Optical Delusions in Deadwood

by Ann Charles

  A flash of black on the other side the window made me step back. Through the thick lace pattern I spotted Millie, kneeling not twenty feet away with a gardening claw in her hand, a patch of pansies her victim. She was in her usual black woolen outerwear.

  Jeez. The woman was a cold-blooded lizard in sheep’s clothing.

  I glanced back toward the kitchen, but still no Wanda and no water. Turning back to the window, I saw that Millie was no longer alone.

  Lila! Wearing an itsy-bitsy red leather vest and some teeny-weeny matching red shorts, my nemesis stood with her arms crossed, shadowing Millie. Lila’s long, black hair hung loose and wavy down her back. She looked as if she’d walked off the pages of a comic book, all busty and ready to fight crimes. Or commit some.

  I stood up straight, tightened my stomach muscles, and wished the earth would crack open and gulp Lila down.

  As I watched their muted conversation, still waiting for that mythical glass of water, I again wondered what a woman like Lila had seen in Junior Carhart. Was it money? The man had been approaching middle age and still lived at home with his parents. He could have been squirreling away gobs of cash.

  Outside, Millie rose and used her skirt to wipe her hands. She faced Lila, shielding her eyes from the sun, her mouth turned downward at the corners. Lila spoke with grand gestures; by the looks of it, she had a lot to say.

  Maybe Junior had some kind of secret life nobody else knew about. Maybe he was part of some weird cult. Maybe he also had a melted goat-pig tattoo. Who could I ask about that? Millie might know. Or Wanda. They had to have seen him with his shirt off sometime in the last few months before his death.

  On the other side of the lace, Millie stepped closer to Lila. Her mouth moved fast and furious, her hands jabbing the air now, too. Lila grabbed her by the arm and dragged her over next to the house in the slice of shade from the eave. I brushed against the curtain, inching closer to the window so I could continue to watch the sideshow.

  George Mudder would know if Junior had a tattoo. I needed to round up Natalie and take her back to Mudder Brothers, see if she could figure out a way to coax that information out of George. I had a feeling we’d need something more substantial than just a low-cut shirt to loosen his tongue. He didn’t seem interested in Natalie, at least not sexua—

  Holy shit! I gaped out the window at Lila, whose lips now covered Millie’s. What the ... Were they ... Oh, my ... Wait! Was that tongue? Oh yeah, definitely tongue. And groping, too. I winced, unprepared for a girl-on-girl floor show during my lunch hour, especially one involving Millie. Turning away from the train wreck, I found myself face-to-face with Wanda.

  “Here’s your water.”

  Shell shocked from the lip-lock going on outside the window, I took the glass without comment, blushing from my accidental stumble down voyeurism lane.

  “I’ll go get Millie if you’d like.” Wanda seemed oblivious to the peep show on the other side of the glass.

  At my nod, she scurried off.

  When I peeked out the window again, Lila and Millie were nowhere to be seen.

  The sound of an engine starting up drew me to the front window. I peered through the holes in the lace, watching Lila back out of the drive in the sporty red car that matched her sporty red outfit. Watch out, Malibu Barbie, there was a new crazy bitch in town.

  “Mother says you need me,” Millie said to my back.

  I hadn’t heard her enter the room. She must have inherited her mother’s ability to mouse about. I plastered a big smile on my lips that any clown would envy and faced her. “Hello, Millie.”

  She stared at me through those owl glasses for a beat, then glanced at the peep-show window. Her eyes narrowed when they returned to my face. “How long have you been waiting in here?”

  Long enough to need to wash my eyes out with soap. “Oh, just a few minutes.”

  “I didn’t hear you pull in.”

  “I parked on the street. I didn’t want to block Miss Beaumont.”

  “You didn’t call first.”

  “No, I ... uh ... can’t find my cell phone.”

  My cell phone chose that moment to ring, muffled slightly by my purse. What were the odds? Apparently not in my favor.

  “You mean that phone?”

  I laughed, straining to hold eye contact. I sounded like a pinched chicken, so I cut it short. “What do you know? It was in my purse all along.”

