by Ann Charles
My jaw fell. “You think a Nachzehrer has the brainpower to use a compass?”
“We don’t know that the Nachzehrer was alone. It might have been used as a distraction, keeping Jonesy busy while someone else took a look around the place.”
That was a good point. I needed to broaden my focus if I was going to keep playing cat and mouse with these assholes.
He shrugged. “Or maybe somebody found it in one of the mines around here and Jonesy bought it off of him, leaving it to sit on that shelf for the time being.”
“Maybe one of the German miners who came to the Black Hills back during the gold rush days lost it.”
“Or that.”
I lowered my voice to a whisper, “And maybe that ghost you saw outside is that very miner looking for his compass.”
Half of his face scrunched. “Now you’re reaching.”
“Have you seen the ghost today?”
He shook his head. I couldn’t tell if he was happy about the lack of a ghost or not.
I pointed back at the compass. “So, you really think that could be a clue?”
“I think it’s worth remembering.” He walked away.
A few minutes later, I joined Doc in front of a glass case full of bleached skulls. “You find anything interesting?”
He pointed at one of the midsized skulls with an elongated snout. “Look at the sharp teeth on that one.”
“What was it?”
“A fox, I think.”
That made two of them here.
He put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close for a hug. “Reminds me of you.”
“Because I’m a vixen?”
He leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Because you’re a biter.”
“Yeah, but you like it when I sink my teeth in.”
His gaze locked onto my lips. “Yes, I do. Especially in certain spots.”
Before I could ask him to clarify the parts on his body where he liked my teeth sunk, Reid joined us.
“I’m going to head on back to the workshop and take a look at Jonesy’s breaker box. You think you could help me out, Sparky?”
I opened my mouth to tell him that I didn’t know anything about breaker boxes, but then realized he might want to talk to me about my aunt without an audience.
“Sure.” I pulled away from Doc.
“Hey, Nyce,” Cooper said. “Let’s get that stag loaded in the trailer before Martin or I get called back to work.”
The four of us headed down the hallway leading back to Garth’s workshop with Reid out front. Once there, Cooper and Doc joined Garth next to the large stag I saw the other night. It was three-fourths covered with a tarp, only its head and impressive rack of antlers were sticking out.
While the three of them discussed how to move the deer from the workshop up into the trailer, Reid headed over to the breaker box attached to the wall studs above a built-in countertop and started unscrewing the panel cover.
I joined him, glancing around the room. I was too overwhelmed by all of the taxidermy-based chemicals, glues, books, and other odds and ends covering the shelves; the sharp knives, used rubber gloves, stitching tools, and bits of stuffing spread here and there over several long countertops; and the various poised animals staring at me with their creepy dead eyes to see anything not out of the ordinary. Then again, I had been a taxidermy shop virgin prior to this past week.
When my focus returned to Reid, he was checking the wiring to each of the breakers. Then he screwed the cover back on and began studying the paper chart on the inside of the breaker box’s metal door. While I tried to read the scrawls written on the chart from several feet away, he flicked a few switches, looking around as he tested each.
“Did Zo say anything about last night?” he asked me quietly when he focused back on the chart.
She had, but only after a little blackmail. However, I didn’t want to tell him that. He was probably looking for something heartening from me when it came to his future with my aunt, not the cold, hard truth.
I joined him at the counter, keeping my voice low. “She said your son was very nice and good with my kids.”
No lie there.
He flicked another switch back and forth.
I wrung my hands, looking for something to do with them. A wide metal box was secured to the wall. The rust-edged door was pockmarked with small dents and scratches. It opened with a creak, and a dusting of rusty powder floated down to the counter below. Inside was an old-fashioned fuse box with colorful, round fuses that screwed into circle holes. Cobwebs were strung between the sides of the box, especially thick in the corners. I remembered seeing something similar in my grandparents’ barn when I was a kid.
Several cloth-covered wires stuck out from the box, but had been cut off. Another pair of wires ran out of the bottom. They trailed south behind the counter and wrapped around two white ceramic knobs nailed into the wall before taking a left through the stud inside of two ceramic tubes.
“Check it out, Reid.” I pointed at the old fuse box. “Knob-and-tube wiring. When’s the last time you saw that?”
“At an old warehouse down near the rodeo grounds.” He studied the paper chart again on the breaker box. “The owner started a fire and blamed it on the old wiring, hoping to get the insurance money. Your aunt helped me figure out the truth behind that case.”
Oh, right. I remembered Aunt Zoe telling me Reid had asked her for details about the building, which happened to be where she’d had piano lessons long ago. It was shortly after that when Reid finally broke through the wall she’d put up around her heart for the first time and they became a hot mess of a couple, which seemed fitting for a man who dillied with fire and a woman who dallied with a molten glass furnace. But then he’d balked at any sort of commitment to her, and shit went south from there.
“Reid,” I whispered, glancing at Doc, Cooper, and Garth over near the head of the stag to make sure they weren’t listening. Based on their body gestures, I figured the three of them were discussing lifting logistics. That or they were preparing to perform a three-man version of “YMCA” by the Village People.
