Better Off Dead in Deadwood

by Ann Charles

  “What’s in the basement storage room?” Harvey asked.

  “It’s where I’m keeping all of my personal stuff while the house is being shown.”

  Cooper had personal stuff? What could there be besides guns? Gun racks? Gun cleaning supplies? Ammo? Cannons?

  “No problem,” I said. “But you should probably lock the door.”

  “I did.” He held up a key.

  “I’ll hold onto that while you’re gone,” Harvey said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll keep it safe,” Harvey said.

  “You give in too easily to her.” Cooper jutted his chin in my direction.

  Why didn’t Cooper want me in the basement storage room?

  “What if we catch the place on fire while we’re making cookies?” Harvey asked.

  “Don’t.”

  “I make no guarantees when preparing my masterpieces.”

  Cooper seemed to chew on that, his jaw flexing, then he held out the key to his uncle. “Okay, but you’re in charge of making sure nobody goes in there, including both of you.”

  What was in the basement storage room?

  “Do you understand what I just told you, Violet?” Cooper asked, as if he’d just read me my Miranda rights.

  “Got it,” I said.

  “I mean not a single soul.”

  “Tarnation, boy! You wanna grab a Bible and have us swear on it?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I want to sell your house, Cooper, not take all of your stuff.” Shaking my head, I walked past Harvey to the kitchen. “Come on, Harvey. It’s time to make this place smell homey.”

  Cozying up the inside of Count Dracula’s castle might have been easier.

  A couple of minutes later, I heard the front door close.

  After the sound of his engine disappeared, I breathed a sigh of relief. “Has Cooper always been so intense?”

  He nodded. “He once arrested his grandma on his daddy’s side.”

  “What?”

  “Yep. She was three sheets to the wind and shootin’ at the neighbor’s pigs, claiming they were demons in disguise. Coop tried to stop her and ended up gettin’ that there shirt he was wearing peppered with hot lead.”

  “Holy crap.”

  “Puttin’ his granny in the hoosegow never did settle well with the rest of the family.”

  I grinned. I couldn’t help it. Poor Cooper. Well, maybe it was more like poor Grandma Coop.

  “What did Cooper have to say to you after lunch yesterday?” Harvey asked.

  “Not much. He wanted the details on what I was doing Friday night—the night the coroner estimates Jane died.”

  “You have an alibi?”

  “Doc.”

  “Lucky girl.”

  When it came to Doc, I was. Well, except for the fact that my having kids seemed to wig him out.

  “Unfortunately, Cooper wouldn’t give me any details about Jane or who they think murdered her. Or why.”

  I checked the time on my cell phone. I had ten minutes until we opened to the public. While I was staring at the screen, the phone started ringing, the number unfamiliar.

  “Hello?” I answered.

  “Violet, it’s Jerry.”

  “Jerry?”

  “Your boss.”

  It all came rushing back—big shoulders, big feet, big expectations. “Right, sorry. I haven’t eaten lunch yet, so I’m a little scatterbrained.”

  “Are you ready for some company?”

  “You mean prospective buyers?”

  “And me.”

  “You?”

  “I thought I’d come by today to watch you in action.”

  My shoulders tightened so fast it was a wonder my head didn’t pop right off. The last thing I needed while playing hostess in Cooper’s house was my new boss breathing down my neck. Well, from his height, he’d be breathing on the top of my head.

  “Are you sure you have time to spare today?” I asked. Didn’t he have bookwork to go through or a big hammer to polish?

  “Plenty. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “Jerry, I’d rather you—” about that time I realized I was speaking to a dead line.

  Shit! My boss was coming.

  I glanced around Cooper’s living room, hoping I’d taken care of every last detail. What about the bedrooms? The bathrooms? I hadn’t even checked the toilets and shower yet to make sure Cooper had left everything clean.

  “Harvey, I’ll be right back.”

  I raced down the hallway, peeking in the guest bathroom where a vanilla-scented candle burned away. Cooper lit a candle? No, that had to have been a Harvey touch.

