by Ann Charles
“Her feet are the worst,” Layne agreed.
“Hey, now!” I stuck one leg out from under the covers and pointed my sock-covered toe at Doc. “My frozen tater tots are dutifully swaddled, so quit bawling, you big babies.” I followed with a yawn that morphed into a stretch.
Doc’s gaze crawled up my otherwise bare leg, then he blew out a breath, shaking his head. “We should let your mom get a little more sleep. She was up late last night hanging out with Harvey.”
“Okay. I just wanted to know if she could take me to the police station sometime today.”
What!? “Why do you want to go there?”
I shuddered at the mere idea of stepping foot inside of the cop shop. I’d had too many bouts of inquisitional indigestion thanks to Cooper and Detective Hawke in the past six months.
“To see Coop.”
Oh, of course. “I told you we could deliver the birthday gifts Addy and you made for him at Doc’s place after school.” According to Natalie, Cooper had the day off and planned on working on a few things at home before Doc took him out for happy hour drinks.
“This isn’t about Coop’s birthday present.”
I pushed up onto my elbows. “It’s not?”
“Why do you want to go to the police station, Layne?” Doc asked while buckling his belt, his lined brow mirroring the tension brewing inside of me.
Before Layne could answer, Addy came rushing through the door, her straight blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, her glasses slightly askew. Unlike her brother, she was wearing blue jeans and a kitty-covered pink sweater. “Did you tell them, Layne?” she asked, mumbling around her toothbrush.
“I was just about to.”
“Tell us what?” I asked, sitting fully upright now.
Addy looked at me and her eyes widened. “Your hair is crazy this morning, Mom.”
Cooper was rubbing off on her, dang it.
She took a step closer. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”
“They look freaky, don’t they?” Layne added.
Crazy hair and freaky eyes. So far, my “normal day” was off to a stellar start.
“Adelynn Renee, you just drooled toothpaste on the rug.” I turned to her brother. “Layne, tell us why you want to go to the police station right now.”
“We want to report a missing rooster.”
* * *
“A missing rooster?” Mona, my coworker-slash-mentor, asked a couple of hours later as I settled in behind my desk at Calamity Jane Realty.
“Yeah. Only it’s not really a rooster.” I tucked my purse in my desk drawer, shoving it closed with an extra kick of frustration.
“What is it, then?” She watched me from over the rims of her rhinestone-edged reading glasses as she stirred some sugar into a cup of coffee.
Dressed in a cropped, black and white striped blazer over a black silk tank top and knee-length leather skirt, Mona would be an excellent choice for the cover girl of Sophisticated Sirens magazine, if there were such a periodical. She’d left her auburn hair free and flowing today, with big casual waves that spilled over her shoulders like a smooth lava flow.
Hell’s bells. Next to Mona, I felt like a ragamuffin with a bird’s nest for a hairdo, sticky fingers, and Kool-Aid stained lips. Add to it my pink tweed jacket and black knit pants, and I could blend in with a row of flamingo lawn ornaments. I really needed to hire someone to dress me, comb my hair, and send me off to work with a sack lunch.
“Rooster is a stray dog,” I explained. “It turns out they’ve been feeding it behind Aunt Zoe’s and my backs, so it kept coming around for more.” At least it had until three days ago, having since been a no-show, which prompted their request to submit a missing-dog report over at the police station. “Addy named it ‘Rooster Cogburn,’ so that I’d be more willing to let them keep it when I found out they’d unofficially adopted it.”
Mona chuckled, heading back to her desk. “There’s never a dull moment in your life, is there?”
She didn’t know the half of it. Well, actually, she did know some about what I dealt with—the ghostly stuff, anyway. Mona also knew that Doc was a mental medium and that Cornelius was able to hear ghosts, and he and I had dabbled with multiple séances. Mona had even joined us, along with Cooper and Natalie, when we’d tried to reach out to our old boss, Jane Grimes, whose ghost haunted the building. She just didn’t know about my Executioner gig on the side, or about all of the others that roamed the hills these days.
