Better Off Dead in Deadwood

by Ann Charles

  “A mouse with a broken tail.”

  “Ewww.” Why couldn’t she be like her mother and run from creepy, crawly things like mice and spiders and albinos with snake eyes?

  I ran the cold water, rinsing the rag, and thought I heard a door close downstairs. Jeff and the girls must be back inside. I hoped he’d made them wash their hands and kept his big mouth shut about his Brady Bunch fantasy with me.

  Pulling out some first aid ointment, I smeared it on the bandage.

  The growl of an engine made me pause. Was someone coming or going?

  I slapped the bandage on Layne’s leg, wiped my hand on a towel, and rushed out into the hall.

  “Mom, it’s crooked,” Layne called after me.

  Ignoring him, I took the steps two at a time and peeked out the front window in time to see Doc roll away.

  Damn, damn, damn!

  Back in the kitchen, Jeff and the girls sat at the table, where five dishes were set out instead of the six I’d handed to Doc earlier. Next to the candle, the bowl of spaghetti sat in the middle, all mixed together and ready for eating.

  “So, Doc took off?” I tried to act as if I didn’t want to throw myself onto the floor and kick my feet.

  “Yeah,” Addy said, scooping spaghetti onto her plate. “He said to tell you he needed to take care of something and he’d talk to you tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow? Crappity-crap. That didn’t sit well in my gut, nor did the idea of eating spaghetti anymore. I dropped into the seat next to Kelly as Layne scuffed up behind me.

  “Hey, Layne,” Addy said around a mouthful of noodles. “Jeff said we could keep the mouse in his garage if we wanted to.”

  “That garage lost its roof,” Layne grumbled, scooting a chair close enough to me that our legs touched when he sat on it. He couldn’t be much more obvious about marking his territory short of peeing on me, which I’d had enough of when he was a baby.

  “It’ll have a new one soon,” Jeff said, winking at me as he shoved a forkful of spaghetti in his mouth. He focused on Layne. “Then you and your mom and sister can come visit the little guy on weekend nights.”

  Or never. “I’m not really into mice,” I told Jeff with a tight smile.

  “Me, either,” he said, his gaze dipping to my chest. “Is that blood on your shirt?”

  I glanced down. How had Layne managed that? I didn’t even remember him touching me.

  “Darn it, Layne.” Pushing back from the table, I used the opportunity to make my escape. “I’m going to go take a shower and change.”

  “But you already showered, Mom,” Addy said.

  Shut up, sweetie.

  Jeff’s fork lowered. “It’s just a little smudge.”

  I took my clean plate over to the cupboard and put it back. “I’m sorry, Jeff, but I have a nasty headache after today.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Jeff said. “You went to Jane’s f—”

  “I went to Jane’s family gathering, exactly.” I shook my head quickly at Jeff.

  “Her gathering, right.” He’d caught on, thankfully.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I skip dinner. I want to lie down for a while, try to kick this headache. We can catch up another day about the roof.”

  “Sure. Holler if you need anything upstairs, Violet Parker. Anything to help you relax.” Jeff hit me with another wink.

  I considered super-gluing his peepers shut as a calming exercise. It’d be right up there with yoga at the moment.

  “Layne, will you clean up after dinner and see Jeff and Kelly out?”

  “Yeah, Mom.” Layne smiled, obviously happy at the idea of shutting the door behind Jeff.

  With a nod goodbye, I exited stage left.

  Instead of showering again, I sat on the bathroom floor while I let the water run for a couple of minutes. Wasteful, yes, but extreme measures were sometimes needed when hiding from a client who wanted to make my womb his baby factory.

  While I pretended to shower, I sent a text to Natalie, telling her about my new boss being a giant. Then I sent another one saying Cooper had asked about the “albinos” comment she’d made, asking if she’d seen any more since that night at Mudder Brothers. Since she’d stopped talking to me, I’d been sending her texts with the hope that she’d at least write to me. So far, I’d received nothing.

