Lipstick voodoo, p.1
Lipstick Voodoo, page 1
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2019
Copyright © 2019 Kristi Charish
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published by Vintage Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, in 2019. Distributed in Canada and the United States of America by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage Canada with colophon is a registered trademark.
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Charish, Kristi, author
Lipstick voodoo : a Kincaid Strange novel / Kristi Charish.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 9780345815903
eBook ISBN 9780345815910
I. Title.
PS8605.H3686L57 2019 c813’.6 C2018-900997-7
C2018-900998-5
Cover design by Five Seventeen
Ebook design adapted from printed book design by Five Seventeen
Cover images: (alley) © Tao Wu / EyeEm, (woman) © Vladimir Serov, both Getty Images; (powder) © RedGreen /Shutterstock.com
v5.3.2
a
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1: Lipstick Seance
Chapter 2: Can’t Take No for an Answer
Chapter 3: Dead Men and Dead Ends
Chapter 4: No Rest for The Wicked
Chapter 5: You Get What You Pay For…
Chapter 6: Dead Men and The Tale of Mindy May Pine
Chapter 7: Frozen Ghosts
Chapter 8: Death and Taxes
Chapter 9: Great Expectations
Chapter 10: Cadmium Coffee
Chapter 11: Personal Demons
Chapter 12: Ghost of a Reason
Chapter 13: Familiar Haunts
Chapter 14: The Devil You Know
Chapter 15: Dead and Frozen
Chapter 16: Jail…Again
Chapter 17: Dead and Buried
Chapter 18: Crash and Burn
Chapter 19: Ghouls
Chapter 20: Drummer’s Tails and Dead Ends
Chapter 21: Heroin and Murder
Chapter 22: The Wraith of Mindy Pine
Chapter 23: No Good Deed
Epilogue: Shanghaied
Acknowledgements
About the Author
For everyone I know who’s ever thought
‘If I had to do it all over again…’
CHAPTER 1
LIPSTICK SEANCE
I tapped my foot on grass crunchy with frost, let out my breath and watched it condense into white fog around my face. This mid-October cold was not a good sign for my perpetually chilled state. I’d planned on spending my Thursday night wrapped in a blanket in front of the TV, not standing in a graveyard beside a marble tombstone easily worth about four months’ rent. The soil in front of it was freshly turned, and the grass surrounding the gravesite sparkled under the overhead sodium lamps. Though, I had to admit, the layer of frost made the graveyard look a lot prettier than it had any right to be—except for all the mud around the recently dug-up grave, that is, and the current company.
I let out another breath and watched the air condense. Concentrate on the job, Kincaid. “Look, Mr. Graeme—” I started again.
“Ah—now what did I say?” The eighty-five-year-old man standing in front of me frowned and wagged his finger. He was dressed in a suit that probably also cost a few months’ rent.
“I always get pretty girls like you to call me Michael,” he said. He smiled, or tried to—only the left side of his mouth turned up and a week’s worth of desiccation in the grave meant his lips stretched into a thin grimace. “And where’d you get such pretty, curly black hair like that? You Irish?” He leaned in and added in a whisper, “Or part black maybe? I know that’s a lot more common nowadays.”
I shot a glance over my shoulder at my client for the evening, Cody Banks, a young lawyer who’d contacted me two days ago with an urgent job. He’d offered more money than I usually demanded for expedited will cases, and I needed the cash, so it had been impossible to say no. He gave me a fake smile, but his eyes communicated something very different: Get the job done.
That was my first mistake: taking this job. I turned back to Mr. Graeme and squeezed my arms, wishing to god I’d worn something warmer than my leather jacket—my second mistake.
“Okay, let’s try this again, Mr. Graeme. You aren’t alive anymore.” There, I’d said it. Again. Here’s hoping this time it stuck. Zombies usually remember how they died, why the hell this one was being so stubborn about admitting it…
Michael Graeme, a.k.a. tonight’s zombie of the hour, furrowed his brow…which contorted unevenly due to the paralysis from the stroke that had killed him.
“You know what I think?” the late Mr. Graeme said. “I think this is all a hoax. Jonathan’s idea of a bad joke.” He raised his arm and jabbed a pale finger in the direction of the sixty-year-old woman dressed in a tasteful black suit and veil standing to the left of my pentagram. “Bertha, are you and your brother behind this?” he shouted.
The recently widowed Mrs. Graeme clutched at Cody’s jacket and launched into a fresh round of sobs—though considering her serene state before I performed Mr. Graeme’s raising, I had trouble believing the grief was genuine.
Cody cleared his throat—loudly.
I sighed. “Wait right here, Mr. Graeme,” I said, though it wasn’t like he had a choice. I’d raised him and set the limits so he couldn’t step outside my summoning ring, regardless of whether or not he believed he was dead.
With effort Cody detached himself from the widow and headed for my pentagram. I met him at the edge, sage smoke and gold Otherside billowing between us—though I was the only one of us who could see the Otherside. All Cody would see was smoke.
As soon as his back was turned on his clients, he dropped the smile. “You said this would be fast,” he hissed.
