That Old Black Magic Read online

  “How did it go on the Natchez tonight? Were Sabrina and Leo satisfied with your cake?” asked Marguerite.

  “They seemed to be,” said Piper. “And I noticed that most of the guests cleaned their plates. That’s always a positive sign. So many times you go to a wedding reception and people just take a bite or two of the cake and leave the rest.”

  “Ah, good,” said Marguerite. “Bertrand would be so pleased. Thank you very much, Piper. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you when you go back north.”

  “I was happy to do it, Marguerite. Now there’s just tomorrow’s cake to finish. That’s why I’m in the office now. Leo told me tonight he doesn’t want cream-cheese icing on the bananas Foster cake. I’m gonna Google around on the Internet for buttercream recipes with a little something extra.”

  “It’s so late, Piper,” Marguerite said with alarm in her voice. “Don’t do that now. You can do it in the morning. You worked hard today. Go upstairs and get some rest.”

  Chapter 90

  It was a cold but crystal-clear night in Manhattan. Jack stood at the window of his apartment in Peter Cooper Village. When he positioned himself at precisely the right angle, he could see the top of the Empire State Building glowing white against the midnight blue sky.

  He wished Piper were with him.

  Both of them were stubborn. Neither had called the other. Jack had vowed to himself that he wasn’t going to be the one to give in.

  He sighed heavily and walked over to the small bar in the corner of the living room. Pouring some scotch into a glass, he could feel his resolve weakening. He was tired of the game they were playing now, waiting to see who would break down and call. There was little doubt that eventually they would get over their disagreement. What did it matter who made the first move? Was he just being a macho jerk, trying to show her who was boss? Jack didn’t like to think about himself that way.

  He loved Piper. Pure and simple. He wanted to hear her voice.

  Jack put down his glass and picked up the phone. But Piper didn’t pick up as it rang and rang, finally going into voice mail. He didn’t leave a message.

  Chapter 91

  Piper wanted to speak with Jack. She checked the office clock. It was getting late. If she was going to call, she shouldn’t wait any longer. She wouldn’t want to wake him.

  She was about to pick up the receiver on the desk phone again when she realized she didn’t even have Jack’s number committed to memory. She was so dependent now on her iPhone that she made her calls from her contacts list rather than entering numbers. Besides, it was better to make a personal call on her own phone anyway. She rummaged through her bag looking for the phone.

  Where was it? She couldn’t find it.

  Dumping the contents of the bag on the desk, she sorted through lipsticks, mascara, blush, tissues, a brush, notebooks, receipts, a wallet, keys, pens, and pencils. She felt increasingly distressed.

  Where could it be?

  She looked around the office and kitchen. Then she traced her steps back through the hallway to the salesroom, glancing in every direction as she searched. Opening the front door, Piper checked the sidewalk in front of the bakery and walked along the curb for several yards one way and then the other. Perhaps the phone had fallen in the street when she got out of the taxi and been kicked aside by a pedestrian or hit by the cab’s rear tire as it drove away.

  Nothing.

  She told herself to calm down and try to remember when she’d last had it. She was sure she hadn’t used it in the taxi. The last time she could recall having it was when she’d taken pictures on the paddleboat. She’d put the phone back into her purse when Falkner approached her.

  Piper returned to the office and called directory assistance for the number of the Natchez. When she called it, she got a recorded message with an announcement of the operating hours. She’d have to call again in the morning.

  There was no way she was going to be able to go upstairs and fall right asleep now. She was too wound up. Sighing with resignation, Piper decided she might as well go ahead and figure out that frosting recipe. Beginning with Leo’s suggestion of making a buttercream frosting mixed with crumbled pralines, Piper typed the first few letters into the Google search engine.

  “B-U-T-T-E-R.”

  Instantly a list of the most recently searched terms, beginning with those letters, dropped down from the input box. Piper’s eyes shifted upward and glanced at it. She immediately felt a tingle shoot through her system as she noticed the search at the top of the list.

