Meanwhile, Back in Deadwood (Deadwood Humorous Mystery Book 6) (10 page)

“It’s a pickle all right.” Cooper threw his pen, like a gauntlet, onto the coffee table between us. “Especially since we found evidence of rock salt in a wall of the barn.”

Chapter Five

Meanwhile, back in the land of the non-living …

After announcing that detail about the rock salt in the barn wall, Cooper nailed each of us in turn with those steely eyes of his, settling finally on me.

We were dead meat.

Detective Cooper had his teeth sunk in, and I highly doubted he’d let go until one of us whimpered.

Harvey’s stupid family shotgun was going to land us in a chain gang cleaning up litter in the median of Interstate 90.

I felt a wheeze of fear trying to crawl its way up from my lungs. I opened my mouth, searching for something to say that would send the detective back into his dog house where his usual chew toys waited for him.

Before I could get a word out, Natalie let out a hair-raising screech.

I nearly jumped into Harvey’s lap in surprise.

All three of us gaped at her.

She pointed at the floor. “Spider.”

Spider?
I looked down at her feet, then hit her with a wrinkly brow. First of all, there was no eight-legged beastie to be seen. Second, I’d known Natalie almost my whole life and had never seen even a peep of arachnophobia from her before, not even when she’d found a nest of Daddy-longlegs in the basement of my parents’ house during a sleepover back in seventh grade. Hell, she’d practically petted the creepy crawlies that night.

I was about to ask her what in hell was wrong with her when she narrowed her eyes at me.

Oh! She was saving our bacon. Her distraction now had Cooper searching the floor around her feet for the phantom spider. Thanks to Natalie’s quick thinking, Cooper’s interrogation was momentarily knocked off track. I needed to make my escape before he could get it back on the rails.

I shot to my feet. “If we’re done here, Detective, I need to get to work. I have paperwork and a boss waiting.”

Cooper glared up at me. “We’re not done, Parker.”

“Great! I’ll look forward to hearing from you again as this case gets more exciting.” Or not. Besides, what could be more exciting than a skinless face?

On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t have asked that question since I really didn’t want to find out the answer.

Without giving Cooper the opportunity to bid me further adieu, or to block my path with some police “Red-Rover” maneuver, I bee-lined for the door.

Natalie raced out after me. “Wait for me, crazy!”

I keyed the pickup to life as Natalie was climbing into the cab and barely gave the old truck a chance to catch its breath before stomping on the gas. I wanted to get the hell out of Dodge before Cooper decided to throw us in the think-tank on some trumped up charges based on his suspicions alone.

A glance in the rearview mirror as we sped away found Cooper standing on the front porch watching us leave, his arms crossed. I lowered my head a fraction, half-expecting him to whip out his gun and shoot out the back window of our getaway truck.

“We’re up shit creek,” Natalie said after we made it to the bottom of the hill and turned right toward Deadwood. “It’s only a matter of time before one of us cracks.”

I thought of that piss-reeking, pubic-hair sprinkled urinal in the jail cell down at the Deadwood Police Station and grimaced. “It’s not going to be me.”

“Ha!” Her tone was full of disbelief.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You almost spilled your guts back there. If I hadn’t played Little Miss Muffet to distract him, you’d have upchucked the truth.”

“No way.”

“Yes way. Your eyes got all big and round like they do when you’re freaking out.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“Oh, they definitely did. You’ve never been very good at keeping secrets what with your twitchy nose and scaredy-cat eyes.” She looked at her hands. “Well, except for that doozy about Doc, but I was too blind with a stupid crush to notice your usual cues then.”

My cheeks warmed. I wished I could crawl down by the gas pedal until this awkward moment blew out the window. I thought about blurting out that Cooper had the hots for her to make her feel better about the whole Doc and me affair, but it would only feed that insecure part of her psyche that this sabbatical from men was supposed to starve to death.

I slowed as we entered the Deadwood city limits. “Cooper is not going to make me crack.”

“Right.”

I ignored her sarcasm. “He and I have done this circle and snarl dance several times.” I could count on only one hand the number of times the detective had actually been nice to me. “I know when to lunge and when to tuck tail.”

