by Ann Charles
“Like what?” Harvey asked, taking the picture from me. “Just looks like old lady stuff to me.”
I pointed at the detective. “Take Cooper’s outfit.”
Cooper sat back, straightening his tie. “I’m all ears, Parker.”
“Today he’s wearing a button up shirt and tie. No holey T-shirts, no torn jeans, no Harley Davidson emblems. He’s all business. Don’t be fooled, though,” I smirked at Harvey. “He didn’t dress up for us. We don’t rate. He’s dressed up for something going down at work. Something that made him actually iron his collar this morning and pick a tie that has no bullets, handcuffs, or anything else fun or threatening. It’s just a regular navy blue tie.”
Harvey perused Cooper from top to bottom, bending over to tug up the hem of his nephew’s pant leg. “Look, his socks even match.”
“Well done, Parker. If you ever lose your job at Calamity Jane’s, you should try out as one of those fortune tellers at the circus. With your crazy hair, you’d fit right in.”
“Leave my hair out of this.”
“What’s going on at work, Coop?”
The detective shrugged. “This latest death has drawn some unwanted attention. I have a meeting this afternoon, and I need to dress appropriately for our company.”
I wondered whose presence required such a button-up version of Cooper, but I could tell by the rigid expression on the detective’s face that he wasn’t going to share anything more than he already had.
“Do me, do me,” Harvey said, tugging on my arm.
I laughed. “You’re easy, Harvey. Today is like every day for you. You dress for comfort, but you always smell good and make sure to brush your hair and finger comb your beard. I’d say that you’re out to enjoy life but on the lookout for tail.”
“Always on the lookout,” he agreed, his gold teeth showing.
“What about you, Parker?” Cooper asked. “What’s with the flowery, girly dress under that dark red power jacket?”
“It’s a blazer,” I clarified, brushing some lint off the lapel. “I chose it because I was cold. As for the dress, I thought some flowers might look nice today, since it was dreary.”
“She’s lyin’,” Harvey said, tugging my blazer aside. “Look how tight her dress is up top. And her hair is down and loose. She only shows off her wares like this when she’s on the prowl.”
“I’m not on the prowl.” Although, it didn’t hurt to dress to impress the man who took me to the moon and back when we were alone and sans clothing.
“Who are you having lunch with?” Cooper asked.
“A client.” I adjusted my blazer, buttoning a button Harvey’s tug had undone.
My lunch with Doc had almost nothing to do with my choice in clothing today. Well, except that I knew he liked boots. Oh, and he might have mentioned last week how sexy it was when I crossed my legs while wearing a dress. And there was a slight possibility my matching underwear and bra were inspired by the hope that Doc would have a chance to see them today—and then remove them. But that was it.
So what if I was a bit pathetic with this need to see Doc’s eyes light up when he looked at me. After years of living in a no-man land, was it so wrong for me to like having a gorgeous guy stare at me as if I came equipped with a huge flat screen, a zero turn radius lawnmower, and a decked-out barbecue? Not to mention that it had been over a week since we’d last stolen over to his house and enjoyed some time in his bed … and on his stairs. A girl had needs.
“Tell your so-called client that I need to have a chat with him when he has an hour of free time,” Cooper said. “I’ll come to his office.”
I didn’t dignify his assumption with a response.
Instead I picked up the last photo the detective had left on the coffee table. It was a crooked shot of a dresser top with an attached mirror reflecting the flash in the upper corner. I held the picture closer, my nose almost brushing it. “What’s this?” I asked pointing at something that looked to be stuck in the mirror’s edge.
“Look closer,” Cooper said, pulling a magnifying glass out from a drawer in the coffee table.
I took it, did as told, and then gasped, my heart free-falling down a deep, dark hole.
Harvey plucked the photo from my fingers, squinting down at it. “What is it? What do you see? I left my readers at your aunt’s house.”
“Violet?” Cooper asked, waving his hand in front of my tunneling vision. “Are you okay?”