“Yeah?” Reid flicked another switch, leaning out to peer down the hallway toward the front room.
“How come you didn’t tell your son that Aunt Zoe and you were in a relationship years ago?”
He slowly turned my way, his eyes big and wide. He reminded me of those tiny primates on that show about the wildlife of Borneo that I’d watched with Addy a couple of weeks ago. What was it? A tarsier! That was it. Then Reid looked away, but his cheeks were ruddier, along with his neck.
“It’s complicated, Sparky.”
I wasn’t buying his snake oil. “Complicated how? Is this about your divorce?”
He flicked another switch. The light overhead shut off. “Yes and no.”
I waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, I poked him in the shoulder.
He sighed. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?
“Nope.”
He closed the electrical panel and focused on the old breaker box in front of me. “This old wiring is still in pretty good shape. Knob-and-tube was used mainly between the late 1800s through the 1930s, until electrician labor wages grew greater than the material costs, making this sort of labor-intensive installation too expensive.”
“Thanks for the history lesson, Fire Captain Martin, but you’re still evading the question.”
He unscrewed an old yellow fuse, looked at it and then screwed it back in. “I wonder how long ago this building was switched over to the current setup. I’d guess Garth’s grandfather was still around, but you never know in these old places. Some folks kept using knob-and-tube wiring into the 1960s and 1970s, until the electrical load grew too great thanks to all of our fancy new appliances and devices.”
‘Reid, don’t make me pinch you to get an answer.”
He pulled a small, cigar-sized flashlight from inside his coat and leaned down to look under the counter. “
Ox did know about your aunt back then,” he said as we walked along, bent over, chasing the old wire through the ceramic tubes in the exposed wall studs.
“Then why did he act like he didn’t?”
He frowned up at me. “Who said he acted that way? Your kids?”
“Think taller.”
He scowled. “Zo shouldn’t make assumptions.” Still following the wire trail, he skirted a shoulder-high bookshelf. The wire continued on the other side near the floor.
“So, you had told Ox everything?”
“No. You don’t tell your kid the whole truth about a relationship after divorcing his mom.” He followed the wire around the back corner of the workshop. “There are some things better left unsaid until people cool down and the dust settles.”
I followed Reid, bending low, too, so I could keep my voice quieter. “When did you tell your son about her then?”
He shrugged. “A few months after Zo threw me out of her bed. I was pretty miserable, moping around my apartment and Ox came to visit. I tried to pretend everything was fine. When that didn’t work, I told him that I was still a little sad about it not working out with his mom after all of the years we put into our marriage. But he didn’t buy that either. He’d been there through the yelling matches and rants.” His face lined. “My first marriage was hell, and Ox had been singed during the battles more times than I care to remember.”
He dropped onto one knee, shining the flashlight under a table filled with jugs of chemicals. Some clear, others milky. I tried to read the words on the labels, but they might as well be German, like the compass out front.
“So, I told Ox the truth at the time,” Reid continued. “That I’d been dating a woman, but it didn’t work out and I was feeling down about it.”
“And?” I pressed.
“And what?”
“That was all you said about Aunt Zoe?”
He glanced up at me. “I didn’t figure there was much else to tell since she’d kicked me out and told me if I showed up on her doorstep again she’d fill my ass full of rock salt.”
“Yeah, but, don’t you think you should’ve mentioned to Ox before dinner last night that you were trying to woo that same woman back? Maybe fill him in on some of the important events that had happened in the past with you and her?”
“I did.”
“But I thought …”
He moved several feet forward, shining his light under a heavy-duty steel worktable with rusted cabinet doors in the front. “I told Ox she was an old flame and I hoped to rekindle some heat with her. Same as you said.”
I slapped my forehead. “That is not the same thing.”
“Close enough.”
“You’ve been sniffing too much asbestos.”
He scowled up at me. “What was I supposed to tell him?”
“How about the truth so that when Aunt Zoe met him, he’d already know some of the details about your history together.” I checked to see if Doc and Cooper and Garth were listening, but they were gone and so was the stag.
“But I did tell him,” Reid defended. “Like I said.”
I crossed my arms, glaring now on my aunt’s behalf. “You didn’t even give her a name in your version.”
He sat back on his haunches. “So, to be clear, now Zo’s pissed that Ox doesn’t know how much time I spent in her bed way back when?”
“No, you big firebug, she’s pissed that you didn’t care about her enough in the past to tell your son that she was a part of your life.”
He scrubbed his hand down his face. “But I did care. It was just … complicated.”
“Yeah, love is. Trust me, I know.”
“Where do I go from here with her?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. Let me think about it.”
He stood and grabbed the corner of the steel worktable, tugging on it. The table scraped along the wood floor an inch or so. He got a better grip and put some weight behind the next pull, along with a solid grunt. This time, it slid forward several inches.
“What are you doing?” I asked as he leaned over the table and shined his light down behind it.
“Wondering something,” he said, getting down on his hands and knees again to peer under the cabinet doors.
