by Ann Charles
“That’s dirty snow.”
“Do you want to slow that swelling or what?”
I hesitated.
She grabbed the door handle. “Stay here, princess. I’ll get it for you.”
While she crept over to get some snow for me, I texted Doc back with: Short version: Cornelius is an energy-sucking specter collector, and a deadly Duzarx escaped the Open Cut and will wreak havoc unless I kill it soon.
A few seconds later, just as Natalie was climbing back in the pickup, my cell phone rang.
“Don’t answer that.” She handed me a snowball wrapped up in her scarf.
“But it’s Doc. He’s probably heading home from Spearfish.”
“I don’t care. While I was out getting you ice, Hawke left his pickup and went inside the little building.”
“Maybe he’s just taking a piss.”
I’d taken the kids into that building this fall during a bike ride along the Mickelson Trail. Inside were some old photos and articles about the community of Pluma, as well as men’s and women’s bathrooms. I’d have figured the parks department would have locked the building at dusk, but maybe whoever did the locking up hadn’t come by yet.
Natalie rubbed her hands together and then blew on them. “Or maybe he’s meeting someone inside.”
I sent Doc’s call to voice mail and texted: Can’t talk. Spying on someone w/Nat. No lying there, although I decided to be vague in case Cooper apprehended my phone again and went through my texts sometime soon.
Doc replied with: You’ll be the death of me, woman. See you soon.
Grabbing the spare pair of binoculars, I focused on the small building while holding Natalie’s snow-filled scarf up to my throbbing cheek.
“He’s taking awhile,” Natalie said. “I didn’t see anyone else go inside.”
“I’m telling you, he might just need to use the facilities.”
“He didn’t walk like a man who had to use the john.”
I lowered the binoculars. “What did you expect him to do? Walk with his legs crossed?”
She kept watching through the windshield. “No, smartass. He strolled over to it leisurely, which tells me he doesn’t really have to go.”
“Are we really sitting here in the dark analyzing the way Hawke walks when he has to go to the bathroom?”
“You have something better to do right now?”
“Yes. I’d like to go home and put on my pajamas, and then ice my eye while sitting next to my boyfriend on the couch. Of course, I’d ask him to kiss it better, and from there we’d—”
“Doc’s not home yet and your aunt’s couch isn’t comfortable, so quit your bitching and keep watching.”
A minute passed.
“Where is he, dammit?” I adjusted the makeshift ice pack, my fingers freezing from where the snow was melting through the scarf and soaking my skin.
“Maybe someone was already waiting inside for him.”
“But there aren’t any other vehicles in the lot.”
“They could have walked over from the trail.”
Another minute passed.
I switched the snow-filled scarf to my other hand, giving my cold wet hand a break. “This reminds me of when we spied on George Mudder and Ray.”
My ex-coworker, Ray Underhill, and the previous owner of Mudder Brothers funeral parlor had been trafficking something on the sly to or from the funeral home in big wooden crates.
“Did we ever figure out what Ray was hauling for George?” Natalie asked.
“Besides that shipment of bottles full of mead that we found in the funeral home’s storage room, no. But if you’d take one for the team and sleep with Cooper, you might be able to woo it out of him in the midst of sex since he had his thumb on Ray the whole time. Where’s your sense of duty, woman?”
“What am I? Some Russian double agent?”
“You have the lips for it. Those baby inner tubes scream Soviet sex siren.”
She snorted. “Sleeping with Coop is not going to land us any answers.”
I scanned the Mickelson Trail back toward Deadwood, looking for another vehicle parked somewhere else along it. “How do you know?”
“Because I already did it.”
Skirch!!! I lowered the binoculars. “Ha!”
She lowered hers, too, frowning at me. “Ha what?”
“I knew it!”
“You did not.”
“Well, I highly suspected you two were screwing around down in Arizona when I didn’t hear a peep from you.”
“I peeped.”
“You gave me weather stats, and that was about it.” I grinned so wide my eye hurt. “That explains it.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Explains what?”
“Earlier today, Harvey and I were up at the Sugarloaf Building with Cooper and he was prickly the whole time—more so than usual. When I tried to find out what had his sphincter so dang tight, he blamed work, but Harvey hinted that there was something more.”
She shrugged. “He probably is stressed about his caseload. The weird crimes around here keep piling up.”
“What do you mean, ‘probably’? Don’t you know?”
“Why would I?”
“Because you’re sleeping with him.” Was I the only one keeping score here?
“No, I slept with him down in Arizona.”
“Yeah, but …”
“Since I returned, we’ve only seen each other once, when I stopped by his office to collect my keys from him.”
Cooper had driven Natalie’s pickup home and left her to ride back north with Harvey and the fifth-wheel camper he’d towed down there. I’d gotten that crumb of information out of the ol’ dirty bird when he’d shown up for breakfast on Wednesday morning.
I adjusted the scarf again, wiping a drip of cold water off of my pant leg. “So you two haven’t done the deed since you got back home?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?” There’d been plenty of time, even if just for a quickie.
