by Ann Charles
“You let me win,” Cooper told her. “It’s a draw.”
“What about the bet?”
“I’ll forget about the wipers, but you owe me a trip to the shooting range.”
She patted his shoulder in a totally friendly manner, no stroking or flirty touching. “Sounds fair.”
“And Parker was right—it’s more fun to shoot with a friend so I’ll expect you to join me.”
“I’m not as talented with a gun as I am a pool stick.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire! Natalie’s grandpa had taught her all about guns and shooting while she was still in a training bra.
“That’s okay.” He placed the sticks on the rack. “I’ll teach you how to squeeze and not yank.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked Doc. Was it another double-entendre?
“It’s a line from one of Coop’s favorite movies, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man.”
“The one with Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson?”
“Damn, Boots. Killer curves and you know your action movies.” Doc whistled low, flattering. “How’s a guy supposed to stand a chance around you?”
I pretended to shoot him in the heart and then blew on the tip of my finger.
“Tomorrow after lunch.” The sound of Cooper’s voice behind me made me lower my fake gun.
“What’s tomorrow after lunch?” Doc asked.
“You two meet me at Wolff’s apartment.” Cooper slipped on his black leather coat.
He must have had enough ghosts and girls for one night. “Are we going inside?”
His steely gray eyes met mine. “That depends.”
“On what?” I would have promised to be on my best behavior, but I doubted he’d buy what I was selling.
“If I can figure out how to slip you two past the patrol unit Detective Hawke has on surveillance 24/7 outside the Galena House.” He looked up at Doc. “Sorry to ruin the party, but I need a ride home.”
“Have a little too much whiskey tonight, Detective?” I asked, holding up my own empty glass. I’d sure had plenty of rum.
He looked over his shoulder at where Natalie was talking to some dark haired guy over at the bar. “As Carl Sandburg once said, ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if the women don’t get you then the whiskey must.’” He grabbed his glass off the edge of the pool table and downed the last of the amber liquid in one smooth gulp. “Prudence got to me earlier, now it’s the whiskey’s turn.”
* * *
Saturday, November 17th
The Galena House loomed tall and alone, looking down on the road. As I stood at the end of the cobblestone walk leading up to the porch, a single ray of sunshine broke through the clouds and spotlighted the Italianette-style Victorian building. For a moment, the old boarding house appeared almost elegant.
Almost.
But I knew that the cornices were crumbling, the shingles were worn, and the paint was beginning to peel. The old gal needed a facelift, but her owner didn’t have stacks of cash tucked away in a hidden safe somewhere, so she was selling it “as is.” Or rather I was selling it for her, I thought as I glanced at the Calamity Jane Realty FOR SALE sign planted in the front yard. It rattled in the cold breeze blowing in from the north.
Dark, thick snow clouds swallowed up the sun again. Gloom and doom returned as Doc and I followed Cooper up the sidewalk to where Freesia Tender waited, leaning against one of the two large columns that bracketed the porch.
A movement in the stand of pine trees off to the right of the house caught my eye. I slowed, watching the shadows, searching for any signs of … There it was again. Something white moved in the semidarkness under the trees. Then it stopped. Was that fur? A rabbit maybe? No, something larger.
I took a step toward it, veering off the sidewalk into the brown grass. My gut tightened. Something wasn’t quite right with what I was seeing.
“Parker!”
Cooper’s bark snapped me back to the task at hand.
The detective stood on the porch, arms crossed over his black leather jacket, jaw rigid. He’d been pricklier than usual today, no doubt thanks to all of that whiskey last night and the resulting skull cramps. “Get your ass up here before someone sees that damned hair of yours, and I get stuck doling out parking tickets for disobeying orders and sneaking you in here.”
Doc waited on the porch steps, studying me with a frown. “What is it?” he asked and looked over toward the pines.
I searched the forest edge, but I saw only trees and shadows. “Nothing.” I caught up to him. “I’m just seeing ghosts.”