No. I was far from anything even close to okay, but I nodded anyway.
“You should probably continue breathing then.”
I inhaled, gulping much needed oxygen down my windpipe. The darkness that had been rising ebbed but still lapped at the edges of my sight.
“What is it?” Harvey asked again. “What’s got you skittery all of a sudden, girl?”
I pointed at the square picture tucked into the trim around the dresser mirror in the photo and handed him the magnifying glass. “Look.”
Harvey squinted. “I’m lookin’. Who is that? The shape of his head reminds me of …” Harvey stopped. His blue eyes locked onto mine, mirroring my fret and worry.
“It’s Layne,” I whispered.
* * *
“Why would that woman have a picture of your boy?” Harvey asked a half-hour later, his bushy eyebrows scrunched into one long wrinkled caterpillar.
I leaned back into the cushy booth, the whirring of anxiety in my ears blocking out most of the usual lunch time clamor going on around me at Bighorn Billy’s Diner. “I’m more concerned right now about how she got it.”
I remembered when I’d taken that picture in my aunt’s workshop. Aunt Zoe had spent the afternoon with us, teaching the kids how to make blown glass pieces. Both Addy and Layne had made several creations with Aunt Zoe doing the dangerous work, letting the kids choose the material and spin the rods. I’d taken pictures of them and their favorite creations with Aunt Zoe’s old film camera, wanting both kids to have the pictures in hand to remind them of that day long after they were grown and gone.
I’d explained this to Detective Cooper and Harvey. Unsurprisingly, Layne had been the main focus of the remainder of our conversation before Cooper nudged us out the door; he needed to get back to work in time to prepare for his meeting with whatever big wigs had inspired him to wear a tie. Most of the theories of how Ms. Wolff had ended up with that photograph had come from Cooper and Harvey; my brain had been too scattered with fear for my kid to think straight.
Before shutting the door in my face, Cooper had asked me to wait on confronting Layne about whether he knew Ms. Wolff until the detective had dug deeper. Then he’d made my eyebrows shoot to the top of my forehead by suggesting he and I take a tour of Ms. Wolff’s apartment together tomorrow. When his uncle offered to join us, he shook his head without pause, which made me wonder if Cooper had found some other skeleton in one of Ms. Wolff’s closets that he didn’t want his uncle to see.
“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” Harvey’s voice hauled me back to the present. “Like Coop said.”
I stirred sugar into my tea. “You and I both know that’s hogwash.”
“What’s hogwash?” Doc slid into the booth next to me, smelling like fresh air and my favorite woodsy cologne. With my focus mired in worry, I hadn’t noticed him come in.
His hair and shoulders were sprinkled with rain, but his hand was warm when he reached beneath the table and found mine. I laced my fingers through his, resting our hands on my thigh. Today I relished the distraction his warm touch brought, wanting to savor it like hot fudge on vanilla ice cream.
“We just came from Cooper’s place,” I explained.
“Right, the interrogation you told me about last night on the phone.”
Ranted about until his ear rang was more accurate, but there was no need to split hairs.
“Coop found somethin’ of Violet’s in Ms. Wolff’s apartment.”
Doc picked up a menu. “Oh, yeah?”
I stirred my tea some m
ore, adding more sugar. “Yeah. Ms. Wolff had a picture I took of Layne stuck into the trim of her bedroom dresser mirror.”
“What?” Doc lowered the menu. “Layne? Your son?”
“Yep. My son.”
Leaning back, Doc pulled my hand into his lap, tugging me closer. “Did Layne know her?”
“I don’t know.”
Harvey motioned for the waitress to come over. “Coop’s gonna take Violet on another tour of Ms. Wolff’s apartment tomorrow, have her snoop around with him.”
Doc searched my face. “How did you manage to convince Detective Cooper to agree to that?”
“It was his idea.”
His dark gaze narrowed. “Now I’m really worried.”
“Why? You think he has ulterior motives?” I always did, but Doc was usually more of a Polly Positive about Cooper than me and my conspiracy theories.