She raised her binoculars again. “Because it was a vacation-only deal.”
“Says who? Him?” That bonehead had better not have used his “I don’t date local girls” crap on Natalie again, or I’d wallop him a few more times with my purse.
“No, says me.”
“Really? That’s silly.”
“No it’s not, especially after what I overheard Hawke saying.”
“You mean about Cooper being in league with me?”
“Exactly.”
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with you and him doing the horizontal bop?”
“I’m your best friend. If Hawke finds out I slept with Coop, it jeopardizes Coop’s credibility even more.”
Maybe, but still … “So, what are you saying? You two are going to return to the miserable messes you were before you went to Arizona and blew off some steam?”
“I wasn’t a miserable mess.”
“Yes, you were.”
“Okay, maybe I was a tiny mess.”
“More like a Titanic-sized calamity.”
“But now we have that whole business out of our systems, so we can return to just being friends.”
I guffawed so loud she jumped. “If you believe that, you have noodles for brains.”
“You’re the noodlebrain,” she muttered, scanning around through her binoculars.
“Does Cooper know about this back-to-friends plan of yours?”
“No, I’ve sort of been avoiding him.”
I lowered the snow pack and tapped on my cheek. It was still tender as hell and cold now, too. “Avoidance is not going to work, you know. Deadwood is too small a town.”
“Hawke cannot know we were together. I can’t risk Coop losing his job because of me.”
That would be bad. Cooper was born to chase criminals and threaten poor innocent mothers of twins with jail time. He came naturally by the steely eyes and sharp edges needed for the job.
I raised my binoculars and focused on Hawke
’s empty pickup. Like a pair of birdwatchers, we sat in silence for a moment just watching and waiting for Hawke to leave the building.
“Natalie?” I kept my eyes on the prize, only there was no prize yet.
“What?”
“Was it worth it?”
“Was what worth it?”
“Arizona. Cooper. Sex.”
She didn’t answer for a couple of breaths, and then she said, “Well, I’m in deep shit now.”
“Why?”
“Arizona, Coop, and sex.”
“That good, huh?”
“He had a lot of testosterone stored up.”
I grimaced. “Why’d you have to go and make it so clinical?”
“Would you rather I give you the sweaty details about how many times we did it and all of the different ways?”
“Eww. No.”
“Then trust me when I say he was worth the wait.”
We sat in silence a little longer.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked, lowering the binoculars so I could switch the scarf to my other hand again.
“About what?”
“You know damned well about what.”
“I don’t know. It was sort of magical down in Arizona, and I guess I wanted to keep it all to myself for a little longer.”
“So, nobody else knows?”
“Well, my cousins figured it out, of course.”
I snickered. “The Morgan sisters are no fools.”
“And Harvey knows because we used his camper.”
“It’s a wonder he didn’t want to set up a watch party and shout out pointers.”
She smirked under the binoculars. “There were plenty of jokes about it from him and everyone else down there, believe me.”
We both peered through the binoculars again for several seconds.
“Do you really think you can go back to just being pals with Cooper after that?” I asked, lowering the scarf so I could wipe off some of the cold drips running down the inside of my sleeve.
“I don’t think I have a choice right now.”
“What if he doesn’t want to be just a friend?”
“I don’t think he has a choice either, not if he wants to keep being a detective, and you and I both know how important that is to him.” Her tone had a slight bitterness to it.
Years ago, the first time Natalie and Cooper had almost played hide the pickle behind the Purple Door Saloon, Cooper had chosen his job over her. Apparently, she hadn’t forgotten that detail in spite of whatever went down in Arizona.
I set the binoculars on my lap, wringing out the scarf over the floor before rewrapping it around the shrinking snowball. “There has to be a way around this.”
“I don’t see how. Detective Hawke has gone over the deep end, and I get the feeling he’s going to try to take you, Coop, and anyone else down with him as he scrambles to land on top through it all. I won’t play a part in causing you or Coop or anyone else to end up in deeper shit than we’re already in here with this other business of yours.” She dipped her binoculars. “No offense intended there.”
“None taken. You’re right.” I returned to spying. “We need to figure out how to remove Hawke from the equation.”
“Short of taking him back to Prudence and letting her completely short-circuit his brain, I don’t think— Vi, he’s back.”
I refocused on the building, catching sight of Hawke returning to his truck and climbing inside.
Two minutes later, he was still sitting there with exhaust steam coming out of the tailpipe.
“Maybe he just needed to use the bathroom,” I said.
“He could’ve done that back at work.”
“He might have a shy bladder.”
“That was longer than taking a piss.”
“Can you have a shy colon?”
Natalie made a gagging sound. “We really need to find a new hobby.”
“You’re the one who …” I trailed off at the sight of a familiar Jeep pulling up next to Hawke’s pickup. “Holy shit! Is that who I think it is?”
Sure enough, Tiffany Sugarbell crawled out of her Jeep, looking like a cute snow bunny in her white fluffy hat and matching puffy jacket and furry boots—the two-bit whore. She glanced around suspiciously and then climbed into Hawke’s pickup.