  Next door down, the bedroom-turned-office was empty of everything but a desk with a polished oak top. Even the books had been lined up according to height. I needed to hire Harvey for every open house.

  A little further back was Cooper’s bedroom. I’d been in there once before when I’d first checked out the house with Harvey in tow.

  Not much had changed. It still smelled like leather, only now mixed with pine thanks to the breeze rippling the gray curtains. Cooper’s room was filled with black things—from the dresser to the headboard to the leather lounge chair against the far wall. Even the bedside lampshade was black.

  Hitting the light switch, I started back up the hall then stopped.

  Wait a second.

  Heading back into his bedroom, I hit the overhead lights again and walked over to that black-shaded lamp, taking a closer look.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said and tore the cord from the wall, carting the lamp to the kitchen where the smell of sweet molasses made my stomach purr.

  “Harvey, what is this?”

  He pulled a tray of molasses cookies out of the oven and dropped it on the burners. He spared a glance at the pistol that made up the lamp’s neck. “It’s a Peacemaker.”

  “Is it a real gun?”

  “That’s not just a ‘gun,’ it’s a Colt .45, nickel-plated with a wooden stock. That there’s a piece of history.”

  “Great. Wonderful. I’m in awe. Does it actually work?”

  “Hell, yes. I bought that online for Coop’s birthday a few years back. It’s just glued to the base.” He pointed a spatula at me. “It’ll light up a crook so you can get a clear shot. You should get one.”

  I looked around for somewhere to hide the damned thing. “I can’t have a gun in here during an open house.”

  Harvey pulled the basement key out of his pocket. “Stick it in the basement room with the rest of his stuff.”

  “Cooper said not to go down there.”

  “Well, don’t dilly dally while you’re there. Just open the door and shove it in. I’ll get it out later before he even notices it’s gone.”

  I grabbed the key. The steep basement stairs groaned under my two-inch heels. At the bottom, I made a left. I’d been down there once before during that first tour, so I knew exactly where to go.

  The deadbolt on the door looked shiny and new. I unlocked it and felt along the wall for a light switch, clicking it on. The room was packed full of boxes and crates and a couple of corkboards. I could smell the cardboard over the scent of damp concrete.

  What was the big deal with me not seeing this? It was just a storeroom. No naked babe posters, no sadomasochistic racks with spikes, no dead bodies. If this were Cooper’s secret lair, he could use an interior decorator and some air fresheners.

  I carried the lamp inside, weaving through several crates full of folders and papers, looking for something to set the lamp on without it falling over and possibly going off. I wouldn’t put it past Cooper to have a loaded bedside lamp.

  The end table with the two beer cans on it sitting in front of one of the big corkboards would work. I crossed to it, my gaze snagging on my name written on a notecard pinned to the board.

  What? My grip tightened on the lamp.

  I took a closer look. My name wasn’t the only one secured to the board.
There were several notecards with names, including Ray’s, Mona’s, George Mudder’s, and Jane’s ex-husband—the cradle-robbing one, not Jerry. All of the cards were grouped together in an almost flower shape with Jane’s name in the center.

  Ah, now I knew why Cooper didn’t want me down here.

  On the other side of the board, there were a few more names, most I didn’t recognize, except for Dominick Masterson, the guy from the diner who was running for mayor in Lead.

  Down in the bottom corner were several pictures. The shadows made it hard to see, so I pushed the end table aside, steadying the empty beer cans, and squatted in front of the board. Something shiny filled one of the photos, but it was still too dark to see it clearly.

  I looked around for a flashlight or wall outlet and then remembered my cell phone. I set the lamp down on the floor and pulled out my phone, hit a button to light it up, and peered more closely at the picture with the shiny thing in it.

  What I saw made my breath whoosh from my lungs.

  No!

  It couldn’t be.

  I pulled the picture free and held it up to my phone.

  The floor tilted under my feet, then spun a couple of twirls. I shook my head, trying to clear it, and blinked.

