Meanwhile, Back in Deadwood (Deadwood Humorous Mystery Book 6) (32 page)

By the time Aunt Zoe and I waved them goodbye from the front porch, the kids were in bed and I was practically asleep on my feet. With a starring role in front of the camera coming again bright and early, I’d kissed Aunt Zoe goodnight and headed to bed. Sleep had come surprisingly fast. The nightmares even faster, one in particular starring my son in a bleak, rage-filled future as a serial killer. The crowd outside his jail cell chanted how his mother had driven him to it, their cries echoing long after I’d woken up drenched in sweat.

Criminy, this parenting business was going to turn me into a silver-haired, shriveled hag by age forty.

I parked behind the office, stopping in only to make sure we were still on for the Galena House. Jerry made eye contact as if I hadn’t caught him and Mona in a lip lock yesterday. Mona was still inspecting her fingernail polish when the three of us were in the room together.

Ray texted me while I was powdering my nose in the office restroom:
Get your ass over here, Blondie. We don’t have all day.

I typed back:
Funny, I don’t remember signing up to receive inspirational texts from the president of Dickheads Anonymous.

Before he could reply, I shoved my phone in my purse and headed out the back door.

Twenty minutes later, I passed Rosy the Riveter on the way up the front walk of the Galena House, her camera focused on the front of the square, two-story boarding house.

She thanked me for the coffee I’d stopped to grab, promising to make me look better than Loni Anderson and Dolly Parton combined in exchange for the caffeine hit.

Dickie and Honey were huddled up in the Galena House’s downstairs hallway when I crested the porch steps. As I approached, handing a coffee to Dickie, Honey stepped back and turned aside, letting out a rally of sneezes.

“Excuse me,” she said, taking the hot tea I’d brought her. “Thank you for this.”

I nodded, looking around. “Where’s Rad?” I’d grabbed a hot tea for him, too, since he’d been so sick the last couple of days of filming.

“Back at the hotel room sleeping,” Honey said, and then sneezed again. “He’s too sick to film, was up coughing all night.”

“He should probably get that checked out,” Dickie said, slurping down some coffee. “You better take some cough medicine, too. It sounds like you’re going down next.”

Honey shook her head. “I’m fine, it’s just allergies. These houses and buildings are so old and full of dust.”

“And ghosts,” Dickie added. His gaze traveled over my dark red blazer and straight black velvet skirt, ending at my black boots. He saluted me with his coffee cup. “Nice outfit today, Violet. You’ll look great on camera.”

“Thanks,” I said, keeping mum that it was one of the outfits Jerry had picked out and bought just for this occasion. The fewer people who knew that I had less clothes sense than a retired pro-basketball player the better.

“Anyone see Ray around?” I wanted to stay on opposite sides of the hall from him if at all possible today.

“He’s upstairs in Miss Tender’s apartment using the facilities.”

I checked the time on my phone. Ohhhh, poor Freesia. I could set my watch by Ray and his daily trip to the litterbox.

“Violet, we should be ready to set up for your part in about fifteen minutes,” Honey said, swiping at her nose with the back of her hand. “Do you need more time to practice your lines or are you ready to roll?”

“I’m ready.” I’d practiced while getting dolled up this morning. I held up my phone. “I’m going to make a quick phone call out on the front porch.”

She gave me a thumbs up and then focused her energy on fussing over Dickie, reminding me of my mother last night with Layne.

I passed Rosy coming in through the main door on the way, her camera balanced on her shoulder while she sipped from her coffee. “Thanks again, Violet. You da’ bomb.”

Some days I felt very bomb-ish, the atomic variety.

Outside on the porch, I pulled up Doc’s number on my phone.

“Morning, Tiger.” He sounded sleepy. It must have been a late poker night over at Reid’s place. Their weekly game had been moved up a day due to Halloween.

“Are you still in bed?” I’d rather be there with him than hanging around a haunted boarding house.

“If I say yes, will you come over and perform a wake up service in your purple boots and those matching panties with the pink heart on the front?”

“Hey, who told you about my Halloween costume?”

“You wear that and we’ll never make it to the bar.”

“Promises, promises.” I stepped down the front porch steps, turning my face up to soak up some rays of sunlight shining through a break in the clouds. I could use more sunshine in my days and more of Doc in my nights. “So, who was your fourth for poker?”

