Better Off Dead in Deadwood

by Ann Charles

Huffing, I shook my head and stormed toward the front desk. “Wrongfully accused again,” I announced to the small crowd of policemen hovering around the coffeemaker.

  Doc followed me out into the front room. “Violet, wait.”

  I stopped at the glass doors, looking back.

  He handed me his car keys. “I forgot something. I’ll meet you at the car.”

  Forgot what? I didn’t like the sound of that, but I also didn’t like the big, stupid grin on the jowls of the police officer staffing the desk. Without another word, I pushed outside, sucking in the fresh air of sweet freedom, and bounded down the steps.

  When I reached Doc’s Camaro SS, I leaned back against it with my arms crossed. The metal felt warm through my clothes, calming.

  Now that my blood pressure was no longer red-lining, I was able to think rationally about Cooper and the widening chasm between us that made all of our conversations happen at a shouting level.

  He wanted to know everything. That was all good and fine, but he’d made it clear with the subject of the albino that he couldn’t handle hearing everything. No matter how many times he drilled me, my answer was still the same—the albino disappeared in a puff of smoke. As much as I’d love to have a rational explanation for what had happened, there wasn’t one.

  I had to accept that.

  So did he.

  With all of this freaky stuff going on, I needed Cooper to have a little faith in me, but the only thing he seemed to have faith in was his gun. I had no idea where to go from here with that hardheaded man.

  A ray of sunlight peeked through the clouds and warmed the top of my head. I fished my sunglasses from my purse and found a folded piece of paper stuffed next to them. I unfolded it, wondering what part of a horse’s anatomy Layne had drawn for me now.

  But it wasn’t a drawing.

  It was a printed note with large, bold capital letters:

  WE WANT WHAT BELONGS TO US!

  The words sucked the breath from my chest.

  I wadded up the note with shaking hands and stuffed it back into my purse. Behind my sunglasses, my gaze darted around, scoping out the police station windows, the parking garage behind me, the Rec Center, and the neighboring playground across the street. I tried to act nonchalant while dewy with sweat, feeling like Bambi’s mom caught in the crosshairs.

  My legs went weak with relief at the sight of Doc coming out the station’s front doors, pulling on his sunglasses as he trotted down the concrete steps.

  His brow wrinkled as he drew near, his fingers taking the keys from my hand. “Are you okay?” he asked, opening the passenger door for me.

  I shook my head and crawled inside, sinking into the warm leather seats. The scent of his cologne wrapped around me, easing my skittishness. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Doc shut my door and then joined me, sliding behind the steering wheel. “What is it? Something Cooper said?” he asked, keying the Camaro SS to life.

  “I’ll show you when we get home.”

  He stared at me from behind his sunglasses for a moment. “Yours or mine?”

  Spending the afternoon in his place, letting him and his hands help me forget about all of these bizarre events for a short time would have been nice, but I hadn’t even been into work yet today. Jerry was going to have my head if I didn’t get my ass in there. “Mine, please.”

  He nodded, rolling out of the parking lot and onto the road. His palm drifted from the gear shift to my thigh. I covered his hand with mine, leaning my head back against the seat.

  “What did you forget in Cooper’s office?” I asked, staring blankly out my side window, wondering which of the police officers might have slipped me that note and what it meant.

  “Something I needed to talk to him about.”

  Me? I wanted to ask, but it sounded insecure. As Harvey had reminded me earlier, not everyone’s world revolved around me.

  “Bail money?” I prodded.

  “You were free …” he squeezed my thigh, “this time.”

  I grimaced. “I owe you for coming to my rescue.”

  “I thought we’d already established how you’ll pay me back for any hardship—in my bed, preferably naked, but I’ll take whatever I can get.”

  Lifting his hand to my lips, I kissed his knuckles. “You called earlier wanting to talk to me about something.”

  He turned into the Presidential District neighborhood, making a left toward Aunt Zoe’s house.

  “I opened the bottle,” he said.