  “Go figure.”

  While I pulled out my phone and silenced it with the Off button, Millie hustled over to the window through which I’d watched the unsettling scene and closed the curtains. Her frown lines sank deeper into her skin. “To what do we owe this surprise visit, Miss Parker?”

  I needed something positive to smooth this over. If Millie found out I’d seen her and Lila rubbing tongues together, she might go to Jane and request another agent. And I was too close to selling this puppy to hand it off to Ray so he could swipe my commission. “I may have a buyer for your house.”

  Millie’s eyes widened, lit up. She took a step toward me. “Really?”

  “Yes. But I need some help from you.”

  “What kind of help? More painting?”

  “No, the house looks great, both inside and out. What I need is some information on the history of it.”

  “You mean like the title?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of pictures or stories about whoever lived here before your father bought it.”

  “Well ...” Millie pushed her owl glasses up on her nose. “I think we have a box in the attic that was here when we moved in. I remember seeing it tucked back in a cupboard when I hid up there once.”

  I tried to replace the image of Millie groping Lila’s boob with one of a young girl in long, curly pigtails and thick glasses. “Were you and Junior playing hide and seek?”

  “Junior never played games with me.”

  “Oh. I thought you were talking about hiding from him in the attic.”

  She shook her head. “I was hiding from the old lady.”

  “You mean your mother?”

  “No. The old lady who lives up there. The dead one.”

  * * *

  I cruised back to Calamity Jane’s with an old wooden box sitting on the seat next to me and a new headache jammed between my eyes. The box was locked, the key missing. The headache was manageable—more so since I’d popped some pills and gulped down a grilled chicken burrito I’d grabbed from Taco John’s on the way back to work.

  Doc’s black Camaro sat in its usual spot again. I smiled, glad to have a sliver of my world back to normal. I pulled in next to it and strode toward Calamity Jane’s back door, the midday heat rolling off my back.

  I didn’t know what to do with the dead-lady tale from Millie, who’d refused to go up in the attic and get the box. It reminded me of Jane’s mention at Bighorn Billy’s of the ghost with the slit throat. Were they the same ghostly rumor? Or was Millie’s a different optical delusion?

  I’d had to climb the rickety attic ladder and swim through cobwebs over to the corner Millie had described, finding the box just as she’d remembered—tucked away in a cupboard. No old dead ladies had surfaced, just as I’d suspected. No doubt this was all a figment of Millie’s bored-hermit imagination.

  Back in town, I weaved through a resting herd of shiny Harley-Davidsons leaning on their kickstands, engines ticking as they cooled.

  I still wasn’t sure what to make of that kiss, but more important than what had happened outside that window was why it happened. How long had this been going on between the two women? Since Junior’s death? Before?

  Why were they hiding it? Was it because public displays of homosexuality in small towns like Lead sparked lots of whispers and finger-pointing—kind of like what my ghost-loving reputation brought about? Or was there some other reason? Something darker, more sinister? Since Lila was involved, I wanted it to be something wicked.

  Inside the back door of Calamity Jane’s, cool air ble
w on my hot face. Thank God for air conditioning, I thought, and pulled at my dress to fan my chest.

  I’d spent the last couple of days wondering why Lila had hitched herself to Junior’s wagon. Now I wondered the same about Millie’s wagon. Was it Junior who’d attracted Lila, or had Lila used him to get close to Millie?

  Or was Lila after something else? Something more than just the house’s inhabitants?

  I set the box on my desk.

  “What’s that?” Mona asked.

  “Something I found in the attic.” No need to clarify whose attic.

  “What’s in it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s locked.” I was hoping it contained the answers to all of my questions, or the solutions to my problems. But it was more likely something Pandora had left behind.

  “Are you back for the day?”

  “Sure.”

  Mona stood, closing her laptop. “I have an appointment with a client. Ray is taking a late lunch, so the office is yours.”

  “No problem.” I had a date with a locked box.

