Boot Points

by Ann Charles

  Contents

  Start Reading

  Dear Reader

  Very Short Stories from the Ann Charles Vault

  Deleted Scenes from Nearly Departed in Deadwood | Dancing with Dialogue | Rainstorms | Metro Madness

  About the Author

  Contact Information

  Also by Ann Charles

  Copyright

  Dear Reader,

  One of the things I’ve wanted to do since I wrote Nearly Departed in Deadwood, the first book in my Deadwood Mystery Series, was to write several short stories that give the backstory of the characters and settings. I chose not to include these bits of backstory in the actual novels because I didn’t want to slow the pace.

  This series of short ebooks will be released in between the regular length Deadwood novels and will offer what I hope are fun insights to gobble up, kind of like those mini-sized candy bars and MoonPies. Rather than blather on about my random ideas, crazy antics, and diabolical plans, I present to you another Deadwood Shorts ebook: Boot Points.

  Boot Points is a collection of short tales about Violet Parker’s purple boots. It is set in the story time between the third and fourth book in the Deadwood Mystery series. Each tale not only explains a bit more of Violet’s history, but also shows the role each character plays in Violet’s life. For this reason, I chose the title of Boot Points; because it’s not really about the boots … or is it?

  In addition to this short story, I’ve included a deleted scene from Nearly Departed in Deadwood with an explanation for the scene at its beginning. I have thrown in some Deadwood illustrations by C.S. Kunkle that many of you have probably not seen before. Finally, I included three short stories called Dancing with Dialogue, Rainstorms, and Metro Madness that I pulled from my short story vault. These stories have nothing to do with Violet and Deadwood; however, they were written long before the Deadwood series and show some examples of me developing my skills in different genres. They are sort of precursors to Violet and her friends.

  I hope you enjoy this next short story from the Deadwood Mystery series.

  As old man Harvey would say, “Don’t pee on any electric fences.”

  Ann Charles

  P.S.—Special thanks to my wonderful beta readers. I can’t say “thank you” enough for all of your time and support. Virtual drinks and cake for all!

  For My Wonderful Husband:

  Thank you for all of the love and laughter!

  Boot Points

  Deadwood, South Dakota

  Tuesday, 8:20 a.m.

  “Elvis, where are my damned boots?” I asked my daughter’s pet chicken from the top of the stairs.

  Down below, Elvis strutted across the entry hall, her beak jutting with each step. Apparently, she was too busy clucking to herself to give me the time of day.

  “Dang bird,” I muttered, stomping down the stairs. “You may walk and talk like a chicken, but I swear you’re the devil in disguise.”

  The doorbell rang as I hit the bottom step. Cursing under my breath at the lack of respect Elvis had for me after I’d saved her neck from the chopping block, I yanked open the front door. Doc Nyce stood on the other side of the screen, looking like he hadn’t spent his morning wrangling almost-ten-year-old twins, a cat, a gerbil, and a chicken named after the King of Rock n’ Roll all while getting razzed by an ornery old codger.

  “I can’t find my boots,” I told Doc as a greeting. I’d been growling and cursing my way around the house for the last twenty minutes, so it took me a moment to take in his white, long-sleeve henley, blue jeans, and whisker-covered chin. Screeeech! I did a double take at his ruggedness, my focus zeroing in on his jaw. Damn. No fair. Why couldn’t my legs and armpits look that hot covered with stubble?

  Touching my hair, I tried to remember if I’d actually combed it this morning.

  “Good morning to you, too, Violet,” Doc said, pulling open the screen.

  He stepped inside my Aunt Zoe’s house, where my kids and I were squatting temporarily until I made enough money at my real estate gig to rent my own place in Deadwood. The woodsy scent of his cologne followed him inside and spun my hormones every which way.

  “Keep looking at me like that,” he said, his dark eyes drinking me up, “and you’re going to have to start taking off some clothes before I rip them off.”

  Balling up my fists, I took a step back before I got burned. What was I doing? Oh, right. “I need my boots.”