“Hi, Violet,” Freesia Tender, owner of the Galena House, held open the screen door for me as I crested the top step. Her loose dark curls shimmied and waved in the cold breeze, catching in her long dark eyelashes. With her hair now past her shoulders, she didn’t look as much like Halle Berry’s twin anymore. But they could still be cousins, with Freesia being the more curvy of the two.
She welcomed Cooper and Doc after me, closing the door on the bone-chilling north wind. She looked warm and cozy in a thick cream-colored sweater, blue jeans, and thick slipper booties.
“It’s good to see you again,” she said, giving me a quick hug. She smelled like fresh baked bread. Normally, such an aroma might have spurred me to drool all over her neck, especially since I’d only nibbled on a protein bar for lunch. But the reason I had only nibbled was my stomach, which was still queasy from drinking too much rum last night.
Tequila was my usual drink of choice. My stomach and the blue agave-based liquor had developed a long and happy relationship over a history of sharing joys and heartaches. Pouring rum down the hatch, on the other hand, was like dumping holy water on the devil.
I should have known better than to try to hide it in Coca-Cola and sneak it past my stomach. What had gone down sweet and easy had come back up bitter and wrenching. After Doc had dropped me off last night and left to take Cooper home, poor Harvey had played nursemaid in addition to bodyguard, mopping my brow and stuffing bread down my throat to try to clog the leak my stomach seemed to have sprung.
“We’ve had a few walk-throughs over the last week.” Freesia handed me a short stack of business cards. “They called ahead like the sign says,” she said in a lowered voice, shooting a quick frown in Cooper’s direction. “So I had plenty of time to take down the police tape before they arrived.”
The Galena House had been in Freesia’s family for generations after her great, great uncle, Big Jake Tender, had built it with his own two strong hands. Jake had come out West after the Civil War and made a name for himself around the northern Black Hills as a skilled jack-of-all-trades. Tall tales of his feats still circulated at the senior center, some painting pictures akin to Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill. Truth be told he was just a big man with an even bigger heart who had fallen in love with Ms. Wolff, the timekeeper I’d found dead and shriveled up like a raisin in her apartment at the Galena House last month. According to Doc, Ms. Wolff had been there at the time of Big Jake’s demise, leaning over him as his heart slowed to a stop, holding his hand through it all. Unfortunately for both, their love was never meant to be.
There were many who whispered that Big Jake still roamed the halls of the Galena House where his true love had lived for so many years. Those many included Doc, who’d shared a moment in time with Big Jake during a séance we’d had in Ms. Wolff’s apartment.
I pocketed the business cards, following Freesia down the hall toward Ms. Wolff’s apartment. The police tape was there, crisscrossing the door again per Detective Hawke’s orders.
“Bites from buyers are slow at the moment,” I told her when we stopped in front of the apartment door. “But I’ve placed an ad on a few national websites.”
She smiled, her brown eyes sparkling. “That’s okay. I’m not in a big rush to leave town now.”
I barely kept a groan from surfacing. For some crazy reason, Freesia had fallen gob smack into lust with Deadwood’s own Abe Lincoln look-alike. One look at
Cornelius and Freesia had started howling at the moon. Wait, did females howl at the moon? Maybe we just purred a lot. Anyway, while she lusted after Cornelius in plain sight, he seemed completely oblivious. I was beginning to wonder if his stovepipe hat was on too tight.
“I appreciate your patience with the selling process,” I told her. That reminded me—I had good news for Detective Grumpy-pants as soon as he stopped gnawing on me for a moment. Rosy and I had swung by his place this morning for a walk through and she was even more enamored with his little blue bungalow. She was going to contact me with her official offer amount after she talked to her financial consultant and thought about it a little longer.
We came to a stop in front of Ms. Wolff’s door. The little brass clock knocker was still there, reflecting the chandelier hall lights. Had that been a sign of sorts for those who came seeking help from the timekeeper? What kind of help had she offered? What purpose did all of those clocks play in the grand scheme of time? It certainly wasn’t keeping up with the earth’s daily rotation, because none of the clocks showed the same time, or the right time for that matter.