  “BUTTERFLY RELEASE.”

  Chapter 92

  Traffic was relatively light on the streets that led from the Garden District to the French Quarter. Marguerite drove along St. Charles Avenue, where the green streetcars had ceased running for the night. Even in the darkness, she could see the silhouettes of the Greek Revival, Italianate, and Queen Anne–style mansions along the road framed by massive, ancient live oaks.

  She tried to remain calm. The call to the buyers that Bertrand had lined up could wait until tomorrow. The trip to the bakery could not.

  The minute Piper had mentioned that she was going to use the office computer for a recipe search, Marguerite felt a rush of adrenaline. How stupid she felt! With all her extensive planning, she had forgotten one crucial thing: All the research she’d done to map out her murder spree was sitting, for any and all to see, right there on her computer.

  The World Wide Web had provided her whatever information she needed on voodoo and hoodoo, the symbols of the loas and the offerings they preferred. Various Web sites had pointed the way to where she could buy snakes and order butterflies. And the computer she used could document every keystroke she’d made. Anyone seeing her search history could piece together every step she’d taken to implement her deadly scheme. Living in the computer age had made murder easy.

  The computer couldn’t take credit, though, for the plan itself. That was all Marguerite’s idea and, now, she was marveling at the cleverness of it.

  After years of excruciating hurt and humiliation at the knowledge of Bertrand’s disgusting womanizing, Marguerite had had enough. The pain she’d suffered, pretending she didn’t notice each time he devoured attractive women with his eyes or touched them in whatever way he could. Bertrand thought she was oblivious to his using the upstairs apartment for his trysts. But his travels in the dumbwaiter, sneaking in and watching unsuspecting female guests, bothered Marguerite the most.

  She still cringed when she thought of the most mortifying event of all. Last year her very own sister had come to visit and awoke in the middle of the night to find Bertrand standing by her bed leering down at her. Candice had been scared to death at first and thoroughly disgusted later. Bertrand had given some lame excuse about wanting to check if a recently installed air-conditioning system was working well up there. Marguerite’s sister left the next morning, but not before she pulled Marguerite aside and urged her to divorce her lecherous husband.

  But for Marguerite divorce was not an option. She wasn’t going to settle for half of what they’d built. She deserved it all. The Consolidated Cuisine acquisition was about to go through with the plan of opening Boulangerie Bertrand franchises around the country. She’d be truly rich.

  “Pig!” Marguerite spat as the car reached Canal Street.

  That’s what Bertrand was. He was cocky, too. When he got out of bed that night after the dinner at Bistro Sabrina, Marguerite suspected he might be going back to the French Quarter to sneak in and watch the latest pretty female he’d lured to New Orleans. There had been many qualified applicants for the guest-baker position, but Marguerite was sure Bertrand chose Piper Donovan after he saw her picture online.

  That night there was no point in confronting Bertrand. She was way past that. Marguerite had already decided what she was going to do about him weeks ago. The first phase of her plan was schedule
d to begin just a few hours later.

  She wanted Bertrand dead, yet she didn’t want to be a suspect. Marguerite knew that the police always looked at family members first in their homicide investigations. But if she killed Bertrand in the middle of a murder spree, the cops wouldn’t look her way.

  The idea for the other victims came to her one day as she worked beside Bertrand in the bakery.

  He was decorating nursery-rhyme cookies. As she watched him piping a tiny mustache on the middle figure of the three characters in a little cookie boat, she decided who else would die. The rhyme itself suggested them.

  The baker would be in the middle: Bertrand. So there’d have to be a butcher and a candlestick maker to complete the rhyme: Muffuletta Mike and Ellinore Duchamps. Though neither of them had wronged her, Marguerite didn’t care. It worked out well for her plan that they all made their living on Royal Street.