“I’d advise tucking tail as much as possible on this one. That man is positively stressed to the max.”

That made two of us. “Yeah, well you’d better focus on prepping for your next go around, because knowing the detective as well as I do, I can assure you that he’ll be back again. Next time, he’ll bring a bigger trap.”

“Please, we both know that I have a titanium lock on my lips when it comes to secrets. Remember back in ninth grade when you dragged Bobby Razinski into the boys’ locker room while he was waiting for his bitchy girlfriend to finish cheerleading practice and slipped him the tongue?”

“That wasn’t me, dodo. That was you. I was just there with you.”

“Oh, that’s right. But you were the one who bet I didn’t have the guts to do it.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I still can’t believe you stuck your tongue in his mouth. Bobby always had food in his braces and dragon’s breath.”

“It wasn’t the most pleasant of kisses, but I’ve had far worse since.”

“Now that’s just sad,” I said.

“I know. Beer makes you do dumb things. Anyway, my point is that I kept it a secret that you’d dared me to do it even when Bobby’s bitchy girlfriend came at me in the parking lot a couple days later.”

“Come on, you and I both know you’d been wanting to knock her off her pedestal ever since she stole Bobby’s older brother from you.”

“It’s just wrong to dump one brother while seducing the other. That girl needed a dose of her own medicine.”

I pulled up in front of Aunt Zoe’s place. “You coming over again tonight, oh Keeper of Great Secrets?”

“I’m not sure. I need to go out and check on my parents and then head down to Rapid to check on my Aunt Deborah’s place, make sure nobody has tried to break in or messed with anything. She’s decided to spend the winter down in Arizona.”

“You’re kidding. Claire’s mom is going to live in an RV Park all winter?” I had grown up in the house next to Deborah Morgan and her wild and crazy daughters, who also happened to be Natalie’s cousins. It was through the Morgan sisters that Natalie and I first had met back when playing hide and seek had been our favorite pastime. “Isn’t that a step down on the social ladder for your aunt?”

“According to Claire, Deborah has found herself a new man down there, and she’s going to shack up with him for the winter.”

“So the wild pigs have started to fly in Arizona?”

She opened her door. “They aren’t pigs. They’re javelinas.”

“Know it all.”

“Who’d have thought there was a man out there nutty enough to risk getting naked anywhere near my aunt?” She hopped down from the Picklemobile. “I’ll call you later.”

I waited until she’d stepped up into her pickup and started it before heading down to work.

My cellphone rang just as the Picklemobile was backfiring to a stop.

“Hello?” I said, dropping the keys in my purse.

“I NEED TO SPEAK WITH VIOLET PARKER!” bellowed a voice I hadn’t heard for almost a week.

I jerked the phone away, my ear drum ringing in complaint. “Cornelius,” I growled and switched the phone to my other ear. “I told you before to stop yelling at me when I answer the phone.”

While I appreciated that Cornelius Curion had bought a haunted hotel through me recently, and I was still jumping for joy about my portion of the money he had paid for said hotel (which was currently fattening my previously anorexic bank account), his eccentric phone etiquette often made me want to throw my phone at a tree … again.

Now that Cornelius and I were done partnering in the Realtor-client game, he wanted me to hook up with him on a new gig—playing a real-life version of
Ghostbusters
.

“Is this Violet?” Cornelius whispered, his volume level swinging to the opposite end of the scale.

“Of course it’s me.” I kept my voice normal. “You called my phone.”

“What’s the code word?”

What code word? Had we established a code word at some point, and I’d spaced it? Hold up. Why would we have a freaking code word?

It was probably best not to ask. I tried to think of something that a man who looked and dressed like Abe Lincoln, who swore he could converse with ghosts on a daily basis, and who demanded protein drinks for breakfast each morning, would pick for a code word.

“Paranormal?” I asked.

“Have you put much thought into that?”

“About five seconds’ worth.”

“It sounds like only three. How about I come up with a code word instead?”

How about what? “I thought you wanted me to give you the code word to receive whatever information it is you’re calling to tell me.”

Cornelius laughed. “Oh, Violet. In spite of your silliness, I remain firm in my belief that you’ll make an incredible slayer.”

