Better Off Dead in Deadwood

by Ann Charles

  “Coop had a note on his calendar about a dentist appointment this morning.” Harvey glanced at his watch. “He should still be down in Rapid.”

  So that’s where he had his incisors sharpened. “What if he skipped the appointment?”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “To catch me doing something I’m not supposed to.”

  “Coop’s world doesn’t revolve around you. Besides, I don’t think he’ll really arrest you. He’s just snarlin’ at anything that moves because he’s frustrated with not figuring out who’s killin’ who.” Harvey shoved open his door. “Come on, I’ll show you some parts of this old place that they don’t cover on that fancy tour.”

  I stayed put. “How do you know about these secret parts?”

  “You kiddin’? My uncles both worked for Homestake. I spent a lot of time growing up in this old building, bowling with my aunts, taking swimmin’ lessons, and watching dime movies back when they used to show flicks in the theatre. Hell, my initials are probably still etched in the underside of one of the tables up in the old library.”

  He stepped down onto the ground. “Come on.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not taking any chances at getting caught.”

  “Chicken.”

  I stuck out my tongue. “You can call me Elvis Jr.”

  “Fine. You stay here and keep an eye out for Cooper. If he shows up, distract him.”

  “What? How am I supposed to distract him?”

  His gold teeth showed. “Flash him.”

  “You said he’s sweet on someone else.”

  “Hooters are hooters, girl. If you flash him, he’ll be temporarily blinded and drift off course long enough for me to make my escape.”

  “I will not—”

  He slammed his door on my refusal, and then hitched across the street, slipping inside the street-level back doors.

  The pickup engine ticked as I sat there alone, watching the traffic inch by at the top of Siever Street. I inspected my fingernails, checked my hair for split ends, picked the lint off my suede skirt, and tried not to think about Wanda, Prudence, Harvey, or Cooper.

  Five very long minutes had dragged by when I noticed a white and black taxi cut through the traffic and make a turn toward me down Siever Street. The taxi pulled up next to the sidewalk and a familiar top hat popped out of the front passenger side.

  Cornelius!

  What was he doing back at the opera house? Was he meeting Caly?

  I watched him pay the cab driver and start walking up the sidewalk toward the front of the block, his cane clacking on the sidewalk loud enough for me to hear.

  “It’s not my business,” I told Harvey’s pickup.

  Cornelius was a big boy. If he wanted to waste his time and energy on a little pixie who had shown absolutely zero interest in him besides asking him to take off that damned hat, that was his prerogative. His broken heart was not my problem.

  But maybe I should give him a call, see what he was up to today. We could meet later, talk about other options if this hotel deal fell through.

  I fished my cell phone from my purse and called him.

  Cornelius paused as he rounded the corner, pulling out his phone.

  It rang for a third time in my ear, then a fourth.

  He looked at his phone for another ring, then shook his head and stuffed it back in his coat pocket.

  The ringing stopped and his voicemail kicked in.

  Hanging up the phone, I yelled through the windshield, “You big bozo!”

  Cornelius continued along the sidewalk, swinging his cane now, looking happy as could be as he disappeared from my sight around the front of the old Stamp Mill building that occupied the corner of Siever and Main.

  I tossed my phone back in my purse.

  Well, damn. Now what?

  Only I knew exactly what.

  Grabbing my purse, I climbed out of the pickup, locked the door, and raced up the sidewalk after the love-smitten fool.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I was halfway up the block, following in Cornelius’s footsteps, when I heard my phone ringing. It came from somewhere in the depths of my purse. I kept climbing toward Main Street while rummaging through the inside pockets, trying to find the blasted thing amongst my makeup, business cards, wallet, a small field guide on dinosaur bones Layne must have stuck in there, and a sticky unwrapped sucker—dang it, Addy!

  Something vibrated against the back of my fingers. Ah ha! I pulled it out just in time for it to stop ringing.

  “Of course,” I muttered and looked to see who’d called, pressing OK through the low battery warning.

