by Ann Charles
“Do we have company?” I asked Ben, indicating the additional furniture now sharing the room with us.
“Actually, Violet,” Jerry answered before Ben could get a word out, “that’s your desk. The one your purse is sitting on is now Mona’s.”
My desk? I sized it up, wondering why Jerry would situate it in the room so that my back was to the door and the plate-glass windows. Jane would not have approved, what with her being into feng shui. Wild Bill would have rolled over in his grave.
“I told Jerry that Wild Bill wouldn’t approve of you sitting with your back to the door,” Ben said, as if he’d been reading my thoughts.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think the famous gunfighter of old had much sway over Jerry “Thor” Russo. Like the Nordic mythological god, Jerry was supersized with a rock-hewn face, booming voice, and extra-large shoes to fill. He also had a tendency to cause lightning and thunderstorms in my world. One of these days I was going to hide his marketing hammer so he’d quit taking swings at my career.
“Ben tried to get me to change to a zone defense,” Jerry said, leaning closer to his computer screen, “and line up the desks the way we used to have them. But I think the huddle formation is better for the team.”
I mouthed a “thank you for trying” to Ben, who gave me a thumbs-up before returning to his paperwork.
“So who’s working at the fifth desk?” I moved my purse over to my new workstation. I had an idea, but wanted to confirm my fears.
“You’re looking at him.”
“Is someone using your office?” As in someone who used to own this business when she was still alive and wasn’t quite ready to move on now that she was dead?
“I’m loaning it out temporarily.”
Loaning out his office? Was that the story he was going with to throw off my coworkers?
I hit the spacebar on my keyboard, waking up my computer, and noticed the blinking light on my desk phone. Stuck on the receiver were two notes. They had names written on them that I’d never heard of before along with phone numbers and the Call back box checked.
“Is this my phone or did Mona’s get mixed up with mine in the move?”
“It’s yours, Violet.” Jerry leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Did you see the two messages I left for you?”
I nodded, holding them up. “Any idea what these two gentlemen are looking for?”
The pained expression on Ben’s face when I glanced his way made me do a double take. “What?” I asked, turning to Jerry. “What’s going on?”
He clapped his large hands together, making me cringe. In the past, when Jerry clapped, thunder and lightning usually followed. “I have good news, Violet.”
Oh, no. What now? I fell into my chair, my knees giving out on premonition alone. I waited for his hammer to fall.
“Your new billboard is up.”
“My new billboard? You mean you replaced my billboard over near Sturgis?”
As in the billboard that showcased me wearing a hideous pink silk suit with my hair spiraling out of control? The one with my lips painted blood red, making me look like the queen of the local vampire cult, that told travelers I would show them a “magical place” they’d love coming home to every night? I was still getting shit about that billboard whenever I stopped up at the Piggly Wiggly in Lead to pick up milk and superglue for my kids.
“No, that baby is still up and capturing westbound travelers’ attention. The billboard I’m talking about is brand-new, installed yesterday afternoon.” His smile stretched to his ears, showing off his pearly whites. “It’s over in Spearfish snagging eastbound drivers on Interstate 90.”
“Spearfish?” My ears started to ring loudly, alarms going off throughout my brain. Crap, not Spearfish. Please let me have heard that wrong.
“Yep. We’re going to give Tiffany Sugarbell a run for her money and drive the ball into her key.”
“We are?” The ringing grew louder after hearing the name of Doc’s neurotic ex-girlfriend. My upper lip started to sweat. “What key?”
“You know, the key in basketball. Where her hoop is.”
Jerry spoke English as a second language, with Sport-uguese being his native tongue. Some days his accent was so thick with basketball jargon that I had to watch the instant replay video to make sense of what he was saying.
“So, you rented billboard space in Tiffany’s backyard?”
“That’s another way of putting it.”
Crud.
Damn.
Hell’s bells.
I was dead meat.
As soon as Tiffany caught wind of that billboard, she was going to come at me with her claws sharpened and fully extended. How could Jerry not see that the redheaded sexpot was born on Crazy Creek just this side of Nutterville’s city limits?
Jeez-on-crackers, like I needed to give the ultra-competitive, Jessica Rabbit wannabe another reason to hate me to death. She’d already spit sparks at me for stealing Doc—although for the record he’d left her well before I’d come into the picture. That billboard would make flames shoot from Tiffany’s eyes. Jerry might as well have painted a target on my ass and handed her a damned rocket launcher.
I held up the two messages, moving on to another element of this disaster that had my shoulders tense. “These two gentlemen saw my billboard today and called?”
“Yep.” Jerry pushed out his chest, proud as a peacock with two tails. “They know a good thing when they see it.”
See it? Lordy, please tell me he didn’t … “Which particular picture of me did you happen to use on this new billboard?”
“The one with you in the black dress and a pen in your mouth.”
I crushed the messages in my fist. “Oh, dear.” I tried to smile around my frown.
Jerry winced at my expression. “Are you okay? You’re not going to start crying again are you?”
I’d cried once in front of Jerry. One freaking time. Apparently, that was all it took to scar the brute for life.
