by Ann Charles
“The counters are low.”
“They’re standard height. Have you considered that maybe you’re too tall in those boots?”
“The can lights are spaced too closely.”
I was beginning to think I’d have better luck catching raindrops with a fishnet than finding Cooper a damned house.
“So, we’ve determined that the kitchen is not up to your standards.” Neither were the last two kitchens we’d toured, nor the bathrooms, the bedrooms, or the garages—especially not the garages where he planned to keep his prized Harley Davidson. “Do you want to look at the rest of the house or call it a day?” Please say call it a day.
He walked away without answering, heading through an archway into what looked like a living room. I stayed put, not really interested in hearing his list of complaints about the rest of the house. I’d plumb run out of give-a-damn about twenty minutes ago.
Harvey grunted from the doorway. “Somebody must’ve put a horse chestnut on his chair this mornin’.”
Or was hanging around with me making him snarl more than usual this afternoon? Cooper and I rarely spent even ten minutes in each other’s company without ramming our horns together. “I vote we throw down our cards and try another hand at this game when he’s not so irritable.”
“I don’t know.” Harvey combed his beard with his fingers. “The Rocky Mountains will probably go flat before then. Although we could try gettin’ him a fine heifer. Nothin’ like a pair of grippin’ hips and a full rack to smooth out a man’s burrs.”
I let his “grippin’ hips” comment go without an eye-roll because he’d spurred an idea for a way to make my next house-shopping trip with Cooper less scratchy. I needed a distraction for the detective, and I had just the girl for the job—my best friend since childhood, Natalie Beals.
According to Natalie, Cooper and she had shared a brief but heated history, as in one evening at the Purple Door Saloon where some heavy flirting apparently took place. But then work had interfered and Cooper turned back into the tin man, minus the desire to find a heart. Recently, however, the tables had turned, and now Cooper was often pawing at the ground whenever she was around. Natalie, on the other hand, was in the midst of a sabbatical from men and appeared to be oblivious that the detective’s hot-for-her-bod feelings had returned tenfold.
I was in the process of planning how I could trick Natalie into joining us on our next house-hunting trip when Cooper backed into the kitchen and tried to run me over. His boot heel came down on my sock-covered toes, making me howl and shove him away.
“Watch where you’re stepping, Cooper.” I hopped on one foot while I rubbed my toes.
“Uh, Sparky.” Harvey pointed at his nephew. “I reckon his knees are about to turn to puddin’.”
Harvey was right. The detective had backed as far as the kitchen counter would allow, his face noticeably pale, eyes wide. “Are you okay, Cooper?”
He stared at the archway leading to the living room. “Do you see that?”
Harvey and I both turned to look, peering into the room filled with long afternoon shadows. “See what?”
“That … that …” He shook out of his trance-like stare and scoured my face, searching for what, I had no idea. I smiled, or at least I tried to, but since my toes were still throbbing it probably came out wrinkled.
Dark red circles bloomed on Cooper’s pale cheeks. His eyes narrowed. “Damn you, Parker!” With a litany of cursing, he strode out of the kitchen, slamming the front door in his wake.
I turned to Harvey. “What did I do?”
“For one thing, yer breathin’. That alone pisses off Coop most days. Then there’s yer crazy hair …”
“You leave my hair out of this, old man.” I frowned toward the archway, wondering what the detective had seen in the living room. I tiptoed over and peeked into the room.
Someone breathed down the back of my neck and then snorted.
“Looks like a plain old livin’ room to me,” said the heavy breather. “Only thing odd is the TV.”
“What TV?” I didn’t see one.
“That’s what I mean. It’s missin’. Who doesn’t have a TV these days?”
I sniffed to see if I could smell anything unnatural. Doc had taught me that trick months ago, only he was a mental medium who could sense ghosts at a mere sniff. His abilities were actually much more complicated than just being able to “smell” ghosts, but for a lack of a more thorough paranormal vocabulary, I stuck to the basics.
