by Ann Charles
She’d mentioned that idea to me on the way home. I grew even more bristly about it the second time she said it.
Right then, I remembered something else I hadn’t told her before. “There was more to it than that. Dominick told me he saw sadness in you that he wanted to fix. He was certain he could make you happy for a while in exchange for your making an entertaining companion for him.” I left out the bit he said about “entertaining” both in and out of the bedroom.
“Yup,” Harvey said. “A fine heifer will perk me up fer months.”
Cooper stood. “You have cows on the brain, Uncle Willis.” He took his plate to the sink.
Natalie chuckled. “Harvey’s right, though. A new love does tend to put a bounce in your step.” She cast a swift glance in Cooper’s direction, looking away before anyone who wasn’t watching her like a hawk would notice.
However, the magnification on my “hawk” binoculars was set at 10x, so I saw enough to wonder if she was having second, third, and fourth thoughts about her sabbatical.
“Could he?” Reid asked Aunt Zoe.
“Could he what?”
“Make you happy?
She stared at him for a long silent moment, and then shrugged. “Dominick is very attractive, but underneath it’s all the same Hell, merely a different devil.”
“A very dangerous devil,” I added, sending Doc a worried frown. Dominick knew where Aunt Zoe worked. If he set his sights on her when I wasn’t around, she might be toast.
Doc returned my frown.
“Sparky?” Harvey said. “That day Ms. Wolff called ya, how long did it take from when ya hung up on ‘er until we showed up on her doorstep?”
“A half an hour, maybe a little longer. Why?”
“Somethin’ is stickin’ in my craw about what Zoe’s loverboy said.”
Aunt Zoe harrumphed. “He’s not my loverboy.”
“Which part?” I asked Harvey.
“The bit about Ms. Wolff dabblin’ with time.” He stroked his beard, his head cocked to the side.
Cooper leaned against the counter, crossing his arms. “So, let me get this straight. The clocks in Ms. Wolff’s apartment that are ticking represent subjects who are existing here amongst us.” At my nod, he continued, “And if a clock is stopped, the subject is no longer with us, but not necessarily deceased.” I nodded again. “And if it’s cuckooing or chiming, then …”
“Change is occurring,” Doc answered for me. “Something is either coming or going.”
“Or trying to,” I added.
“And those clocks that you heard chiming for a couple of days meant that something kept trying to come through or leave.” He didn’t ask, merely stated it. “But then you didn’t open the door, which is apparently something a timekeeper is supposed to do, so what then? It left?”
“I guess.”
“Where did it go?”
I raised my hands, palms up.
“This is insane, Parker.” Cooper pinched the bridge of his nose, near the crooked part. “I’m going to need a bottle of whiskey for it to start making sense.”
Natalie tapped on the table. “So, Dominick thinks Ms. Wolff gave you some of her timekeeping abilities?”
“That’s what he insinuated.”
“How is that even possible?” Reid asked, giving Aunt Zoe a troubled glance. She was frowning at the table, her mind seemingly elsewhere at the moment.
“I have no idea,” I answered for her.
“Did ya leave yer brains in yer other coat tonight, Sparky?” Harvey asked.
“Maybe I did, ol’ man.” I looked around at each of them, ending with Cooper. “Listen, who knows if any of this is even true? Dominick can’t be trusted. He might have been intentionally misleading. Maybe all executioners can hear the sounds I heard in Ms. Wolff’s apartment.”
“That’s not normal behavior for executioners,” Doc spoke up. When I turned his way, he added, “At least according to your family history book it’s not.”
“Define normal.” I remembered a Morticia Addams quote that had always stuck with me, adding, “What is normal for the spider is chaos to the fly.”
His lips curved. “You, cara mia, are far from normal.”
“How’s it all tie together?” Cooper asked, still pinching the bridge of his nose.
“All of what, Coop?” Harvey asked.
“This timekeeper shit with the remains found on the Mickelson Trail and the picture that you and Nosy Parker here picked up from Slagton.”