  To keep the police even farther away, Marguerite had decided to make all three murders look as though they were parts of voodoo rituals. The usual motives for murder wouldn’t even be considered. Investigators would be distracted by voodoo clues.

  But if they decided to check her computer, the police would be able to trace her electronic steps and figure out what she had done.

  She had to get the computer.

  On Royal Street the lights were on inside Boulangerie Bertrand. Piper hadn’t closed the shop and gone upstairs after all. Why hadn’t she done as she was told?

  Marguerite was seized with panic.

  Fear quickly changed to resolve. If a fourth murder were necessary, so be it. While she had no desire to kill Piper, she would if she had to. Marguerite would be able to tell right away by the expression on Piper’s face, by the look of terror in her eyes, whether the young woman had uncovered the secrets in the computer. Piper couldn’t possibly be a good enough actress to conceal the horror of that discovery.

  Marguerite drove down to the corner and turned, steering the car into the narrow passage behind the bakery. Alleys were scarce in the French Quarter, with shops, cafés, and hotels built on top of one another, side by side and back to back. Tonight Marguerite was especially grateful that Boulangerie Bertrand had that rarest of amenities in the center of New Orleans: a back alley.

  That advantage had tipped the scales when she and Bertrand chose the building for their business. Deliveries could be made to the rear door rather than having big sacks of flour, sugar, and other supplies hauled through the front. At the time Marguerite had never dreamed that the passageway would facilitate anything more than that.

  Tonight the alley was going to help her get away with murder.

  Chapter 93

  Piper tapped in just the first two letters of every term she could think of that related to the murders.

  “D-A.” Up came “DAMBALLAH” at the very top of the recent-searches menu.

  “L-O.” Up came “LOKO.”

  “S-N”—“SNAKES.”

  Leaning back in her chair, Piper was shocked and in disbelief. Maybe she was overreacting. There had to be another explanation. The one that was running through her mind was too horrible to be real.

  Only Bertrand and Marguerite used the computer. Bertrand was dead. That left Marguerite. Had she killed her husband? Had Marguerite killed Muffuletta Mike and Ellinore Duchamps as well?

  Should she call the police? Maybe she was wrong about Marguerite. But shouldn’t the police be informed of what Piper had come across on the computer? She was determined to follow Jack’s and her father’s advice and let the pros figure it out.

  As Piper reached for the telephone, she heard the back door to the kitchen open. She turned to see Marguerite standing behind her. Piper tried but failed to keep the fear from her facial expression.

  “Put down that phone,” commanded Marguerite. “Now.”

  Chapter 94

  Jack clicked the remote control, and the TV screen went black. He got up from the couch and turned off the lamps, then walked down the hall to the bedroom. Before he went to sleep, he wanted to try Piper again.

  As he undressed, Jack found comfort in the thought that Piper was going to be home this weekend. When they were together again, things would be all right between them. He hated when she went off and he couldn’t be sure whether or not she was safe. Still, he didn’t want to be some Neanderthal who resented his woman for doing her own thing.

  Getting into bed, Jack called Piper’s cell phone once more. It rang three times before a man’s voice answered.

  “Who’s this?” Jack asked warily.

  “Leo Yancy. Who’s this?”

  “I’m trying to reach Piper Donovan. This is her friend, Jack Lombardi.”

  “Oh, hi.” The man’s voice became friendlier. “Piper was with us tonight, Jack, at a party for our wedding. She lost her cell on the boat. We have it now. My fiancée and I are on our way over to her apartment to drop it off. We’ll tell her you called when we see her.”

  Chapter 95

  Piper watched in stunned silence as Marguerite calmly walked toward the desk. The older woman bent down, opened the bottom drawer, and extracted a gun.

  “All right, get up, Piper,” said Marguerite, pointing the weapon at her.

  “Marguerite, please,” Piper pleaded. “What are you doing?”

  “Do as I say, Piper. Now.”

  “But, Marguerite, stop and think for a minute,” Piper warned, her voice cracking. “You’re only going to make things worse.”

