by Ann Charles
“Why would the changeling want to locate Doc?” Ever since the séance at the Hessler house, Doc had been worried the changeling would come for me, not him.
“Time will likely answer that for us.” Cornelius frowned toward the circle. “At least we know now that the changeling is still nearby.”
He said that as if we should be high-fiving about it. “Oh, goodie.”
“The question is, how do we keep it from possessing the Tall Medium when he helps us with an exorcism?”
Chapter Six
“Did Corny actually call it an exorcism?” Natalie asked a half hour later as she and I slipped and spun our way up Burnham Avenue on the north end of Deadwood under dark, snow-fattened clouds.
I’d received a phone call from my long-time partner in mischief right after I’d left Cornelius and his haunted hotel. She’d wanted to know where I was because she needed my help with a “little job.” My opt-out due to needing to pick up my kids from school didn’t fly since she’d already called Harvey and asked him to give them a ride home. When I reminded her that this was my day of “no-jobbing,” she pretended the phone cut out right after telling me she’d be by in two shakes. Now, here I was on this usually wide street narrowed by piles of snow. Thankfully, we were the only ones risking our lives on the lone set of tire tracks at the moment.
“Or did he say ‘exotism,’ ” she continued, “and you heard him wrong?”
“ ‘Exotism’?” I repeated, darting a frowny glance her way while maintaining my death grip on the dashboard.
“Yeah, you know.” She paused to downshift. “Something with exotic qualities.”
“I know what ‘exotism’ means, birdbrain.”
“If you say so, numbskull, but you always sucked at English in school, so I wasn’t sure if you’d need me to spell the word, too.”
She was right. High school English classes were the closest I’d ever come to prison life—well, except for a few stints in jail, but I was innocent every time, damn it. Okay, except for that one time. Anyway, I’d rather spend an afternoon of thumbscrew torture than squirm and sweat at a school desk labeling sentence parts; or worse, analyzing long-dead literary authors’ words to try and figure out what they truly meant in every freaking line they jotted down. Bleck! Maybe the line “It was a dark and stormy night” was just a weather report by a wannabe meteorologist.
Shit, where was I?
Oh, yeah, holding onto the dash for dear life while my best friend tried to give me a heart attack.
“Sucking at English class was better than what you sucked back then with those baby inner-tube lips,” I shot back, managing a grin in spite of the now slightly sideways crawl of her rig up the icy hill as her pickup’s back end fishtailed hard to the left.
Natalie laughed, giving me a loud, lip-smacking air kiss while keeping her eyes on the road.
I probably should tap my kidneys before we slid back down this icy hill, or I might leave a puddle on her front seat by the time we skidded to the bottom and plowed through the traffic down on Highway 85. Hopefully, we’d stop before taking a nosedive into Whitewood Creek.
I looked across the cab at my best friend while she maneuvered our way back to the straight and narrow. With her fuzzy pink earmuffs and double Dutch braids, she looked almost young enough to still be in high school. But the faint wrinkles that fanned from the corners of her eyes, creased her forehead, and curved along each side of her full lips couldn’t hide the truth—she’d lived a bit of life, sunny with laughter and rainy with heartaches. But she’d survived. And now, she was determined to put my life at risk on this damned street under a sky that threatened to unleash more icy doom any minute.
I tried to focus on something besides this wild sled-run from hell. “Why on earth would Cornelius be worried about an exotism? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“I don’t know. A lot of what Corny says most days doesn’t make sense.”
She had a point. That bit he told me about nostril erections still had me scratching my head.
“He definitely said ‘exorcism.’ And when I told him that I wasn’t interested in reenacting that Exorcist movie—”
“Yuck.” She made a face. “So much projectile vomiting.”
“He called me a namby-pamby.”
She slanted a glance in my direction. “Namby-pamby, huh? I like that boy’s spunk. Did you pinch him hard enough to bruise after that?”
“He dodged my fingers.” The stick insect was as quick as he was quirky.