  A long, shiny hook that looked like it was wrapped with some kind of wicked sharp barbed wire filled the four-by-six picture.

  I’d seen a hook just like it once before a couple of weeks ago. The albino had pulled it from his pocket when he was coming for me in the autopsy room at Mudder Brothers. Only the hook he’d threatened me with hadn’t had any dried blood on it.

  This one did.

  “Violet!” Harvey’s voice made me drop the picture in surprise.

  My heart rattling in my throat, I picked up the photo, took a quick shot of it with my cell phone camera, and then pinned the picture back to the board in the same spot. Pocketing my cell, I moved the end table back to its original position and skirted around the boxes on my way to the door.

  “Violet!” Harvey yelled louder.

  “What?” I called from the open doorway.

  “Pecos Bill is at the door. I think he rode in on a tornado. Should I let him in?”

  Pecos Bill? What was he … Oh, Jerry must be here.

  “Yes. I’ll be right up.”

  Shutting off the light, I started to close the door then remembered the lamp. If Cooper saw it near the corkboard, he’d know I’d been in there snooping around. I raced back inside, grabbed the Peacemaker, and zipped back out, shutting off the light and locking up behind me.

  Harvey scowled at me after I closed the door to the basement and leaned against it, my breath erratic.

  “Whaddya doin’ with that damned lamp? I thought you were gettin’ rid of it.”

  Right, the lamp. I opened Cooper’s pantry door and buried it behind a big plastic container labeled FLOUR.

  I shut the cupboard door and turned around to find Jerry filling up the whole kitchen doorway. Wearing a white button-up shirt, a tie covered in different colored rectangles, and a pair of blue Dockers, he looked like a freighter ship docked in port.

  His gaze traveled down my pink satin blouse and matching paisley skirt to my heels, his forehead furrowing. “You have dirt on your shirt,” he pointed out.

  I glanced down, dusting off some dust and spider webs. “Better?”

  He nodded. “Those are pretty bright colors for an open house. You might want to consider something beige next time so that you blend into the background, let the house shine brighter than you.”

  I refused to wear beige while my blood ran red. It made me look twice as wide and emphasized all of my skin’s blotches.

  “Violet’s not much of a wallflower,” Harvey said. “Especially with that hair.”

  “Yes, I noticed that.” Jerry said while inspecting my curls. “Not much we can do about that, though, unless you feel like shaving your head.”

  “Uhhh.” I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not.

  “I’m kidding.”

  “Oh, whew.” I tried to get my mind back into the game, but my brain was still down in the basement hyperventilating about that bloody weapon.

  “Maybe cutting off a few inches would help, though,” Jerry said. “Or a straightener.”

  What? I touched my curls.

  He rubbed his huge hands together. “Are you ready to open her up?”

  Is that what the albino had done to Jane with that barbed hook? Opened her up? What exactly had Cooper found at the bottom of the mine’s pit?

  STOP!

  I took a deep breath and pasted a smile on my face. It didn’t want to stay on my lips.

  How in the hell was I going to make it through the next few hours without locking myself in the bathroom and screaming into a towel until they called the guys with the straitjacket to come and take me to my new home?

  * * *

  There were no garage explosions at Cooper’s open house, thank God. But Harvey did burn a batch of cookies, filling the house with smoke and setting off Cooper’s fire alarms. All six of them.

  Of course, just my luck, Reid Martin, Deadwood’s fire chief and Aunt Zoe’s ex, was talking to me in the front yard at the time, asking me if the guy he’d seen with Aunt Zoe the night before in Charles’ Club, an upstairs lounge on Main Street, was more than just “a friend.” I’d been trying to decide if I should tell Reid the truth when all hell broke loose.

  Now, two hours later, I could still smell the burned cookies. The carbon particles must be embedded in my nose.

  I pulled the Picklemobile into the parking lot behind Calamity Jane’s, noticing Doc’s Camaro SS parked in its usual spot, and cut the engine.

