by Ann Charles
Harvey twisted his beard on that for a few moments and then held up his finger. “How about this?” he said to Freesia. “After we leave, you go inside and unlock the living room window and leave it that way all night. Come morning, you go back in and lock the window.”
Freesia smiled. “I can do that.” She’d lowered her voice and added, “Just be careful about touching stuff. Detective Cooper and Detective Hawke have been in there so many times they’d probably notice if anything has been moved.”
Harvey and I promised to keep our hands in our pockets and walked out on the front porch in time to run into Hawke.
“Parker, I need to talk to you,” he said as a greeting.
His use of my last name reminded me of Cooper, which made my hackles all uppity.
“Gotta run,” I said, racing past him down the front steps. “Give Detective Cooper my love,” I added over my shoulder.
“You can’t keep avoiding me,” he hollered after me.
Until he had a warrant to drag me in for questioning, I sure could.
Harvey and I had hopped into the Picklemobile and sputtered down the road, calling Doc along the way to fill him in on our plan.
“Violet,” Doc whispered, nudging me back to the present. “Come on, we don’t have all night.” He laced his fingers together holding his palms out for me to use as a step. “Climb up.”
I glanced toward the trees, half expecting to see Cooper crashing through them like Bigfoot’s kissing cousin. “Maybe we should go play some slots at one of the casinos, test our luck there instead of here.”
He stood up. “This was your idea, remember?”
“I know. I know.”
“Don’t go chickening out on me now.”
“I’m trying not to.”
“Would you feel better about doing this if your bodyguard was here with us?”
“No. He might accidentally shoot one of us in the ass.”
“There’s always that risk with Harvey.” Doc bent over and laced his fingers again. “Come on, Tiger, up and in.”
Sighing, I did as he asked, using his hands as a step. He lifted me up and into the open window.
Even darker shadows waited inside the apartment window. I tried to be careful not to make many sounds as I pulled myself inside, keeping my grunts and curses under my breath. I had one leg over the sill when my sweaty palm slipped off the ledge and I tumbled onto the living room floor with a muffled thump-thump-thump. By the time I’d untangled my limbs and figured out what had happened, Doc had already hoisted himself inside with more grace than I could muster even in my prime.
He smiled down at me in the shadows. “Nice landing, Maxwell Smart. I hope you remembered to mute your shoe phone.”
“Showoff,” I whispered, taking the hand he offered to help me to my feet.
While I made sure my arms and legs were still bending the right way, he leaned out the window, crooking his neck to check the front of the house again.
“Still clear,” he closed the window and turned toward me.
“What about ghosts?”
He sniffed, and then inhaled slowly. “That’s weird.”
“What?”
He sniffed again, but shook his head. “Never mind.” He walked over to the wall and clicked on his flashlight. “Holy shit, look at all of these clocks.”
“I told you she had a fetish.” I didn’t relish looking at all of Ms. Wolff’s freaky clocks in the dark, but we didn’t have much choice since the Deadwood Police Department still wasn’t allowing anyone other than cops into the apartment.
Tiptoeing across the floor, I winced with each step. The boards under the carpet seemed excessively squeaky tonight.
He shined his flashlight around. “She really was obsessed.”
I pointed at the clock with the wolves on the attack. “This one wasn’t working when I was here with Cooper.”
He focused the beam on it. “This isn’t your normal Black Forest clock design.”
“I know. It’s super creepy, right?”
“Yeah.” His light beam moved up over the ticking clocks. “All of them are eccentric and macabre. The times are set differently, as Harvey and you said. I wonder why.”
“You think Harvey’s right? That she liked clocks, not necessarily caring about the actual time?”
Doc moved his light beam over several more, his profile thick with shadows. “How come so many of them are still working?” he said more to himself than me.
“What do you mean?”
His frown lines looked extra deep thanks to the shadows. “Didn’t you say there were no batteries in the back of the one Cooper took off the wall?”
“Yes.”
“If they’re on a winding mechanism, I’d expect the clocks to come to a stop. But all of these clocks are ticking away and it’s been a week since Ms. Wolff died.”
“Maybe Cooper has a cop in charge of winding duty.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. There’s no way Cooper would want any of his guys messing with potential evidence.”
“You think there’s something in these clocks that helps explain what happened to Ms. Wolff?”
“Hard to tell.” Doc reached high, pulling one off the wall that was striking the top of the hour. “Check out this one.”
I grimaced, glancing over my shoulder, feeling as if Cooper were going to pop onto the scene and chew Doc out. “Be careful.”
He aimed his light on the spinning part as it circled slowly, spotlighting a bear-like beast with long fangs chasing down a little girl who was on the ground backing away.
I shivered at the scene. “These clocks and this place are really eerie in the dark.” I moved closer to Doc. “Is there anything in here with us?” I whispered.
“It’s standing right next to you.”
I almost leapt into his arms right there and then, clock be damned. “What? Where?”
He chuckled as he lifted the nasty beast clock and hung it back in place. “I was kidding, Violet.”