  “What bottle? You mean the black one from the crate at the funeral parlor?”

  He gave a brief nod. “I was tired of staring at it, wondering what was inside.”

  I jackknifed upright. “What’s in it? Blood? Poison? Some kind of potion or elixir?” I’d read one of Addy’s young adult fantasy books the other night in the tub and had witches, love potions, and were-fairies on my mind.

  “Mead.”

  “Mead? What do you mean mead?”

  “Fermented honey and water.”

  “I know what mead is, I just don’t understand why Ray would have been hauling around crates of it. It’s not like mead is in high demand.”

  Why was that albino willing to kill Ray over mead?

  Doc pulled into Aunt Zoe’s drive, parked behind the Picklemobile, and cut the engine.

  “It was high-quality mead,” Doc said. “Not any of that watered down stuff.”

  “You tasted it?”

  “How else was I going to figure out what it was?”

  My lower jaw fell open. “You could have died.”

  “I started with just a drop and knew what it was as soon as I tasted it. The flavors were really complex and they blended well, which tells me that whoever made it knew what they were doing. I’m pretty sure it had been cellared for more than just a few months.”

  When I didn’t respond and kept staring, he added, “We could see about having it tested in a lab somewhere if you don’t believe me.”

  “I believe you.” I sat back, surprised by his knowledge of fermented honey. “You drink mead often, do you?”

  He grinned. “It’s the elixir of love.”

  A love potion it was, then. “Really?”

  “Sure, it greases the wheels of procreation. Humans have been using it for millennia—the Vikings, the Celts, the Egyptians.”

  I held up my fingers in a cross gesture to ward off evil spirits. “Keep it away from me. I’m allergic to procreating.”

  “You’re good at practicing, though.”

  “With the right partner,” I said and poked him in the thigh. “How do you know so much about mead?”

  “I grew up around bees. I learned how to make it early on.”

  That must mean he’d grown up in the country, right? I tucked away that nugget of information. I wanted to drill him for additional details, but I was gun-shy. In the past, when I’d pushed him for more about his history, he’d pretty much walled me out. I didn’t feel like taking up my battering ram right now, not after the morning I’d had.

  I climbed out of his car, skirting the front, and leaned into his open window. “You coming inside?”

  “What about the kids?”

  “They’re at school for a couple more hours.”

  “Oh, right. Your aunt?”

  “Her pickup is gone. She must be down at her gallery.”

  He lifted his sunglasses, hitting me with a suspicious squint. “You’re not going to get me inside and try to seduce me are you?”

  I wasn’t ruling anything out. “I stink like a pee-soaked concrete block.”

  “I love it when you talk dirty to me.”

  “And I need to get to work before my boss hears that I haven’t been in yet today because I was a little detained this morning.”

  “He’s probably already heard. Jailhouse gossip is juicy stuff. Didn’t Andy Griffith and Barney Fife teach you anything?”

  Chuckling, I tucked my hair behind my ears. “Oh, that reminds me of what I wante
d to show you. I found something in my purse after I got it back from Evidence.” I took out the wadded up piece of paper and handed it to Doc.

  He frowned at it then took it from me.

  “See you inside,” I said and headed toward the porch.

  His car door slammed as I crested the top step. I held the front door for him, shutting and locking it behind us.

  “What the hell is this?” he asked, holding up the rumpled paper.

  “I don’t know. Either someone slipped it in my purse recently and I didn’t notice it until today, or someone at the cop-shop wants something I have.”

  Aunt Zoe’s mantel clock chimed the half-hour, spurring me. I started up the stairs. “Come on, we can talk more while I get cleaned up.”

  When I reached the landing at the top, I realized Doc wasn’t on my heels. Instead, he stood with one foot on the first stair, frowning down at a rainbow-colored tennis shoe in his path. Addy had neglected to do as told and put her shoe by the door where it belonged.

  “Sorry about the mess,” I said.