While my boyfriend had an ability to interact with the ectoplasmic crowd, I normally couldn’t even sense a ghost when it was standing inside of my skin, hiding behind my face. A creepy dead prostitute had actually tested that for me one time, and it still gave me goosebumps.
After tossing a shrug back and forth, Harvey and I headed for the front door. I collected his booties and slipped into my boots. Cooper must have stormed out with his booties still on—a parting gift from Ben and his client.
We found the surly detective leaning against the hood of my SUV, not a bootie to be found.
I held my tongue until we’d all climbed inside, escaping the wind. “Care to explain your damning me back there, Detective?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“What’d ya see in there, boy?” Harvey asked, rubbing his hands together in between blowing on them. “A ghost?”
Cooper squeezed the bridge of his slightly crooked nose. “It was nothing, Uncle Willis. Just shadows messing with my head.”
Shadows, huh? Right.
I chewed on my lower lip, wondering if I should play parapsychologist and dig deeper into the truth of what Cooper had seen in the living room. Guilt tied my tongue, though.
Recently, the detective had attended a séance where he was given the job of keeping an eye on me while I was “under.” Being the diligent cop that he was, Cooper had trailed me when I left the group and he’d been plowed down by a ghost.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t just any ghost, but a very powerful and twisted one.
And I suppose it could be said that he wasn’t merely plowed down, more like blasted clear through by the evil presence.
Also, there was a slight chance that I was partly to blame since I had been the one who accidentally conjured this nasty being somehow, but those details were insignificant at the moment.
The main thing was that Cooper was now sort of seeing ghosts, whether he wanted to or not. Judging by his reaction to whatever was floating around inside of the house, he was still in the “not” category.
Doc had prophesized that the detective wouldn’t accept this newfound ability without a fight, and Cooper had proved him right to date. Every time Harvey prodded his nephew about catching sight of “wispy folks,” Cooper dug in his boot heels and came up with a laundry list of excuses for what he must have seen.
The shock of having this new ghost vision had apparently shifted to denial. How long he could keep pretending ghosts weren’t real was a worry that those of us who knew him best debated behind his back. Doc’s concern was that Cooper’s rigid mind might break instead of bend. My worry was that if he did snap, he’d blame me and fill me full of holes for dragging him into my chaotic world.
“So.” I decided to change the subject from ghosts. “I take it that’s a ‘No’ on this house.”
His wrinkled upper lip was my answer. I pulled out a sheet of listings I had brought along with several circled. “You sure you don’t want to move to the country? I have a couple of properties that match your want-list about five miles out of town.”
When Cooper had first hired me to sell his place up in Lead, he’d told me he wanted to move to the country, far away from the civilians he protected day and night. But he’d had a change of heart since then.
I had to wonder if it was something to do with his job and all of the overtime he kept putting in; or with his friends who lived in town, including Doc and their other poker buddy, Deadwood’s fire captain.
The
n again, maybe it had to do with Natalie, who’d recently mentioned an interest in moving closer to Deadwood so she could hang around with me and my kids more. Cooper had been pretending to read the paper when she’d told me that, but I doubted he missed much when Natalie talked, let alone breathed, within the same four walls.
Cooper’s phone rang before he could answer me. He pulled it out of his coat pocket and frowned down at the screen. “Shit.” He held the phone to his ear. “Detective Cooper speaking.”
I scanned my listings sheet again, checking if maybe one of the other agencies in the area had something on there that I’d overlooked.
“She’s right here with me,” Cooper said to whoever was on the phone.
I frowned at him, wondering who was asking. Was that Doc? If so, why hadn’t he called me instead of Cooper? I pulled out my phone to see if I’d missed his call.
Nope, nothing from Doc.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Cooper’s words were clipped.
I lowered my phone, my chest tightening. Harvey’s wide blue eyes in the rearview mirror matched mine.
Cooper rubbed the back of his neck. “No. I need to come see it first.”
“See what?” I whispered, twisting my hands together.
He held up his index finger. “You’re overreacting, Hawke.”