“For the record,” I said, “I only rode along on that trip.”
Harvey made chicken sounds at me.
“What’s the story behind that picture, anyway?” Doc asked.
Cooper sighed, lowering his hand. “I’ll make all of you a deal. If I tell you about the picture, you promise not to go back to Slagton to sniff around more without me.”
“You want to pinkie swear again?” I held up my pinkie.
He glared in return.
“Okay, fine.” I lowered my hand. “But I’m sort of shocked you’re not going to give us the ‘police business’ runaround.”
“That picture isn’t police business. It’s my business.”
“This just keeps getting better,” Natalie said, rubbing her hands together.
“When I was back there asking around about the victim you three musketeers found in Uncle Willis’s safe, one of the locals mentioned he’d been out hunting somewhat recently and seen a strange creature. He explained that it walked upright, but had thick horns, like a bighorn sheep.”
Natalie shuddered. “That reminds me of that pink-eyed thing from Amityville Horror.”
“At the time,” Cooper continued, “I could smell liquor on the guy and figured it was the moonshine talking, but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. I gave him my home phone number and told him to call if he ever saw it again, suggesting he take a picture if he could. I didn’t expect anything to come of it, which is why I gave him my home number. The last thing I need at work these days is another one of Parker’s Bigfoot sightings coming in, you know?”
“I wish it was good ol’ Bigfoot I was seeing,” I muttered.
“What makes you think this creature back in Slagton is tied to Violet?” Aunt Zoe asked.
Reid joined Cooper at the counter, getting a coffee cup from the cupboard, adding, “We still don’t know for sure that the Mickelson Trail remains weren’t left by some cougar or mountain lion.”
“Think about it. Parker shows up in town and weird shit starts happening, including one fucked-up murder after another.”
“So this is my fault?”
“No, more like the result of your presence. Apparently, these things were living here with us all along. Then you came and got things stirred up.”
“She’s been stirring up trouble since we were kids,” Natalie said, giving me a wink.
I shot her with my finger gun.
“It comes in waves,” Doc said, his tone sobering. “Nature always seeks to restore balance.”
I looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Think about it. Before you, there was Prudence. That collection of teeth didn’t come from her scouring the seashore somewhere. She was taking care of business here in Deadwood, cleaning up, dealing with whatever trouble was coming out of the woodwork, including taking out humans.” When I frowned at him, he added, “Not all of those teeth were from other beings. The question is, had she gone too far in her vengeance?”
“Then she got murdered,” Natalie said. “Playing along with your theory, that means her death was necessary for balance to be restored.”
“Maybe,” Doc said. “Or Prudence’s death just put things on hold for more than a century, which is a hiccup in the long skein of time.”
“So, if I went away …” I started, trailing off.
“I don’t think it’s as simple as you leaving and Coop’s problems going away.” Doc took my hand in his. “A balance has to be found first. Clearly, if th
ese other beings are roaming and killing at will, you’re needed here. If you were to leave, things could grow considerably worse.”
Aunt Zoe nodded. “My grandmother talked of the balance often, warning me to watch for shifts in the scale.” She leaned forward, pushing her empty plate away. “Doc, based on what you’ve deciphered in the book, do you think the appearance of these other creatures is directly due to Violet’s presence? That she is some sort of magnifier that summons them from their usual hunting grounds?”
“I haven’t come across anything yet in the book about executioners having any kind of summoning power.”
“Didn’t Dominick say that the hunters would be coming for me?” I said, trying to remember exactly how that conversation went.
Doc nodded at me. “But I think it’s usually the other way around with an executioner. You’re called because the threat is here.” He looked across at Aunt Zoe. “Your niece has been living a regular life for decades. Why the sudden change? Why was the executioner awakened in her now? Does it have something to do with that first brush with death in Wolfgang’s house? Or did something else trigger it? Something far beyond her control?”
Cooper focused on me. “Why did you move to Deadwood?”
“Ha, ha,” I said dryly.