“Willis.”

“I thought he had a date.” Why else would Harvey have sent me a text yesterday afternoon that asked:
Boxers, a leather thong, or commando?

“He didn’t mention anything about one.”

I heard the beep of Doc’s coffeemaker. Coffee was ready. It was nice to start my day without Cooper chewing on me for once, although Ray’s not-so-friendly follow up texts were waiting in my phone’s message box.

“How was your night?” Doc asked. “You didn’t get a whim to do some early trick-or-treating at any more morgues, did you?”

“No dead bodies for me, but my parents dropped by.” I wondered how Doc felt about meeting them. If he were as skittish about it as I was? If we’d reached that stage in our relationship yet? If we ever would?

“They drove up from Rapid City just to say, ‘Hi’?”

“And drop in for supper.”

“Did you have a good visit?”

“Not really.”

“What happened? Your sister didn’t tag along, did she?”

“No, but I sort of had a problem I didn’t want them to know about.”

I heard his pantry door creak open. “What kind of problem?”

“Layne has a black eye.”

“Really? I didn’t think Addy had hit him that hard.”

“It wasn’t Addy. I got a call from his school principal yesterday.” I gave Doc a condensed version of the story, nodding at Honey when she stepped out to give me the five minute signal.

“Did Layne tell you why he picked the fight?”

“No. He didn’t want to talk about it, and with my parents there last night, I didn’t make him.”

There was a long pause from his end. I checked my phone screen to make sure I hadn’t lost his call. Then he spoke, “How do you feel about me stopping by your aunt’s place to talk to him on my way to work?”

“You want to talk to Layne?”

“Yes, man-to-man, no mother or sister or great aunt involved. Unless that makes you uncomfortable.”

I was actually wondering if it would make Layne uncomfortable being that one possible reason for his aggression might be Doc’s presence in our lives. “You think he’ll be more willing to open up to a man?”

“Maybe. There are things that go through a boy’s head that might not be something he wants his mother to know because she might not understand.”

I could believe that after growing up with my own flower-child mother, but I was curious about something. “Are you speaking from experience?” Doc’s mom had died when he was young, but there could have been other women in his young life. His grandmother, maybe.

“I come with the same equipment as Layne, and I’ve been in my fair share of brawls.”

I hesitated, happy that Doc was willing to try to help with Layne, yet feeling torn about giving up some control over my kids to someone else, someone besides Aunt Zoe or my parents. I’d been playing solitaire in this parenting game for a long time. In spite of all my whining and bitching about how hard it was, part of me wasn’t sure I was ready to share my children on that level.

“It’s just an offer to help, Violet. Don’t feel obligated to take me up on it.”

I didn’t, but we had to start somewhere if Doc really planned to stick around like he’d mentioned.

“It’s worth a try,” I said, keeping my fingers crossed that Layne would be on good behavior and that Doc wouldn’t press my boy too hard for answers. Then again, maybe Layne did need to be pressed. Maybe I was being too molly-coddling and making things worse.

God, I wished children came with an instructional video on how not to screw up their lives from the get-go.

Honey popped outside again, giving me the one minute finger.

“Doc, I gotta go.”

“Okay. Call me after you finish the big romance scene where you get messy making pottery with your ghost lover’s help.”

I chuckled. “Good looks and you’ve watched a romantic movie.”

“I tend to think of it as a paranormal suspense.”

“Come on,
Ghost
is definitely a romance.”

“Oh, hey, I meant to ask you if the rumors are true?”

“What rumors?”

“The ones about you winning the next lightweight boxing championship belt. Last night during the game, Cooper gave us a demo of your knockout boxing moves.”

Damn that detective! “Cooper has a bucket mouth.” Just like his uncle.

“Did you really go at him with your patented windmill swings, Tiger?” The laughter in his voice was all but tumbling out of my phone.

“Cooper’s lucky I didn’t knock him on his ass.”

“God, I wish I could have seen that.”

“You’ve seen me make a fool of myself in front of Cooper plenty of times before.”

“I actually think you managed to impress him with it.”

“Well, I do have a wicked wind up.”

He outright laughed at that.

Ray strode out onto the porch. “Shut it down, Blondie. They’re waiting for you.”

