Meanwhile, Back in Deadwood (Deadwood Humorous Mystery Book 6) (29 page)

Hawke shuffled his feet. “Yeah, well, it’s wise to have backup with certain suspects.”

“Backup? You think Parker’s dangerous?”

“More like unstable.”

“Uh, hello.” I waved at them from five feet away. “I’m standing right here still, listening to every word.”

Cooper nudged his chin in my direction. “Your suspect is waiting, Detective.”

Hawke aimed his notepad and pen my way. “Ms. Parker, explain your purpose for being here in the Mudder Brothers morgue on Saturday, October 27th.”

“You’re kidding. You dragged me down here this morning and that’s your leading question?” I shook my head. “Jeez, Quincy just rolled over in his grave.”

“Just answer the question,” Cooper snapped.

“Detective Cooper,” I said, “I thought you promised to play good cop with me today.”

Detective Hawke turned his back on me again, lowering his voice. He brushed shoulders with Cooper, invading his personal space. “Did you talk to my suspect in advance, Coop?”

Cooper’s nostrils flared. He stepped back, putting some distance between them again. “Only to order her to meet us here, as previously discussed.”

“I hate to interrupt your lovers tiff,” I said, walking around Hawke so I could face them both. “But how can I be a suspect when I have an alibi for Saturday night?”

“You’re referring to Nat?” Hawke asked, scribbling something in his notepad.

Cooper and I both did a double take about Hawke’s familiarity with Natalie.

“You mean, Ms. Beals,” Cooper corrected.

“Of course,
Ms. Beals
.” Hawke shot Cooper a knowing leer.

Cooper’s face froze, muscles rigid yet pulsing. For a split second, I thought he might pull an Addy and leave a big red welt on Hawke’s face. Instead, he unclenched his jaw and settled for poking his partner in the chest. “You’d better not let the chief find out you’re fraternizing with witnesses or you’ll be off the case, too.”

Warning issued, he walked over to the door leading to the crematorium furnace and pretended to inspect the jamb.

“I’m not fraternizing,” he defended and then returned to his notepad, a hint of a smile curling the corner of his lips. “Not yet, anyway.”

Cooper looked down at his feet for a moment, then shook his head and turned back to us. “Let’s get this over with. I have work to get back to.”

Cooper could hold his horses for a moment longer; I had some more foundation work to do on Detective Hawke’s and my relationship.

I shoulder bumped Hawke, speaking his language physically. “You should be careful around Natalie,” I baited, mentally steepling my fingers as I put into action one part of my evil plan to sidetrack the big doofus. “She has a rather seedy addiction that tends to get her into trouble around men.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Uh huh. You could end up with some telltale bruises,” I winked at him, “if you get my meaning.”

The bruises I was actually referring to were those around his eye after Natalie nailed him with a right jab or two for getting fresh, but judging from the way his gaze widened and jaw dropped, he took a handcuffs and whip direction with his thoughts.

Cooper cleared his throat from where he now leaned against the wall. His expression was giving me frostbite. “I thought we were here to question Parker about the events that occurred Saturday night, not gossip about Ms. Beals like a pair of junior high girls.”

Hawke wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Right. Ms. Parker, where were we?”

“You were asking her about Eddie Mudder,” Cooper bit out.

“Oh, yes, that’s it.” He held his pen over his notepad. “Did Eddie Mudder mention anything about someone who might be looking for him? Someone who might want to kidnap or hurt him?”

Yes, but I didn’t think either detective would appreciate my bringing up the notorious albino twin who’d had a starring role as the villain in several of my previous reports. “No, he didn’t mention anything about someone looking for him.” I did my best to evade that question without outright lying.

Hawke wrote down my answer.

Cooper’s gaze on me narrowed. I had a feeling he was trying to use x-ray vision to penetrate my skull and read my mind. I smiled at him, imagining how satisfying it would feel to smash a whipped cream pie in his face.

“Did Mr. Mudder appear nervous to be alone with you?” Hawke continued with his interrogation.

“No, I didn’t notice any anxiety issues about being alone with me when we were talking.” Eddie’s anxiety had been all about who might see us, not about chatting with me in a dark morgue.

“Why did he insist on meeting you here instead of inside the funeral parlor?”