  An hour later, Layne walked into my bedroom and caught me staring at the ceiling. I’d been contemplating calling Doc since leaving the bathroom, but every time I reached for my phone my stomach felt like I’d gulped Pop Rocks and followed them with a Coca-Cola chaser.

  “What are you doing, Mom?” He smelled like spaghetti sauce.

  “Trying to figure out if that’s a spider or a black spot on the ceiling.” Which was partly true. I loathed spiders.

  “Everyone’s gone.”

  “Good.”

  “Did you really have a headache?”

  “Yes.” His name was Jeff. “But I’m better now.”

  “Cool. Can Addy and I watch Jaws again?”

  “Do you really think that’s a good movie to watch before bed?”

  “Yeah. I love it when they are out on Quint’s boat.” He cleared his throat and recited his favorite line from the film: “Saw one eat a rockin’ chair once.”

  Chuckling at his impression of the late great Robert Shaw, I pinched his nose. “Fine, but don’t tell your Grammy that I let you watch it. She thinks it makes me a bad mom.”

  Layne leaned over and kissed my cheek. “You’re an awesome mom. So awesome that we never need a dad.”

  He really needed to work on his use of subtlety. “Point taken. Go watch TV.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  It took me almost another hour to get up the nerve to make the call to Doc. I was afraid to hear why he’d left, chewing my knuckles that it was something more than just Jeff sitting at the kitchen table.

  I grabbed the phone and a jacket and went downstairs, stepping out onto the back porch. The cool night air cleared my head of the lingering webs of the day’s sadness, frustration, and exhaustion. It also chilled my bare toes, so I tucked them under me and huddled on the cushioned lounge chair.

  The smell of burning wood reminded me of long ago when I’d sit on Aunt Zoe’s porch and stare at the stars, wondering what my future held. Now thoughts of things to come made me want to hide under my covers with a shotgun next to me.

  Doc’s phone rang and rang and rang and rang. I was about to hang up when the ringing stopped.

  “Hello, Violet.” His deep voice soothed, giving me the courage to dive right in.

  “You left without saying goodbye.”

  “I did.”

  I waited for him to explain why, but he didn’t.

  “I didn’t invite Jeff over here for dinner,” I said. “Addy did.”

  “I figured.”

  “He’s a client.”

  “And he’s a friend,” Doc said.

  “Sort of. He helps with my kids.”

  “I noticed that.”

  Silence filled the line again.

  “Did Jeff say something to you?” I asked, trying to figure out what had sent Doc running. Had it been just being around my kids?

  “He told me he wants to take Addy and Layne to the Rec Center and give them some swimming lessons.”

  “Oh. That’s nice of him.” Especially since I was allergic to bathing suits—they made me break out in humiliation.

  “You all make a perfect little family unit,” Doc said.

  “Wrong.” I didn’t like the sound of that for many reasons.

  “Your kids like him a lot.”

  “Wrong again. Layne isn’t a fan, and Addy just wants Kelly as a sister.”

  “Addy wants more than a sister.”

  Okay, technically, that was true. She wanted a father, who would do things with her like Jeff did with Kelly. But what Addy didn’t get was that her father had walked out on her before she was even the size of a pea and was never coming back. Not if I could help i
t. She was stuck with me and only me.

  “Doc,” I decided to quit screwing around and get the truth out in the open so we could watch it flip, flop, and gasp in front of us. “This isn’t really about my kids liking Jeff, is it?”

  “No.”

  My heart panged. I was afraid of that. “I come as a package deal.”

  “Yeah.”

  I wished he’d stop being so fucking monosyllabic. Closing my eyes, I whispered, “Do you want to call this whole thing off?”

  There was a pause from the other end of the line that felt long enough for the earth to revolve around the sun—twice.

  “No, Violet,” he said finally. “I don’t.”

  I covered the mouthpiece and gulped several breaths. “What do you want to do then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He didn’t know? My best friend was no longer taking my calls because I’d allowed Doc to come between us and he “didn’t know.” I pulled the phone away from my ear and hit it on the cushions a couple of times.