“Not funny.” I punched him in the arm.
“Sorry.” I could hear the grin in his voice. “I find it interesting that you’re so skittish after all you’ve been through.”
“It’s all that I’ve been through that has taught me to be so skittish.”
Doc gave the wall of clocks one last head shake. “Show me where you found her body?”
I led him over near the old-fashioned phone and pointed at the floor. “Right there, and the head had rolled under that end table.”
Doc bent down and peered under the table. He sniffed and stared down at his hands for several seconds.
“What is it?” My gaze darted to the dark corners. “Do you sense something coming?”
“It’s already here.”
“I told you that’s not funny.”
“I’m serious this time.” He stared over his shoulder toward the shadowed hallway that led toward the front door. “But for some reason it’s keeping its distance from me. That’s a first for me. Usually they seek me out.”
“Can you actually see it?”
“No, not even the blur I can sometimes pick up. But I keep catching hints of it. Something tells me it’s hiding over by the door.”
Hiding? Was it scared? Was it trying to sneak up on us? “You think it’s Ms. Wolff?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because the tones I’m picking up aren’t typical for an older ghost, especially not a woman. It’s more pungent, musty.” He inhaled again. “Like fermenting sauerkraut.”
Was it me? I’d been sweating bullets since we’d parked up the road, drips rolling down my back before we’d even gotten out of Doc’s car. I sniffed my armpits. Nope, my antiperspirant was still doing its job. Damn, I’d sooner it have been me than the alternative.
“Who else would be in here with us?” I squinted into the dark hallway, trying to catch a movement even though I was a dud in the ghost-detection mine field.
He stood and shin
ed his flashlight into the hall. “Who knows? It’s an old house.”
I wondered if it were one of the previous murder victims. I imagined the Headless Horseman holding a shriveled pumpkin head. The boom of thunder outside made me gasp and jerk.
I rubbed shoulders with Doc—well, my shoulder, his elbow due to his height. “Maybe we should try this again on a less dark and stormy night.”
He squeezed my hand. “Show me the bedroom, wimpy.”
“Why not? It’s where we usually end up.”
“I beg to differ, Boots. You have only recently moved to my bed after gracing my office and stairwell a few times first.”
I kept him close to me as we made our way into Ms. Wolff’s bedroom. I motioned him over to the closet and slowly opened the door, afraid something would reach out, grab me, and pull me back in with it. No monsters waited for me inside.
“There are the styrofoam heads,” I pointed my light up at them.
“What’s in the hat boxes?”
“Just hats.” I ran my fingers along the dresses and shirts and sweaters hanging along the walls. “Notice how many dresses she had and all of the different styles.”
“What about them?”
“Don’t you think it’s weird?”
“Should I?”
“Yes. This isn’t normal.” I shined my light at the shoes lining the floor, running the beam along the toes. For a moment, I thought I saw something moving in one, my pulse skipping a beat, but then realized it was a dust bunny.
“Where’s the picture of Layne?” Doc asked.
I led the way to the dresser. “There.” I pointed at Layne’s photo, which was still jammed into the edge of the mirror where Cooper had insisted I leave it. “It’s unnerving.”
“No, the wall of clocks are unnerving. This here is spine-chilling.” Doc stood staring in the mirror for much longer than I figured he would. Then he bent his knees and lowered himself to my eyelevel, still looking at the mirror.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Checking to see if I can figure out what Ms. Wolff saw when she looked in this mirror.”
I bumped him aside and centered myself in front of it. “She saw that dresser over there, the bed, and the door.”
Doc walked over to the doorway. “How much of me can you see?”
“From mid-thigh to your chin.”
“Look at Layne’s picture.”
I did. “Okay.”
“What’s reflected in the mirror when you look next to where his picture is placed?”
“The dresser.”
“All of it?”
“No, just the top three drawers. The bed blocks the rest.”
Doc moved over and opened the third drawer down, then the second, then the first, sorting through each as he went. “Just clothes,” he said and sounded unhappy about it.
Then I remembered Cooper standing in the same spot and something he’d pointed out.
“Open the top drawer again,” I told Doc. “No, all of the way and look at the back of the drawer.”
He did, shining his flashlight in the drawer. “What’s that?”
He’d found the weird writing. “Now step aside,” I said, “but keep your flashlight beam on it.”
He moved. When he adjusted his beam of light, I gasped.
“What do you see?” he asked me.
I leaned closer to the mirror, squinting to read the words. “Maybe it’s a message.”
“What’s it say?”
“I don’t know. It looks like German or maybe some Slavic language.” His flashlight beam bobbed. I turned and saw him holding his phone with one hand while shining the light with the other.
“There,” he said, double-checking the picture before stuffing his phone back into his pocket. “I can upload it to my laptop, reverse the image, try to figure out what it says.”
I turned back to the mirror, frowning down at the picture of my son. “Do you think Ms. Wolff set all this up on purpose?”
He came up behind me, meeting my eyes in the mirror. “I don’t know. Are you sure you’d never met her before?”
