An Ex to Grind in Deadwood (Deadwood Humorous Mystery Book 5) Paperback – September 4, 2014 (10 page)

Ms. Wolff’s body reminded me of a deflated blow up doll draped in clothing. Everything was the way my nightmares had been replaying it, except for the part where her body rose up and lurched toward me, one arm outstretched while the other searched for its missing head.

“Where’s Ms. Beals?” Cooper asked.

Blinking away the zombie-ish scene, I raised my gaze to him. “You mean Natalie?”

He nodded and clicked twice.

“In Arizona. Why?”

“I’m covering all of my bases, making sure I’ve interviewed all involved in this case.”

“You mean interrogated, not interviewed.” The word
interview
implied a formal question and answer session, not being drilled and threatened while tortured with a clicker.

He pointed at the photo in my hand. “Focus.”

I handed the one I’d started with to Harvey and picked up the next. It was a picture of the wall with all of the clocks. “What am I focusing on?”

“Anything that strikes you as odd.”

A strangled laugh escaped between my lips. “Besides a headless body and a shrunken skull?”

“Exactly.” His serious voice calmed the hysteria that had bubbled up inside me while looking at Ms. Wolff’s corpse.

I focused, as he ordered. There were more clocks than I remembered, all spaced evenly like they were part of a wallpaper pattern. I wondered if she had written anything on the back of them, like where she had bought them or when. Or if there were a reason for the time each was set to. Had she stuffed any notes inside of the little doors some of them had? Had Cooper’s crew checked for any treasures left behind? Any clues?

“When will Ms. Beals be returning?” the detective interrupted my train of clock questions.

Harvey tossed the first picture onto the coffee table, grabbing another cookie while he waited for me to finish looking at the one in my hand.

“Natalie should be home next Monday, I think.”

I handed the wall of clocks photo to Harvey and picked up the next. It was a shot of an old fashioned rotary dial phone. It sat on an end table next to the chair that I was pretty sure had Ms. Wolff’s crumpled body at its base. Was that the phone she’d used to call me? Or the one someone else had used to call me while Ms. Wolff lay dead below on the floor? Goosebumps formed on my arms.

“Did she drive down to Arizona?” Cooper asked as I handed the phone photo to Harvey.

“Yeah. Her cousin needed her to take along her tools.”

“A workin’ vacation,” Harvey added, eyeing the phone picture. “Her grandpa broke his leg. Natalie had to help finish a building he’d started.” He pointed down at the phone. “Your Great-Aunt Juniper used to have a phone like this back when I was a tadpole.”

I grabbed the next one from the stack without looking at it, staring at Detective Cooper instead. “I can tell you right now that Natalie is not going to be able to give you any information on this. She only knows what I told her right after the phone call, and I’ve already told you that part of the story multiple times.”

He leaned forward and tapped the picture in my hand. “What do you notice in this one?”

I looked down at a picture of what looked like a closet. Dresses, shirts, and jackets hung with one shoulder sticking out. Shoes were lined up below like foot soldiers. On the two shelves above the clothes hangers, mannequin heads lined the lower and hat boxes filled the upper.

“She must have been quite a fancy dresser. If the hats in those boxes match the brand names on some of the lids,” the ones I could read anyway, “those are not cheap hats.”

I wondered why the mannequin heads were empty. Maybe she used to keep her hats on the heads but later preferred to store them in the boxes.

“I’d like to take a closer look at her clothes,” I told the detective.

“You think there’s a clue there?”

“I don’t know. Mostly I want to see her taste in clothing, see if she was into brand names. Sometimes clothes can say a lot about a person.” Truth be told, I wanted to know what kind of a person Ms. Wolff had been. I felt an affinity with her since I was most likely one of the last people she had talked to.

“Like what?” Harvey asked, taking the picture from me. “Just looks like old lady stuff to me.”

I pointed at the detective. “Take Cooper’s outfit.”

Cooper sat back, straightening his tie. “I’m all ears, Parker.”

“Today he’s wearing a button up shirt and tie. No holey T-shirts, no torn jeans, no Harley Davidson emblems. He’s all business. Don’t be fooled, though,” I smirked at Harvey. “He didn’t dress up for us. We don’t rate. He’s dressed up for something going down at work. Something that made him actually iron his collar this morning and pick a tie that has no bullets, handcuffs, or anything else fun or threatening. It’s just a regular navy blue tie.”