  It was Doc.

  “Crikey.”

  It buzzed again, this time a text appeared on the screen from Doc: Need to talk to you. Call me when you can.

  My thumb hovered over the Call button as I rounded the corner. Beyond the old Stamp Mill building, Cornelius stood in front of the opera house, shaking hands with Dominick Masterson. I stopped short. Caly the Pixie stepped out from the concave marbled entryway wearing a huge pair of black sunglasses that made her look almost fly-like. She held open one of the glass doors, then she followed the two men inside.

  What in the hell was going on? Caly hadn’t given Cornelius the time of day yesterday, so what was with today’s sudden interest?

  Was Dominick actually meeting with Cornelius and Caly? What exactly did Dominick Masterson do anyway besides trying to get elected for mayor? Maybe he had an office somewhere in the building.

  I tucked my phone back into my purse. Doc would have to wait. I had questions to get answered.

  Passing the plate-glass windows of the Stamp Mill building, I raced to the entrance as fast as my mule heels would carry me. If Lady Luck were on my side, I’d find Cornelius right inside the doors and catch him before he disappeared with Caly into the bowels of the opera house. If not, I’d be left to wander through shadow-filled halls and empty rooms, risking a face-off with another zombie or worse—Tarragon.

  When I opened the front glass doors, there was no one in sight. Frickety-frack!

  My heels clacked along the tiled floor as I looked through the inside windows of the art gallery on one side and empty office space on the other. At the stairwell, I hesitated, unsure whether to go up or down.

  You should go back to the pickup, a logical voice in my head urged.

  Oh, please. After having had a mid-morning tea party with Prudence the ghost, it was a little late to listen to logic.

  I scraped my teeth over my lower lip, worrying about it. Why did I care if Cornelius got his heart broken by a spiky-haired sprite? Why did I have this need to protect him from Caly’s rejection? It wasn’t my business if Cupid’s arrow was buried hilt-deep in his boney ass. He was just a client.

  Well, okay a client and sort of a friend.

  And a fellow séance groupie.

  And a fellow town oddball.

  Dang it. What was he thinking by laying his feelings out like street vendor wares to be pointed at and made fun of by Tinker Bell’s twin?

  The sound of shoe soles scuffing across a linoleum floor echoed up the stairwell.

  Moving down the first step, I waited, listening, wondering if Cornelius was returning to that pool room and the hat-hating ghost.

  A door closed somewhere below. Footfalls followed, and then another door shut. A car honked on the street behind me, surprising a gasp from my lips and scaring me down another step.

  With one last look behind me to make sure nobody was watching, I headed down the rest of the stairs. At the bottom, I passed what looked like a janitor’s closet on the left, a mop and bucket half full of dirty water blocking the entry. A couple of feet further landed me at a closed door on my right and a long, fluorescent-lit hallway on my left. I recognized the hallway as the one we’d been in yesterday. It led past the door to the bowling-alley-turned-shooting-range and then through a set of double doors to where the pool had been decades ago. If Cornelius had come to talk to the boy
ghost, he must be close. I needed to figure out which of the doors down here would take me to the area under the pool he’d told me about.

  I tiptoed down the hall. In spite of the fact that there were people on the floor above me, I felt alone in the big old building. It reminded me of walking through my high school after a basketball game, the usual din of shoe squeaks and laughter quieted for the night. My hands grew clammy even though it was the middle of the day.

  This sneaking around stuff was for the cats. I wiped my damp hands on my skirt. If Harvey jumped out to scare me, I was going to strangle him with his suspenders. Where had that buzzard gone, anyway?

  I passed a set of bathrooms on my left and then the old bowling alley on my right. Beyond that was an elevator, then the stairs that we’d come down yesterday during the tour. Outside yet another closed door on my left, I hesitated, trying to remember if Caly had let us know what was behind it. Something told me this wasn’t the door I needed, so I continued through the double doors and down a short flight of steps to what used to be the pool room.