  We needed to talk about something else for now, before I pushed too hard for an answer and shoved him away in the process.

  “I think I’m off Cooper’s hit list,” I said. At least I was for now.

  “What did he say about Jane’s murder?” Doc seemed to take the change of subject in stride.

  “The coroner figures she died Friday evening when I was with you. Since our stories match up, Cooper’s done sniffing around me.”

  “Did he say how she was killed?”

  “No.”

  “Does he have any idea why she was killed?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Did he have anything else to say at all?”

  “Yes. He cried about his sore nose and said he should have locked me up for assaulting a cop.”

  Doc chuckled. It sounded forced.

  “He also told me to stay away from his case. You know, same shit, different day.”

  “I wonder how Jane’s body ended up at the bottom of the Open Cut.”

  “You and the rest of the population in Lead and Deadwood. Cooper is being really closemouthed about this, which makes me curious about a few things.”

  “Violet,” Doc warned, “promise me you won’t get mixed up in this Jane mess.”

  “Are you afraid you really will have to bail me out of jail?”

  “No, I’m afraid you’ll end up just like her, dead at the bottom of the Open Cut.”

  I grimaced. “Well, there is that.”

  “And you have two kids.”

  We were back to me and my package deal. “I do.”

  “They need their mother alive and healthy.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been considered ‘healthy,’” I joked, trying to keep from falling back into our serious conversation pothole.

  “I need you alive, too,” he said.

  When he told me stuff like that, I felt like rolling around in the grass with my tail wagging. It almost made me forget about his hesitation when it came to my kids. Almost.

  “So, you’re okay with my not being the epitome of health?” I asked.

  “I like you just the way you are. All of you.”

  I lay back against the lounge cushions, wishing he were here next to me whispering that in my ear. “I like you okay, too.”

  “Just okay, huh?”

  Grinning, I played with him, “Well, you’re a little short.”

  “I’ll strive to be taller for you.”

  “You could also use some practice between the sheets.”

  He laughed aloud. “You have no idea what I’m like between the sheets. You’re too impatient to make it to the bedroom.”

  “My impatience is your fault.”

  “Your impatience is my undoing. You just go off in my hands.”

  “Well, you have talented hands.”

  “It’s incredibly hot to watch you.”

  I unzipped my jacket, warming from the inside out. “Maybe I could come over after Aunt Zoe gets home and throw pebbles at your other bedroom window.” I’d accidently broken one of them weeks ago, why not go for a double whammy?

  “Or I could give you a key.”

  My eyes popped open. “A key?” That was like some kind of commitment, wasn’t it?

  “I can’t have you breaking all of my windows,” he said.

  I heard the screen door creak open.

  “Mom,” Addy called out from the doorway.

  “Over here, Addy,” I said, sitting up.

  “Layne won’t give me the remote so I can back up the movie to watch the scene where they open the shark’s gut again. When I tried to take it from him, he pinched me.”

  “Like mother, like son,” Doc said in my ear, snickering.

  “You big baby,” I whispered to him. To Addy, I said, “I’ll be right there, sweetheart.”

  “Okay, but you better hurry or I’m gonna sock him in the nose.”

  “No hitting!” I said to her back. “Doc, I have to go.”

  “Come see me tomorrow.”

  “At work?” I asked. Doc worked every day of the week, pretty much like me. Building a successful business didn’t allow for much time off.

  “Yes, at work. I want to frisk you against my desk.”

  “Oh.” Goosebumps rippled over my skin.

  “Get some sleep for once, Boots, and dream something happy.”

  Chapter Five

  Sunday, September 2nd

  Early the next afternoon, I stopped at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store on my way to Cooper’s house and almost ran over a zombie in the parking lot.

  No shit.

