by Ann Charles
Cooper scowled. “What are you saying, Parker? That Cornelius was screwing with us all along about that ghost? For shit’s sake, do you realize the risk I’m taking by letting you down in that root cellar?”
“Relax, Cooper. Don’t go busting any blood vessels until you hear me out.” I growled at the ornery detective for good measure. “I’m talking about Wilda being the trickster. She was playing me all along, baiting me with Cornelius.”
“Why would she do that?” Natalie asked.
“So that I’d bring back her mother.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Friday, November 23rd
I woke up in an empty bed. The sky outside my window was gray, sleet pelting the glass. With a groan, I pulled the covers up over my head.
I’d screwed up big time last night …
Natalie had run Cornelius home after he’d finished packing up his gear. He’d been jovial in spite of the new mess I’d caused freeing him from Wilda. He told Doc he’d call him today after he woke up from what he hoped would be a long, quiet night with no trouble from ghosts for the first time in over a month.
Cooper had locked up the root cellar after us and threatened to throw me in jail if I called him within the next twenty-four hours. He strode back to his car and headed toward the police station without even blowing me a kiss goodbye.
“What a grumpy bear,” I told Doc.
He chuckled and put his arm around me, leading me toward the Picklemobile. “Cut him some slack. He leads a tortured life.”
“Fine, but he doesn’t have to use his thumbscrews on me.”
A short drive later, during which I texted Aunt Zoe that we were all fine and dandy at the moment, we were back in her warm, bright kitchen. I recounted what had happened in the Hessler house to Doc while we waited for Natalie to return from dropping off Cornelius. While I planned to share my ghostly adventures with Natalie, there were details that I wanted to work through with only Doc, such as the candle flame game I’d played while we were under. I needed to find out where he thought I’d screwed up and opened the channel too wide, and I didn’t really want an audience during that discussion.
Unfortunately, Doc didn’t have any concrete answers. According to him, in the paranormal activity business, there were different strokes for different folks, depending on the medium’s abilities. Since his specialty differed from mine, he was able to sense when the channel had opened wider but could only surmise that it happened sometime after Cornelius got involved with his humming routine. It was shortly after that when I’d somehow managed to boot both Cornelius and Doc from the whole show, which was an experience that had not happened to Doc before tonight.
Natalie’s return spurred a rerun of the night’s events. We each took turns speculating about the cookie jar lid and how it played into the whole shebang. Each of our theories included Mama Hessler’s appearance, making me wonder if Wilda had somehow played Natalie by offering up that lid from the burned ruins.
After Natalie called it a night and went upstairs to crash in Aunt Zoe’s bed, Doc and I moved to the couch. We both downed a bottle of beer while lost in our own thoughts as Humphrey Bogart smoked and rattled off one-liners on the TV screen. Halfway through the movie, Doc stood and held out his hand for me, pulling me after him up the stairs.
I took a quick rinse shower, wanting to wash away the rank mustiness of that root cellar along with Mrs. Hessler’s foul smell from my skin before crawling under the sheets. Doc was already asleep when I closed the bedroom door and eased in beside him. He woke enough to pull me close and nuzzle my neck and then went out again. Much to my surprise, I followed his course within minutes, snuggling into his body and forgetting about garish clowns and terrifying ghost mothers.
Unfortunately, with the morning light came another reckoning of my royal fuckup. I hid deeper under my covers.
I was in the midst of beating myself up again when I heard the bedroom door open. Familiar footfalls crossed the floor. The mattress shifted next to me.
Doc peeled the covers back, grinning down at me. “Hiding from the world again?”
I blinked up at his unshaven face, noticing the damp ends of his hair, catching a whiff of my shampoo. Showered but not shaved. Hot damn. “How do you do it?”
“Lie next to you all night long without ravishing your body?”
“You didn’t quite make it all night on that score.”
“Oh, but I did score, Boots.”