  “Douglas Mann called for you.” Mona said it as if I knew the name. “I tried to reach you on your cell, but you didn’t answer. He left his number for you to call.”

  “Who’s Douglas Mann?”

  “You don’t know Douglas? He certainly acted like he knew you, even asked for you by first name.”

  “I have no idea who he is.”

  “He’s a big-wig on the city council up in Lead.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Why would a Lead big-wig be calling me?

  “He’s married to Katrina King-Mann.” Her nose wrinkled. “Well, if you want to call what they have a marriage. It’s more like an agreement on paper, these days.”

  “Should I know Katrina, too?”

  Mona chuckled. “Yes, you should. Her family is old-time big money in Lead. They made their fortune as major shareholders in Homestake Mine. They still own a third of the buildings in Lead and a few in Deadwood, along with ranches out near Mount Rushmore and Custer State Park.”

  “So why is Douglas Mann calling me?” Attention from muckity-mucks couldn’t be good, could it? Not after what I’d done to the Hessler house last month.

  “Call Douglas back and see.” Mona slung her purse over her shoulder. “I’ll be back around four.”

  She started toward the back door and then stopped. “Oh, yeah, Harvey called, too. Said he was going to stop in this afternoon to give you some kind of debriefing.”

  I hoped he was referring to Claudette Perkins’ status and not his preference for mud-wrestling in the buff.

  Mona and her jasmine perfume exited out the back, leaving me alone with a box full of who knew what. I grabbed Ray’s letter opener from his desk drawer and tried to pry open the lock.

  A half hour and two broken nails later, I called Layne and told him to grab his rock hammer and Aunt Zoe’s chisel, hop on his bike, and come visit his mother.

  The front door whooshed open as I hung up the phone. Harvey bustled inside. “Where’s Doc?”

  I threw the now-bent letter opener on my desk. “Next door, I’m betting. In his office.”

  “Well, he should be here any minute. I called him on my way into town and told him we needed to powwow.”

  “He’s probably waiting for us over there.” Harvey didn’t know about Doc’s aversion to Calamity Jane’s. Apparently, I shared office space with a stinky, nasty ghost, although I thought it was probably just the underlying rankness of Ray’s personality that kept setting Doc off.

  “No, he said we couldn’t meet there because he was paintin’ and the fumes were too strong.”

  “Painting?” I wasn’t buying that. He’d painted last month.

  “Yeah, painting—you know that thing you do with a brush?”

  Something was up with Doc. All last month he’d avoided even putting a toe in this office, as if we were growing plague cultures under our desks. I doubted he’d just come waltzing over the threshold now. He must have been blowing Harvey off.

  Harvey lifted the box I’d been trying to break into. “What’s with the box?”

  “I found it in—”

  The sight of Doc pushing open the door and waltzing over the threshold left me gape-jawed, and it had little to do with how his blue jeans and dark green T-shirt hugged him everywhere I wanted to squeeze.

  What the hell?

  I heard him sniff as he approached, but he had me locked in his sights. “Hello, Violet.”

  His gaze raked down my body, trying to take my underwear with it. If Harvey hadn’t been watching, I’d have let them fall.

  “Doc.” I tried not to ogle him like an Elvis groupie.

  “Great dress.”

  I sucked in my gut so fast and hard that I almost cracked a rib. “Oh, this old thing?”

  “Let me know when you two are done wasting hot air,” Harvey interrupted our tête-à-tête. “I only spent half the night gardenin’ in the moonlight with Claudette, sacrificing myself to woo that long-legged widow-maker.”

  Doc’s lazy grin surfaced. “Sacrificing? How noble of you.”

  “Gardening in the moonlight?” I asked. Was he referring to his pit stop at Ms. Geary’s place?

  “Yeah, moonlight gardening.” Harvey hooked his thumbs in his suspenders. “I poked around, digging for the truth while she planted her tulips.”

  Doc coughed laughter into his hand.

  I recoiled. “Oh, God, Harvey. Stop. I just ate.”

  Snorting, Harvey continued. “It took a bit of hard work and sweat, but I got her to spit out who really killed old man Carhart.”