“Wondering what?” I asked, leaning forward to peer behind the cabinet, too. There was a rusted steel plate back there, about three feet wide by four feet tall, half an inch thick, bolted flush against the wall. There must have been an opening there at one time.
Reid sat up. “Why is there a steel plate bolted to the wall right here where the shop backs into the hillside?”
I got down and peered under the cabinet. The plate appeared to be sunk into the floor. How far did it go down?
“You think someone kept a safe behind there?” I asked.
“Maybe. The wire I was following goes through the wall right next to the steel plate. Can you see it?”
“Yeah.”
“That wire doesn’t come back out anywhere else.”
I sat up on my knees. “So, there was power into the space on the other side.”
He nodded. “There still might be. Back before there were refrigerators and freezers, people used root cellars and caves in the hillsides to keep things cool year around. Maybe Garth’s grandfather kept dead animals in there when there was a backlog of taxidermy work. With some ice or a snowpack, things might last a week or two without too much decay.”
I made a face, imagining a cave full of dead carcasses.
Reid chuckled. “You remind me of Addy eating peas when you make that face.” He rose to his feet, offering a hand to help me up. “Do you think I should tell Ox all of the details of my past with Zo now? Come clean with him and then let her know what I told him so she understands that I’m not just looking for a roll in the hay with her?”
I brushed the dust off of my pants, weighing my answer. Aunt Zoe had told me more than once in clear English to keep my nose out of her romantic life, including this morning on my way out the front door of her house. If I were to give Reid advice at this point, I’d be stepping over the line she’d drawn in the sand. Especially taking into account her decision earlier at the breakfast table.
“Well … I think …” I looked up into his sad blue eyes.
My cell phone started ringing in my coat pocket.
Chapter Twenty-One
“You rang,” I said when Zelda Britton opened the front door of the beautiful, historic, Gothic Revival house in Lead that had been haunted by one particular, extremely persnickety ghost for well over a century.
In my imagination, Prudence the ghost hovered over Zelda’s shoulder, glaring out at me. Make that me and Doc, actually, since he was standing on the porch behind me.
“Violet,” Zelda said, the warmth in her voice taking the chill out of the air. She wore a daisy-covered apron over a black sweater and yoga pants. Her auburn hair was pulled away from her face by a wide headband made from the same daisy-embellished material as her apron. A sprinkle of white powder dusted one of her rosy cheeks while a friendly smile connected both. “It’s so good to see you again.”
A stomach-teasing aroma seeped out around her, luring me to step foot into Prudence’s lair. Zelda must have been baking some kind of sweet bread before we arrived. Cinnamon buns, I hoped. Although my last experience here with her honeybuns still made my cheeks warm. Things in Zelda’s house often had a way of leaving me red-faced.
“Please, come in.” She stood aside, leaving room for us to slip by her. “Both of you.”
“You remember Doc, my boyfriend,” I said, leading the way into the foyer.
“Yes, of course.” She smiled up at him. “He’s awfully hard to forget.”
My heart and soul both agreed with her. I pulled off my gloves and stuffed them into my pockets. I leaned toward the kitchen and sniffed. Definitely a sweet pastry of some sort. Another sniff. Something with apples, maybe, too. My mouth started watering.
Zelda liked to bake. However, her pint
-sized stature and tiny waist made me wonder if she ever ate her own cooking, or if her bear-sized husband, Zeke, enjoyed all of her labors.
“Do you want to take off your coats?” Zelda closed the door behind us. “I just finished drizzling some caramel sauce over my apple dumplings.”
Jackpot!
I licked my lips and spared Doc a glance, checking to see if Prudence was inspiring any cold sweats in my Tall Medium. He and the uppity ghost had a history of switching places, and sometimes not voluntarily on his part. To be honest, I hadn’t been a fan of him coming in here with me this afternoon, and I’d pretty much begged him to wait in my SUV while I found out what had Prudence pawing at the ground since well before dawn. But in response to my pleading, Doc had just kissed my cheek and told me to get my sweet ass out of the vehicle. Then he’d followed me and my sugary buns up onto the wide front porch, knocking on the door for me when I hesitated.
“Do we have time for an afternoon treat?” I asked him. My fingers were crossed all was well on the ghost front, because I really wanted to give Zelda’s dumplings a try.
Doc gave me a slight nod and began unbuttoning his coat. I followed suit, handing my indigo trench coat off for him to hang on the rack next to the door.
We followed Zelda into the living room, where she left us while she went to dish up some plates of apple scrumptiousness. I crossed the plush, cream-colored shag rug that protected the original birch wood floor beneath and pulled aside the sheer window curtains to look out at my SUV.
“Plotting your escape?” Doc asked as he settled into the burgundy leather sofa.
“I think I forgot my cell phone in the car,” I told him. I’d left my purse in there, too. Prudence had a way of distracting me so that I practically forgot my name when she was near.
“You want me to go get them?” he offered.
“No. But maybe lock the doors.”
“This is Lead, remember?”
“I know, but there’s an imp running around out there, not to mention other creatures can pick up my scent from far away.” I scowled out the window. “If that little bugger can tear up the outside of a car like it did, think of the damage if it got inside.”