I walked over to the coffee maker to pour myself a second cup of much-needed caffeine, catching the sweet scent of Mona’s jasmine perfume in the air. After Doc’s hands-on wakeup call and my kids’ pet collecting escapades, I’d joined everyone down in the kitchen for Harvey’s belly-filling Sheepherders Breakfast. It turned out I’d been even more hungry than tired. But the one cup of coffee I’d wolfed down along with breakfast wasn’t going to cut it today.
“It gets even better.” I dumped cream in my coffee. “Addy had the bright idea to teach ‘Rooster’ my scent as well as hers, so she’d sneak my dirty laundry from my bedroom and wear my clothes while she fed and petted the dog.”
Which explained the long white hairs I’d noticed on my yoga pants and cable knit cardigan when I did laundry earlier this week.
“Smart girl,” Mona said, leaning against her desk as she cleaned her reading glasses. “The dog would be all lovey-dovey with you from the get-go, making it even harder to turn it away.”
“Smart and scheming.” I shook my head. “That girl takes after me a little too much for comfort.”
“And Layne was in on this, too, huh?”
I returned to my desk. “Yep. Addy has him convinced Rooster would be officially his pet, since she has Elvis, the real chicken of the two.”
“Oh, dear. Have they thought about the fact that the dog might want to eat poor Elvis?”
“Yeah. They were using Addy’s stuffed chicken toy to teach Rooster that chickens are friends, not food.”
Her laughter was interrupted by the sound of the back door opening.
When I looked around to see who had joined us, another pinching pain struck low in my gut. I winced and pressed on it. What the hell? Had I gotten food poisoning somehow? Was this the start of a stomach flu? It almost felt like a premenstrual cramp, but it was too soon for that, wasn’t it? Same as earlier this morning, the pain eased as quickly as it had come.
“Violet?” Jerry called, striding into the front room, looking fresh from a workout and shower at the Rec Center with his damp hair, untucked shirt, missing tie, and freshly shaved square-cut jaw. “I need you to do me a fa …”
Jerry’s voice trailed off as he gaped at Mona, who’d stood to greet him. His eyes practically bulged as they roved over her curvy form. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see his tongue roll out and start lapping up dust bunnies from the floor.
“Oh, damn,” he said in a high, creaky voice, which sounded funny coming from a six-foot-eight, Thor-lookalike. He cleared his throat, speaking in a much deeper voice when he said, “Morning, Red.”
Jerry had spent his early years playing pro basketball, wowing television audiences, and slam-dunking his press interviews. After our previous boss died last fall, Jerry had shown up to pick up where Jane had left off, turning a four-person real estate crew into a five-man, all-star sales team. Currently, our “team” was down a player, but Jerry was determined to not let the loss of one agent interfere with his goal to be the top-selling real estate company in all of western South Dakota. This champion ambition was his reasoning behind volunteering our office to be the focus of the Paranormal Realty television show.
“Good morning, Jerry,” Mona replied smoothly before settling in behind her desk. At first glance, she seemed oblivious to her effect on him, but then I saw a small quirk of her lips as she pulled on her reading glasses.
Ah ha! That was who she’d dressed to impress today.
“You need something from me, Jerry?” I asked, wondering if he
was able to hear above the sound of his panting libido.
He blinked several times, turning my way in slow motion. “I was just … Umm, I could use … What?”
“I believe you were going to ask me for a favor.”
“Oh, right.” He glanced at Mona again before continuing. “I was wondering if you could help me out with an appointment. I have some clients interested in attending an open house up near Mount Roosevelt this morning. It’s in the Bountiful Big Pines housing community. They asked if I’d go through the house with them, but I need to take care of a pressing matter down in Rapid City.”
“So, you want me to drive them to the open house?”
“No, just meet them there and do the walk-through with them. They like a little extra hand-holding.”
“When?”
He checked his watch. “I’m supposed to meet them at the house in about an hour.”