“What the hell?” Natalie gaped at the scene.
“Why would Hawke be talking to her?”
“Maybe he needs a real estate agent.”
“Sure, and she’s decided that meeting clients in an empty parking lot next to the Mickelson Trail at night is a good sales technique.” I scoffed. “Don’t let Jerry catch wind of this. He’ll have me hanging out in parking lots to meet potential clients, too, like one of those ‘hot lizard’ prostitutes at truck stops.”
Natalie chuckled. “You mean ‘lot lizard.’ On the bright side, Jerry would have to buy you a new wardrobe for each season.”
I set the sodden scarf down on my leg and played with the focus knob of the binoculars. “Can you see anything going on inside of his truck?”
“Oh yeah,” she said sarcastically. “It looks to me like she’s playing the rusty trombone.”
“The what?”
“You know, she’s giving him some beef stroke-me-off.”
“Oh.” Now I understood. “That trombone line is silly. I expect something more clever from the girl who once out trash-talked a sleazy carnie from Chicago at the Blue Moon bar in Rapid.”
“More clever, huh? How about she’s giving him a chicken wrap?”
“Lame.”
“Some pulled pork?”
“That’s even worse.”
“A Kansas City slider?”
“That’s a little better.”
“A Memphis dry rub?”
I laughed. “I’ll have to borrow that one.”
“A Florida handshake.”
“How do you remember all of these?”
“I store them away with all of the other important things in life and get rid of crap like algebra and how many tablespoons go into a cup.”
“It’s good to know where your priorities lie.” I leaned closer to the windshield. “Can you really see what they’re doing in there?”
“Of course not, spaz. I left my bionic eye back in my apartment.”
Hawke’s passenger door opened. Tiffany stepped out and straightened her hat.
“That was quick.”
Instead of climbing back into her Jeep, she walked over to the little building and went inside.
“What in the ever-lovin’ hell is going on?” I asked.
“Maybe she needed to clean up afterward.”
“Gross,” I said. “That was fast, if so.”
“You’ve seen Hawke. He’s pretty uptight. Might not take her long to work out his kinks.”
“Tiffany is quite a looker.”
“You mean ‘hooker.’ ”
We both started giggling. By the time we’d settled down again, Tiffany walked out of the building, rounded the front of Hawke’s pickup, climbed in her Jeep, and drove away.
“Hmm,” I said.
“I second that.”
Hawke shifted into reverse and headed back toward Deadwood.
“Should we follow?” Natalie asked.
I checked my phone for the time. “I can’t. I need to get home. Reid’s cooking tonight and I promised I’d be there to make sure Aunt Zoe doesn’t fill him full of lead before he finishes.”
“No shit.” She packed away her binoculars. “Zoe is allowing Reid to come over? Is she serving community time for something?”
“She has a big glass order.”
“Ahh, she’s contracting out cooking supper, and Reid was probably only too happy to volunteer.”
“Yep.” I handed her the binoculars I’d been using. “You’re joining us, aren’t you?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Is Coop going to be there?”
“There’s a 50-5
0 chance he’ll show.”
She frowned. “I’d better not risk it then. I’ll head home and listen through the vent some more.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.” She started the pickup and shifted into gear.
We stopped at the small building Hawke and Tiffany had both visited and found nothing besides two restrooms that looked clean. No funny smells, either. After we were back on the road heading toward Deadwood, I asked, “What should I tell Cooper if he wonders why you aren’t there?”
“Tell him that I’m under the weather.”
“I told him that last night and he’d glared at me as if I’d given his favorite gun away to charity.”
“Tell him the truth then.”
“You mean that you’re afraid of falling head over heels for him, so you’re using Hawke as a scapegoat to avoid seeing him tonight?”
She reached over and pinched my thigh.
“Yowch! Take it easy, sheesh. I already got beaten up by a dead woman today.”
“Weenie.” Her frown returned as she steered into the parking lot behind Calamity Jane’s. “You know, on second thought, don’t tell Coop anything.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve changed my mind. It’s time to deal with the fallout from Arizona. What should I bring for dessert?”
Chapter Six
Aunt Zoe’s house was lit up like a beacon, guiding me to the safe haven within its walls after an afternoon of being battered at sea and left to sink or limp into port.
Two things greeted me as soon as I stepped inside the front door—first, the heavenly smell of cooked tomatoes and spices; second, an ornery old man.
The latter didn’t even give me time to shuck my coat before blurting out, “What in tarnation happened to your face?”
“Shhhh.” Harvey didn’t need to make a big deal out of a little bruise. I held out my arm for him to pull off my coat sleeve. “I ran into an elbow.”
He tugged my arm free. “You should watch where you’re goin’. You look like the back end of bad luck.”
I felt like the front end of a snow plow. “Thanks for picking up my kids after school,” I said as he pulled my other arm free.
“Happy to help. Whose elbow was it?”
“Zelda’s, but Prudence was at the wheel.” I took my coat and hung it in the closet.