“Parker, hold up.” Cooper stepped in front of me, checking the doorknob to see if it was still locked. It didn’t budge. “Has anyone been in here lately?” he asked Freesia.
She shook her head. “Not that I’ve seen.”
Doc’s hand brushed my lower back, his touch reassuring.
“This is where you were standing when I saw you last time,” Cooper said to me.
I nodded, my memory fine in spite of last night’s rum disaster.
His steely eyes bored into mine. “And you said you could hear a cuckoo clock chiming from out here.”
“I know what I said, Cooper.”
He looked over at the door, holding his hand up to silence me when I started to speak. After several seconds, he turned back. “I don’t hear anything. Do either of you?” he looked from Doc to Freesia.
Both shook their heads.
Cooper stared down at me again. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Do you hear a clock cuckooing?”
Doc and Freesia were watching me: one with a knitted brow, the other with wide, curious eyes.
“I don’t hear one clock,” I told Cooper.
“It must have stopped on its own then.”
“You didn’t let me finish, Detective.” I reached out and tested the doorknob for myself. The door creaked open, the lock apparently not in effect for me.
“What the hell?” Cooper growled.
I frowned at him. “I don’t hear one clock cuckooing, I hear two.”
Chapter Seventeen
The sound of those two clocks cuckooing made my stomach tighten. The fact that nobody could hear them but me was unsettling enough, but add to that the detail Prudence had told me last month about what the cuckooing sound meant and my urge to tuck tail and run all of the way back to Aunt Zoe’s place made my feet itch.
“Well, Parker?” Cooper stood inside of Ms. Wolff’s apartment, holding the door for me to enter. “Are you going to get your ass in here or not?”
“I’d rather not.” I took a step backward and collided with the solid wall of Doc’s chest. I looked up at him. “Maybe we should come back some other time.” Like when those clocks weren’t cuckooing.
He placed his hands on my shoulders, turning me around. His brown eyes held mine. “I’ll be right there with you.”
“Yeah, but you can’t hear the toll of the death bell.” I used Prudence’s words.
“The what?” Freesia asked.
I stayed focused on Doc. “What if you get dragged back into the past, and I can’t get you out this time?” The last time he’d played medium in this apartment, Cornelius had thought we’d lost Doc for good.
“What’s she talking about?” Cooper asked.
“Doc wouldn’t wake up after the séance,” Freesia explained from behind me. “Violet had trouble pulling him back out.”
Freesia had been there with Cornelius, Doc, and me that night. It was her hand that had reached out to me through the mirror when I’d needed help finding my way out of the past and back to present day. I’d tried to figure out how that trick had worked for days afterward. It still left me scratching my head.
“I’ll be fine. We all will. We’re only going to take a look.” Doc squeezed my hand and then pulled me over the threshold after him. Freesia brought up the rear.
“Are you sure your pal used the term death bell?” Cooper asked, locking the door behind us.
The two cuckooing clocks were louder inside the apartment. I cringed. How could the others not hear the commotion?
“Positive,” I said over the racket. I stopped in front of the wall covered with wooden, Black Forest style clocks with unique macabre death scenes carved onto their fronts—some with animals of prey like bears and wolves, others had unrecognizable or distorted beasts hefting frightening weapons. There were several empty spaces on the wall where clocks used to hang. It looked like the same number were missing as the last time I had been in here, back on that day I’d heard the cuckooing coming from the mirror.
Cooper stood in the doorway to the bedroom, his arms crossed, his blue-jean clad legs in that wide-legged cop stance he did so well. “Did Prudence say why she called the cuckooing sound a death bell?”
Freesia moved up next to me. “Who’s Prudence?”
“An old friend of Violet’s.” Doc walked over to the living room window that looked out at a stand of pines. They were the same trees in which I’d seen something on the way up the walk. He peeked through a slit in the white gauzy curtains, a deep V forming at the bridge of his nose.