Harvey perused Cooper from top to bottom, bending over to tug up the hem of his nephew’s pant leg. “Look, his socks even match.”

“Well done, Parker. If you ever lose your job at Calamity Jane’s, you should try out as one of those fortune tellers at the circus. With your crazy hair, you’d fit right in.”

“Leave my hair out of this.”

“What’s going on at work, Coop?”

The detective shrugged. “This latest death has drawn some unwanted attention. I have a meeting this afternoon, and I need to dress appropriately for our company.”

I wondered whose presence required such a button-up version of Cooper, but I could tell by the rigid expression on the detective’s face that he wasn’t going to share anything more than he already had.

“Do me, do me,” Harvey said, tugging on my arm.

I laughed. “You’re easy, Harvey. Today is like every day for you. You dress for comfort, but you always smell good and make sure to brush your hair and finger comb your beard. I’d say that you’re out to enjoy life but on the lookout for tail.”

“Always on the lookout,” he agreed, his gold teeth showing.

“What about you, Parker?” Cooper asked. “What’s with the flowery, girly dress under that dark red power jacket?”

“It’s a blazer,” I clarified, brushing some lint off the lapel. “I chose it because I was cold. As for the dress, I thought some flowers might look nice today, since it was dreary.”

“She’s lyin’,” Harvey said, tugging my blazer aside. “Look how tight her dress is up top. And her hair is down and loose. She only shows off her wares like this when she’s on the prowl.”

“I’m not on the prowl.” Although, it didn’t hurt to dress to impress the man who took me to the moon and back when we were alone and sans clothing.

“Who are you having lunch with?” Cooper asked.

“A client.” I adjusted my blazer, buttoning a button Harvey’s tug had undone.

My lunch with Doc had almost nothing to do with my choice in clothing today. Well, except that I knew he liked boots. Oh, and he might have mentioned last week how sexy it was when I crossed my legs while wearing a dress. And there was a slight possibility my matching underwear and bra were inspired by the hope that Doc would have a chance to see them today—and then remove them. But that was it.

So what if I was a bit pathetic with this need to see Doc’s eyes light up when he looked at me. After years of living in a no-man land, was it so wrong for me to like having a gorgeous guy stare at me as if I came equipped with a huge flat screen, a zero turn radius lawnmower, and a decked-out barbecue? Not to mention that it had been over a week since we’d last stolen over to his house and enjoyed some time in his bed … and on his stairs. A girl had needs.

“Tell your so-called client that I need to have a chat with him when he has an hour of free time,” Cooper said. “I’ll come to his office.”

I didn’t dignify his assumption with a response.

Instead I picked up the last photo the detective had left on the coffee table. It was a crooked shot of a dresser top with an attached mirror reflecting the flash in the upper corner. I held the picture closer, my nose almost brushing it. “What’s this?” I asked pointing at something that looked to be stuck in the mirror’s edge.

“Look closer,” Cooper said, pulling a magnifying glass out from a drawer in the coffee table.

I took it, did as told, and then gasped, my heart free-falling down a deep, dark hole.

Harvey plucked the photo from my fingers, squinting down at it. “What is it? What do you see? I left my readers at your aunt’s house.”

“Violet?” Cooper asked, waving his hand in front of my tunneling vision. “Are you okay?”

No. I was far from anything even close to
okay
, but I nodded anyway.

“You should probably continue breathing then.”

I inhaled, gulping much needed oxygen down my windpipe. The darkness that had been rising ebbed but still lapped at the edges of my sight.

“What is it?” Harvey asked again. “What’s got you skittery all of a sudden, girl?”

I pointed at the square picture tucked into the trim around the dresser mirror in the photo and handed him the magnifying glass. “Look.”

Harvey squinted. “I’m lookin’. Who is that? The shape of his head reminds me of …” Harvey stopped. His blue eyes locked onto mine, mirroring my fret and worry.

“It’s Layne,” I whispered.

* * *

“Why would that woman have a picture of your boy?” Harvey asked a half-hour later, his bushy eyebrows scrunched into one long wrinkled caterpillar.

I leaned back into the cushy booth, the whirring of anxiety in my ears blocking out most of the usual lunch time clamor going on around me at Bighorn Billy’s Diner. “I’m more concerned right now about how she got it.”