  Doc’s gaze headed south, raking down my black, side-slit skirt to my heels. “You’re already wearing shoes. Why do you need your boots?”

  I waved for him to follow me, escaping the narrow confines of the entryway now filled with testosterone and way too much temptation for an often lonely single mother who was currently the only one home. “I have an appointment today to take my boots in to be fixed.”

  “You need an appointment to drop off your boots?”

  “I want to talk to the cobbler about my options for getting them fixed.”

  “What’s wrong with them?” he asked from behind me.

  “Addy’s gerbil got loose and used my heel as a tooth sharpener.”

  “You mean Bogart the gerbil?”

  “The gerbil’s name is The Duke. Bogart is the cat.”

  “That’s right—Bogart, your vegetarian cat.” Doc leaned against the entry arch while I lifted up the sofa cushions and checked underneath. “Which boots are we talking about?”

  “My purple ones.”

  I pulled off the back cushions next and came up empty again. Criminy, where did Addy leave them? Or was it Layne this time? My son had a habit of borrowing cylindrical shaped objects and using them as containers. I’d first discovered this when I’d shoved my foot into a boot holding spiral pieces of macaroni destined for Layne’s makeshift science lab down in Aunt Zoe’s basement.

  “I like those boots,” Doc said.

  “I know.” He’d been quite fond of them since I’d worn them the first time we’d screwed around. I tossed the cushions back into place.

  “I like you wearing those boots.”

  “Uh huh.” He often called me Boots with a twinkle in his eye when he was feeling frisky.

  Maybe they’d shoved them under the couch. I kneeled and checked, pulling out a mini baseball bat and a half-eaten sucker stuck back in its wrapper, but no boots.

  “I’d like to see you naked while wearing those boots.”

  I stopped and looked at Doc, who seemed to be very interested in my red silk shirt. “That’s not helping me find them.” I pushed to my feet.

  The twinkle was in his eye. “Maybe we should look for them in your bedroom, Boots.”

  “Nice try, Romeo,” I walked toward him, “but I’ve already searched there.” I’d found dust bunnies, chicken feathers, and a library book on taxidermy, which may have been checked out by either of my kids since one dreamed of being a veterinarian and the other a paleontologist. But no boots.

  Doc caught my forearm as I passed him, pulling me up short. “Are you sure you don’t want to search it again? This is the first we’ve been alone in almost a week and you haven’t even said ‘hello’ yet.”

  “Hello, Doc,” I whispered, flushing at the come-hither look in his brown eyes.

  He trailed his knuckles along my jaw, lifting my chin as he lowered his mouth.

  The mantel clock in the living room clanged the half-hour, slapping me back to my senses. I dodged his lips. “Dane R. Nyce,” I chastised, using his full name. “Stop trying to charm me out of my underwear. I have to be at Bighorn Billy’s in an hour for a big pow-wow with my coworkers and I can’t be late.”

  It was a bad morning for Harvey to have taken the old pickup I’d been borrowing for a tune-up. Lately, the Picklemobile had been doing a lot of sp
uttering—well, more than usual—and until I could afford my own set of wheels, the old gal needed some TLC.

  “Just to be clear,” Doc said, lifting my knuckles to his lips, “could you describe exactly which underwear I am trying to charm you out of? Are we talking lace or satin? The daisy-covered ones or the black ones with the tiny rose sewn on front?”

  “You’re incorrigible.” I slipped free of Doc’s grasp before my libido overruled my brain on the case of sex vs. job. “The last thing I need is to stumble into the restaurant with my hair a crazy mess, my lips all puffy and swollen, and a big fat smile that broadcasts I spent my morning doing the wild thing.”

  “I can’t help it.” He followed me into the dining room. “Those boots are my kryptonite. Where did you see them last?”

  “Addy was wearing them a couple of nights ago while playing Rooster Cogburn.”

  “Was she Hepburn or the girl?”

  “Neither.” I peeked under the dining room table. “She was John Wayne. Will you check that coat closet?”

  He chuckled, opening the closet door. “That girl follows in her mother’s footsteps.”

