by Ann Charles
Natalie pointed her spoon at me. “You’re not exactly the quietest sleeper, you know.”
“I don’t snore.”
“No, but you moan a lot. It’s kind of creepy in the middle of the night.”
I looked over at Doc. “I moan?”
He shrugged. “I find it sexy, myself.”
I wondered how long that had been going on. Nobody had ever mentioned me moaning in my sleep, at least not before I started having chronic nightmares about dead killers and melting demons stalking me.
Natalie leaned back in her seat, sliding her fingers through her brown tresses. “I can’t believe we found a dead guy. This morning seemed like any other, and then ‘Bam!’ my life took a sharp left.”
Welcome to my world. She should try starting her day down in the Mudder Brothers’ basement autopsy room attempting to identify a decapitated body. Better yet, how about discovering a shrunken skull next to a wadded up tangle of arms and legs in a spooky apartment?
“At least it still had a head attached,” I said, sugaring my coffee. After the rigmarole this morning, I was going to need to pop coffee beans like Tic Tacs to stay awake when I returned to work after lunch.
“Yep.” Harvey smirked. “But Coop sure didn’t appreciate you pointing that out to him.”
Cooper’s growl had rivaled Red’s at the time.
“So who actually found the body?” Doc asked.
“Red sniffed it out,” Natalie said.
“Good old Red, the crime finding canine,” I added with a quick grin at Harvey. He and I had gotten the giggles in the midst of Detective Hawke’s twenty questions game when I’d told him if he didn’t like my answers he should interrogate Red and have him bark once for No and twice for Yes.
“You know what I don’t get?” I aimed my question at Harvey. “Your grandpappy’s double-barrel shotgun.”
“I already told ya; he wired the triggers back because they were busted.”
“Not that. I don’t get why it was in the safe with the dead guy.”
“What do you mean?” Natalie asked. “Isn’t that where you store it?”
“Nope.” I beat Harvey to the answer. I’d been around the old goat long enough to know that all shotguns were stored within grabbing distance at all times.
“I keep ‘er in the hall closet, loaded and ready to shoot troublemakers.”
“What did Cooper have to say about the gun being in the safe with the body?” Doc asked.
Harvey, Natalie, and I all squirmed as his gaze traveled around the table.
“Nothing,” I spoke first.
“Nothing as in this is more top-secret police business kind of ‘nothing’? Or he was just plain stumped?”
“Nothing because we didn’t tell him about it.”
“Why not?”
“Well, Harvey sort of extracted the shotgun from the safe before the cops arrived and stashed it under the seat in his pickup.”
Doc’s focus volleyed between Harvey and me. “You guys removed evidence from the crime scene again?”
“Not me.” I pointed across the table. “It was all Harvey’s doing this time.”
Harvey just shrugged off my accusation. “It’s a family heirloom. Coop’s boys would’ve taken my grandpappy’s gun and never given it back.”
“That’s probably true.” Doc sipped his coffee. “Was it still loaded?”
“There was one spent cartridge in the chamber. The other one was unfired.”
“Slugs or buckshot?”
“Rock salt. With those broken triggers, you have to hold them hammers back with your thumb and then let ‘er rip to shoot. Rock salt was safer in case my thumb got tired when I got to swingin’ those sawed-off double barrels around.” He toyed with his spoon.
“So somebody got off one shot,” I said.
“If the victim was waving around your grandpa’s big old shotgun, who in their right mind would play target practice with him?” Natalie asked.
“Who says it was the dead guy who fired it?” Harvey tapped his spoon against his mug. “It mighta been the killer who used it, and then stuffed it in the safe with the body.”
Natalie thought on that. “Is there any way to tell?”
“Normally, Coop would dust it for prints. But since the fingertips are missing’ on the one body that stayed behind after the murderin’ hoedown, that won’t do much good.”