  Marguerite shook her head. “I don’t think so, Piper. You are the only one who threatens me right now. I think I’ll get away with all of it, as long as you don’t have a chance to talk to anyone. Now, get up. We’re going for a ride.”

  Piper tried to think. She remembered all the stories her father had told her about murder victims whose fatal mistake had been getting into a car at gunpoint. At the time Piper had vowed she’d never be that stupid. But now, as she stared down the barrel of a gun herself, she understood why the victims had done as they were instructed.

  The choices were limited. Try to run and get shot doing it. Try to wrestle the weapon away and get shot doing that. Or follow orders and try to buy precious time. Once they were in the car, she might have more options. She might be able to jump out or signal to another motorist or a pedestrian for help. Right now, alone with Marguerite at the back of the bakery, there was no prospect that anyone would be coming to her aid.

  Piper rose from the chair and turned toward the door. Marguerite followed behind her. But Piper’s hopes immediately deflated when they got outside to the alleyway. Marguerite clicked the button on her key fob, and the car’s trunk lid popped open.

  Chapter 96

  As she stood behind Piper with the gun pointing at her back, Marguerite tried to anticipate what Piper might do. What was she thinking right now?

  She must be realizing that getting into the trunk of the car was like signing her own death warrant. Once inside, she could be taken anywhere. Perhaps to some remote spot where she could be killed, the gunshots ringing out where nobody could hear and her body dumped where no one would find it for days and days, if it was ever found at all.

  If I were Piper, thought Marguerite, this is when I’d make my move. I’d take my chances now and run, scrambling down the alleyway as fast as I could, praying that the darkness would make me an elusive target. If I could just get to the end of the alley and out onto the street, I’d have a good chance of survival.

  Before Piper could try any such thing, Marguerite repositioned the weapon in her hand and raised her arm. She brought the heel of the gun crashing down onto Piper’s head. The young woman crumpled but didn’t completely fall. Yet the blow was enough to daze and destabilize Piper, making it easier to propel her into the trunk.

  Marguerite slammed the lid shut and went back inside the bakery to get the computer.

  Chapter 97<
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  Blackness.

  Piper’s eyes were open, but she couldn’t see anything. Her head throbbed painfully as she struggled to get her bearings. Soon enough she realized what was happening and where she was.

  Cramped and barely able to move in the small, cluttered space, Piper raised her arms upward and pressed against the roof. When it didn’t move, she clenched her hands into fists and pounded on the unyielding surface. Finally she wriggled around awkwardly and got into a position where she could partially draw up her legs. She pushed her feet as hard as she could against the trunk lid. It did not budge.

  Stop. Think. Try not to panic.

  Lying in the trunk, trapped and alone in the darkness, Piper could sense her mind racing as a familiar, frantic feeling began to course through her. The trauma, the stress, the sheer terror of her paralysis in Florida and her entombment in the New Orleans movie-set crypt: the sense of being buried alive, caught in a horrific situation from which there was no escape. Helpless.

  It was happening all over again!

  The terror Piper felt with a flashback was real, but now actual physical threat was imminent. She pictured Marguerite opening the trunk and aiming the gun. She thought of her parents and Jack. She wondered if anyone would ever find her body.

  Please, God. Don’t let this be happening!

  Piper broke out in a cold sweat. She was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe. The short, shallow gasps came faster and faster. She was hyperventilating.

  Then she blacked out.

  Chapter 98

  On Royal Street the plainclothes police officer took his hand from the pocket of his blazer and looked at his watch with impatience. He was eager for his relief to arrive. Where was the guy?

  He was about to call and check when he noticed the lights go off inside the bakery across the street. Wouldn’t you know it? Piper Donovan would be coming out any second, heading up to the apartment for the night. The next guy on duty most likely wouldn’t have a thing to do for his entire shift. If he were smart, he’d bring a blanket with him and catch up on some sleep in one of the doorways.