“I’m serious, Parker. What prompted you to move to Deadwood?”
I shrugged. “I felt the need for a change.”
“But why Deadwood?” Doc pressed.
“I felt like I needed to be here with Aunt Zoe.”
“You were being called to action,” Natalie whispered. “How freaking cool is that?”
“Trust me, spudnut,” I said. “It wouldn’t feel very cool if you were walking in my boots.”
Doc rubbed his lower lip. “Zoe, you’ve said before that sometimes the executioner genes skip a generation or more, right?”
She nodded.
“While I’ve been studying your family history book, I’ve been creating a timeline. At first, I was only noting the estimated life span of the executioners, but then I realized that some of them started fighting at a very young age and others were older—in their twenties, thirties, and beyond when they made their first kill. That made me wonder if it’s not a matter of which generation pulls the short straw, but rather that every generation has the genetic makeup to become an executioner. The trigger is an external force, rather than internal, that lights them up.”
I sat back, letting his words simmer. That would mean I really had no control over any of this, that I was being directed sort of like a puppet. Did that mean if I lived long enough to see the balance returned, I’d have to be killed off like Prudence? Or could I slink back into regular life and live happily ever after as plain old Violet Parker, struggling single mom and crappy real estate agent?
Doc squeezed my hand. “That’s only a theory. I could be way off, of course.”
I doubted that. His theories were more often than not close to the mark.
“What if somethin’ were to happen to Sparky while the balance was still catawampus?” Harvey asked. “Would another killer from her line be called into action?”
“You mean Zo?” Reid asked.
“Either Zoe,” Harvey said. “Or a smaller version of Sparky.”
We all looked up at the ceiling.
Addy.
I grimaced, locking onto Aunt Zoe’s blue eyes. “If anything happens to me, take her away from here. She’s too young. She’ll have no chance.” Hell, I didn’t think I had much of a chance. So far, Lady Luck had been in my boat. If she jumped ship, I’d be walking the plank in no time.
Aunt Zoe nodded once.
“Back in seventh grade,” Natalie said to me, all mirth gone from her face. “We made a blood contract.”
I remembered.
“I meant what I said then, Vi, and I still mean it now. For you and your kids.”
My eyes grew watery.
“What did she say?” Cooper asked.
I frowned, blinking away the tears. “That she’d die for me to keep me safe.”
At the time, I was dealing with a she-bully who was twice my size and sat next to me in science. She was threatening to beat the crap out of me if I didn’t take the fall for her pouring dish soap in the teacher’s goldfish tank. The gravity of Natalie’s promise held a lot more weight now. If only it were school bullies I were facing.
“It’s not going to come to that,” Aunt Zoe said, her voice confident.
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re a smart girl.”
“Lucky to boot,” Harvey said, apparently reading my mind. “You’ve dodged more bullets than Coop.”
“That would explain all of his scars,” Natalie said.
Wanting to move on from the idea of Addy being next in line for the slaughter, I changed the subject. “Okay, if Dominick is right about Ms. Wolff somehow giving me the ability to detect travelers who come and go, then what exactly did she find out before she died? What was it that motivated her to give me these abilities?”
“Hey, Mom?” Layne walked into the kitchen with envelopes in one hand, pausing our pow-wow.
I pasted a smile on my lips. “What honey?”
“I forgot to give you the mail. I got it when we got home and stuffed it in the front pocket of my backpack.”
I held out my hand for the envelopes he was holding.
“Most of them are Christmas cards,” he said, handing them over. The envelopes were all opened, which was no big deal since I had always allowed the kids to open holiday cards for me.
“But this one is different.” He held out another opened, card-sized envelope for me to take.
Something in his voice made me frown. “What do you mean, it’s different?”
“Look.” He pulled out a plain white card and opened it. Inside, a picture of him holding up a glass egg had been taped to the back of the front cover.
My stomach dropped.
I knew that picture! It was THE picture. The one that had been stuck in Ms. Wolff’s dresser mirror.