  More coughs from Doc.

  I reached out and snapped one of Harvey’s suspenders. “Knock it off, you dirty old bird, and tell us who.”

  “Well, I could be wrong.”

  “Who?” I snapped again.

  “And I haven’t talked to Coop about it yet.”

  “Good, you shouldn’t.” I wanted to avoid Cooper’s squinty eyes at all costs. “Who was it?”

  “And Claudette had me a little distracted with her tulips when I was askin’.”

  “Only a little?” Doc was still chuckling.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “I’m going to go blind if you don’t hurry up and just spill it.”

  Harvey guffawed. “That’s almost exactly what Claudette said to me last night when we were—”

  “Harvey!”

  “Okay, okay, Miss Prude. Wanda did it.”

  Chapter Eleven

  There are a few things in this life I believe with absolute certainty: the Earth circles the sun, Bugs Bunny will always outsmart Elmer Fudd, and Wanda Carhart doesn’t have the gumption to bash her husband’s head in with a rolling pin.

  “So, let me get this straight,” I said to Harvey, who had planted himself in my desk chair. “Claudette Perkins told you straight up that Wanda murdered her husband.”

  “Yep.”

  “And you worked this so-called admission out of her during sex?”

  He shook his head. “Russell didn’t put out any old flames last night—at least not with Claudette.”

  “Who’s Russell?” Doc asked from where he held down the corner of Ray’s desk.

  Harvey’s two gold teeth gleamed. “Russell, the one-eyed love muscle.”

  Doc laughed outright this time.

  I squeezed the bridge of my nose, trying to keep on task in spite of my mind’s desire to join in the puns and fun. “My point is, Claudette was a bit distracted when she made this accusation.”

  “And busy. She’s a handy girl.”

  “Really?” Doc said. “She sounds a little mouthy to me.”

  I grinned at Doc, who winked back at me and waited for Harvey to stop wheezing before he continued. “She was distracted, and yet you believe her?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the night before Wanda smashed in her old man’s skull, Old Man Carhart had asked Claudette to go to Florida with him.”

&nbs
p; That made me blink. “On vacation or to move there?”

  “I doubt it was to get their picture taken with Mickey Mouse.” Harvey leaned back. “According to Claudette, Carhart said something like, ‘I’m gonna take that dipshit’s money and we’re going to leave these hills for good.’ One day later, Carhart was dead.”

  Doc crossed his arms over his chest. “What makes you think Carhart was referring to Wanda?”

  “Wanda has a nest egg that only one other person besides Claudette knew about, and now he’s pushing up posies.”

  “She does?” And here I’d figured Wanda had needed to sell the house for financial reasons.

  “Turns out some old maid aunt of hers died last fall and left Wanda everything. Claudette doesn’t know how much ‘everything’ adds up to, but Carhart seemed to think it was enough to pay for a nice retirement in Florida—for two.”

  Claudette’s story sounded hackneyed to me. I needed a second opinion from someone who hadn’t been dipping his toes—and then some—into the witness pool. “Doc, do you believe Claudette’s story?”

  He rubbed his neck. “I’m not sure. I haven’t met either woman. I only know what the newspapers said, which included nothing about an inheritance and adultery. Do you believe her?”

  “I don’t know.” My gut still sided with Wanda’s innocence, but my brain toed the line.

  Harvey snorted. “Well, while you two hem and haw, I’m gonna keep an eye on Wanda.”

  “So, Claudette—and now you—think Wanda found out and snapped?”

  “Yep. After puttin’ up with all of his steppin’ out and abuse over the years, Wanda probably didn’t need much of a nudge. A rolling pin would’ve just about evened the score for her.”

  “But Wanda’s a church mouse.”

  “Little critters bite, too.”

  Maybe so, but they didn’t bash skulls. “Do you think Cooper knows about this?”

  “I’m guessin’ so,” Harvey said. “Coop’s no bumblin’ gumshoe.”

  I tossed the hot potato back to Doc. “But didn’t the paper say the police had confirmed Junior was the killer?”