“No tears.” But torturing Jerry on the rack did pass through my thoughts. I placed the crumpled messages next to each other on my desk, smoothing out the crinkles. “Just out of curiosity, what does the new billboard say?”
Jerry pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll text you the picture I took earlier when I zipped over there to see it for myself.” He tapped his screen a couple of times.
My phone chirped in response. I pulled it out of my coat pocket, my gut churning. With Jerry and Ben both watching, I opened the text and tapped on the picture to enlarge it.
It took several seconds for the woman in my head to stop screaming obscenities. After I’d wrestled her into silence, I reminded myself to breathe before I turned purple and keeled over.
I scanned the words again, praying that I’d read it wrong the first time through.
Looking for a high-quality, low-maintenance LTR?
Violet Parker is the professional for you.
She can meet your needs and put a smile on your face!
Contact Calamity Jane Realty.
Violet is waiting for your call.
“Wow,” I croaked. Shit.
“I tweaked a singles’ ad so that it worked for real estate,” Jerry explained his madness with a proud smile.
If I aimed my boot heel at his teeth … “And ‘LTR’ refers to?”
“Long Term Realtor. Clever, huh?”
As opposed to Long Term Relationship, right. Double shit. Call me kooky, but I might have spelled that acronym out for drivers.
“Clever is one word for it,” I said, trying to laugh like my world wasn’t swirling down the toilet. My laugh sounded high and squeaky, like someone had stuck a thermometer in Elvis’s butt—Elvis as in my daughter’s chicken, not the late, great King of Rock and Roll.
“Now, Violet,” Jerry said, his tone pacifying. “I can see by your red cheeks that you’re not thrilled with this new billboard, but I promise you it’s going to pay off.”
My eye twit
ched. Did he mean it would pay off for my future as a real estate agent or a professional call girl? Because from where I was standing, I could only see stripper poles lining up clear to the horizon.
“I have a new billboard, too.” Ben spoke up. “We’ll be blazing forth together.”
“Where?”
“His is down in Rapid City,” Jerry answered.
“What’s he wearing?” Please let it be only his underwear so that we were at least on an even playing field.
“That black tuxedo Jerry rented for me.”
Dang! That tux had given Ben a sleek, sophisticated appeal that my black dress couldn’t touch. “What’s your ad say?”
Ben held out his phone to me. I took it, enlarging the picture.
Sure enough, he looked handsome and debonair. I read the words on his billboard aloud. “Looking for your next win in the real estate game? Score big with Realtor Ben Underhill—your local MVP!”
Well, wasn’t that just my luck? Ben’s billboard looked and read like a men’s magazine cover, turning him into a local sports star. I frowned down at my billboard picture again—and I was the slutty blond cheerleader who gave hand jobs under the bleachers. At this rate, I was going to have to hire me a pimp to screen my clientele.
Jerry’s phone rang. “I need to take this.”
I turned my back on him while he spoke into the receiver and let my emotions have at it on my face, cursing Jerry seven ways from Sunday under my breath.
Ben joined me, leaning back against my desk. “It’s not that bad, Violet.”
“Have you read it?”
He nodded.
“More than once? Beginning to end?”
Chuckling, he patted my shoulder. “From a guy’s perspective, it’s sexy, but not over the top. Tongue in cheek, so to speak.”
“Ben, I have a pen in my mouth.”
He shrugged. “That’s part of the sex appeal. Jerry’s right—it’s going to bring you a lot of new clients.”
“Clients who expect what, though?”
Aunt Zoe was going to come swinging for Jerry when she saw this new ad. Her bra-burning days might be over, but that didn’t mean she had stopped carrying a lighter in her pocket. She still cursed up a storm whenever anyone brought up my other billboard.
“Did you notice the phone number Jerry listed?” Ben asked.
No, I’d been too busy ranting about Jerry turning me into Deadwood’s newest prostitute. I looked at the picture on my phone again, cringing my way through the ad blurb, and focused on the phone number. “That’s not mine.” It wasn’t my cell number or my desk phone.
“It’s Jerry’s. He’s going to screen each of your clients.”
Ah, so Jerry was my new pimp. “Screen them how?”
“He told me that he’s going to run them through the hoops on the phone first, and then meet them along with us the first time to make sure they’re legit.”
“These two passed the phone test?” I pointed at the messages.
He nodded. “Four callers didn’t make it past your new bouncer.”
I glanced over at Jerry, who had his back to us as he spoke on the phone. The man’s shoulders were wider than a refrigerator, his forearms giving Popeye a run for his money. The fire inside of me cooled several degrees.
“I know Jerry’s tactics are a bit excessive,” Ben continued. “But if you step back and look at it from another angle, he’s really good at marketing in new ways that most real estate companies wouldn’t even think to try. He has guts.”
“And a fair share of gall.”
“True, but you and I both know that success doesn’t come without a willingness to take a few risks.”
I blew out a breath. “Damn it,” I whispered, pocketing the two messages. “Fine. I’ll call these guys in the morning and see what I can do to help them.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“But don’t expect me to put on a cheerleading skirt and do any cartwheels about it.”