My stomach tanked. Oh, no. What did Detective Hawke want with me now? The Columbo wanna-be had a real hard-on for the idea of seeing me behind bars. He really needed to get a hobby. Maybe I should give him a paint-by-numbers set for Christmas. Then again, numbers were pretty advanced for the blockhead. I should probably stick to something with shapes.
“I’ll be there in five minutes.” There was a pause, and then Cooper added, “No, I’ll be alone. We can discuss your theory after I take a look.”
He hung up without waiting for an answer from his partner. His eyes held mine, the lines on his forehead doubling and then tripling before I even got a word out.
“I didn’t do it. I swear.” I had no idea what I didn’t do, but I was sure I could come up with an alibi.
“What has Hawke all lathered up, boy?” When Cooper didn’t answer, Harvey leaned between the seats, prodding his nephew with a poke in the shoulder. “Spit it out. Yer scarin’ poor Sparky.”
“She should be scared.”
“Why? What happened? What did he say?” I rattled off, ending with, “I’m innocent.”
“I need you to drive me back to work, Parker. Detective Hawke claims to have learned of new evidence on Ms. Wolff’s murder case.”
Ms. Wolff was a previous resident of the Galena House, the old boarding house turned into apartments down the hill from where we were currently parked that I was trying to sell. She’d lived there for decades, I’d been told, much loved by the other residents from the past and present.
A month ago, however, Ms. Wolff had dialed my number out of the blue, told me I had to come see her immediately, called me something in German that later turned out to be the word for Executioner, and then hung up on me. After I’d shaken off my surprise, I’d fetched Harvey to go with me to visit her apartment. We’d shown up a short time later and found her dead and then some—she’d been decapitated.
What was even more bizarre, her head was shriveled up like a raisin and her body looked like a bunch of bones tossed into a wrinkled leather sack. Cooper had been less than thrilled to receive that phone call from us, adding yet another dead body to his stack of unsolved cases.
I shifted into reverse, backed into a nearby drive, and then headed down the hill to the police station.
“What sort of evidence?” I asked as we crossed Main Street. More important, “What’s it have to do with me?”
Maybe they’d found the missing picture of my son that had been stuck in Ms. Wolff’s mirror at the time we stumbled onto her body. Why my son’s picture had been slid in the dead woman’s bedroom mirror frame was a spine-chilling mystery that had not been solved yet by Detective Hawke and his clicking pen.
Cooper stared out the window, not making a comment on my speed, which was ten miles over the posted sign again. As we pulled into the police station parking lot, he finally answered, “All I can say for now is that it’s police business.”
“Dammit, boy! Ya can’t drop a bomb like that and then cover up yer mess with a load of horseshit about police business.”
“I’m sorry,” he said to me more than his uncle. “Until I see what Detective Hawke claims to have found, that’s as much as I can tell you.”
I idled at the steps leading up to the cop shop’s front doors while Cooper climbed out of the SUV. A blast of wind plastered his coat against him, trying to take my door down the road with it.
He frowned at me. “Do me a favor, Parker. Keep this between the three of us and Nyce until I find out for certain what is going on.”
“Fine.”
“I mean it. Your aunt and Natalie are not on the need-to-know list. Understand?”
I pretended to cross my heart. Keeping tight-lipped that I had a detective potentially trying to pin a crime on me again was not a problem. It was almost quitting time, anyway. I planned to go back to work, check in with my boss, and then head home for supper—which I might drink my way through until I heard back from Cooper.
“How long will it take you to find out if I’m in some kind of trouble for something I didn’t do?” I asked him, refraining from adding an “again” to the end of my question since he was kind of on my side this time … so far, anyway.
“I don’t know.” He rubbed his eyes. “But when I call, you’d better answer your damned phone.”
Chapter Two
Calamity Jane Realty’s office was located on the bottom floor of a two-story brick building that dated back to the late 1800s. Like many of the old structures throughout Deadwood, the old gal had withstood her fair share of floods and fires, standing tall and sturdy against the rough and rowdy hands of time.