“No, I’m worried because Cooper usually insists you stay as far away as possible. If he’s offering to take you on a personal tour of the murder site, something is up.”
Yeah, I’d thought that, too. I wasn’t naïve enough to think Cooper had plucked daisy petals and had a change of heart about his overall desire to have me booted from the state.
“Maybe his job is hangin’ from the noose,” Harvey threw out.
“He’s the only detective in the northern hills,” I said. “The chief wouldn’t fire him, would he? You think that’s what this important meeting is today?” It would certainly explain him dressing all spiffy and wanting to share notes.
“Could be.” Harvey waited while the waitress came and took Doc’s drink order. “Or it could be he’s finally figurin’ out he needs some help to solve these murders. The boy always has been a bit anvil-headed. Takes after his mother that way.”
“His mother, huh?” I said, shooting Harvey a crooked grin.
Harvey winked back, then turned to Doc. “Hope you don’t mind me joining you two for lunch. Violet wasn’t fit to be left alone after seeing that picture of Layne.”
“Three’s company,” Doc said.
I sniffed. “I was fine.”
“You were tremblin’.”
“From the cold.”
“How was I supposed to tell the difference with that blazer coverin’ your headlights?”
And yet another reason for me to cover my headlights at every opportunity. “Gee, I don’t know, maybe when I said, ‘Dang, it’s cold in here, why isn’t your heater working?’ you should have caught on.”
“I thought you were makin’ small talk about the weather.”
“When have I ever made small talk with you?”
“When we first met.”
“No, I made small talk with Bessie, your shotgun, until you removed her double barrels from my kisser.”
“What’ll you have, hun?” the waitress interrupted our tennis match.
When we finished ordering, Doc let go of my hand and lowered his palm onto my thigh. His body heat zapped through my dress like it was made of copper. “Tell me about what happened at Cooper’s,” he said, squeezing my leg as encouragement.
For the next ten minutes, I took turns with Harvey catching Doc up on our morning fun. We bounced from the speculation about Cooper’s meeting this afternoon to what we had seen in each picture and why he had shown them to us. Neither of us believed he happened to have a few photos of the crime scene on him and felt like sharing them over tea and biscuits.
Emptying his drink, Harvey excused himself to go see a man about a mule. Finally I sat alone with Doc.
“Are you okay, Violet?”
“Mostly.”
He rubbed my leg reassuringly. “There’s probably some easy explanation for Ms. Wolff having Layne’s picture.”
I puffed my cheeks and blew out a sigh, trying to smile around my anxieties. “I hope you’re right.”
He removed his hand from my thigh, reaching out to snag one of the longer curls twirling down from my temple. “You wore your hair loose.”
“Harvey always tells me that men like women better with their hair down.” The same thing had been said by Doc’s ex-girlfriend, Tiffany, the Jessica Rabbit look-alike who happened to be the inspiration for my boss’s billboard marketing madness. Her sexy ads for a competing real estate company in Spearfish had increased their walk-in traffic by thirty percent according to Jerry’s insider information.
“So,” Doc wound the curl around his finger, “you’re letting Harvey advise you on what to wear now?”
“Only when it comes to dressing to impress.”
One of his dark eyebrows inched up. “Were you out to impress Detective Cooper this morning?”
“I have two recurring goals when in Cooper’s company—to refrain from poking him in the eye with a sharp stick and to stay out of jail.” I shrugged out of my blazer, partly to cool down the furnace growing inside of me thanks to Doc’s nearness, partly with the hope of heating Doc up. “I had someone else in mind while showering this morning.”
“Oh, yeah?” His gaze lowered, eyes darkening as he openly admired the flower garden stretching across my chest. “Nice dress. Pretty daisies.”
“This old thing? I found it in the back of my closet. I’m surprised it still fits after all of these years.” The top gaped more than it used to thanks to gravity sucking some of the air out of my balloons, but push-up bras worked miracles these days.