  As I stood there on the bottom step looking at the two doors on my left that bracketed the edge of the concrete capped pool like a pair of parentheses, the door closest to me opened. A woman in white flew out. Blood stains covered the front of her wedding dress.

  I knew that bloody dress. Tarragon’s wife, minus the zombie gore and veil, closed the door and leaned against it. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her chest heaved either with sobs or from running; I couldn’t quite tell which.

  She hadn’t appeared to notice me so I took a step back up the stairs toward the double doors, not really sure I wanted to get mixed up in whatever had her crying this time. My heel scraped across a step.

  She looked over at me, her eyes wide, watery.

  Crap!

  I opened my mouth to say something but had no clue what. I tried to smile instead, but my mouth felt all crooked and loose on my face.

  She sniffed. “You shouldn’t be down here.”

  At that moment, I absolutely wanted to be anywhere else but down here. I cleared my throat. “I was just looking for—”

  “They’ll see you.”

  They who? Security guards? Janitors? Cooper’s boys in blue? “I’ll just explain that I’m looking for—”

  “You don’t understand,” she interrupted me again. “She’ll hurt you.”

  Just for looking … wait, now it was a she? “Who’s ‘she’?”

  Tarragon’s wife shoved away from the door and grabbed my arm. “I can’t talk about it. She’ll know it’s me.” She tugged me up the steps behind her.

  I tried not to trip over her blood-splattered train.

  She dragged me through the double doors, opened the door I’d hesitated outside of a moment ago, and shoved me inside. I stumbled into what looked like a supply room, almost knocking over a box of paper cups.

  “What are you—”

  “Shhhh,” she hissed. Following behind me, she drew the door shut with a quiet click and enclosed us in darkness.

  The room smelled like cardboard, floor cleaner, and a hint of sweat. Wait—I sniffed my armpits. Good, it wasn’t me.

  Her dress rustled in the darkness. “Deadly things come in tiny packages,” she whispered, as if we’d been in the midst of a discussion about package sizes. “Remember that if you want to live.”

  Hmmm. Receiving cryptic advice from a spooked zombie bride in a dark supply room had not been on my schedule today. The urge to bust out through that door and get the hell out of Dodge had me shuffling my feet.

  “Um, you know,” I said, trying to sound calm like my pulse wasn’t racing. “I think I’ll just go back the way I—”

  “Shhhh.”

  I stood quietly and counted to thirty, listening, thinking that Mrs. Tarragon’s brain might have broken under the stress of living with a man who sounded like he was an arrogant dickhead.

  The clacking of heels on the floor outside our hideout and the alternating hiss and pause of something being dragged along stopped my ponderings. My heart beat like a tribal drum, so loud that I was sure Mrs. Tarragon would shush me again.

  We waited in the dark for another minute after the clacking and dragging sounds disappeared, me with bated breath, her with her satin dress swizz-swizzing at each little move. Then she opened the door a crack and peeked out. Without warning, she opened the door wide. The hallway fluorescent lights made me recoil and squint.

  “All clear,” she spoke softly, hauling me out into the hallway with her.

  I looked up and down the hall and saw no zombies or albinos, nobody at all. Still, the urge to run, not walk, through the double doors, over the pool, and out the glass exit doors beyond zinged down my legs.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Violet Parker.” Oops. It might have been smarter to lie. I blamed Prudence for my loose lips—she’d upset my inner apple cart this morning with her surprise party, scrambling my brain. My brief stay in the dark supply room hadn’t helped straighten my thoughts out any either.

  She pointed at my head. “You were at Jane’s funeral. I remember your hair.”

  “I worked for Jane.” Shutting up was probably the better choice, but someone else seemed to be controlling my mouth.

  “You’re a Realtor?” she asked.

  I nodded. Since we were getting all warm and chummy, I dared my own question. “How well did you know Jane?”

  Her eyes welled up.

