Hoodoo Woman (Roxie Mathis Book 3) by Sonya Clark

her face, one after another like a waterfall. Anger, confusion, determination, sadness. Great sadness. Twenty-four years old, dead face down in three inches of water with her system full of chemicals. At one point she looked incredulous and I could almost hear her, though she didn’t speak, “Can you believe this shit?” Then a pleading, asking me for help. As if to say, this is not what my life was supposed to be. Help me fix this. But I can’t fix it. There’s no turning back the clock, no stopping her death. All I can do is try to solve her murder, if indeed it was murder.
    I moved on to the next pages. In addition to the high school basketball game there were several other incidents. One of the older married men Britney was rumored to have had an affair with was seemingly harassed by her ghost in a grocery store. There were several witnesses to that one, providing many gleeful quotes about canned goods and boxes of condoms being hurled at the hapless philanderer. Witnesses described a group of her friends being pelted with popcorn and candy at the movie theater by an invisible entity. A rumor of cars full of teenagers being run off the back nine of the country club’s golf course could have been the ghost, security guards, or nothing at all.
    “The woods behind the country club still a place to go parking?”
    Ray nodded. “I’m not convinced that was her but I included it anyway. It’s getting to where sightings of her ghost are about as popular as Elvis.”
    Strange noises in the apartment where she lived downtown had been heard by the owner of the antique store below it. The Parker family sold her Mini Cooper, the new owner reporting that the stereo turned itself on and off at random as well as changing stations.
    The closest the hauntings came to the family was an incident at a book club of which her mother was a member. The meeting was supposed to discuss Eat, Pray, Love . Instead the ladies wound up dodging books and wine glasses as the power flickered “like a seizure” as one witness described it.
    Joanne Parker had nothing to say on the matter, though according to the same unnamed witness she was the focus of the ghost’s wrath that night. None of the Parkers had anything to say, at least not to Ray.
    “Do they know you’re doing this?”
    “I’d been wondering that myself, until today.” He sat in the chair I’d vacated. “Sheriff Taylor had me in his office this afternoon. Suggested I might need to pursue another hobby.”
    “What’s he like? The new sheriff.” The last one ended his term going to jail for something or other, I couldn’t remember what.
    “He’s not a bad guy but he’s more politician than cop. You’d have to be to want the job. He didn’t like having to talk to me about this and the fact that he did it at all tells me he was put under a lot of pressure. I’m not worried about him, though.”
    “You worried about old man Parker?” I was and I was barely involved at this point.
    “If he is covering something up, he needs to think I’m done nosing around after being called on the carpet today. And he needs to either not know about you at all or think you’re harmless. So we need to figure out how to do this on the down low.”
    “Did you just say down low?”
    “I have cable. I’m a very hip guy.”
    I laughed. The slow smile that used to make my knees weak spread across his face.
    A loud knock at the front door ended the moment. We exchanged a look, then he flicked his gaze to the screen. I started closing documents and tucked the paper folder between books on the shelf while he left the room. Something told me he would answer the door with a gun in one hand. Chalk it up to nerves maybe but I kind of hoped he did.
    After a moment Ray called my name. I ventured out to the foyer. Daniel stood on the other side of the threshold, looking like trouble with his collar popped, a cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth and an open beer bottle in one hand.
    The