I parked in my designated spot behind the office. “What do you think is going on over at the police station right now?” I asked Harvey, who’d joined me in the front seat after Cooper had left.
His two gold teeth shined back at me. “I reckon Coop is thinkin’ about burnin’ some powder.”
That was a given with Cooper’s fetish for firearms. “I mean besides that? What do you think Hawke is trying to pin on me now?”
“I don’t know, but at first glance Hawke is purty good at puffin’ up the truth enough so you can hardly recognize it. Whatever he’s locked his jaws onto this time can’t be that big of a deal, or Coop would’ve dragged you into the station with him.”
That was true. I’d been ordered to join Detective Cooper inside of the Deadwood Police Station more times than I had fingers and maybe even toes.
Harvey opened his door. “Might as well get on with livin’ until Coop or Hawke are barkin’ at your doorstep.”
I followed Harvey out into the cold wind, making fast tracks across the parking lot. Harvey veered left, toward Doc’s back door.
“Where you going?” I asked, slowing.
“I’m gonna pay a visit to yer biggest fan and let him know which way the wind is blowin’ this afternoon.”
A gust blew up my skirt just then as if showing me which direction it was heading—right up the old ying-yang. My knees shivered, my feet itching to keep walking and escape the freezing blasts. “Fine. I’ll stop by after I wrap up at work.”
“Don’t dillydally. I want to git a jump on supper.”
I licked my chops without even caring what was on the menu for tonight. Knowing Harvey would be cooking supper was enough to put a smile on my face and a skip in my step in spite of Detective Hawke’s newest threat. “I’ll be quick.”
He gave me a thumbs-up and we parted ways.
A lone fluorescent light flickered in Calamity Jane’s back hallway. The other three bulbs were dark, along with the bathroom doorway. My boss, Jerry, wasn’t in his office, but his desk lamp was on,
lighting up a medium-sized box sitting on his desktop. I sniffed, catching a whiff of his sandalwood cologne. He must be working out front again.
Lately, Jerry had taken to sitting out amongst the rest of us desk jockeys in the front office. While he claimed his reasoning was to make us feel more like a five-man team, I knew better. His change of setting was spurred by the ghost of his dead ex-wife, Jane Grimes. Jane was not only the “Jane” in Calamity Jane Realty, but she also used to be my boss before she was murdered back in August.
Now Jane was back in the wispy form, but as far as I knew, her return was not common knowledge. Doc had been the first to pick up her scent several weeks ago. Since then, neither Jerry nor I had actually “seen” Jane around the office, but he periodically found his paperwork and furniture rearranged overnight to her liking, and he claimed to smell a trace of her perfume every now and then. I’d been around enough ghosts in this town to take the evidence presented to me by both men and believe without question that Jane’s ghost was haunting Calamity Jane Realty.
Shivering all the way to my desk, I didn’t bother taking off my pea coat. There was no way I was going to be able to focus on work until I knew what had Detective Hawke in such a lather. As soon as I checked my email and made sure Jerry didn’t need me for anything else, I’d be skedaddling.
Jerry was holding court from Mona’s desk this afternoon, his extra-long legs sticking out from under the front. Jerry used to play professional basketball back in his heyday. Decades later, he still had the height, shoulders, and solid build of a ballplayer, but his head was immersed in a totally different game—making Calamity Jane Realty the number one real estate business in western South Dakota.
“Hi, Jerry.” I flashed him a smile on the way to my desk, which was one of four that he’d positioned in a loosely spaced huddle formation to encourage teamwo … wait.
I stopped, counting desks to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Make that one of five. I lowered my purse onto my desk and aimed a raised brow at Ben Underhill, my only coworker still in the office this afternoon.
Ben sat at his desk, which was now separated from mine by the newest piece of furniture to join our team huddle. His brown hair looked windblown. His blue tie matched his eyes both in color and the way it sort of drooped. The smile he returned sagged at the corners. From the looks of it, I wasn’t the only one who’d had a rotten day.