  “So I’ve heard before. I just wish she’d follow in her own shoes instead of in my favorite boots.”

  “Where did you get those boots, anyway?” he asked, shoving some coats aside, making rustling noises as he searched the closet. “I haven’t seen any around here like them.”

  I shot him a questioning look. “You’ve been looking for purple cowboy boots? Is this to complete your one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater ensemble?”

  “That one’s a no-go; my cape is torn,” he said, sending me a wink. “I want a pair to keep in my bedroom for those special occasions when Trouble comes calling, wearing her daisy-covered underwear.”

  That made me smile in spite of my frustrating morning, but I tried not to read more into it relationship-wise than the two of us knocking boots. Doc’s last girlfriend had started throwing around the M-word, as in wedding bells and flying rice, and he’d kicked her to the curb like three-day-old road kill.

  “Make sure you get size eight with a wide toe,” I told him, opening the cupboard doors under Aunt Zoe’s antique sideboard. Before my brain could start overanalyzing how often he’d like Trouble to show up on his doorstep, I returned to Doc’s earlier question. “Quint bought the boots for me a long time ago.”

  “Quint, your brother?”

  “Yep. They were supposed to cheer me up.”

  “Why’d you need cheering up?” The rustling noises stopped. Doc was looking at me.

  I puffed up my cheeks with a breath and then blew it out, traveling back over the washboard road that wound through my past. I wondered how much I should spill, not wanting him to judge me and find me lacking. Well, more lacking than I found myself most days. In the end, I decided to dump the whole thing out on the floor between us and watch it wriggle and squirm. “Because I’d just found out I was pregnant, and when I told the father, he skipped town before my waistband even got tight.”

  “He sounds like a real winner.”

  “My sister, Susan, sure thought so. Did I mention that this happened a few weeks after I’d found out the bastard was having sex with her?” The flash of memory still made my gut clench.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Unfortunately, I am.”

  Doc tilted his head to the side, sizing me up for several beats. “That explains a few things.”

  Huh? “Like what?”

  He just shook his head in response. “What did Quint have to say about your sister and your ex?”

  What did that explain? Inquiring, crazy inner voices wanted to know. I rounded them all up and shoved them back in their cages.

  “He wasn’t surprised,” I explained. “Susan has always been a wild brat.”

  Mother’s fawning was the result of years of guilt over a glitch in her marriage with my father that ended with having another man’s child. While my father had stepped up to the plate to play Daddy to Susan, I figured Mom had been trying to ease her guilt by giving Susan whatever the little shit’s heart desired. Mom’s goal being that Susan would appear to be the perfect child and my father might forget that she didn’t share his DNA. Unfortunately, Mom’s plan backfired and Susan became a vicious bitch bent on taking whatever was mine and making it hers—including the father of my children. Oh, such happy family memories filled with half-melted Barbie heads and kidnapped favorite teddy bears.

  “So, Quint bought you the boots to make you happy.” Doc wasn’t asking, but I nodded anyway.

  “At first he offered to fly home, break Rex’s nose, and hang him upside down by his balls.”

  Doc cringed. “Remind me never to piss off your brother.”

  I checked under the sideboard in case a child had jammed a boot underneath it, extracting three balled up socks and a pair of scissors.

  “But then he settled for having a pair of boots made just for me,” I said.

  “You said ‘fly home.’ Where was he?”

  “On a job in Mexico.” Quint was a photojournalist who was on the road more than home. “He happened to be in León, Guanajuato at the time, working on a piece about famous cathedrals for a magazine, which turned out to be lucky for me since León is nicknamed the ‘Shoe Capital of the World.’”

  I shut the sideboard door and chewed on my lower lip as I peered around the room. Where could those damned boots have disappeared to?

  At Doc’s gesture to keep spilling, I continued. “He found this cobbler hand-tooling boots in one of the city’s mercados and paid the guy a wad of cash on the spot. Two days later, the boots were in Quint’s hands. But instead of shipping them, he decided to carry them home with him since he had less than a week left on the job. That’s when the problems started.”