Cody was a lawyer and, in my experience, they were to be treated as carefully as you would the devil himself. “Normally, yes, but he is refusing to acknowledge the fact that he is dead.”
“I thought all zombies knew they were dead.”
“That doesn’t mean they don’t try to lie to themselves.”
“How the hell can he lie to himself? I mean, it’s obvious he’s a zombie, look at him.”
I clenched my fists, trying not to lose my temper. Damn it, I wished I’d pushed harder for cash up front. I hate being desperate for work. “I don’t see why it’s so surprising. People do it to themselves all the time.”
Cody held up his hand. “Look, I don’t care how you do it. Just get him to sign the paperwork.”
I watched Cody stalk back to his clients, shook my head and turned my attention back to the deceased Mr. Graeme. He was staring at the small collection of lawyers and family gathered ten feet away, the left side of his face frowning in concern, creating a wholly unpleasant effect.
How were the people gathered outside the pentagram handling tonight’s entertainment? Well, it depended on who you were watching. Mrs. Graeme—the deceased’s wife—her two sons and their wives were weeping and clinging to each other. Cody was comforting them and sneaking acid looks at me. The tall, thirty-something redhead keeping her distance from them—Samantha Diamond, professional entertainer, was how she’d introduced herself—was shaken up but otherwise composed, and huddled with her own lawyer. And why shouldn’t she be composed? Mr. Graeme had left her all his liquid cash.
Man, what I wouldn’t give to be anywhere else but here….
I checked my phone. A quarter to twelve. I was running out of time to get the papers signed by midnight. Time to employ more direct measures. I pulled my compact mirror out of my pocket and held it up to Mr. Graeme.
“Michael, you are most certainly dead. You died one week ago of a massive stroke.” I’d read the full examiner’s report before agreeing to the raising to make certain there’d been no other mitigating factors. Before raising a zombie—even a four-line like Mr. Graeme—you need to do some fancy footwork with Otherside lines to repair the damage. Otherwise, when I activated the temporary zombie bindings, Mr. Graeme would only have stood, looked at the crowd surrounding his grave and collapsed from a stroke all over again.
I’d used some new bindings—better artery reinforcement in the head but took more Otherside and didn’t last as long. Still, I’d thought it would leave me plenty of time to get this damned will sorted out.
I glanced back at Cody, who had his arm around Mrs. Graeme and was still staring daggers at me. I sighed and turned back to the late Mr. Graeme, who was examining his face in my compact, probing the paralyzed side with shrivelled fingers.
“Your doctors have been warning you about your blood pressure for the last thirty years.” I took back my compact and retrieved a folder from my backpack: his medical files—the pared-down version, mind you, with the important details. Namely, his doctor’s bitching about Graeme’s refusal to take his blood pressure medication.
Graeme squinted at the folder and I held out his glasses, which I’d had tuc
He sniffed at the air—a common reaction for any zombie on account of the subconscious parts of their brain picking up familiar scents. Probably his wife, or the girlfriend, or even faint traces of his old life.
He hesitated for a moment then snatched the glasses from my fingers, placing them on his face and motioning for me to fork over the folder.
“Knock yourself out.” I crossed my arms and watched as he flipped through the pages. For a slim man, his blood pressure had been obscenely high. It was a miracle he’d made it to eighty, let alone eighty-five….
He snorted and looked up, jabbing at the last page. “Says here I’m dead,” he said. “Can’t be dead, I’m standing here talking to you.”
Bingo. I opened my mouth to explain, but I was interrupted by a tug at the sleeve of my jacket and turned to find Cody at my shoulder. “You gave him the autopsy report? Are you nuts?”
“Trust me, it moves things along. And you’re supposed to stay the hell outside of my pentagram.”
Cody ignored me. “If by moving things along you mean making the zombie angry—didn’t you see the New Mexico case?”
This time I couldn’t stop myself from rolling my eyes. The marshals had shot down the White Picket Fence Killer, a.k.a. Martin Dane, two weeks ago. He’d targeted families in California living behind—you guessed it—white picket fences. He stabbed and strangled the sleeping family and after everyone save one was dead, he dressed their corpses in 1950s clothes. The survivor, usually a girl, was taken hostage. Martin would kill her after he had chosen the next family and leave her body in the new hostage’s home, a sick and twisted game of “musical corpses.” With over a dozen murders in three years, he’d terrified suburban Americans chasing the middle-class dream. Luckily for suburbia, he’d been identified courtesy of a hidden nanny camera and shot by the police at a New Mexico gas station. Unfortunately, his last kidnap victim, a ten-year-old girl, hadn’t been with him. She was presumed to be alive…which is why they had tried to raise him.
“Okay, first off, any serial-killer zombie is going to be angry.” I smiled at the memory of how spectacularly Dane had acted once the raiser told him he was dead. Liam Sinclair, celebrity practitioner and TV host, liked to get the recently deceased to acknowledge their shortcomings in life and commit to self-improvement in the afterlife. This approach might give closure to the families of expired drug addicts and be spectacular for ratings, but it really wasn’t the tack you wanted to take with a serial killer.