Yes, he had early this morning. Or rather I had. Actually it’d been more of a tie on the scoreboard. “How do you battle ghosts at night yet look fresh as a daisy come morning?”
“You fought the battle last night, not me. I just facilitated transitions for you.” He combed some curls back from my face. “Besides, I wasn’t the one who looked Wilda’s mom in the face up close and personal.”
“Thanks to you all I did was look.”
When I’d met up with Cornelius and Doc as they were coming out of the root cellar last night, Cornelius had told me that after I’d booted the two of them back to the present, Doc had gone back under in order to shield me from whatever harm Mrs. Hessler had intended. He’d been the reason the front door had banged open, saving me from her touch. Unfortunately, that move had given Wilda and her mom an escape route, something for which Doc took full blame. Never mind that I was the one responsible for Mrs. Hessler showing up in the first place.
“Come on.” He pulled the covers down further. “Harvey is here. He made bacon and waffles. That’ll make you feel better.”
I sat up and pulled my shoulders back in a big stretch.
Doc watched me, his eyes locked south of my chin. “On second thought,” he reached for me, “forget breakfast.”
I dodged his hand and rolled off the other side of the bed before he could catch me. “Bacon trumps sex, buster,” I told him, stepping into a pair of pajama bottoms and slippers. “Especially when Harvey’s working the spatula.” I put on an old sweater and chased him out the bedroom door.
He detoured toward the bathroom while I headed for the kitchen. Cooper was sitting at the table when I stepped into the room. He welcomed me with a scowl.
I stopped short. “Who let you off your leash already?”
His steely eyes narrowed, moving up to my hair. “It’s even worse first thing in the morning.”
“How about some coffee with a splash of hemlock to start your day, Cooper?” I walked over to the fridge to get some creamer, poking Harvey in the ribs on the way.
“Thanks, Parker, but your venom is deadly enough.”
“Jeez.” Natalie stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. “Do you two wake up thinking of ways to insult each other?”
Harvey snickered. “They’re both mean as bulldogs on gunpowder diets this mornin’.”
She joined me at the coffee pot, not noticing that Cooper was checking her out, from her tousled hair to her faded Lead-Deadwood Golddiggers T-shirt and black yoga pants to Aunt Zoe’s smiley sunshine slippers.
Doc strolled into the kitchen, his face clean shaven, his boxer briefs and bare chest covered with jeans and a black thermal. I couldn’t decide which I preferred.
He handed me a thick book.
I looked down at it. Make that the book, as in the family history book that had gone missing while I was sick.
“Where did you get this?”
“Layne called while I was shaving. He wanted me to check for a library book under his bed. He’d forgotten it’s due today.”
“Why didn’t he call me?”
“He did, but you didn’t answer.”
My phone was still up in my bedroom. I held the book close to my chest. “This was under his bed?”
Doc nodded. “Is that what Zoe was talking about?”
“Yes.” So Layne had it all along. Cripes, how much had he read? Did he have any clue it was our family line?
“We’ll find out after he comes home,” Doc told me, apparently reading my mind. “You should probab
ly put that somewhere safe.”
“Right,” I said and disappeared into the laundry room for a few seconds. When I returned, Harvey looked at me with raised brows, but I shook my head.
“What’s going on, Coop?” With his coffee in hand, Doc took the chair across from the detective. “I thought you were heading out to the shooting range this morning to blow off some steam.”
“I am but I needed to swing by and pick up Natalie. She owes me a trip to the range.”
“Food first, then guns,” she said, joining him at the table. “I should shower, too, or you may feel like shooting me.”
Cooper watched her take a drink from her mug before turning back to Doc. “I also need to talk to Parker about something.”
“Did you look at Rosy’s offer?” I’d dropped it off at the front desk of the cop shop Tuesday afternoon in a manila envelope with his name on it. He’d been busy in a meeting and I was happy not to bother him.
