by Ann Charles
I called Doc before leaving, but he didn’t answer. Nor was the Picklemobile in the parking lot when I arrived at work.
When I’d finally had a moment on my own last night after the kids had fallen asleep, we’d shot a few texts back and forth—him to make sure my sister hadn’t planted her pitchfork in my heart, me to apologize again for rushing him out the door. He hadn’t mentioned anything about an appointment this morning, but then again I wasn’t his secretary.
I parked between Mona’s SUV and Ben’s Subaru and hustled through the slushy aftermath of last night’s not-quite two inches. The weatherman had been off on snowfall totals, but I was happy to forgive him since his error was in my favor.
I caught whiffs of Mona’s jasmine perfume as I hung up my coat. The sound of her clacking fingernails on her keyboard echoed down the hall.
I walked straight to the coffee pot, saying my good-mornings to Mona and Ben as I poured brain juice into my cup. The nightmares had been in the bedroom along with my kids last night. Lucky for the three of us, I hadn’t woken up mid-scream as I had two nights prior.
“You look nice today, Violet,” Ben told me. Unlike Jerry, when Ben gave a compliment, it was just that—a plain old compliment. No advice on hair styles, suggestions on color coordination, or talk about including buttons on my ensemble.
I smiled across at him as I sat down behind my desk. “Thanks, Ben. I like that color of blue on you. It looks nice with your eyes.” Usually, Ben’s eyes were two different colors, but today he had his blue contact in place. It was hard to believe he shared DNA with a horse’s ass. His brown hair appeared to have been trimmed lately and neatly combed with a hint of gel.
“Are you ready for another week of filming in haunted houses?” Ben and I would be taking turns standing in front of the camera when the crew from Paranormal Realty came back to town.
He glanced toward Jerry’s empty office. “Not really,” he grinned and added, “but I’m looking forward to seeing Honey again.”
I did a double take. “Only Honey?” Unlike her name sounded, Honey wasn’t blonde and super sweet. She reminded me more of Cher back when Sonny was singing at her side, only with less rainbow and sequin-covered clothing.
Ben smirked, reminding me a little of his uncle. “I guess Dickie, too. And that buff camerawoman, what was her name?”
“Rosy.” As in The Riveter. At least that’s how I remembered her and her beefy arms from lugging that camera all over the place.
“Isn’t Honey involved with Dickie?” Mona asked, tucking a loose wave of her red hair behind her ear. Her chignon this morning looked stylish, along with her yellow mohair sweater and green silk scarf.
With a shrug, Ben said, “She didn’t act like it the night we went out for drinks.”
“Interesting.” I wondered if Dickie knew about Honey and Ben’s drink date. “He acted like she belonged to him on set.” Or maybe I’d misread the way he bossed her around.
“Not everything is always as it seems, Vi.” Mona said as she clacked away.
Something in Mona’s tone gave me pause. “Are you referring to yourself and someone with really big shoes?”
The clacking stopped.
Several weeks ago I’d walked into Jerry’s office and caught him in the midst of bending Mona backwards while the two of them were temporarily attached at the lips. The heat between them prior to that day had often made my curls smolder. The sparks since their steamy kiss nearly singed my eyelashes off whenever I got too close to the flames dancing around the two of them.
These days, however, both seemed to be cooling off in a pool of denial, avoiding touching each other to the point of it being almost comical.
Mona’s eyes narrowed above her rhinestone-rimmed reading glasses. “I’m referring only to Honey, little Miss Busybody.”
I chuckled.
The three of us delved into our work then, happy as shoe-making elves until Ray Underhill joined us.
Ray was looking extra Oompa-Loompa-like this morning with his fake tan a seemingly brighter shade of orange than usual. His brown hair matched his personality—slick and greasy.
“Morning, Ben,” he said to his nephew as he stepped into the front office. “Looking tight in that sweater, Red,” he gave Mona and her curve-hugging sweater a thumbs up. As for me, I received a wrinkled upper lip and an eyeful of sneer.