Serial killers kill people for sport. They are the definition of unrepentant. Scratch that—their life’s regret is that they can’t kill people anymore. Raising Dane gave him one last chance to commit murder, and Liam happened to be standing right in front of him with the TV cameras rolling. What the hell other outcome would you expect? The only surprising part was that Liam had survived.
Now, convincing the serial killer he’s still alive and that cooperating and telling you where his last victim is will get him off death row, and therefore secure another chance someday to kill someone? That took finesse beyond the capability of a half-rate pseudo-celebrity zombie raiser.
Aaron, a Seattle detective who worked afterlife cases—and my ex-boyfriend—had been right about one thing: I’d been insulted that Liam, a practitioner with no criminal experience, had been asked to raise Dane and not me. Why hire a professional with a track record when you could hire a camera-friendly, D-list celebrity with a syndicated TV show?
Not that I was going to bother telling Cody any of that. Instead, I said, “Do you want this will settled in the next fifteen minutes or not?” If we didn’t get the will revoked soon, no one got paid, including me…well, except Graeme’s mistress.
Cody didn’t nod, but his eyes shifted back to Graeme’s widow. I took that as an affirmative.
“Then stick to the sleazeball lawyering and leave me to wrangle the zombie.” I pulled my sleeve free and turned back to Mr. Graeme, and shivered against a fresh gust of cold wind. The sooner this will was signed, the sooner I could get back to my apartment and take a hot shower…and deal with my own personal zombie predicament.
Still holding his medical folder, Graeme had started examining his surroundings: the gravestones, falling leaves, and the freshly dug-up grave and coffin where he’d been buried until a few minutes ago. He was looking a hell of a lot less confident about the whole alive thing.
“I’m really dead?” he said to me, pointing at the tombstone.
I nodded. “You bet you are, Graeme.” I held out my hand. Now was as good a time as any to make introductions. He took it, albeit reluctantly.
“I’m Kincaid Strange, voodoo practitioner.” I inhaled deeply. There’s never an easy way to broach this one. “I raised you as a zombie this evening so we could address some business you left unsettled before you died.”
It’s hard to know how much you should tell a four-line zombie about their temporary state of being. Personally, lying to the dead is a level of seedy I’m not comfortable with—unless it’s a serial killer. Totally comfortable lying to those. My recently deceased instructor and mentor, Maximillian Odu, wouldn’t stoop that low either. The fact is, most dead people are grateful to get the truth. And, let’s face it, deep down they know they’re dead.
Graeme threw the medical report into the dirt. “Well, shit, damn doctor was right. You’ve got no idea, young lady, how much that pisses me off.”
Cody cleared his throat, drawing Graeme’s attention, and I shot Cody a dirty look. I’d made it clear at the beginning that the peanut gallery, lawyers included, had to keep quiet. Four-line zombies like Graeme are easily distracted. I spoke loudly to regain his attention.
“So, the discrepancies in your will—”
He gave a dry snort and turned his attention back to me. “Discrepancies? I left everything in order with my lawyers.”
“Yeah, about that…” I fished another folder out of my backpack, one Cody had given me earlier with the copy of the will and the complaints from Graeme’s family. By law, the licensed zombie practitioner—i.e., me—is the only one allowed to explain legal issues to the zombie in question.
I pulled out the sheet sitting on top of the will and handed it to Graeme. “Apparently it says here,” I added, pointing to one of the bullet points, “that you left all your liquid assets to your—friend—Samantha Diamond.”
“I did,” Graeme said, and motioned me to hand over the file. He managed to pull out his will and flipped to the page that named Samantha as his beneficiary. He tapped it with the more dexterous of his hands and then pointed at his mistress. “That’s her over there. No discrepancy at all.” He raised his voice. “Samantha, did they rope you into this too? Aww, I’m sorry you had to come out in the cold.”
To her credit, Samantha only waved and blew kisses. Unlike Cody, she knew how to follow the no-talking instructions….
Cody cleared his throat. Again.
“Yeah, so that’s the problem. Your family”—I gestured to the Graeme clan—“have filed a complaint against Samantha claiming she manipulated you into giving her all your money.”
“Oh, of all the—” Graeme mumbled a few choice words under his breath, pushed his glasses back up his nose and craned his neck until his eyes found the widow Graeme. “Samantha didn’t have to convince me to do anything. Let me guess, my harpy of a wife hired you?” Graeme said, so everyone outside the pentagram could hear.
The widow Graeme gave an audible gasp and covered her mouth, gripping Cody’s arm.
Oh, fantastic. Here we go…Lawyers, mistresses, family spats, who gets the goldfish: when you raise a zombie for financial reasons, things are guaranteed to get ugly.
“How much did she offer you if you could claw back some of my money, hunh?” Graeme shouted, though the volume and tone made it plain his disgust was directed at his wife, not me.
“She didn’t offer me anything,” I said, keeping my voice calm. That was true. There was a three-thousand-dollar bonus on top of my fee if I could get Graeme to agree to sign over five million in cash for the family, but technically that had come from a desperate Cody, not Bertha Graeme.