“Sure, I can help.”
I had no appointments today and was happy to escape the office for a bit. Maybe I could sneak in a quick visit over at Doc’s office on my return. He should be done with his morning appointments by then.
Ten minutes later, I slid in behind the wheel of my SUV. I’d decided to leave early so I could check out the place on my own, talk to the agent staging the open house, and prepare for whatever questions Jerry’s clients might have for me. I’d just pulled out of the parking lot behind Calamity Jane Realty when my cell phone rang.
I accepted the call via my vehicle’s speakerphone. “Hello?”
“Hey, Sparky,” a deep, gravelly voice said.
“Hi, Reid. We missed you at supper last night.”
“Even Zo?”
Uhhh … “Yep.”
“Are you crossing your fingers while you tell that lie?”
I uncrossed my fingers. “No. She did. For real.”
At least I assumed that it was missing him that spurred that jealous gleam in her eye when she’d told me Reid hadn’t come to supper due to having out-of-town company.
“I need to talk to you, Sparky.”
“I’m on my way to an open house.”
“In town?”
“A few miles out from it. Up by Mount Roosevelt.”
“Can I meet you there? This will only take a few minutes.”
Was this going to be about Aunt Zoe? Did it have anything to do with whoever his mystery company was? Was he going to practice his it’s-not-you-it’s-me speech on me, stomping on my hopes for them sharing a future?
“Sure,” I said, hiding my anxiety behind a dollop of bravado. “I’m a little early, so if you can meet me there in the next twenty minutes that should work.”
“Great. Give me the address.”
I rattled off the street number and name.
As I hung up, a full-on cramp tightened down low in my abdomen. I rubbed it, wincing until it passed.
What was today’s date? The 18th, right? I counted backward on my fingers. It couldn’t be here already, could it? I stopped off at Jackpot Gas-N-Go on the way out of town so I could use their bathroom to see if what I suspected was true.
It was, damn it.
Aunt Flo had come calling a week early and I wasn’t prepared. The timing was weird, especially considering that the birth control pills I’d been taking for the last year sometimes had me skipping periods altogether. Not to mention the cramping like I was having hadn’t happened since I’d started this particular brand of pills.
Maybe all of the stress from that lidérc and everything else going on screwed up my cycle. At least I wasn’t pregnant. I quivered at the thought alone. I’d rather face off with another Hungarian devil. Although the thought of having Doc’s kid had crossed my mind now and then, but usually my pregnancy amnesia kicked in only when I was good and drunk.
The bathroom vending machine didn’t offer much choice. Holy menstrocity! Football players wore smaller pads than what came out of the box. But this would cover me until I could stop by home after this open house business. I bought an extra pad as a backup, figuring I could keep it under my car seat in case I accidentally cut off one of my arms someday and needed to staunch the flow of blood.
“So much for my normal day,” I muttered as I crawled back behind the wheel. I popped a couple of ibuprofen I found in my purse to ease the cramps and headed back down the road. At least I was wearing black pants today.
A few minutes later, I pulled up in front of an open house sign planted in front of a two-story log home with a wraparound porch. Its angled tin roof still sported a thin layer of snow, probably left over from last night’s extra-thorough dusting. Its lower story had been dug into the hillside and was fronted with a river stone façade. Or maybe the stone walls were real. I’d see for myself when I walked through the place. The house still looked somewhat new, considering it had been built about ten years prior.
Off to the side of the house sat a detached, A-frame, three-car garage with tan-colored siding and dark green doors. According to the sales listing, this outbuilding included a fully furnished mother-in-law apartment upstairs. The garage backed up against the forest, separated from the hillside covered with pine trees by a cedar rail fence that was obviously more for looks than privacy.
The half-circle drive had been plowed, but I decided I’d park near the end of the drive to give potential buyers the closer spots.
I steered past the two vehicles currently sitting in the drive—a pickup and a Subaru. As I passed the garage, I noticed another vehicle parked back out of view of the road. I did a double take, hitting the brakes.