“Did either of the detectives find any other clues while you guys were there?” Doc asked us. “Anything in the house or barn besides the bloody rag and the mess under the bathroom sink Violet told me about?”
“Nothing they felt like playing show and tell with,” I spoke for all of us.
“Did you three notice any signs of fighting in Harvey’s house? Any evidence that the gun was fired inside?”
I glanced at the others. We all shook our heads. “No, the place looked as clean as usual besides the bathroom.”
Surprisingly, Harvey was a bit of a neat bug. Even more shocking, his skills at interior decorating and house staging would give Martha Stewart a run for her money.
“Makes you wonder,” Doc put his arm over the back of the seat, his fingers stroking my chenille covered shoulder.
“If someone was dallyin’ in my underwear drawer?”
Doc chuckled, but shook his head. “Who went in the house? Did the victim break in, patch himself back up, find your grandfather’s shotgun, and then go out to face off with his killer?”
“Or was it the killer who cleaned himself up after doing the deed?” I finished for Doc.
“Exactly.” His fingers strummed down my arm. “I’d love to hear Detective Cooper’s thoughts on the victim. Was he hiding in the safe initially or was he stuffed in there after death?”
“What difference would that make?” Natalie asked.
Doc glanced from Natalie to me. “It would tell us more about what kind of killer we’re dealing with here.”
“You mean what kind of killer Detective Cooper is dealing with.” I thought about how hair-raising it was that somebody had taken the time to cut off the dead guy’s face … or had it been cut off when the guy was still alive? That thought gave me a whole new rash of chills. “I don’t want to be anywhere near this one if Cooper digs deep enough to make the killer start to sweat.”
“I see what you mean about Detective Hawke,” Natalie said to me. “His ego was at flood stage today.”
“Nope. That was normal level.” Which was why I’d threatened to crush his balls under my boot heel a few weeks ago upon our first meeting. Ever since then, he had been out to prove I had a violent streak, including this stupid Wicked Witch from the East notion.
“Ahhh,” Natalie shot me a knowing grin. “Now I see why you are dumping him off on me.”
“Your reservoir of tolerance for assholes is way deeper than mine.”
“True. Yours is more of a mud puddle at best. At least we’re done with him and Cooper on today’s mess.”
“Oh, we’re far from done, trust me. Harvey and I have danced this police jig a few times. Both detectives will be back with their clicking pens and stupid notebooks, asking the same questions over and over. It’s their legal form of torture.”
“This wound is just startin’ to fester.” Harvey glanced toward the restaurant’s kitchen. “Company’s a-comin’.”
The waitress was on the way with a tray of steaming food. “Here we go.” She set the tray on the table next to us and started doling out plates.
My stomach took control of my brain and all thoughts of faceless bodies and twisted killers took a back seat to red meat and bacon.
A half hour later, we all headed out to the parking lot.
Doc caught my arm as we neared Harvey’s pickup. “You going home or to the office?”
“The office. I need to spend a couple of hours at my desk taking care of paperwork for the Carhart house sale.”
A sale about which I had mixed feelings. On one hand, the commission would be nice, as well as
a third sale under my belt since starting at Calamity Jane Realty last spring. On the other hand, there was a very demanding ghost named Prudence who had been hovering in that house since the late 1800s and who kept finding new ways to freak the crap out of me through creatively delivered eerie messages from beyond. I liked the couple buying the place, though, and they were still determined to make it their home away from home even after my full disclosure of multiple murders and hauntings. Now if I could just get Prudence the ghost to quit messing with me.
“I’ll take Violet to work,” Doc said over my head to my partners in crime-witnessing. “I’m heading that way.”
I’d rather spend a couple of hours in his office next door to Calamity Jane Realty, hiding away from Cooper, Hawke, and all of my other troubles, but I doubted my boss would appreciate me not being within hollering distance.
“I’ll see you two later.” I followed Doc to his Camaro.