“He wanted to be alone.” No lie there.

“Why? What was the reason for being so top secret?”

A big scary albino with all-seeing snake eyes. “Eddie wanted to talk to me in private. I believe his cousin is currently residing with him in the funeral parlor. Out here we were alone.” I made a point of staring toward the door to the freezer where they kept the bodies on ice and put to work the other plan I had for distracting Detective Hawke. “Well, mostly alone.”

Hawke followed my gaze. “Mostly? Was someone else in here with you?”

I tilted my chin down, looking at him through lowered lashes. “More like something,” I whispered in my best spooky voice.

Hawke set his jaw. “If you’re going to play that medium baloney with me again, I’m not buying.”

I shrugged. “Believe as you will, skeptic, but Eddie and I had an audience Saturday night.” I stared toward the door again. “Just like we do now.”

Cooper shook his head, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “Christ, Parker. Don’t start this shit.”

Hawke frowned at me for several beats before returning to his notepad. “And what was it Eddie Mudder wanted to talk to you alone about? What was so important that he insisted on you meeting him here in the middle of the night?”

“Is midnight the middle of the night? I suppose it is now that we are heading toward winter solstice.”

“Ms. Parker,” Hawke clicked his pen several times, trying to frazzle me, I could tell. “Answer the question.”

I stalled a few more moments, frowning in the direction of the fake ghost, and nodding like I agreed with what it said. “Eddie was worried.”

“About what?”

“My reputation.”

Hawke’s caterpillar brows got all squiggly. “What about your reputation?”

“Eddie knows about my ability.”

“To see ghosts?”

“Yes, that one.”

“You have other abilities, Parker?” Cooper butted in.

“I have many.”

“Don’t distract her,” Detective Hawke said, holding his hand out to silence Cooper. “So, Eddie Mudder wanted to meet you in the morgue at midnight to discuss your ability to see ghosts.”

Cooper cursed under his breath.

“Yes. I’m rather wary of anyone knowing about this ability of mine, and Eddie knew that, so I’d appreciate it if you kept it top secret, too.”

“Maybe we should have waited to stage this meeting with Parker until midnight,” the Peanut Gallery said.

“Maybe we need to perform a séance with her,” Hawke jested back.

“Maybe you should,” I challenged. “Unless you two big strong detectives are too scared.”

Hawke snorted at me.

I resisted the urge to reach out and clamp his nose shut.

“Did you see or talk to Eddie Mudder after leaving here at …” Hawke turned back a few pages in his notepad, “approximately twelve twenty-five a.m.?”

“No. As I told Detective Cooper three times, I returned to my Aunt Zoe’s house and spent the rest of the night there with my kids and Natalie.”

“Does Ms. Beals often spend the night at your house, or was this a special occasion?” Hawke asked.

I frowned at Cooper. “I move to strike that question from the record.”

“This isn’t court, Ms. Parker,” Hawke said. “You can’t move to strike.”

“Want to bet?” I shifted into a martial arts stance that I’d once seen in a movie. Something called “the cat” position if I remembered correctly. I leaned forward poised to strike. “What do you call this?”

“The end of the interrogation,” Cooper said, pushing away from the wall. “Detective Hawke, we need to wrap this up before Parker tries to hypnotize you or something even more absurd than ghost-chatting and séances.”

“One more thing.” Hawke pulled a card from his pocket and held it out to me. “Have you seen this before?”

I took the card, recognizing it immediately. “Of course. It’s my business card.”

“Can you explain why it was left on the slab in there,” he pointed at the freezer room door, “in place of where the body from the ranch was stored?”

I blinked. “It was where?”

He caught my elbow and dragged me over to the freezer door. When he opened it, a gust of cold air hit me, smelling a bit like the walk-in freezer where my mom’s butcher kept the beef we’d ordered every fall.

I cringed as Hawke pointed at an empty metal shelf. “Your business card was found there, where the body was.”

Cooper stepped forward, shutting the freezer door in our faces. “I think it’s clear this business with her card is news to Parker.”

“Or is she pretending it’s news?” Hawke moved in too close, staring down at me, all scrutinizing and menacing.

“Step back, Detective, or I will bite.” I gnashed my teeth for effect.

He obliged, lucky for him.

