "And no!" She hung up the phone in a panic, but it rang again a few seconds later. She yanked the phone cord from the base unit, her chest heaving.
    Rubbing her gritty eyes, she went to the kitchen for a drink of water. It was just after 7:00 a.m . She leaned into the sink, welcoming the cool of the stainless steel against her flesh, fighting nausea as the previous day's events came back with jarring clarity. Fending off the remnants of a hangover and dealing with the most shocking news of her life was not a good combination. She felt as if she'd been dragged by her heels over some very rough terrain; the last thing she wanted to do was go out for her morning run, but she knew it would help to clear her head. For energy, she downed a tall glass of orange juice, then she went into the bedroom, trying to ignore the mess while she rifled for running gear. She dressed in record time.
    When she opened the door and stepped onto the sidewalk, the scene was dank and depressing. Everywhere people lay sleeping, unwashed clumps covered with dew. Food containers littered the ground. From the shelter rose a sickening smell of chicken flesh and smoke. Penny swallowed and took off on her usual route, toward Charm Street. B.J. had said to act normal.
    As her feet hit the pavement, her thoughts went to the man who so quickly and so willingly had come to her aid. She pondered her strong attraction to B.J. Beaumont and told herself it was because she was still stinging from Deke's rejection...and death.
    As she bounded onto Charm Street toward the Victorian, she stayed on the side of the street of her business. Her store was quiet, and probably would be until Marie opened at 9:00. Business should be good...unless people decided to avoid her store because of the rumors that were bound to have spread about Deke's murder. The residents of Mojo were a suspicious, unforgiving lot—take Diane Davidson, for instance. In the same situation, Penny wasn't so sure she'd have the guts to stay...and she hoped she wouldn't have to find out.
    She tried, but she couldn't resist a glance at the pink house as she jogged by. The yard was flattened and marred with muddy tire tracks from the many police vehicles that had parked wherever they could the night before. She wondered if Deke's office had been cordoned off with police tape, if Sheena had spent the night in the house. When the memory of Deke's staring eyes rose in her mind, she dug her heels deeper into the pavement. When the vision of the wire stake imbedded in his chest haunted her, she pumped her arms and picked up speed. Her brain couldn't dwell on those horrific details if it was occupied with processing pain signals from her straining calves.
    She ran to the corner and turned right to jog past the Instruments of Death and Voodoo Museum. The museum loomed ominously in the predawn light, separated from the sidewalk by the shoulder-high iron fence and the padlocked gate. As she ran by, a flicker of light in one of the stained-glass windows on the top floor caught her eye—a strobe of some kind? A fire? When she slowed, however, the light disappeared. She resumed running, deciding that the rising sun was playing tricks on her eyes. She shook her head, reminding herself that she had plenty of intrigue in her own life without imagining more.
    She crossed a quiet street and inhaled deeply to prepare her body for Hairpin Hill, which led up into the new suburbs that surrounded Mojo. The curvy road was quiet and deserted, hemmed with thick hawthorne trees and white camellias at the peak of their perfume. With its three hairpin curves traversing the side of the small manmade mountain before looping back to the road on the other side, Hairpin Hill was the most challenging leg of her run, but also her favorite...usually.
    This morning the darkness of the tree canopy seemed menacing instead of