  There I was, merrily cruising toward an empty spot with cookie dough in the forefront of my thoughts—as it often was—and out popped a black-haired zombie with a torn, blood-stained shirt and hillbilly pants belted on with a rope. He was pushing a grocery cart with a six-pack of beer, laundry soap, and a loaf of bread.

  And here I’d been worried about killer albinos. Silly me.

  The zombie guy was gone by the time I grabbed the cookie dough and returned to the Picklemobile, making me wonder if my nightmares and the resulting lack of sleep were now expanding to include hallucinations about the walking dead.

  Old Man Harvey’s Ford truck hogged Cooper’s drive, so I parked on the street.

  Cooper opened the door before I reached his bottom porch step. His holey T-shirt, torn jeans, and bare feet made me do a double-take. Who was this laid-back looking guy and what had he done with Detective Cooper?

  He squinted down his broken nose at me. “You’re late.”

  Ah, there was the detective I knew and hissed at when he wasn’t looking. My mistake.

  I glared up at him. “There was a zombie at Piggly Wiggly.”

  That wiped the scowl off his face. He laughed, his carved features softening. “Did it try to bite you?”

  “No. He bought beer and bread.”

  “Do you want me to arrest him?”

  “That would require you to actually capture him first.”

  “Watch it, Coop,” Harvey said, peeking around the detective’s shoulder. “She’s feisty this morning. She must not have gotten any last night.”

  Damn Harvey for being right.

  “Can it, old man.” I pointed the Picklemobile’s key at Cooper’s shirt. “Please tell me you’re not wearing that today.”

  “What’s wrong with my shirt?”

  “It’s your bullet-hole shirt.” His proof that Kevlar was a necessity in his career. “Buyers don’t need to be reminded that you own and carry a gun for a living.”

  “I own and carry several guns.”

  “Wonderful. You should start a club with bullet-hole filled jackets. Can’t you put on a different shirt?”

  “This is a different shirt from my other one.”

  I looked down at the wide circle full of tiny holes in the cotton—shotgun spray by the looks of it. The holes did appear smaller than before.

  “Exactly how many
times have you been shot?” I asked.

  “I stopped counting after this happened.” He pointed at his shirt.

  “Are you two going to stand there flapping your lips all day, or are we gonna have us an open house?” Harvey asked.

  Cooper stood back to let me by. “What’s in the bag?”

  I slipped past, careful not to touch him lest he slap handcuffs on me for assault. “Cookie dough.”

  “What?” Harvey grabbed the grocery bag from me, his face crinkling in disgust when he saw the plastic roll in the bottom of it. “You can’t serve pre-made cookies at an open house, girl.”

  “Why not? I’m going for smell not taste. It’s an illusion.”

  “Those cookies scream cheap and lazy. Impressing buyers starts with showin’ up in your finest duds, not letting them see your shabby old bloomers.”

  “You’re ragging on me about cookies, but you have no problem with him wearing that?” I pointed at Cooper’s shirt.

  “He’s skedaddlin’ soon, so his skivvies don’t matter none.”

  I looked back at Cooper, who’d closed the door and now leaned against it with his arms crossed, his frown back in its usual place.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Work.”

  “They fix that air conditioning?”

  “No.”

  “It’s good you’re leaving. Buyers are more at ease if the owner isn’t underfoot.”

  “You will be, too.”

  “Of course. It’s easier to withhold evidence when you’re not around.” I made light of the truth, then turned to Harvey. “You ready to make some cookies?”

  “Not them there little pieces of cardboard that taste like cow patties. I’m making some from scratch.”

  “Before you two start playing Betty Crocker,” Cooper said, “I have a couple of rules.”

  Harvey and I both stopped, listening.

  “Nobody goes in the garage—my bike’s in there.”

  Cooper owned a shiny Harley that he liked to wash while wearing his bullet-hole shirts.

  “They can look in the windows, but that’s it.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but before someone makes an offer, they’re probably going to want to see it.”

  “A serious buyer can make an appointment for another visit. The second rule is absolutely nobody goes in the storage room in the basement.”