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You'd better hope Maman Danflous is in trouble. If she isn't, she's going to be billing you for this door.

You kick the door as hard as you can. The wood splinters satisfyingly and caves in. The broken door gapes invitingly into what must be Maman's stockroom: a dark little space stacked floor to ceiling with unlabeled wooden crates. You make your way through the gloom and into the main store.

Maman Danflous's front parlor is every tourist's idea of what a Voodoo emporium should look like. A stuffed baby alligator keeps a beady eye on proceedings from a shelf behind the counter; jars full of dried fruits, grasses, and preserved animal parts line the shelves; a tiny, colorful shrine to Damballa decorates one wall.

Despite all the color and character on display, everything here is silent and still. There is no sign of Maman Danflous.

"Through here," says Cleo, gesturing at a door in the right-hand wall of the store. "That leads upstairs."

You step through the door into a back hallway. Icons of Catholic saints clutter the walls, and a flight of rickety stairs lead upward.

And hanging in the stairway, suspended by a rope around her neck, is the corpse of Maman Danflous. The body sways gently in the silence.

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Cleo staggers back a step and draws in a sharp gulp of air. "Maman? Maman! No!"

Maman's bloated corpse hangs there by the neck, suspended from a rail on the top landing of the stairs. Her legs dangle in empty space. It's hard to tell, but you'd guess she's been there for a few hours at least. Totally, irredeemably, undeniably dead.

"Are you OK?" you ask Cleo. She is standing stock-still, hand clasped to her mouth.

After a few seconds, she nods. "She was…she was around a lot when I was growing up. She brought a lot of happiness to our house. To my dad. Just—just give me a minute."

As Cleo collects herself, you survey the scene. Maman is a small, round woman in her early sixties, her graying hair curled and prim. She's not exactly dressed like a Voodoo Queen: she's wearing a dowdy gray cardigan, a conservative white dress, and thick gray stockings. She was clearly injured before being strung up; a dripping pool of blood has soaked into her skirt. And you can see where the blood went.

Scrawled on the wall, halfway up the stairs, is a large red pentagram in a circle. 666 is scrawled in the center of it.

More Satanic iconography.

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"Why would anyone do this?" you ask, more to yourself than to Cleo.

Your companion, already recovering from her shock, responds. "OK, think. This is obviously a distraction. Satanism my ass. They're trying to pin this on Elliot, whoever they are. And why would they do that?"

"Maybe they have a grudge against him?"

She shrugs off your suggestion with a curt shake of her head. "Doubtful. He's never played New Orleans before. Who here knows the guy, let alone has a grudge against him? This is misdirection. They're trying to pin the blame on Elliot in order to protect someone else. And why would they kill Maman Danflous unless she knew something?"

It makes sense, you have to concede. Rather than being the targeted victim of a frame-up, Elliot could just be a convenient fall guy. And you instinctively agree with Cleo that the Satanic trappings are bullshit. They feel too conventional, too clichéd. Misdirection, as she said.

"Maman used to keep detailed records of all her meetings and transactions," says Cleo, thinking fast. "But she will have hidden them. Many of her clients in the Voodoo world demand discretion. Those records won't be lying around in the open. Maybe—maybe whoever did this didn't find them. Maybe there's still information here, information that the people who did this were trying to hide."

Your face sets with a fierce determination. "You take downstairs. I'll search above."

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