I frowned down at my business card. Why had it been in the Mudder Brothers freezer? I flipped the card over, noticing the words scrawled on the back for the first time.

WE WANT WHAT BELONGS TO US!

My breath caught. Those were the same words someone had left months ago on a note inside my purse after I’d been hauled to jail by Cooper and bailed out by Doc.

I looked up to find Cooper’s steely gaze watching, assessing, trying to read me again.

“All right, Ms. Parker,” Hawke said, “you’re free to go for now.” He held out his hand for my business card, which I was happy to return, wiping my hands on my coat as if that could wipe away the slimy feeling those words had left behind. “But don’t go too far, because I have a feeling you and I are far from done when it comes to this case.”

I was too discombobulated to give a smartass comeback.

Cooper came over and led me to the door, which was good since my feet seemed to have forgotten how to walk on their own.

“I’ll take Parker to her truck and make sure she doesn’t get any ideas about sneaking back in here on her own. You lock up.”

Detective Hawke nodded, turning his back to us as he stared toward the freezer door.

I waited until we were out of earshot on the other side of a closed door to ask Cooper, “Why are you protecting me?”

“Amazingly, I believe you’re innocent of this mess.”

I stared openly at him. “Who are you, and what have you done with Detective Cooper?”

“Shut up, Parker.”

“Seriously, why are you being nice to me?”

He smirked at me. “I owe your boyfriend for rescuing me from Uncle Willis’s love shack. Consider yourself lucky to have Nyce on your side.”

I considered myself lucky when it came to Doc every damned day.

“You and I need to talk more about what Eddie and you really discussed Saturday night, but not here, not now.”

“Oh, boy. I can hardly wait.”

He stopped next to the driver’s side door. “You don’t have any idea who wrote that note on the back of your business card, do you?”

I shook my head.

“Or what it is that belongs to whoever wrote it?”

I shook my head again.

“Do you think it has anything to do with how you know there was mead in those bottles in the crate?”

I shrugged, not wanting to talk about the message or the mead right now. I just wanted to go find Doc and let him help me carry this new burden.

“Fine, play your games, Parker, but if there’s something more that you’re not telling me about this shit,” he waved his hand toward the garage, “I advise you to come talk to me.” He opened my door and waited for me to climb up into the Picklemobile.

“I will,” I told him and meant it, and then climbed behind the wheel.

He frowned in at me. “What I can’t figure out is if whoever stole the body, the one trying to pin this all on you, is a civilian or a member of law enforcement.”

Or something non-human with creepy snake eyes. “Which is worse?”

“I don’t know.” He stepped back so I could shut the door. “Get out of here, Parker, before I change my mind about arresting you for obstructing justice with those tricks you were playing in there with Hawke and decide to throw your ass in jail.”

He didn’t need to tell me twice.

I left Cooper squinting after me through a cloud of exhaust.

Chapter Fifteen

Meanwhile, back at Calamity Jane Realty …

I parked behind Calamity Jane Realty and sat in the cab of the Picklemobile for a few moments, staring into the rearview mirror at the office’s back door.

I needed to go in there and face the day like I hadn’t already paid a visit to the morgue this morning. Like someone or something wasn’t trying to drag me deeper into the mess out at Harvey’s ranch for Lord only knew what diabolical reason.

We want what belongs to us!

What was it they wanted? Was it the freaky flesh-covered book I’d swiped from that wacky tart Lila months ago when she’d tried to hook me up with a demon in her version of speed dating/incubus mating? Or was it something else? Something like Prudence’s collection of teeth? Or could it merely have been an explanation of why they had taken the faceless body back, as in the body belonged to them?

I needed to talk to Doc, but he was down in Rapid this morning meeting a friend of a client who looked to be another new opportunity. Doc was the only one who knew about the previous identical message I’d received.

I fiddled with the Picklemobile’s smiley face keychain, pondering whether or not to tell Cooper about the previous message. But how would the detective react? Would he be pissed I hadn’t told him about the first message? Would he get even nosier about what else I’d come across in my adventures with the albinos? Would he arrest me for withholding a key piece of evidence?

At the least, he’d be perturbed as hell for hiding stuff from him. Learning about all I’d been up to behind his back might change his mind, too, about believing in my innocence on the faceless body-napping case.