  “One, two, three …” Boom! The exhaust scared several crows out of the pine trees overhead. They screeched their complaints at me as they flew away.

  “Oh, get in line,” I muttered.

  I took two deep, slow breaths, then checked to see how badly my hands were shaking—only a slight tremble, barely visible. Good. Grabbing my purse, I stepped out into the warm afternoon sunshine.

  Jerry had wanted to meet back in the office for a “team huddle,” but he’d needed to run a couple of errands first, so I had a half hour to get my team spirit on.

  The back door was locked meaning I wouldn’t have to face off with Ray before getting critiqued by my new boss. Score!

  It also meant Mona hadn’t come into work yet. Maybe I should stop over at her house later, see how she was doing.

  I tucked my purse in my desk drawer and slipped out the front door over to Doc’s office. I had to tell him about the picture of the albino’s barbed hook before my head burst. His office door was unlocked even though the sign on it was flipped to Closed.

  Pushing it open, I called, “Doc?”

  He was nowhere to be seen, but his laptop was sitting on his desk, the screen saver running.

  “Be out in a second, Violet,” Doc’s voice came from the hallway leading to the back room, a place I knew well from our past escapades. If I hadn’t seen that picture with the bloody hook, I’d join him back there and see if he could give me a private pep rally before Jerry told me everything that I had done wrong today.

  I dropped into the chair opposite his desk and leaned back, pulling the bobby pins from my hair that Jerry had insisted I use to corral my curls so I’d blend better into Cooper’s surroundings. I hadn’t bothered explaining to Jerry that Cooper and I were like oil and vinegar—our molecules didn’t mix well together because one of us was positively charged and the other was pissed off and always wanting to be on top.

  “I can’t stay long,” I hollered back to Doc, shaking out my hair and then closing my tired eyes for a few seconds of much-wanted rest. “But I need to tell you what I found at Cooper’s house today. You’re not going to believe it.”

  Silence came from the back room. Then I heard footfalls.

  Eyes still closed, I felt the air shift over me. My chair’s wood arms creaked and then the whole thing
scooted backwards a little with me in it. I imagined Doc leaning over me and pursed my lips, waiting for him to touch me like he usually did when we were alone.

  Then I caught a whiff of cologne—sharp, zesty, not Doc’s usual. I opened my eyes.

  Detective Cooper’s face was six inches from mine, every crease furrowed into one big squint. “What did you find at my house, Ms. Parker?”

  Shit!

  I gulped, my face flash-frying. “Smoke alarms,” I whispered.

  Movement over Cooper’s shoulder caught my attention. Doc stood in the hallway, his face lined with a cringe.

  “Smoke alarms?” Cooper said, trying to stare the truth out of me.

  I nodded. “A lot of them. You must buy your weapons and alarms in bulk.”

  He pushed away from the chair, standing upright, but continued to stare down at me with his arms crossed. “Why do you smell like smoke?”

  “Your uncle had a little accident.”

  His jaw clenched. “Do I still have a house?”

  I nodded. “Reid was there to help.”

  “What was the chief of Deadwood’s fire department doing at a false alarm in Lead?”

  “Trying to find out if my Aunt Zoe was on a real date last night.”

  He seemed to swallow that without a second thought. “Was anyone hurt?”

  I shook my head.

  “How much burned?”

  “Twelve cookies. They were a total loss. And a hot pad.”

  “Where was my uncle when this was happening?”

  I hesitated. “Preoccupied.”

  “With what?”

  “More like ‘whom.’ He was showing your bedroom closet to one of his old flames.” Jerry had run to the store for more bottled water, leaving Harvey alone in the house with the wanna-be Brigitte Bardot in her black pleather top.

  “My closet?”

  “With the door locked.”

  He grunted.

  “Why do you have a deadbolt on the inside of your closet door?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Other than that little incident, the open house was a success.”

  Unfortunately, most of the visitors were Cooper’s neighbors—the female variety—who’d come to see what the inside of his house looked like. Come to find out, he was a bit of a hermit in the neighborhood. No surprise there.