My breath caught. How did he know about my killer family history? “What do you mean?”

“What do you mean what do I mean?”

“Why did you call me that?”

“Violet? I was under the impression it was your name. Would you prefer another flower name? We can do anything but Freesia. It would get too confusing if there were two of you.”

The Freesia he was referring to was Freesia Tender, the great-great niece of Big Jake Tender who’d built the Galena House, a beautiful old boarding house turned apartment building. Freesia now owned said building and wanted to sell it with my help. The upside of Freesia’s property was that it was well-built, and we were almost ready to put it on the market. The downside was that we were waiting for Detective Cooper to remove the police tape from the door of one of the apartments, which happened to be the site of multiple murders over the years.

Oh, and then there was that lovely little “Haunted” line in the disclaimer, too. But every other building and home in Deadwood and Lead were supposedly haunted, so I strived to remain optimistic about its sale potential.

“I’m perfectly fine with my name, Cornelius.”

“You sure? I’ve always been fond of the chlamydia flower.”

I nearly choked on my spit. “Chlamydia is not a flower,” I said when I could speak without coughing. “I think you mean clematis.”

“No. I once knew a girl named Chlamydia. She was an amazing medium, especially when it came to calling up Viking ghosts.”

“No shit?” Maybe that was where he had gotten his one-horned Viking hat he liked to wear during séances.

“Truly. I remember her well. She was sweet and very pretty, like a young Shirley MacLaine. I met her in college when she was modeling for a fine arts class.”

“Let me guess, she was naked at the time.”

“Impressive. Your channeling abilities are growing stronger by the day, Violet.”

“Here’s another guess—you asked her out after class.”

“I’m not sure I like it when you’re reading my mind. What am I thinking now?”

“Never mind that. Are you sure she didn’t say, ‘I have chlamydia,’ when you asked her out, but you were so enamored by her amazing nakedness that you heard, ‘I am Chlamydia,’ instead?”

“She did have an extremely perky set of—”

“No!” We were not going to go there. That was out of bounds for our level of friendship.

“Eyebrows,” he continued.

“She had perky eyebrows?”

“Yes. They were very round-shaped, just like both of her very round—”

“You know what? Let’s just stop this train before it crashes into the station.”

“Nostrils,” he finished, ignoring my interruption.

I needed to get out of this quicksand and back onto solid ground. “You said I’d make an incredible slayer. Why did you call me a slayer?”

“I didn’t. I said you’d make an incredible
sayer
. As in soothsayer. You know, with your ability to open channels and see the future.”

“I think you called the wrong number, sir.”

“Is that another foretelling?”

“No, it’s a forewarning.”

“Ah, because your phone will be in the hands of someone from the past. I got it.”

Good, because I didn’t. In fact, I couldn’t even remember who had called whom at this point. Then it all came tumbling back like a dead cow caught in the surf. “Why did you call me, Cornelius?”

“I need you to arrange a verbal exchange with your associate.”

“Freesia?”

“No, the other one. The tall one who can meld with beings from the past.”

“You mean my boyfriend, Doc?”

“Yes, that one. Bring him to my suite. I need him to listen to something.”

Cornelius was living temporarily in one of the suites on the third floor of his hotel.

“If you’re going to propose another séance, I’m not sure he’ll be interested.”

“It’s not me that I want him to hear.”

He shushed someone in the background.

“Is someone there with you?” I didn’t want him to be mentioning Doc’s or my name in relation to the paranormal world in front of anyone else.

“No.”

“Then who were you shushing?”

“That is the exact reason why I need to talk to your tall associate. He needs to come to my suite and help me.”

“Help you with what?”

“With speaking to the people surrounding me.”

“I thought you said nobody was there.”

“I’m talking about the people in my walls, Violet.” He made a shushing sound again. “The dead ones.”

“Say what now?”

The phone went silent.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

“Cornelius?”

Still nothing.

The nincompoop had hung up on me.

Bahhh! I thought about banging my phone on the steering wheel, but since Doc bought it for me after my last one had ended up in a toilet in the Homestake Opera House, I settled for burying it in my purse.