“Time’s up,” I told Doc. “Let me know how it goes with Layne.”

“Will do if you promise to stop by and show me some of your moves later.”

“Sure. You’ll be impressed.”

“I always am. Break a leg, Tiger.”

I hung up and shoulder bumped Ray back a step as I passed in front of him. Jerry had warned us that we needed to say nice things to each other and not fight in front of the TV people, but he hadn’t mentioned whether checking the dickhead into the boards was a no-no. Wait, that was a hockey reference, not basketball. I needed to keep my sports metaphors straight.

Honey led me up the stairs to the attic where the fun and games and filming would commence today. Freesia was waiting up there on the sidelines; her smile spread further up her face at the sight of me.

“Hi, Violet.” She came over. “You look smokin’ hot, girl. How’s show business treating you?”

“Like roadkill skunk.”

That made her giggle. “Have you seen Cornelius lately?”

Boy, Freesia sure had a moose-sized crush on Abe Lincoln, Jr. If Cornelius had his head screwed on straight … no, never mind. There was no way in hell Cornelius’s head was on straight. Some days I wondered if it were attached at all.

“I saw him last week,” I whispered, aware that Rosy was about to give us the let’s get rolling cue. “Any Realtors come by in the last few days to look around?”

She shook her head. “We both know it’s a bad time to try to sell a house, especially a haunted boarding house that was the setting for multiple, bizarre murders over the years.”

“Don’t give up hope yet. I’m in the process of wrapping up a sale for a house with a bloodier history than this place.” If the Carhart house could sell after all that had gone on under that roof, the Galena House had a sure-fire chance. I just needed to find buyers with the right mindset.

“Really?”

I nodded. “You know, I was thinking that maybe I can put an ad on the same ghost-lovers website where Cornelius first saw The Old Prospector Hotel advertised.” Or was it a magazine? I’d have to ask him the next time I saw him.

“Hook another ghost groupie?”

“Something like that.”

“Do you know if Cornelius is planning to go to any Halloween parties?”

Maybe her attraction to Cornelius was more like an obsession, or a fetish for men who wore stove pipe hats and long woolen coats.

“He hasn’t mentioned anything to me about a party.” At her forlorn expression, I felt compelled to add, “but I can certainly ask him and let you know what he says.”

Her smile returned, reminding me of the sunshine poking through the scattering of dark clouds outside. “Thanks. I owe you one.”

“Ready, Violet?” Honey sneezed before she could catch it, and then turned away to blow her nose. The poor woman was sinking right before our very eyes.

“Let’s do it.”

Two hours later, I’d gone through my lines more times than I could remember while Rosy moved around, filming from different angles each time. With Rad and his camera out of commission, Rosy needed to make it look like I was being filmed by multiple cameras so that the show kept its same look and feel on the screen.

Now it was Dickie’s turn to work his medium magic on screen over and over, which truth be told made me want to giggle with the way he added periodic swooning to his smoke and mirrors show. Although after the last séance Doc, Cornelius, Freesia, and I had performed in Ms. Wolff’s apartment downstairs, Dickie’s claim that he was sensing a dark and menacing presence in the Galena House attic wasn’t far from the bulls-eye. I wouldn’t call the white haired, scythe-wielding juggernaut in Apartment 4 on the first floor “dark,” but he certainly had scared the bejeezus out of me that night with the way he had come at me swinging.

In between takes, I got Honey’s okay to head downstairs and return a call from a new client who’d contacted me yesterday searching for a mid-priced three bedroom house in the area. To avoid being heard on camera in the attic, I made the call on the front porch.

When I finished lining up an appointment, I headed back inside, choosing to ignore the call and voicemail from Cooper that had come in while I was on the line. Aside from Ray’s earlier occasional glares between my takes, my morning was missing its usual second cup of angst, thankfully. I had a feeling listening to Cooper’s voicemail would dump a whole pitcher of worry over my head.

At the base of the stairs, I hesitated, glancing down the hall at the door to Ms. Wolff’s apartment. One of the pieces of police tape had come unstuck and was lying on the floor. I tiptoed down the hall trying to be as quiet as possible and plucked up the piece of tape. Out of curiosity, I tried the doorknob. It turned easily, unlocked.