The Voodoo Killings by Kristi Charish Page B

up with the times, she wasn’t a Luddite, either.
    “Kincaid, I have received some…disturbing news.” Her blue-green eyes drifted down to the gold phone. Without a word, she put it in the drawer and closed it. “Marjorie Secord, a friend of mine—I believe you know her?”
    “Marjorie’s Coffee Shop? In Pioneer Square. Everyone knows that place.”
    Lee nodded. “Someone broke into the shop this evening. Marjorie is dead.”
    It took a moment for it to sink in. I thought back to the commotion at that end of the street. “So that’s what the police were doing there.”
    She nodded.
    “I’m sorry, Lee.”
    She took an uncharacteristic breath. Her fingers played with the key to her desk drawer. “Kincaid, I need you to visit the murder scene for me.”
    That…was not what I’d expected. “Umm, Lee, I don’t work for the police anymore. They fired me. Remember? I can’t go near any crime scene.”
    “No one will be investigating. Her shop will be left alone.”
    “I highly doubt that, not from the number of cop cars I saw tonight. Aaron and Sarah are good. They might give me information on the murder if I ask.” Well, Sarah would. Aaron would attach strings….
    Lee frowned at me.
    “I can try and get a hold of her ghost, but seriously, that’s all I can do.” I didn’t add that talking to the ghost of a murder victim rarely sheds any light on what happened to them; they’re usually batty from the shock and trauma.
    Lee shook her head again. “There will be no investigation, Kincaid, and no ghost. Marjorie was a zombie, like me.”
    “What! How is that even possible?”
    “Marjorie became a zombie shortly after I did. A bout of smallpox.”
    I thought back to my visits to the coffee shop. I’d never once got a zombie vibe off Marjorie.
    “She was very careful,” Lee said, reading my thoughts. “Especially around practitioners such as yourself. You give off a signature. Faint, but distinct to a zombie looking for it.”
    “It’s not that I don’t believe you,” I said. “I just thought I knew every old zombie in Seattle.”
    “Apparently you were mistaken,” Lee said.
    “Apparently.”
    “Kincaid, all I need you to do is scan the scene for any traces of Otherside—any at all, however insignificant.”
    “Lee, this is more up Max’s alley. He’s got way more experience with bindings than I do.”
    Lee just looked at me. “You stand a better chance. And if you get caught, the police like you.”
    “ No , they hate me right now.”
    Lee’s eyes narrowed and the fine scars gathered around them like shadows.
    I sighed. Walking by a crime scene and pulling a globe wasn’t illegal…yet. But if Aaron saw me…
    “Lee, look, I’m sorry. It’s too risky. Things are bad enough right now without me sticking my nose over the police tape—”
    “I’ll pay you,” Lee said. “Fifteen hundred just to look. I know you need the money.”
    “Lee, that’s not fair—”
    “No,” she said, “it isn’t. But you need the money and I need to know what happened to Marjorie.”
    “Why?”
    Lee stared at me for a long moment. “I owed her some favours,” she finally said. Her fingers absently brushed the drawer key again. I don’t think I’d ever seen Lee perform an action that wasn’t conscious and deliberate. Marjorie’s death had really rattled her.
    I tried one last time. “Lee, you don’t need me, you need a private investigator with a practitioner on retainer. Scrap that—you need totalk to Aaron. I’ve got enough of a problem with this zombie without poking my nose into Marjorie’s murder—”
    “Kincaid, now that they know she was a zombie, you know there will be no investigation.”
    I closed my eyes and worded what I said next very carefully. “They’ll investigate the break-in and treat what happened to her as aggravated assault. I’ll talk to Aaron. If he knows she was part of the local underground community—”
    Lee actually hissed. I stopped. She was right. No