Ray and I shared plenty of sparks, too. Only ours were followed up with rude gestures and crude insults.
His lack of love was fine and dandy with me this morning. I had two clients who’d be arriving shortly to check out Cooper’s place and a few other potentials. I’d rather not be foaming at the mouth when they walked through the door.
“Where’s Jerry?” Ray asked, plopping down in his chair. He kicked back and rested his fancy Tony Lama cowboy boots on his desk. With the boss away, Ray was off the leash.
“How should I know?” Mona snapped, surprising the three of us into silence for a couple of clock ticks.
“Whoa, there Red. You better dial it back a couple of notches before the big boss man arrives.” He snickered, digging between his teeth with his pinkie nail. “You’re starting to sound like Jane used to when husband number three had her panties twisted up tight about banging that younger woman in her bed.”
The white board hanging on the wall behind Ray fell off with a loud crash. I jerked in surprise, sloshing coffee on my desk. Before I could register what had happened, Ray tipped backward so far in his seat that his chair flipped over, sending him tumbling across the floor into the baseboard.
“Uncle Ray!” Ben was the first to break the silence that followed. He rushed over to help his uncle stand. “Are you okay?” he asked, brushing off Ray’s back.
I pinched my lips together, trying not to laugh.
“What in the hell happened?” Ray asked, kicking at his chair like it had bucked him on purpose. “What did you do to my chair, Blondie?”
“Me?” A giggle escaped my lips when I opened them.
“Violet didn’t touch your chair, sunshine,” Mona said, barely holding back a grin of her own. “You can blame gravity for that.”
“It wasn’t gravity, Red.” Glaring at me, Ray pulled his chair out and sat in it, gingerly tipping back, testing. “I wasn’t anywhere close to tipping over. It was like somebody came up behind me and yanked on it.”
I held up my hands. “I was sitting here the whole time, I swear.”
His scrunched face looked even uglier than usual. I waved off his nonverbal accusation.
“It’s like the screws were ripped out of the wall,” Ben said, checking out the white board that had crashed to the floor before Ray had joined it. “Look, it even took chunks of plaster with it.”
Since the building housing Calamity Jane Realty had been built sometime back in the late 1800s, the walls were made of old plaster and lath. I joined Ben by the white board, dodging several crumbles of plaster spread across the floor.
Back when Jane, our old boss and Jerry’s ex-wife, had been alive, she’d had two white boards fastened to the wall side by side. I’d knocked the other one down by throwing a stapler at it months ago, but it hadn’t torn plaster from the wall when it had fallen.
“See what I mean?” Ben pointed at the top of the white board. “It’s even a little bent right here.” He glanced at his uncle and then Mona. “Do either of you happen to know if it was bent when Jane first hung it, whenever that was?”
Mona fiddled with her glasses’ chain. “It was brand new, remember, Ray? You gave Jane trouble about having two white boards, making a bet with me that you’d be the first to fill it with your sales.”
Ray chuckled, his gaze lost in yesteryear. “Yeah, Janey-girl reminded me of that bet many times over the years.”
I ran my fingers over the slight crease in the aluminum edging. What if … I frowned, thinking back to a couple of weeks ago when Doc had been in here with me. He’d sensed a presence in Jerry’s office that wasn’t the normal nasty gh
ost, the one that always made Doc pale and sweaty when he hung around Calamity Jane’s too long. He had told me Jane was back, and I’d believed him in a “Sure, if you say so” sort of way.
Now my gaze traveled from one corner of the office to the next. Had Jane been responsible for the white board’s demise and Ray’s tumble? Hadn’t Ray been criticizing Jane right before the whole crash-and-roll happened?
Was Jane’s presence in the building why Jerry had been working at Mona’s desk yesterday? Had something happened in his office, driving him out under the bright fluorescent lights?
I dragged my eyes from the coffeemaker area and found Mona watching me with a searching gaze. Mona saw too much most days. I wasn’t sure how she’d take my announcement that the ghost of Jane was roaming the office, so I pinned a smile on my cheeks.