He shook his head. “I’ll get to it later today or tomorrow. She gave me plenty of time.”
A week to be exact, due to the holiday. So, if not Rosy’s offer, then what? “If this is about Katrina King, I plead the Fifth.” I stirred sugar in my coffee, needing to sweeten up if Cooper was staying for breakfast.
“It’s not.”
“You mean Detective Hawke didn’t send you here to threaten to put me in jail for Katrina’s murder?”
“No. Dominick Masterson has written up a statement that clears your name, sharing information that ties Katrina in with some shady dealings in the past, listing several possible suspects who might have wanted to take her out of the picture.”
That gave me pause. “And how are Dominick and you going to explain his exit from the Opera House in September and subsequent absence until now?”
“We’re still working on that mess of yours.”
I subdued the urge to snap back at him by pouring coffee down my throat.
In my silence, Cooper continued, “Something else happened that saved your ass when it comes to Katrina’s death.”
“What’s that?” Doc asked.
“I learned this morning that the war hammer disappeared in transit. It never made it to the lab for further examination.”
I fell into the seat next to Doc. “What? How?”
“That’s what I came to ask you.”
“I had nothing to do with that,” I lowered my coffee cup. “I was with Doc all day yesterday and the night prior.”
“I know that, but Detective Hawke has a different idea.”
“What? He thinks I hijacked it during transport?”
“No. He suspects one of your henchmen swiped it for you.”
“I have henchmen? Damn, if I’d known I had henchmen working for me, I would’ve had them help with getting the kids back and forth to school, bullying Ray when he was being an extra big asshole, and threatening Rex to leave town.”
“Cute, Parker, but Hawke is determined to pin something on you, so try to keep your nose squeaky clean for a while.”
“There you go again, obsessed with my nose.”
“At least I’m kind enough not to break yours.”
“Do I need to put ya both in separate stalls for breakfast?” Harvey asked, threatening us both with his spatula after setting down a stacked plate of waffles.
“Sorry,” I told the old buzzard as he dropped a couple of pieces of bacon on my plate. “I’d just like to enjoy a day without the police crawling up my ass.”
“Great, tell Coop that, not me.”
I turned to our not-so-friendly detective with a sigh. “Is there anything else you needed to tell us, Cooper?” I asked in my nice Realtor voice.
He fidgeted with his fork, which was unusual behavior for the gritty detective. He looked up at me and then Doc. “I have a question for you two.”
“About last night?” Doc asked.
He shook his head. “About ghosts.”
That was more Cornelius and Doc’s department than mine, but I kept my lips closed.
“I went into work extra early this morning and found something.” He hesitated, his gaze concentrating on his fork.
I looked at Doc, who shrugged back. He prompted. “What’d you find?”
“A prisoner in one of the jail cells.”
I lowered my cup of coffee. “It wasn’t Cornelius was it?”
“No.” He set down his fork. “The guy had a rope around his neck. When I asked him where he’d gotten the rope, he walked into the wall.”
“Was he drunk?” Natalie asked.
“You don’t understand. He didn’t walk into the wall and fall down, he walked through the wall and disappeared.”
In the silence that followed, Cooper’s steely gaze dared each of us to challenge him.
Doc spoke first. “Last night, you said a wind came out of nowhere and knocked you down.”
Cooper nodded.
“That wasn’t wind, Coop. I’d opened the door to help Violet escape the trap Wilda had set, only Violet wasn’t the only one to use that door.”
“What are you saying, Nyce?”
“While we are all born with the ability to see beyond our everyday world, not everyone develops that ability.” He raised one finger. “Some of us are born with our sixth sense cranked all of the way up from the get-go, which was my case.” He raised a second finger. “Some know they have the ability but need to work at it, building the muscle if you will, before they can see.”
“Like Cornelius?” I asked.
“I guess, but I don’t know his full history.” Doc raised a third finger. “And some people get blasted wide open by an event in their lives—it could be spurred by extreme stress, by a near-death experience, or by a particularly powerful ghost.”