The whole pickup started to slide sideways as Natalie made a left turn onto a side street, but she steered out of the spin with much-practiced ease.
I breathed a sigh of relief, happy to be rolling along on a flat surface again. “Isn’t there a cemetery up this way?”
“St. Ambrose,” she confirmed. “An old Catholic cemetery.” She pointed out the windshield. “It’s just ahead of us over that hill.”
It seemed like Doc told me about that cemetery once. It was established in the late 1800s and closed officially some years back after a restoration. Most of the graves were over seventy years old now, with many of the older ones dating back to the late nineteenth century.
“Please tell me we’re not going there today for this ‘job’ of yours.” The snow looked knee-deep around here.
“What? You don’t want to say hello to some old friends?”
“Not in these babies.” I pointed down at my suede ankle boots.
She scoffed at my foot attire. “What were you thinking, wearing those on a snowy day like this?”
“I was thinking that it was my day off and I was going to stick to shoveled sidewalks and a torn-up hotel, not go traipsing through the snow-covered hills like some frontierswoman.”
She slowed to a stop in front of a square, single-story house with yellow siding and a green tin roof. Mounds of snow barricaded the place, except for a somewhat recently shoveled driveway. The windows were dark, though, and no smoke came from the chimney.
She shifted into park and then turned to me, her eyes practically sparkling with excitement. “Speaking of Coop, what time are we meeting tomorrow?”
I did a double take that ended with a frown. “We weren’t speaking of Detective Cooper.”
“You sure about that? Because I was certainly thinking about him.” The saucy grin filling her cheeks gave me the notion that Cooper probably wasn’t fully clothed in those thoughts of hers.
“I’m positive, Miss Single White Female. You’re obsessed.”
“I’m not obsessed, and your reference is all wrong. In Single White Female, she was obsessed with her roommate, who was a girl, not a guy.” She snorted. “I love you to pieces, babe, but not enough to don a blond, curly Dolly Parton wig and go on a killing spree.”
Dang, she was right. “Fine, then you’re Miss Fatal Attraction.”
“Bzzzt. Wrong again. There’s an affair in that one, and Coop was single coming into this pocket-rocket rodeo. Besides, I like Bugs Bunny too much to play that part with the rabbit.”
I flipped through movies about obsession in my memory, skipping past those involving extramarital affairs. Criminy, there were a lot of those, though. How come Hollywood had so many affairs end with the woman going nutso? When I caught the kids’ piece-of-shit sperm donor boinking my sister way back when, I didn’t go bananas and reach for the butcher knife. Sure, I poked holes in my old Ken and Barbie dolls one night after too much tequila, but my witch doctor skills have always been amateur at best.
Wait! I had a good one. “You’re Miss Misery then.”
She blew out a raspberry. “Coop is no writer, and while my fantasies have included bondage, I’m not into breaking bones.”
“How about The Hand That Rocks the Cradle?”
“Seriously? Can you see me breastfeeding some other woman’s kid on the sly ever? I mean, I’m all for breastfeeding, don’t get me wrong, and I know that wet nurses can be lifesavers, but my girls probably aren’t even big enough to feed a newborn kitten, let
alone a whole baby.”
Who was she kidding? Her rack was plenty big. She was forgetting that pregnancy could turn oranges into cantaloupes. I frowned down at my chest. And then sad, bitter lemons when everything dried up again.
I held my hands in front of the warm air blowing out the vent. “What about Play Misty for Me?”
“That’s a little more on the mark.” She stared out the windshield, looking a bit dreamy eyed. “But I don’t want to stab Cooper. I just want to get him down to his birthday suit and spread Italian meringue caramel buttercream frosting all over him.”
I raised one eyebrow. “That seems weirdly specific.”
She scrubbed her hand down her face, blew out a breath, and then focused back on me with slightly rosy cheeks. “Clint Eastwood was early 1970s hot in that movie, though, with his wavy hair and thick sideburns.”
“Maybe, but I like him better with a beard and hat, like in Two Mules for Sister Sara.” I snapped my fingers. “I got it. The Crush.”