I thought back to that conversation. “When I told Prudence about coming in this place and seeing the moving cuckoo clock in the mirror, all she said was that it was interesting I could actually hear the toll of the death bell. Then she commented that I was getting stronger.”
“Does your friend Prudence know about Cornelius and the séance we did?” Freesia asked.
“No.” I hadn’t gotten around to telling Prudence about my battle with the ax-wielding juggernaut that night, or that I’d actually gotten sliced by his blade in the process of trying to escape from him. I didn’t want to give her more to scoff about when it came to my skills and lineage compared to hers.
Doc turned away from the window, his forehead still sporting that deep V. “You ready?”
I shook my head, but headed toward the bedroom door anyway. Cooper stepped aside to let me pass. Ms. Wolff’s bedroom also had a wall covered with creepy Black Forest clocks. A smattering of them were missing, same as the dining room. Whoever had broken in and stolen the clocks seemed to have done so with purpose rather than grabbing willy-nilly.
The commotion from the two cuckooing clocks was starting to make my head feel like it was going cuckoo, too. I skirted the bed, stopping on the other side in front of the tall mirror attached to the dresser. What would it mean if one of the clocks fell silent suddenly? I grimaced at my own reflection. Hell, I didn’t even know for sure what it meant for them to be going off.
In the mirror, I could see Doc and Cooper standing in front of the clock-covered wall. Freesia’s head poked around the door jamb, her usual smile missing as she stared back at me with worried eyes. Her paranormal experience prior to the séance we’d had included a Ouija board, a trip to a fortune teller, and a haunted house tour or two. We’d knocked her socks off that night with my mirror trip.
“Well?” Cooper asked. “Which ones are cuckooing?”
I glanced over my shoulder to double check that the ones I could see cuckooing in the mirror were actually attached to the wall in the real world.
“The one to the left of Doc and the one directly above your head.” I watched in the mirror as Cooper took down the one over his head. In the reflection, it continued to cuckoo as he inspected it. I looked over my shoulder, making sure the actual clock he held remained silent. Yep, no movement.
Back in the mirror the little birdie kept popping out the window in spite of his hand being in the way. It was the oddest thing to watch, like looking at a pebble under rippling water.
A phone rang, loud and trilling.
That wasn’t one of Doc’s or my cell phone rings, and Cooper wasn’t pulling out his phone, so it must be Freesia’s.
After the fifth ring, I turned to where she now filled the doorway. “Are you going to answer that?”
She glanced to her right and left. “Are you talking to me?”
“Isn’t that your phone ringing?”
Cooper frowned up from the clock. “What are you talking about, Parker?”
The trilling continued. “The phone that’s ringing.”
Doc’s head cocked to the side. “You hear a phone?”
“You don’t?”
He shook his head.
Oh, hell.
“So now you hear two clocks cuckooing and a phone?” Cooper asked, hanging the clock he’d been inspecting back on the wall. It continued to cuckoo in the mirror.
I nodded, kneading my hands together. “Am I going crazy?” I asked Doc.
“I think it’s this apartment. I’m beginning to suspect …” he trailed off, sending a quick frown in Freesia’s direction. “Can you tell where the ringing is coming from?” he asked me.
I closed my eyes, letting my ears take over. I followed the sound around the bed, careful to swing wide enough. Doc’s warm palm clasped my elbow, guiding me through the doorway to where the trilling sound was a bit louder. I turned and took several steps into the living room until Doc tugged me to a stop.
“It’s the antique phone,” he said.
I opened my eyes, finding myself in the corner where Harvey and I had found Ms. Wolff’s wrinkled up body and severed head under the rocking chair. There was a Victorian style phone sitting on the end table next to the chair. It was the same phone that had been there the day Harvey and I had found Ms. Wolff. The very phone that Cooper had told me was not connected to a phone jack. We had figured it was for decoration. Turned out we’d been wrong, because it certainly sounded like it was ringing now. The trouble was, I was the only one hearing it. Had the cuckooing in this place finally broken my brain?