Cooper set his fork down, his gaze locked on Doc. “You’re saying that a ghost blasted me open when it knocked me down?”
“Maybe.”
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” I mused. In this case, there were two women—Wilda and her mom.
Child killer, I heard Mama Hessler’s accusation in my head. Chills peppered my back.
“Shut up, Parker.” To Doc, he said, “And that’s why I saw what could’ve been the prisoner who hung himself in that jail cell years ago?”
“Possibly.”
“Could you be any more ambiguous?”
“Sure, if you’d like to have a longer, more detailed discussion on psychic abilities and using your sixth sense, I’ll make your head spin.” Doc grinned at Cooper’s curses. “Time will tell for you, Coop. Until then, all you can do is keep your mind open to the possibility that you may not be seeing or hearing or sensing something real in the usual sense of the word.”
The doorbell rang before Cooper could swear some more. Natalie hopped up to get it since she was closest to the door.
At the sound of her cry of surprise, I lowered my fork. I was in the midst of standing to go join her when my brother came striding into the kitchen with Natalie on his heels, her face split by a wide smile.
Quint had a cherry pie in one hand and a long, brown paper package in the other. He set the pie on the table and the package on Nat’s empty chair, and then shucked his coat and hung it over the back of the chair. “I brought you some get-well pie, outlaw Curly Bill,” he said, using the nickname he’d given me as kids after we had watched a show about Tombstone.
Everyone stared at him in surprise, including me. I hadn’t seen Quint in months. His dark, wavy hair was longer than usual, brushing his collar. He looked more buff in his T-shirt than I remembered, but his smile was as infectious as ever.
Natalie took his coat, poking him in the ribs playfully and giggling when he tickled her back, the same screwing around type of fun they’d shared since childhood. Cooper watched with a masked expression, but his eyes soaked up the whole show, his face rigid.
When Natalie took Quint’s coat to the other room, Quint glanced around the table, his eyes alight with questions when they settled on me. “A
re you going to give me a hug hello or just sit there with your pie hole hanging open?”
“I’m gonna pop you in your pie hole, knucklehead,” I said and rushed into his open arms, giving him a loud kiss on the cheek. He smelled good, like fresh air and laughter-filled memories. “I can’t believe you’re here in Deadwood.”
“Aunt Zoe said you really wanted some pie, so I thought I’d share it with you.” He glanced over my head. “But it looks like you already have company.”
I made introductions, saving Doc for last. “And this is Doc Nyce. He and I are …” I searched for the appropriate word. Boyfriend and girlfriend sounded juvenile and lovers seemed too dramatic.
“Playing doctor,” Harvey supplied.
“More like playing house,” Natalie said, her face alight as she focused on Quint. She’d been in our lives so long Quint was practically her brother, too.
“Ahh,” Quint shook Doc’s hand. “Now it makes sense.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
He released Doc’s hand and crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze still locked on Doc. “Aunt Zoe told me that you weren’t feeling well but not to worry because you had a doctor making house calls.”
Doc’s face turned a shade of red under Quint’s scrutiny. “Yes, well, I’m happy to report your sister is in excellent form.”
Harvey hooted, smacking the table.
“Good.” One of Quint’s eyebrows rose. “And you’ll make sure she stays that way, right?”
“I’ll do my best,” Doc said, giving me a look that made my heart almost as happy as the sight of that cherry pie. “But she does tend to run headlong into trouble now and then.”
“Only now and then?” Quint winked at me. “You must be out of practice, Curly Bill.”
I stuck my tongue out at him and hauled him over to the chair next to me. “Join us for breakfast. I want to hear all about your latest adventures.” It would be refreshing to hear about something besides ghosts, murders, and all of the other gruesome topics ruling my life lately.
“What’s this?” Natalie asked him, holding up the package he’d left on her chair.