Read Hoodoo Woman (Roxie Mathis Book 3) for Free Online Page B

aura. “Tell me about seeing her ghost.”
    He leaned heavily on his forearms resting on the table, fingers restless on the coffee cup. “It was night. Getting on toward time for bed. I was hungry, so I fixed a piece of the pie somebody gave me.”
    The faint blush on his cheeks was too much temptation. “Somebody gave you a pie? Homemade?”
    His chin jerked, challenge sending a few ripples through his aura. “Strawberry.”
    “Your fondness for strawberry pie is legendary. Somebody must want you bad.”
    “Believe it or not, I’m still considered quite the catch back home. Women offer me pie all the time.”
    “I just bet they do.” I tamped down my amusement and did my best to ignore the faint twinge of jealousy. “Go on.”
    “So I take my slice of pie and a cup of coffee to the living room and then I realize I forgot the whipped cream. I’d left it setting out but forgot to put any on the pie. I take the plate back into the kitchen and there she is, right in front of the fridge. I can see clear through some of her, like she’s made of smudged glass. The can is in the air and she’s writing on my fridge with it. Then she turns around and I get a real good look at her. There’s no doubt in my mind who she is. She steps to the side and looks at the fridge, like she wants to point out what she wrote. It says murdered in big white letters. Then she looks at me again. I’m trying to make my brain work and say something but before I can get it in gear, the can hits the floor and she’s gone.”
    I considered everything he said for a long moment. If Ray said he saw a ghost I believed him. When we first got involved he hadn’t believed in anything remotely supernatural. It took seeing some of what I could do to convince him I wasn’t just flaky, that magic was real. When I saw him last year he’d said things that implied he’d become more open-minded over the years, but I knew that didn’t mean he’d fall for any trick or lie.
    “The heat was on?”
    Ray nodded, bringing the coffee to his lips. “Yeah but it was cold when I went back to the kitchen. Stayed that way the short time the ghost was there.” He took a drink then grimaced. The coffee must have gotten cold.
    “Could you see your breath?”
    “Yes.” He withdrew his cellphone from a belt holster. “I took some pictures of the fridge.”
    The tips of our fingers touched as he passed the phone. White whipped cream letters stood out on the black refrigerator. Next was a shot of the can on the floor. I thumbed a button, expecting to see more of the incident but instead got a fish. Smiling, I handed the phone back.
    “Still fish, huh?”
    “Of course. How else am I going to drink beer and relax?” He replaced the phone. “So what do you think?”
    “Even without the pictures, I believe you. I don’t know what to tell you about getting the case reopened. If the Parkers want it closed, that’s it.” I left my seat and headed for the work room. “I can give you the white sage and a simple house blessing spell to keep her from coming back.”
    Ray followed. “I appreciate it but what about the rest of the town?”
    I stopped at the doorway of the work room to face him. “What do you mean?”
    “How do I stop her from haunting the rest of the town? Because that’s what she’s doing, Roxie.”
    I searched his face for the joke, the punch line, something to indicate he was kidding. All I found was dead seriousness.
    Because when a ghost is haunting an entire town, what other kind of serious would it be but dead?
    Before I had a chance to say anything Ray spoke. “There’s been sightings of her in places she frequented all over town. My fridge isn’t the only place where she’s left graffiti. She left the same message on the bathroom mirror of one of her boyfriends while he was in the shower. Another had it scrawled on the hood of his truck with motor oil while he was underneath it about to change the oil. One of that group of girls she