He held open the door for me. While he zipped around back, I flipped down the visor mirror and applied a coat of the new lip gloss I’d bought with Doc in mind.
He slid in behind the wheel. “Are you really okay after that mess out at Harvey’s place?”
I thought about my answer. “Wouldn’t it figure with my luck these days that instead of finding money in a safe, I found another dead body?”
He started the car and shifted into gear. “You do have a way of stumbling onto macabre leftovers.”
Leftovers summed up that body. “It was pretty horrific, but I’ve seen worse.”
“Yes, unfortunately you have.” He pulled out onto the road and headed toward downtown Deadwood. “Do you have a few minutes before you have to be at work? I have something I want to show you in my back room.”
I’d seen a lot of things while in Doc’s back room. Let me correct that—I’d seen a lot of Doc sans clothing, his and mine, while in his back room. A smile crept onto my lips. “Will it involve clothing being removed again?”
He did a double take, his gaze lingering on my mouth the second time around, and then sliding south over the front of my sweater. “Would you like it to involve clothing being removed?”
“What a silly question.”
His hand wandered over to my thigh, his fingers trailing upward along my inseam. “You are very soft today. I had trouble keeping my hands off of you at lunch.”
“It’s all of your extra bacon softening me up.” I was serious. If I kept eating like I had been for the last couple of weeks, I was going to have to break down and start exercising. I’d sooner battle orange-eyed demons and hissing albinos than spend one second on a treadmill.
He rolled into the parking lot behind our offices, pulling into his usual spot. “Tell me something, Boots.” He used the nickname he reserved for when he was feeling frisky. He shut off the car and turned my way, ogling me like I was a cooler showcasing tasty pies and cakes at a dessert buffet. “Are your underwear as soft as your pants and sweater?”
“They’re fur-lined, baby,” I lied, feeling frisky myself in spite of my recent troubles with a faceless body along with a handful of prickly cops.
He sucked his breath in through his teeth. “Damn. You’re like one of those hot cave-chicks from the Flintstones.” He opened his door. “Come on, Pebbles Parker. You need to see what I found.”
I met him at the trunk, shivering in the cool fall air. We crossed the parking lot to his back door, which he locked behind me. Without a word, he grabbed my hand and pulled me into his back room, shutting the door behind us. The place smelled like old varnish and a hint of Doc’s woodsy cologne.
“Are you keeping somebody out?” I asked as he moved over to the rows of bookshelves lining the walls and pulled a book out. “Or making sure I don’t leave?”
He chuckled as he flipped through the book. “I have better ways of making sure you don’t leave.”
“If you’re even considering trying handcuffs, don’t.”
Detective Cooper had ruined the sexiness of them when he had slapped them on me and hauled me off to jail earlier this month.
“I take it you’re still pissed about Cooper making an example of you.”
“I’ll hold my grudges against that butthead until the day I die.”
“There’s the tiger I know and fantasize about while in the shower. Maybe we should get you a tiger striped negligée to go with your fur-lined panties.”
“Okay, but only if I get to hold the chair and whip.”
He hit me with one raised eyebrow. “I think your and my tiger fantasies are very different.”
“You mean yours doesn’t include elephants spinning on beach balls and monkeys riding tiny bicycles under a Big Top tent?”
He laughed, lowering the book and strolling over to me. “No elephants in mine, but I might be able to incorporate the monkeys.”
“Trust me, you won’t regret it.”
Lifting my chin, he leaned over and kissed me thoroughly, leaving me weak kneed and breathless with a hankering for more. Holy heart breaker! His kisses were as addictive as crack.
“I’ve wanted to do that since you walked into Bighorn Billy’s.”
“Next time don’t wait so long.”
“You taste like peaches today.”
“I bought a new flavor of lip gloss.”
When I leaned in for another round of show-don’t-tell, he held the book up between us. “You need to look at this before I forget why I brought you in here and give you a hands-on demonstration of what I like about your lips, that sweater, and ripe peaches.”