“Hmmm, that’s kind of odd,” I said to nobody in particular, heading back to my chair. For the next minute or so, I shuffled papers, keeping my focus on my desktop until my three coworkers returned to their usual routines.
My clients from Pierre walked through the front door five minutes early, but I was ready to escape with them. We left their car in the parking lot behind Calamity Jane’s, and I drove them up to Cooper’s blue bungalow in Lead. Harvey had promised he’d be gone when we got there and would leave fresh baked goodies in his wake, and he’d delivered on his word with blue-ribbon brownies.
We left a crumb trail as we toured room to room, admiring the black leather furniture, wood accents, and clean white walls. Harvey had been kind enough to remove all of his nephew’s gun-related magazines and art so as not to let them know how obsessed the current owner was with his firearms.
After the initial walkthrough, I stepped outside to let the friendly couple get a feel for the place without me in it. I was shivering on Cooper’s front steps when a familiar black Jaguar pulled to a stop at the curb out front.
A double-take later, I stormed down the sidewalk to the man climbing out of the fancy car.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” I spit out, doing my best to zap Rex Conner clear to Mars with my glare.
The wind rippled through his blond hair. A casual passerby would never guess what a heartless bastard was hiding behind Rex’s classically handsome looks. His tan wool coat probably cost a month’s worth of child support, his ritzy leather shoes more like two or three.
He ignored my growling and pawing at the ground. “Did you get the message I left with your boss yesterday?”
I didn’t answer, jutting my chin at him instead.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“You need to leave.”
“But I just arrived.”
“I mean leave the Black Hills.”
“Sorry, sweetheart, but I can’t. I’m here on a grant. Our project is going to take at least a year up at the lab.”
Son of a bitch! It sucked that the Homestake Gold Mine here in Lead was such a prime location for scientists from all over the world to congregate. Why couldn’t someone dig a deep hole somewhere else for them to perform their underground experiments? It was just my luck that Rex would be one of those scientists.
Rex’s career specialty was a mystery to me. I didn’t bother to ask for details on his profession, because I didn’t want to know anything about his life. Anything at all. In fact, I preferred to be on an “Is he still breathing or not” level of information and that was it. Unfortunately, the jerkwad was standing three feet away from me, breathing without a problem.
I stepped closer to him. “I’m not your sweetheart. Call me that again, and I will relocate your testicles to the back of your throat right behind your uvula.”
He had the gall to smile, the asshole. “I really like this new Violet. She’s so feisty and hot, nothing like the shy virgin I deflowered back in college.”
I sighed in disgust. “Newsflash, dickhead. I hadn’t been a virgin for years by the time I met you, so you can flush that deflowering fantasy of yours down the toilet.”
One blond eyebrow raised. “You acted virginal.”
“It was called role-playing. It went with the stupid outfits you insisted I wear.”
His smile widened. “That’s right. My sexy young assistant in a lab coat and horn-rimmed glasses.”
Before he could finish that sordid flashback, I interrupted him. “Find a different Realtor.”
He faked a pout. “But I want you.”
“I’m not available.”
“According to your boss you are.”
“He’s confused.”
His face tightened. “Violet, you know I’ll leave you be as soon as you follow through on the favor I requested.”
“It wasn’t a request, more like emotional blackmail.”
The sound of his phone ringing interrupted his reply. He pulled it out of his coat pocket and read the number, then answered.
I stepped away to give him some privacy, hoping he was being called away on an emergency at the McMurdo research station down at the South Pole. Before I’d made it too far away, he hung up and pocketed his phone.
“Violet.”
“Go away, Rex.”
“I told you, that’s not an option.”
“Then we have nothing left to say.” I started toward Cooper’s house, fingers crossed my clients hadn’t been watching the fireworks display going on outside of the front window.
“You will find some legitimate housing options for me,” he said to my back. There was an underlying threat in his tone.