“I don’t remember her face, but I’ve seen a lot of people since moving up here.” I stepped back, leaning against him. “Why would she leave me a message?”
Had she known someone was coming for her? She had told me she didn’t have long when she phoned that fateful day. Had she had enough time to plant this clue and write her message between the time she called and my arrival? Or had she set that up before she called, figuring on it being insurance if I didn’t get to her before they did.
Maybe the message wasn’t even for me. Maybe she put Layne’s picture there to remind herself where she’d left her note. If that was so, why use Layne’s picture?
Doc wrapped his arms around me. “I don’t know. Until we figure out what the message says, we’re guessing at best.”
I glanced over at the bookshelf. “Did you find anything in the book Cooper gave me to read?”
“All kinds of interesting historical information on Deadwood, but nothing in particular, and not a mention about Ms. Wolff.”
He’d beat me to my next question, so I moved on to the final one. “So what now?”
“Let’s get out of here before someone sees my car parked down the street and Cooper shows up at the door spitting nails at us. We’ll figure out what this message says after I can play with it on the computer and maybe have more answers.” He kissed the top of my head and then snagged my hand and pulled me out of the bedroom and across the living room.
He didn’t have to pull hard. This place felt like death tonight, all dried up and hollow, bones rattling. I wanted to get back to the land of the living.
“Oh, and one more thing,” he said after opening the window.
“What’s that?”
“About the séance—”
“You don’t want to do it anymore?” I interrupted, my fingers crossed behind my back.
“I want to change the setting for it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Instead of having it in Cornelius’s hotel room, I want to see if we can find a way to have it here.”
“Here?” I looked over at the wall of creepy clocks ticking away, the floor where Ms. Wolff’s body had lain in a gnarled heap, the shadow-filled corners. “Why here?”
Doc shined his flashlight toward the dark hallway. “Because our ghostly visitor is still hiding over there and I want to know why.”
* * *
Monday, October 8th
“You look like something old Red hacked up,” Harvey said to me as he settled into the passenger seat of Jerry’s Hummer. Old Red was his lazy yellow dog out at the ranch who only moved to get closer to his food dish these days.
“Good morning to you, too, buzzard-breath.” I shifted the Hummer into reverse and backed out of Doc’s driveway. The beast drove like a tank.
Since I was picking up Dickie and Honey and taking them out to Harvey’s ranch, Jerry had insisted I use his fancy rig. He’d also sent me home to change after seeing my sensible brown boots and capri corduroy pants. I thought I looked nice but practical, since we might be traipsing around in the mud at Harvey’s ranch after last night’s storm. Jerry thought I needed more pink and white and a lot less brown, as in none. He also suggested a silky neck scarf to add a Grace Kelly flare to my ensemble. I was surprised he even knew who Grace was since she hadn’t played any professional sports.
“You catch any shuteye last night?” Harvey said, leaning close to look me over. His hair was damp and wavy. I could smell Doc’s sandalwood-scented soap on him.
“Not really.”
I’d tossed and turned about the message on the back of Ms. Wolff’s dresser drawer. Until Doc could decipher it and we figured out if the message was for me or for someone else, I doubted I’d be slumbering peacefully anytime soon. The shy ghost hiding in her apartment hadn’t helped with my sheep-counting woes either. The topper of my middle-of-the-night anxie
ties, of course, was the séance Doc swore he was dead serious about having in her apartment. My problems with Rex didn’t stand a chance of elbowing to the front of my worry line-up against last night’s excitement.
“Your peepers look like they’re covered with red spider webs. And look at those dark bags underneath.” He pinched my cheek.
I batted his hand away. “What’d you do that for?”
“Your cheeks are pale.”
“I’m a natural blonde. Pale skin comes as part of the package deal.”
“You look like one of those zombies hanging out at the Opera House last month before you went and screwed up their play.”
I hadn’t screwed up anything. It wasn’t my fault that a bitchy white-haired sprite with a fetish for spikey stuff had gone on a killing spree and taken out part of the cast.
“You are doing wonders for my ego, old man.”
“Well, the scarf sure looks purty. Is that warm and fuzzy enough for ya, or do you need me to write ya a love poem?”
“I’m allergic to poetry.” After my coworker, Ben, had played Shakespeare this past summer and had tried to woo me with a slew of Roses are Red sonnets and flower bouquets, I’d changed my standards when it came to romance. These days, a thick steak and a cold bottle of beer were good enough.
Rolling to a stop in front of the hotel where Dickie and Honey were staying, I snapped one of Harvey’s suspenders. “Promise you’ll be polite in front of my guests.”
“Of course I’ll be polite. My mamma didn’t raise me to be an addle-headed coot.”
“And that you won’t talk about sex, guns, and prostitutes or your history with loose women and kissing cousins.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Shucks, girl. All that leaves us to chew on all day is a bunch of fiddle faddle.”
“And that you’ll keep quiet about all of the body parts and weird discoveries going on at your place.”
His chin jutted. “I thought these folks wanted to hear the juicy stuff. That’s what makes good TV.”