Natalie wrinkled her nose. “She was 14 years old. I’m 36.” She shook her head at me, feigning a sad look. “Really, Vi, just stop. You’re embarrassing yourself now.”
I stuck my tongue out at her. “You’re the one who failed at your year-long sabbatical from men, not me.”
“Hey, I made it a long time without a guy.”
“Five months was not even halfway there.”
She shrugged. “It’s not my fault. Coop chased me clear to Arizona and proceeded to woo me with billiard balls and bullet holes. What’s a girl to do?”
“Not sleep with a cranky law dog. That’s what a girl is supposed to do.”
She eyed me for a couple of beats. “You sound like my cousins. At least two out of three of them, anyway.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. They’re smart women.”
I’d grown up next to Natalie’s cousins down in Rapid City. The Morgan sisters were always one step ahead of the law … at least they had been until they moved down to southeastern Arizona and the oldest of the three had started monkeying around with the county sheriff.
I reached over and poked Natalie’s shoulder. “At least they know well enough to lay low when the cops are around.”
“I lay low sometimes when Coop’s around.” She batted my finger away. “Other times I prefer to be on top.”
I covered my ears. “Stop or I’m going to projectile vomit all over your dashboard.”
She laughed. “I’m kidding. Kind of. Or maybe not. But Cornelius is right, you’re a namby-pamby.” She yanked my hand closest to her away from my ear. “What time are we heading down to Spearfish?”
Tomorrow was Cooper’s birthday. Unbeknownst to him, we were having a little party of sorts at an old mansion in Spearfish that was built well over a century ago by a lumber baron. The main part of the sprawling house had been renovated recently and was now used for weddings, company parties, and more. However, back in the early twentieth century, a large wing had been added on to the rear of the mansion that was used as an overflow jail throughout the decades. Inside that rear wing, the new owners had repurposed the jail space, which was supposedly haunted like everything else in the Black Hills, but I had a feeling that was a marketing ploy. They’d made it into an escape room game, where money-paying guests, aka prisoners, had to figure out clues hidden throughout the various floors in order to find the key to escape from the jail wing back into the mansion.
I’d made it known from the start that I’d been against this whole birthday party idea. First of all, I’d spent enough time in jails to know there was nothing fun about trying to escape from them. More important, though, Cooper had threatened to shoot anyone who dared to throw him a birthday party of any kind, complaining that birthdays brought nothing but bad luck for him. Being that he liked Natalie, Doc, Cornelius, and his uncle far more than me, I figured he’d take aim at my hind end first. But Natalie and Harvey had blown off my concerns, going forth with their plans to celebrate Cooper’s birthday anyway.
“Doc is going to leave after work tomorrow, pick up Cooper, and head straight to Spearfish for some happy hour drinks.”
“Good. Remind him to pour at least two whiskeys down Coop’s throat to soften him up before bringing him to the mansion.”
I had a feeling it would take a whole bottle of whiskey to relax that steely hardass.
I continued with the plan. “Harvey is going to pick us up a little after six, and then we’ll meet Doc at the mansion about quarter to seven.” Seven was our start time in the escape room game.
She rubbed her hands together. “This is going to be so much fun.”
I guffawed. “I’ve solved mysteries with your lover boy before. More than once, actually. Every time, I ended up bruised and walking with a limp.”
“Wow. Sexy. Giddy up.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “Did he use handcuffs or silk neckties?”
“I meant metaphorically, you oversexed orangutan.”
She reached over and patted my head. “Don’t be such a party pooper, babycakes.” She shut off her pickup and pocketed the keys. “Coop said he didn’t want a big party and we’re not giving him one. This is a small party with only a few friends to celebrate, that’s all.” She opened her door, flashing me a grin. “Oh, and you, of course.”
“He’s going to blame me,” I called as she shut the driver’s side door.
“Come on,” she hollered through the window and headed toward the tailgate.