I turned to glare at the pompous jerk. “Or what?”
“Trust me, Violet. You don’t want to find out.”
Chapter Four
The thing about Deadwood was that in the century-plus since Wild Bill, Seth Bullock, and Calamity Jane had strolled the streets, the town hadn’t changed all that much. Sure it had evolved into the modern age with indoor plumbing and electricity, but the gambling halls, saloons, and street fights still kept the town rootin’ and tootin’. While visitors now shopped the souvenir stores instead of the brothels, and slot machines lined the floors once dotted with faro and poker tables, the local character remained as true blue as the mile-high sky. Even better, there was plenty of hard liquor to smooth the sharp edges when a no good, low-down, egotistical bastard came riding into town packing lies and threats.
Unfortunately, I was still about an hour away from the bottle of tequila sitting on top of Aunt Zoe’s fridge, and Rex’s parting shot had blown my inner calm all to hell.
Giving my Pierre buyers a moment alone to chat about the final stop on my tour of potential homes this afternoon—a quaint pink house with fancy gingerbread gable ornaments and shutters etched with ribbon-curls—I stepped outside and pulled my phone from my coat pocket. I needed to talk to the girl who’d had my back since second grade when my front teeth had come in big and ugly, and Bradley Jedinski had kept calling me Bucky Parker in the recess yard and pulling my pigtails. That was the year Natalie had taught me how to land a punch. It was also the year I’d learned how easy it was to break a bully’s nose.
Natalie picked up on the third ring. “Beal’s Mule Barn.”
I chuckled and played along. “I need to talk to the head ass.”
“Are you looking to do some ass kissing or ass kicking?”
A horn honked long and loud, drowning out my answer. I looked toward the end of the drive and groaned at the sight of a white Deadwood Police SUV idling there. “Speaking of asses.”
The passenger side window rolled down and Detective Stone Hawke waved me over.
“Shit.” I blew out a cloud of steam in the chilly air. First Ray, then Rex, and now Detective Hawke. “Today must be bring-an-asshole-to-work day.”
“What’s going on, Vi?” Natalie’s voice came through the line.
“Hold on a minute,” I said, taking her with me to heed Detective Hawke’s beckoning. “I want you to hear this in case I need a witness at the trial.”
“What trial?”
“The on
e I’ll be attending after I finish assaulting and battering our favorite detective.”
“What’s Coop doing now?”
“Not Cooper. The other bigger pain in the butt.”
I’d reached the SUV. “I’m busy, Detective.” I pointed my thumb back over my shoulder. “My clients are inside. What do you need?” Besides a haircut and a frontal lobotomy?
“Detective Cooper is looking for you,” he shouted through the open window.
I wasn’t sure I believed him. If Cooper wanted to talk to me, he would have called my cell phone and barked me up a tree. “Why is Detective Cooper looking for me?”
“You’re a suspect in a murder case,” he hollered even louder.
Jeez-o-peets! Why didn’t he bring a megaphone along so he could yell that loud enough for the tourists down on Main Street to hear?
“Shhhh!” I glanced back toward the pink house, making sure the bozo hadn’t just lost me my potential buyers.
“You need to stick around town,” Hawke told me what I already knew from my previous adventures as a Usual Suspect on Cooper’s case board.
I rested my forearms on the window sill, staring in at his pork chop sideburns and wary eyes. Detective Hawke often reminded me of that old show, The Rockford Files. He’d have fit right into the cast with his bulky shoulders, seventies era hairstyle, and outdated corduroy suit jackets.
“Why?” I purposely played dumb, calling his bluff.
“I need to know your whereabouts the night of Wanda Carhart’s murder.”
Ah ha! That’s what this little visit was all about. Detective Hawke hadn’t listened to Cooper about playing the waiting game before coming at me with his suspicions. I’d expect a detective who’d been around a long time to know better. Then again, I knew the truth about Hawke’s climb up the career ladder, which included backstabbing Cooper, aka his ex-partner, more than once when they had worked down in Rapid City.