  He frowned up at me, his complexion a tad paler than usual.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, starting back down the steps. “Do you smell a ghost?” He’d never had any ectoplasmic reactions before in Aunt Zoe’s house.

  He cringed, shaking his head. “I told you, I don’t smell ghosts. I should never have described it that way to you. It’s much more than just a smell. It’s more of an olfactory sensation triggered by the presence of … I don’t know, a field of energy … but it’s intelligent, it communicates.”

  “You mean a ghost.”

  “No. But yes.”

  I paused, two steps up from the shoe, eye level with him. “You know what, never mind that. What’s the holdup here?”

  I needed to put some time in sitting behind my desk before Jerry hired Ben to sit there in my place.

  Doc’s gaze roved around my face. I could only imagine the mug-shot look I probably had going, all un-glammed with spirals of hair sticking out every which way. I tried to smooth my hair, which was nearly impossible without a jar of petroleum jelly.

  “The way you went at Cooper surprised me,” he said.

  I sucked air in through my teeth, blushing a little at my public display of temper. “Something about that guy really ticks me off. I think it’s those Alpha Male hormones he oozes.” I twisted my lips. “I should probably back down when he challenges me like that.” Otherwise, I might be issued an orange jumpsuit, and orange always made me look like I’d been bitten by a vampire, all pale skinned and dark eyed.

  “No way, tiger.” Doc kicked Addy’s shoe aside and took the next step. He slid his hands around my shoulders and pulled me against him. “When you charged him …” He brushed his mouth over mine, making my lips tickle.

  I draped my arms around his neck. “Yeah?”

  “That was sexy as hell.”

  “Well, then,” I kissed the slight dimple in his chin. “You should hear me get after Addy when she uses my toothbrush to clean Elvis’s feet.”

  His chest rumbled. “Poor Addy.”

  I stepped back and grabbed his hand, tugging him up the stairs after me. “Figures you’d take her side.”

  One step into my bedroom reminded me that I’d been rushed getting out of the house this morning in my efforts to keep from waking Aunt Zoe. Three different outfits were strewn across my unmade bed and wrinkled leftovers from the last few days were scattered around the floor. My closet spilled out loose shoes and fallen hangers, my dresser was covered with the kids’ school papers and half-empty perfume bottles, the attached mirror partly hidden behind pictures of my children.

  Doc paused in my doorway, leaning against the frame as his eyes traveled around my messy boudoir. I gave him bonus points for not wincing.

  “I was in a hurry this morning,” I explained with warm cheeks, opening my underwear drawer. “My room isn’t usually this messy.”

  Liar, liar, pants on fire. It was usually messier, strewn with Addy’s clothes and random pieces of Layne’s anatomical models.

  “Is that a chicken feather on your pillow?”

  “Probably.” I didn’t even bother looking.

  “This reminds me of my mom’s bedroom.”

  I stopped, my hand buried in satin and lace. He’d never mentioned his mother before, never mentioned any family at all. After his earlier comment about the bees and mead, I took a chance and asked, “Where does your mom live?”

  “She’s dead,” he said in a quiet voice.

  My chest panged for him. I pushed a little more. “How long has she been gone?”

  “Since I was a kid.”

  I nodded, keeping my focus on my drawer full of underwear, afraid that any eye contact would slam the window that I’d somehow opened. “Your dad?”

  “He died with my mom. Their truck went off a mountain road during a blizzard.”

  My eyes smarted for a young boy left parentless, making me blink several times. “Who raised you?”

  “My grandfather.”

  I plucked out a pair of lavender satin underwear and a matching bra. “Where did he live?”

  “Colorado. Up in the mountains.”

  So, Doc wasn’t dropped off by an alien spacecraft or created as a top-secret government project. He was just a guy from Colorado. Wait—I remembered something he’d said back when I was showing him houses. “I thought you said you were from back east.”

  “No. That was where I was living for a few years before I moved here.”

  “Ah, I see.” I shut my drawer. “Doc?”

  He dragged his gaze up from the bits of satin in my hand. “What?”