“I wonder what it looks like when you cross your legs in it.” His hand returned to my thigh, his fingers pulling up the hem until he found bare skin. “Who was on your mind while you were getting all warm and wet?”
The fire I’d been playing with burned in all sorts of interesting places. “Some guy I know.”
“Some guy, huh?” His gaze dipped to my neckline and lower. “You’re wearing a red bra.”
I pulled open the front and peeked down, as if I hadn’t spent too many minutes this morning with him in mind, debating on which bra and underwear to choose. “I guess I am. Are you always so observant?”
Under the table, his hand slid up my thigh. “Matching panties, I’m guessing.”
“What panties?” I lied.
I was too chicken to go commando. I even had added a short satin slip. I’d had bad luck with wrap dresses in the past on windy days. The last thing I needed was a wardrobe malfunction in front of Cooper or my boss. Jerry would want to record it and use it for an online marketing ad.
Doc’s fingers stilled. “You wouldn’t happen to have any free time this afternoon would you?”
“What for?”
“I could use your help.”
“With what?”
“Reminding you who you should be thinking about while you’re in the shower.”
I chuckled. Noticing Harvey weaving his way between the tables, I leaned closer and whispered, “I’d rather go to your place and have a hands-on demonstration with that new soap you bought. What flavor is it?”
Doc sucked a breath in through his teeth. “Peach.”
“Where in the hell’s our food?” Harvey asked, then looked at me, his eyes drifting down to my neckline. He grinned at Doc. “What do you think about that daisy dress of hers?”
Rubbing the fabric on my sleeve between his finger and thumb, he smiled at me, sort of wicked and sexy at the same time. I should practice that in the mirror to see if it had the same heart-sputtering effect on him.
“It’s pretty and soft,” Doc said, his fingers drifting down the skin on my arm. “But I’m more partial to violets.”
Harvey snickered. “Partial to Violet’s what?”
“Order up,” I heard come through the window leading to the kitchen. Thank God.
“Here comes our food,” I said, changing the subject.
The waitress brought our lunch over, distracting Harvey with a bacon cheeseburger and a wag of her hips.
We spent the next fifteen minutes speculating about Ms. Wolff, Layne, and Cooper. The ten minutes after that were filled with Harvey picking Doc’s brain on some
investment opportunities. I took that opportunity to zone out and aimlessly chew on cold French fries, battling a handful of ‘why me’s’ when it came to ghosts, albinos, and retired professional basketball players.
As the waitress collected our plates in exchange for the bill, my cell phone rang. It was Mona.
“Hello?” I said into my phone, nodding at the waitress who wanted to take my plate of half-eaten French fry corpses.
“Violet, where are you?” Mona asked.
“Bighorn Billy’s eating lunch. Why?”
“There’s a gentleman here looking for you. He says he saw your billboard and is interested in talking to you.”
“Great.” I grimaced, imagining what kind of client that billboard would lure. “Is he legit you think?”
“Ah, sure.”
“Is he standing in front of you right now?”
“Yes.”
“Is Ray trying to steal him already?”
“Yes.”
“That asshole! Stall for me. I’ll be there in two shakes.”
Doc left money on the table to cover the bill and then some.
“I owe you,” I said as he helped me out of the booth and handed me my blazer.
“You can find a creative way to repay me, Boots.” His eyes twinkled with a mixture of mirth and lust.
Outside the diner, Doc offered to take Harvey back to Aunt Zoe’s where we’d left his pickup this morning. Then he walked me over to the Picklemobile.
“I was serious about coming over this afternoon.” His eyes admired me from head to toe, then he buttoned up my blazer. “I would like a chance to unwrap that dress and see for myself what’s underneath.”
“What’s in it for me?” I flirted, looking up at him from under my lashes.
He caught my hands and pulled me closer. “More of this.”
He tipped my chin and covered my lips with his, coaxing a moan from me. I pressed into his heat, needing his warmth, his touch, and whatever else he was willing to give to me. When he finished lighting wildfires, he stepped back, his gaze as molten as my insides. “You interested?”