I remembered when I’d taken that picture in my aunt’s workshop. Aunt Zoe had spent the afternoon with us, teaching the kids how to make blown glass pieces. Both Addy and Layne had made several creations with Aunt Zoe doing the dangerous work, letting the kids choose the material and spin the rods. I’d taken pictures of them and their favorite creations with Aunt Zoe’s old film camera, wanting both kids to have the pictures in hand to remind them of that day long after they were grown and gone.

I’d explained this to Detective Cooper and Harvey. Unsurprisingly, Layne had been the main focus of the remainder of our conversation before Cooper nudged us out the door; he needed to get back to work in time to prepare for his meeting with whatever big wigs had inspired him to wear a tie. Most of the theories of how Ms. Wolff had ended up with that photograph had come from Cooper and Harvey; my brain had been too scattered with fear for my kid to think straight.

Before shutting the door in my face, Cooper had asked me to wait on confronting Layne about whether he knew Ms. Wolff until the detective had dug deeper. Then he’d made my eyebrows shoot to the top of my forehead by suggesting he and I take a tour of Ms. Wolff’s apartment together tomorrow. When his uncle offered to join us, he shook his head without pause, which made me wonder if Cooper had found some other skeleton in one of Ms. Wolff’s closets that he didn’t want his uncle to see.

“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” Harvey’s voice hauled me back to the present. “Like Coop said.”

I stirred sugar into my tea. “You and I both know that’s hogwash.”

“What’s hogwash?” Doc slid into the booth next to me, smelling like fresh air and my favorite woodsy cologne. With my focus mired in worry, I hadn’t noticed him come in.

His hair and shoulders were sprinkled with rain, but his hand was warm when he reached beneath the table and found mine. I laced my fingers through his, resting our hands on my thigh. Today I relished the distraction his warm touch brought, wanting to savor it like hot fudge on vanilla ice cream.

“We just came from Cooper’s place,” I explained.

“Right, the interrogation you told me about last night on the phone.”

Ranted about until his ear rang was more accurate, but there was no need to split hairs.

“Coop found somethin’ of Violet’s in Ms. Wolff’s apartment.”

Doc picked up a menu. “Oh, yeah?”

I stirred my tea some more, adding more sugar. “Yeah. Ms. Wolff had a picture I took of Layne stuck into the trim of her bedroom dresser mirror.”

“What?” Doc lowered the menu. “Layne? Your son?”

“Yep. My son.”

Leaning back, Doc pulled my hand into his lap, tugging me closer. “Did Layne know her?”

“I don’t know.”

Harvey motioned for the waitress to come over. “Coop’s gonna take Violet on another tour of Ms. Wolff’s apartment tomorrow, have her snoop around with him.”

Doc searched my face. “How did you manage to convince Detective Cooper to agree to that?”

“It was his idea.”

His dark gaze narrowed. “Now I’m really worried.”

“Why? You think he has ulterior motives?” I always did, but Doc was usually more of a Polly Positive about Cooper than me and my conspiracy theories.

“No, I’m worried because Cooper usually insists you stay as far away as possible. If he’s offering to take you on a personal tour of the murder site, something is up.”

Yeah, I’d thought that, too. I wasn’t naïve enough to think Cooper had plucked daisy petals and had a change of heart about his overall desire to have me booted from the state.

“Maybe his job is hangin’ from the noose,” Harvey threw out.

“He’s the only detective in the northern hills,” I said. “The chief wouldn’t fire him, would he? You think that’s what this important meeting is today?” It would certainly explain him dressing all spiffy and wanting to share notes.

“Could be.” Harvey waited while the waitress came and took Doc’s drink order. “Or it could be he’s finally figurin’ out he needs some help to solve these murders. The boy always has been a bit anvil-headed. Takes after his mother that way.”

“His mother, huh?” I said, shooting Harvey a crooked grin.

Harvey winked back, then turned to Doc. “Hope you don’t mind me joining you two for lunch. Violet wasn’t fit to be left alone after seeing that picture of Layne.”

“Three’s company,” Doc said.

I sniffed. “I was fine.”

“You were tremblin’.”

“From the cold.”

“How was I supposed to tell the difference with that blazer coverin’ your headlights?”

And yet another reason for me to cover my headlights at every opportunity. “Gee, I don’t know, maybe when I said, ‘Dang, it’s cold in here, why isn’t your heater working?’ you should have caught on.”