I took the card, holding it out for Cooper to see.
He came closer, his mouth flat-lining. “Was there anything else with it?” he asked Layne.
“Just this.” Layne pulled a piece of folded paper from the envelope.
Cooper opened the paper, his gaze narrowing to slits.
“What’s it say?” Doc asked.
I was afraid to find out.
Cooper handed it over.
Doc held it out for me to read at the same time.
It is time. You will need this, Scharfrichter.
“What’s that mean?” Layne asked, pointing at my “other” name.
“It’s just a weird German word.” I took the paper from Doc and crumbled it in my fist. “It’s nothing.”
“Layne,” Aunt Zoe said, her voice light and smiley. “Do me a favor, kiddo, and go see if you can find that special I recorded about the Maya civilization. Reid told me earlier he’d like to watch that with us.”
Layne frowned at me for a few seconds, long enough that I didn’t think he’d take Aunt Zoe’s bait. Then he gave in and disappeared into the living room.
“I’m spending the night, then?” Reid asked Aunt Zoe.
She nodded, not looking thrilled about it, but Reid smiled anyway.
I tossed the crumpled note on the table. “I wish whoever was sending me this shit would stop playing hide and seek and just knock on the fucking door.”
“Careful what you wish for, baby doll,” Aunt Zoe said. “Remember the story about that mummified monkey’s paw by W.W. Jacobs? Granted wishes sometimes come with hellish consequences.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Saturday, December 8th
Life never seemed to go as planned for me, especially when I really needed it to. I grabbed a syrup-coated plate and stuck it into the sudsy dishwater, washing it as I stared out the kitchen window at the sparkling snow.
Take last night, for example.
&nbs
p; After dealing with the Dominick shit and the timekeeper crap, I had the business with Layne’s picture.
Who had returned it to me? Was it Mr. Black? Had I been wrong all along and Mr. Black hadn’t taken Layne’s picture from Ms. Wolff’s apartment that day? Could he have been distracting Freesia at Ms. Wolff’s door while someone else was inside swiping it?
The questions surrounding the picture had made me dizzy. My solution was to sleep on it … next to Doc. But then life stepped in and shook my snow globe yet again.
About two hours before I’d planned to sneak Doc up to my room, there was a loud crash overhead, followed by little girl squeals and a particular chicken’s squawks. I raced up the stairs, barging into Addy’s room only to pinch my nose and rush back out, followed by the two girls and Elvis.
Call it a mother’s instinct or an executioner’s sixth sense, but I’d known there was a reason I didn’t want Addy taking Elvis up to her room. When I demanded an explanation from my kid for why her room smelled like someone dumped perfume all over the place, my daughter told me that Elvis knocked an old bottle of my perfume off her desk. On its way to the floor, it hit one of the metal drawer knobs and the glass top shattered. While Addy ran to grab a towel from the bathroom, the perfume leaked out and soaked into the carpet, leaving her bedroom smelling like a good ol’ whorehouse. At least that’s what Harvey told me when he joined us upstairs to find out what the commotion was.
At bedtime the room still reeked in spite of the carpet cleaner that was supposed to neutralize odors and the window open a couple of inches. There was no way I could let the two girls sleep in there, so I ended up giving up my bed to them. Doc mentioned walking home through the snow, but Harvey offered to sleep in the makeshift whorehouse since his smeller didn’t work so well anymore. The old goat had high hopes that the aroma would spur happy dreams full of good-time memories, including someone named Nevada Nelly with a penchant for spurs. I handed him an extra quilt and left before he could share any further details.
That left the couch for Doc. Unfortunately for him, rather than crawl into bed with the girls after everyone had settled down for the night, I opted to squish in next to him. Although he didn’t seem to mind too much, especially when I slipped off my robe and crawled under his blanket in just my camisole and underwear. We fooled around a bit under the covers, rubbing and teasing enough to get him breathing hard and me achy with need, but then Addy came down crying because she had a bad dream. Playtime was over.