“Shit!” That was Tiffany Sugarbell’s Jeep.
What were the chances that she was only visiting the place and this wasn’t her open house? I looked around for the For Sale sign that should be near the end of the drive, finding it behind a mound of plowed snow. Sure enough, Tiffany was listed as the agent to contact.
Growling at the idea of facing off with Doc’s gorgeous ex, I parked my SUV and shut off the engine. I pulled down the visor and peered in the light-up mirror on the back. Eek! I should have worked harder on my eye makeup this morning. Or at least brushed on some cover-up powder. I looked red-eyed and blotchy with a shiny nose and forehead, as if I’d come straight over from holding a spot in a police lineup. Scrubbing off my T-zone with a tissue, I painted my lips and retouched my mascara, pinching my cheeks a few times in place of blush. Sadly, that would have to do for this round of Violet “Rocky” Parker versus Tiffany “Perky-tits” Sugarbell.
I closed the visor mirror and checked the time. Still no Reid in sight. Blowing out a breath, I grabbed my purse and pushed out into the cold. I might as well get this reunion with Tiffany over with before I had company. It would be better to hiss and snarl at each other without too many witnesses.
The wind was stronger up here in the hills above Deadwood. The pine trees surrounding the place shivered and bent in the stiff breezes that tore at my coat and blasted through my wool pants as if they were made of a single layer of cheesecloth. At least my knee-high boots were doing their job of gripping the ground in spite of the packed snow. A falling on my ass display in the driveway would fill the red-haired viper inside with a fresh spurt of venom.
I’d made it up onto the porch when Reid’s dually pickup rumbled into the drive. I waved as he circled in front of me before parking behind my SUV.
Bracing against the wind, I walked back down the porch steps and along the drive. A strong gust hit me halfway there, ramming me into the knee-high snowbank ringing the drive.
“Asshole!” I shouted at the sky and returned to the plowed path, brushing and shaking the snow off my pants before continuing over to his driver’s side door.
Reid rolled the window down, his easy grin reaching clear up to his deep blue eyes. “Howdy, Sparky. Is that mean ol’ wind bullying you around?”
As firemen went, Reid was one of the finer specimens. In spite of the decades of wear and tear he had compared to the newer recruits down at Deadwood’s station, the fire captain
could probably hoist ladders and wield hoses as well as the rest of them. He had that rip-cord sort of strength that reminded me of cowhands stuck out on the range for weeks at a time. It didn’t hurt with the local female population that he looked a bit like Sam Elliott in his younger days, including the salt-and-pepper mustache and swaggering gait.
“Keep it up, Reid, and I’ll have Aunt Zoe hit you with another uppercut.”
Reid had one somewhat hindering flaw that my aunt had discovered by accident long ago—he had a glass jaw. Off and on over the years, Aunt Zoe had used that Achilles heel of his to her advantage, bringing the big strong fireman to his knees … and then sometimes leaving him flat on his face.
He held up his hands in surrender. “Down, Sparky.”
“That’s more like it.” Another gust pushed me up against the side of his pickup, leaving my black pants smudged with dust.
“Oh, come on!” I swiped at the dirt. Now I’d have to face Tiffany while looking like I’d ridden in on a dust devil.
“Sparky, why don’t you hop in the passenger side while we talk? You need to get out of the wind.”
Grumbling about being Mother Nature’s punching bag, I stalked around to the passenger door and crawled up inside.
Reid’s rig was warm and smelled of his musky-scented cologne and fresh oranges, the latter probably having to do with the air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror. I sniffed again, checking for a hint of a woman’s perfume, but came up short. If his out-of-town visitor was female, she must not have ridden in his pickup lately.
“How are you doing?” he asked as I settled into the leather seat.
I eyed him warily. “Why? What have you heard?”
He laughed. The deep, baritone sound eased the tension from my shoulders.
“You’re as prickly as your aunt today.”
“Did you go see her?”
“No. I called.”
“What did she say?”