  “Thanks.”

  His brow wrinkled. “For what?”

  “Telling me about your family.”

  He took a step toward me but then stopped. “I like your kids, Violet.”

  That surprised me and made my stomach tighten with anxiety. I waited a few heartbeats and then asked, “Are you going to follow that with a ‘but’?”

  “Do you want one?”

  No! But it was time to face this shitstorm head on. I crossed my arms. “What I want, Doc, is honesty. I come with kids, I’m a package deal. If there is a ‘but’ involved here, I need to know now.” Before I fell totally ass-over-teakettle in love with him.

  “Okay.” He raised one eyebrow. “How about this—I like your kids, but I’m afraid I might somehow jeopardize them.”

  “Jeopardize how?” By bonding with them and then leaving us all broken hearted someday?

  He smirked. “Are you kidding?”

  “Nope. Spell it out for me.”

  “As we just rehashed on the stairs, I can detect ghosts.”

  “Ghosts can’t hurt my kids.” At least I didn’t think they could. But being that I had about a thimbleful of knowledge on the spirit world, I reserved the right to change my mind.

  “I’m not talking about the ghosts hurting them. If it gets out that I have this sixth sense, and your kids are associated with me, they could be picked on and bullied in and out of school. They don’t need that stress on top of the angst of being at a new school in a new town.”

  Boy, he’d sure put a lot of thought into this “but.” It made me wonder if that had something to do with why he’d left wherever he’d been living back east. “Were you picked on when you were a kid?”

  “No.”

  “Well, see—”

  “I was homeschooled because of my sensitivity to ghosts.”

  But his parents … “Your grandfather?”

  He nodded.

  “But you’re a financial planner. You had to have some kind of advanced schooling for that, didn’t you?”

  “My grandfather died when I was seventeen. I tested my way into college.”

  First his parents, then his grandfather, damn. I focused on the less emotional aspect. “And the ghosts didn’t bother you there?”

  “No, they did. I quickly figured out where I couldn’t go, worked on
how to cope with my sensitivity. Most of the time I could avoid confrontations, but not always.”

  “By confrontations, do you mean reactions like you had when Prudence passed through you?”

  More like bulldozed him. She’d literally laid him out flat for several minutes.

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  Prudence’s essence, or whatever it was called, must be powerful. After the way she’d overtaken Wanda this morning, like she’d just flicked a light switch on and then off, I had to wonder if she were one of the stronger ghosts Doc had encountered. And if so, why? Something due to the violent way she’d died or something within Prudence herself?

  “So, why do you need to go in the Carhart house?” I asked. I wasn’t jumping for joy at the idea of returning to that place anytime soon. Just thinking about Wanda’s eyes rolling up in her head gave me goosebumps. “Why see Prudence again? You’ve already experienced her death.”

  “I’ve been experimenting with something. I think I can go back to a short time before her death and see more.”

  “More than the last minute or so?” Typically, he was limited to their final breaths, according to what he’d explained to me.

  He nodded.

  “How come you couldn’t do this before?”

  “Because I’ve always fought being taken over, trying to block the energy rather than receive it. I think that has limited me.”

  “But you couldn’t block it all?”

  “The burst of energy expelled at death is too powerful. After all of these years, I still haven’t figured out how to repel that last surge.”

  “So can you go back to any time in their lives now?”

  “No. I’m still restricted to the final moments. But instead of trying to block the final energy flow, I’ll try to be open to it.”

  Having no ghostly radar at all, I tried to make sense of that as best I could.

  “It’s hard to explain,” he said, apparently picking up my puzzled vibes. “With Prudence, I hope to see what occurred before those men broke into her house and killed her. If it was just some random murder or if there was a reason they chose her family. And like I said before, I want to see what she was doing with her hands.”

  “What’s driving this? Something you read about her family in the library?”

  “I can’t stop thinking about those teeth,” he said. “Why did she have them? What does that mean? There is something about them that I can’t put my finger on.”