I shoved my door open, scowling at the snowflakes drifting down around us. Apparently, the sky had finally decided to let loose. “I’m going to put out an ad for a new best friend,” I said, stepping carefully onto the curb.
“Didn’t you learn anything from Single White Female?”
I pulled my coat hood over my head and joined her at the back of the pickup, grimacing as I sank an inch through the crusty snow with every step in my suede boots. “Just do me a favor and make sure Coop has no bullets in his gun.”
She sighed. “For the umpteenth time, he is not going to shoot you for partaking in his birthday party.”
“You can’t guarantee that.” I watched her untie the back corners of the blue tarp covering the bed of her rig.
“If he threatens to fill you with lead, I’ll stand in front of you.” She winked at me. “It’s really sexy when he uses that police lingo on me.”
I pretended to stick my finger down my throat. “Really, please stop this carnality talk involving Cooper before my brain barfs out my ears.”
She laughed, lowering the tailgate and rolling back the tarp. “Now, hold out your arms.”
I frowned at the pieces of firewood filling the bed of the truck alongside a well-used ax with a wooden handle, and then back at her. “Please tell me that unloading firewood isn’t the reason you dragged me up here.”
“I said I needed your help with a job.” She tried to hit me with a serious stare, but then a smile cracked through. “I’m kidding. I just wanted you to hang out with me on your day off, Outlaw Curly Bill.”
I smiled back. “Of course you do. It’s because I’m so crazy cool, right?”
She grabbed a piece of firewood. “Right. Still crazy after all these years.”
After loading up with several more pieces of wood, she carried them up the shoveled drive to a small carport angled off the side of the house.
When she returned empty-handed, I asked, “What’s the story here?” I nodded toward the house. “It doesn’t look like anyone is home.”
“She’s not.” Natalie collected several more pieces of firewood. “This place belongs to Ms. Gaucho, my old history teacher. Last week she had her hip replaced and is currently in rehab at the hospital.”
“When will she be home?”
“In a few days.” She started up the drive.
I stared after her and then looked down at my tan cashmere gloves. I’d have to make do without them. I yanked them off and stuffed them in my pocket. Hefting a chunk of the firewood in each hand
, I followed Natalie, taking care to step where the snow had been somewhat recently shoveled to protect my suede boots.
“Did you shovel her drive?” I asked after we’d returned to the pickup.
“No, another one of my classmates did. A bunch of us from school decided to work together and get her place all set up for her return.” She grabbed more firewood. “I volunteered for this job. This wood came from that dead tree at my parents’ place, the one that blew down last fall.” I placed another log on her load. “This is about a quarter of a cord. It should last her a few weeks. Put one more on top.”
I did, then followed her up the drive with a couple more pieces myself. “That’s really sweet of you guys.”
“It’s the least we can do.”
I tossed my pieces on the pile and helped her unload.
“She was a wonderful teacher who liked to give good grades just for trying,” Natalie said as we headed back to her truck. “Her two kids live over in Montana, so they can only come every so often. Besides, you know how it is in a small town. We all have to take care of each other.”
The snow was coming down harder now, coating the exposed chunks of firewood in the truck bed. Natalie brushed the snow off of a couple before snagging them. When I tried to pick up a piece with my left hand to stack it on top of the others in her arms, it slipped from my fingers. A jagged spike left over from a broken branch sliced across my hand, cutting into the meat of my palm.
“Son of a beaver!” I said, trying to shake off the pain.
“Here, let me see.” Natalie dropped her load on the tailgate and caught my wrist. She held my palm up for inspection, frowning down at the now bloody gash. “Why aren’t you wearing any gloves?”
“Because the ones I brought are cashmere.”
“Suede boots and cashmere gloves.” She shook her head.
“How was I to know I’d be hauling firewood this afternoon?”
“You should have said something before about the gloves. I have a spare leather pair in the cab.”
I winced as she pressed on the skin around the wound, making more blood well up. “You’re lucky I’m not wearing the cashmere coat Doc gave me for Christmas, or I’d still be sitting in the cab and you’d have missed out on my stellar company.”