  “You mean with customs?”

  “He didn’t even make it that far. My brother is a bit of a cheapskate and doesn’t always stay in the nicest hotels.” Mother often lost sleep while he traveled out of the country. “Two days before he was to fly home, someone broke into his hotel room when he was out and stole the boots.”

  Doc closed the closet door and leaned against it, listening, one eyebrow raised.

  “Quint reported the missing boots to the hotel manager and then headed back to the mercado to see if there was any way he could have another pair of purple boots made overnight. When he got to the cobbler’s stall, he found the guy’s wife there in tears, rattling on in Spanish and gesturing wildly.”

  “Does your brother speak Spanish?”

  “Enough to get him into trouble with a crying woman,” I said. “Remember, the whole reason he was even at the mercado was because I’d called him in tears.”

  “Yeah, but you’re his sister.”

  I shrugged. “Quint has always been a sucker for a damsel in distress. Apparently, this woman’s husband had a gambling problem and was supposed to have gone the night before to pay back some Mexican bookie what he owed, but he never made it home. She had no idea where he was and couldn’t get ahold of him. Quint felt compelled to help, plus he wanted another pair of boots for me. So, he convinced her to close up the shop and then drove her around to the places her husband hung out, including several bars and clubs.”

  I headed for the kitchen. Doc followed.

  “Later that night,” I continued with the story, “my dad got a phone call. Quint was in a Mexican jail and needed bail money. He’d been in a fight at one of the clubs. He’d been outnumbered and they’d left him pretty messed up and stolen his wallet.”

  “Did they ever find the woman’s husband?”

  “Yes. At the gambling joint where Quint got his ass kicked. The cobbler had either gone there to pay his debt or gamble the money away. But there was a slight problem, which was why Quint was in jail.”

  “The cobbler was drunk?”

  I shook my head. “He was dead with a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. When the police showed up, they hauled Quint to jai
l first and asked questions later.”

  “Christ.” Doc sat on the edge of the kitchen table, his arms crossed. “What a mess. All for a pair of boots.” When I narrowed my gaze at him, he added, “Albeit some very nice boots, but still.”

  I started searching through the kitchen cupboards, leaving no bowl unturned. “Quint sat overnight in jail even though Dad had wired the bail money and faxed his identification. The next afternoon, the wife spoke to the police, explaining Quint’s role in the whole shebang. They kept the money and let Quint go free after her statement.” I pointed at the door on the other side of the table. “Could you check the pantry?”

  Doc looked at the pantry door and then back at me. “Why would your boots be in the pantry?”

  “Because I have two children.”

  “Fair enough. So how did you get the boots if the cobbler was dead?” he asked and stepped into the pantry, his broad shoulders filling the doorway.

  “When Quint got back to his hotel, the manager pulled him aside. It turned out that one of the maids had brought her daughter to work with her the day before and the girl had taken a shine to my boots. When her mom noticed the boots at home later that evening, the daughter explained that a rich hotel guest who’d felt sorry for her had given them as a gift. But when the alert went out the next day about the stolen boots, the maid forced her daughter to return them immediately and apologized, hoping not to lose her job.”

  I looked around Aunt Zoe’s pale yellow kitchen, my gaze taking in her Betty Boop cookie jar, the drawings of dinosaurs and unicorns taped to her fridge, the sunflower napkins stacked on the lazy susan on the table, the silly chicken pecking at the cat flap Harvey had installed in the basement door. How quickly this place had come to feel like home, even though it was only temporary. I wasn’t looking forward to the day we moved on to the next digs, nor my kids moaning and groaning at relocating yet again. But we couldn’t mooch off Aunt Zoe forever.

  “So your brother risked his neck and sat in a Mexican jail overnight for nothing?”

  Crossing to check in the broom cupboard on the other side of the fridge, I told him, “Quint still claims it was great research fodder for an article he later wrote for another magazine about the state of Mexican jails, which won him some fancy journalism award. But yeah, it was all for nothing.”