“What? No cartwheels in a short skirt? Dang.” He winked.
“So, have you received any calls because of your new billboard?”
He nodded. “According to Jerry, one potential buyer for a property down in Hot Springs and two who were looking for a fun night on the town.”
“You’re kidding? Two women called for a date?”
One brown eyebrow lifted. “Who said they were both women?”
I smiled as he returned to his desk, glad to have Ben on the front lines next to me. After checking my email, I hoisted my purse. “Tell Jerry I needed to head home a little early.”
“Hey, what did your client think of that house in the Forest Hill neighborhood?”
I didn’t want to lie to Ben, but I couldn’t come out and say Cooper had possibly seen a ghost in the living room. “Detective Cooper is hard to read,” I answered truthfully. “I don’t know if anything we looked at today appealed to him. I really liked the place, though. It shows well. You did a great job prepping it.”
“Thanks. See you tomorrow, Violet.”
I decided to head over to Doc’s office via the front door. When I opened the door, I ran into a box being carried by Abraham Lincoln. The collision knocked his black stovepipe hat onto the ground.
“Cornelius!” I bent down and grabbed his hat before the wind carried it away. I held out the hat to my previous client and fellow séance buddy. “What are you doing here?”
Cornelius had recently bought a haunted hotel on Main Street through me. Our Realtor-client relationship had quickly turned into something more paranormal after I agreed to attend one of his séances. One séance had turned into two and then three and so on. Most recently, we’d sat back-to-back while seeking to eradicate a dead little girl who had been terrorizing Cornelius to the point of physical exhaustion with her murderous directives.
“Good morning, Violet.” Cornelius shoved the box at me in exchange for his hat.
Morning? Had he recently crawled out of bed? It was possible for Cornelius, whose paranormal work often kept him up all night. I took the box.
He settled the hat back on his head where it blended perfectly with his hair. His goatee looked extra pointy today, his cornflower blue eyes a stark contrast against his pale skin. “You can put that in my office with the other one.”
Put what? The box? Cornelius often confused me for his secretary in addition to his real estate agent. I shifted the box, which was growing heavier by the second. “Your office? Are you confused about where you are?”
He stroked his goatee, his head tipping slightly. “That’s an interesting question, Violet. Have you taken me to a parallel realm again?”
Not yet, but if he kept talking about me and my clandestine paranormal activities in the vicinity of my boss, I might knock him and his box into another state—an unconscious one.
“Violet,” Jerry said, speaking from behind me, holding the door open. “Let Cornelius come on in. He’s borrowing my office.”
I led the way inside. “He’s the one you loaned it to?”
Jerry nodded once and then returned to his phone, picking it up and turning his back on me again.
Crappity crap. How was I going to keep my newfound abilities a secret with Cornelius working under the same roof as me day after day? I was going to have to talk to him in private, make it clear that discussing our extracurricular paranormal activities at the office was a big no-no.
I escorted Cornelius back to Jerry’s office, dropping the box on the desk.
“Be careful with that, Violet.”
“Sorry.” That’s what he got for drafting an amateur mover. I opened the box, frowning down at several high tech-looking gadgets that I’d seen before hooked up to the multitude of computers in Cornelius’s hotel suite. That’s when I noticed the numerous monitors lining the wall behind Jerry’s desk.
“What is going on?” I asked Cornelius, who had taken off his long wool overcoat, revealing a black thermal shirt and jeans. He was busy untangling a nest of c
ords he’d pulled out of the other box.
“I’m moving in.”
“To Jerry’s office, I know, but why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Maybe to someone who reads minds.”
“How much have you experimented with telepathy, Violet? You may be as good at it as you are at channeling.”
I shushed him, pointing toward the doorway. “Why don’t you save me the mental headache and tell me why you are relocating your equipment to this office.” I stepped closer, lowering my voice. “Is it because of the ghost?”
His smile was one-sided, making his goatee crooked. “You are already performing thought-transference. Your powers never cease to amaze me, Violet.”
I didn’t bother telling the knucklehead that my guess had nothing to do with reading his mind. Last month, Jerry asked me about Cornelius and his ghost-detecting gadgets. It appeared my boss had taken the next step in his attempt to rid himself of his ex-wife’s restless spirit and hired the self-proclaimed “ghost whisperer” to come witness Jane’s activity in person and convince her to go away.
“So you’ll be in here trying to talk to her ghost each day while we’re working out front?”
“Not just days.” Cornelius lifted a monitor and handed it to me. “Don’t drop that.”
After the lousy day I’d had, he was lucky that I didn’t smash it over his damned hat. I set the monitor down on the desktop.
“You mean you’ll spend the night in here, too?”
Was he going to set up a cot? Where would he shower? Would I be forced to look at his skinny, hairy legs each morning and that god-awful robe he liked to wear?
“Your telepathic skills improve by the second, channeler. What am I thinking now?” He stepped over to the row of monitors.
I glared at his back “That I look like I’m considering clobbering you over the head.”
He lifted another monitor. “Not even close. Try again.”
“I’m too tired for this game, Cornelius.”