Love Can Be Murder

what kind of pain and anguish you put me through yesterday when you knocked Deke's casket off its stand? I had to take a handful of Xanax just to make it through the rest of the day."
    Customers began to stare, and Penny swallowed her retort. "Maybe we should take this discussion into my office."
    Sheena's chin jerked up. "Okay by me."
    Penny led the way, then glanced back to see if Sheena was following her...just in time to see Sheena step in the Vigor Juice that Penny had spilled, which had seeped from behind the counter. In one awful second, Penny realized she was still holding the paper towel she’d meant to use to soak up the spill, before Jules had distracted her with all of her ramblings. Sheena had been strutting full steam ahead, so she'd hit the green Vigor Juice with maximum momentum. Her legs flew up in the air as if they'd been pulled by a rope, and she landed in a yoga v-sit, directly on her tailbone. Penny heard the crack of bone from where she stood, and she winced—that had to hurt.
    Sheena was still screaming when they loaded her into the ambulance, but all Penny could hear was the sound of her insurance premiums soaring over the moon. She did feel sympathetic for the woman...a little. But filing so many bogus personal injury claims was bound to come back and bite her sooner or later. Penny sighed. She just wished it hadn't been her negligence that had taught the woman a lesson.
    Just before the ambulance door closed, Penny noticed Sheena's pants—snakeskin. Penny's body tingled. Jules had said there was a serpent underfoot...had she foreseen the accident?
    "It couldn't have happened to a nicer person," Marie said sarcastically, watching the ambulance pull away.
    "Careful," Penny said. "If she takes my business away from me in court, you might be working for her."
    Marie made a face.
    Penny wet her lips and tried to inject a casual note into her voice. "Jules was in this morning, and she wasn't making sense to me."
    Marie frowned. "Jules is the smartest person I know. What did she say?"
    "She said a serpent was underfoot."
    The young woman shrugged. "That just means she thinks that evil is all around."
    "But then she said she had to leave—that she was weak from using her Cajun and was susceptible to the serpent."
    "So she thought she was susceptible to the evil."
    "From speaking Cajun? Did I misunderstand?"
    Marie bit her lip, then shook her head. "No...in that context, Cajun isn't a person, or a language, or even a culture. The word can be more loosely translated to mean magic. Jules was weak from using her magic." The woman wagged her eyebrows, then walked back inside the store.
    Penny pressed her mouth together—just what had Jules used her magic on? A voodoo doll? Hadn't Jules offered to put a hex on Deke? And Jules had been in the square Friday night—perhaps she was the one who had placed the doll on the table at Caskey's. And she had been at the funeral home yesterday, when the casket had practically leaped off its stand....
    No. Penny shook her head to rid it of nonsense. There was no such thing as voodoo or black magic.
    She stared at the pink house, and B.J.'s words about wishing they could get in to look at the crime scene came back to her. Sheena would be in the hospital for a while, so what better time to snoop around? He had returned to New Orleans yesterday to drop off some items at a lab, and he'd said he'd be back soon. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and hesitated. Was she calling because she wanted to tell him about the house being empty, or because she missed him?
    She closed her eyes and groaned, and her phone rang.
    When she saw his number pop up, her heart lifted higher than it had a right to. She flipped down the mouthpiece. "Hello?"
    "It's me," he said. "I miss you."
    Surprise and pleasure sparkled through her chest. "So come back," she said breezily. "I have a job for us." She explained about the house.
    "I was planning to come back this evening," he said. "But I'll bring my cat burgling clothes."
    She smiled into the phone. "Are you a master of disguise?"
    "If the situation calls for it," he said, and for some reason, his admission niggled at her.
    "Where shall I meet you?" she asked, changing the subject.
    "At your place," he said. "We'll walk to the house after dark. Wear all black clothing. Preferably form-fitting."
    She laughed, then disconnected the call, mystified over her reaction to the man. And had she, in Jules's words, "wished" him into