  Oh, man, more tears. This woman was one big leaky faucet. I started to reach for her, to console her, but she reared back from my touch.

  While I was deciding if I should be offended, Mrs. Tarragon told me, “Jane was one of my best friends.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, unsure of what to do with my hands, which seemed to want to comfort her even after being rejected.

  “She also slept with my husband,” she whispered, her face pinched in pain.

  “Oh,” I managed to croak out. I held onto my purse with both hands to keep from hugging the poor woman. “I’m very sorry.”

  “Me, too.” She swiped at her eyes. “Especially now.”

  Movement over by the stairwell caught my eye.

  Dominick Masterson stepped into the hall, looking back up the stairs and talking to someone behind him as his feet turned in our direction.

  Cornelius? Thank God, I’d found him.

  The low sound of Dominick’s laughter reached me at the same time his follower moved into my line of sight.

  It wasn’t Cornelius.

  Panic bells rang in my head, clanging like a submarine’s diving alarm. All hands below deck, I was going down, down, down.

  Detective Cooper’s rugged face looked even craggier under the fluorescent lights. He seemed to look my way in slow motion, his unyielding gaze turning into a searing laser beam as it locked onto me.

  I took a step back. My first instinct was to hide behind an invisibility cloak and become one with the wall. My second instinct was to run like hell.

  Mrs. Tarragon balked at the sight of them and let out a little screech. She seemed to be channeling my reaction. Then she practically sprouted wings and flew back down the steps and through the door she’d burst from earlier, leaving me alone to gurgle and sputter.

  Dominick did a double-take when he noticed me, his eyebrows arching, the corners of his mouth following suit. “Hello, Violet,” he said, as if we hadn’t just met yesterday in a hallway that was as off-limits to me as this one.

  I wasn’t sure if his remembering my name was good.

  Dominick walked toward me, his smile curving higher with each step. Cooper followed, his expression all glare, granite, and fractured fault lines.

  “You look lovely this morning,” Dominick said, his voice velvet, his eyes soft enough to match it.

  My stomach fluttered as if someone had roused a colony of bats that had been snoozing there. A mixture of pleasure and nausea roiled inside of me—the latter I blamed on the irritation spark
ing off Cooper.

  “What are you doing down here, Parker?” Cooper’s voice sounding like he’d been gargling firewater.

  “Looking for a friend,” I answered, standing tall against the brunt of the fury surging from him. I focused on Dominick. “Maybe you’ve seen him. He wears a top hat and looks a little bit like Abe Lincoln.”

  “Mr. Curion?” At my nod, Dominick said, “Yes, he had an emergency come up and left without an explanation.”

  What emergency? I wasn’t sure whether I should be relieved or more worried. “In that case, I’ll leave you two to your business and see if I can track him down elsewhere.”

  I left through the double doors, bee-lining toward the set of glass doors behind me—the same doors Harvey had entered. I just hoped the old buzzard’s truck still waited for me. If not, I probably had enough adrenaline pumping through my veins to sprint down to Deadwood.

  “I’ll call you later,” Dominick called after me. “I want to speak with you about something Jane was working on for me.”

  I winced at how that might sound to a certain detective. Glancing back, I winced again. The expression on Cooper’s face should have turned me to salt. Great. Just great.

  “You have my card,” I told Dominick and tried not to crash through the glass doors in my haste to escape handcuff free.

  The safety of Harvey’s pickup beckoned. I clomped down the back steps, my feet trying to run out from under me, my pulse rampant, my breaths short and quick. Without even bothering to check whether anyone was watching, I reached up under the wheel well for the spare key, then vaulted in through the passenger door, slamming it behind me and hammering the lock button.

  What in the hell had just happened in there?

  I leaned forward, burying my face in my hands. Why had Tarragon’s wife hidden me? And from whom?

  What was that sound outside the supply room?

  When had Jane slept with Peter Tarragon? Was he another Ray-like mistake at the end?

  Had the zombie bride killed Jane for having an affair with her husband?