“Fine, party pooper.” I took the book from him, staring down at a grainy black and white picture.
“Come here. You need more light.” He turned on a lamp sitting on a stack of milk crates.
I followed, holding the book under the light.
From what I could tell, it was an early 1900s picture of the inside of a general store, every nook and cranny overflowing with products. There were shelves filled with canned and dry goods along with what looked like jars of candy. The side walls held shovels and pickaxes, rugs, and clocks. Against the back wall of the shop, I could make out racks of clothing and a sign advertising shoes and hats.
The woman behind the counter looked typical of many women of the early twentieth century who had lived a hard life out West. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, her face makeup free. The harsh lighting made the angles on her face more pronounced, her eyes dark. The high-collared dress elongated her neck.
“What am I looking for here?” I asked.
Doc pointed at one of the shelves on the right wall.
I held the book closer. The dark glass bottles looked very familiar. “Are those what I think they are?”
“If you look closer with a magnifying glass, there’s a price for mead by the bottle next to the cash register.”
I gaped at him. “Those bottles look exactly like the one I borrowed from that crate in Mudder Brothers’ side room back in August.”
“Borrowed, you say?”
“Leave the hair splitting to Detective Cooper.” My focus returned to the photo. “Do you think there’s a connection somehow?”
“I’m not sure, but there’s something else in this photo that I wanted you to see besides the mead.” He pointed at the woman behind the counter. “That’s Ms. Wolff.”
Ms. Wolff? This time my lower jaw bounced off my toes. The same Ms. Wolff who had called me almost a month ago out of the blue and told me she had to talk to me immediately because she’d be dead soon … and then followed through with that dearly departed prediction right before I arrived at her apartment with Harvey in tow?
I frowned at the picture caption. “It says here it’s a Miss Hundt.”
“Hundt means hound in German. Wolff is wolf. Suspiciously similar, don’t you think?”
“So you think she’s one and the same?”
“I don’t think, I know.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Didn’t Prudence the ghost call the t
imekeeper ‘Ms. Hundt’ when she spoke to you through me last time we paid her a visit?” At my grimace and nod, he continued. “And you and I both realized that when Prudence was asking you to bring her the timekeeper, she meant the keeper of time, aka clocks, aka all of those Black Forest clocks on Ms. Wolff’s wall.”
“Right, the creepy, nightmare-spurring wall.”
“But what makes me even more certain this is Ms. Wolff is the fact that I saw her up close. I know her face.”
“You mean from when we had the séance in Ms. Wolff’s apartment and you joined with the ghost of Big Jake Tender?”
Doc nodded.
Big Jake had been in Ms. Wolff’s company when he had died almost a century ago. During one of Doc’s adventures as a ghost medium in the boarding house Big Jake had built, Doc had witnessed this scene and more through the dead man’s eyes. I shivered just remembering that séance and how close we’d come to losing Doc in the past for good.
“You’re positive this is her?”
He nodded again.
“How can you be so sure?”
“If you saw an old black and white picture of John Wayne, would you know it’s the Duke?”
“Of course. But I’ve seen the Duke hundreds of times on TV.”
“Ms. Wolff was hovering over Big Jake while he died. Her face is sort of stuck in my mind, the stricken look of pain over losing him still fresh.”
I stared at the photo again, searching the background with this new information in mind. That back wall with the clothing and sign about hats struck a chord. “That’s it!”
“What?”
“The different sized clothing and shoes in her closet, and all of those hat boxes full of fancy hats. They were from when she ran this store.” There’d been dresses and shoes from various time periods. I’d thought maybe they were clothes from the costume room of the Homestake Opera House up in Lead. Turned out they were just leftover stock.
“That makes sense.” Doc took the book back from me, rubbing his jaw as he scrutinized the photo. “I was able to go back through some of the history books at the library and figure out which building this store operated out of and what’s there now.”