Meanwhile, Back in Deadwood (Deadwood Humorous Mystery Book 6) (5 page)

“Fine, party pooper.” I took the book from him, staring down at a grainy black and white picture.

“Come here. You need more light.” He turned on a lamp sitting on a stack of milk crates.

I followed, holding the book under the light.

From what I could tell, it was an early 1900s picture of the inside of a general store, every nook and cranny overflowing with products. There were shelves filled with canned and dry goods along with what looked like jars of candy. The side walls held shovels and pickaxes, rugs, and clocks. Against the back wall of the shop, I could make out racks of clothing and a sign advertising shoes and hats.

The woman behind the counter looked typical of many women of the early twentieth century who had lived a hard life out West. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, her face makeup free. The harsh lighting made the angles on her face more pronounced, her eyes dark. The high-collared dress elongated her neck.

“What am I looking for here?” I asked.

Doc pointed at one of the shelves on the right wall.

I held the book closer. The dark glass bottles looked very familiar. “Are those what I think they are?”

“If you look closer with a magnifying glass, there’s a price for mead by the bottle next to the cash register.”

I gaped at him. “Those bottles look exactly like the one I borrowed from that crate in Mudder Brothers’ side room back in August.”

“
Borrowed
, you say?”

“Leave the hair splitting to Detective Cooper.” My focus returned to the photo. “Do you think there’s a connection somehow?”

“I’m not sure, but there’s something else in this photo that I wanted you to see besides the mead.” He pointed at the woman behind the counter. “That’s Ms. Wolff.”

Ms. Wolff? This time my lower jaw bounced off my toes. The same Ms. Wolff who had called me almost a month ago out of the blue and told me she had to talk to me immediately because she’d be dead soon … and then followed through with that dearly departed prediction right before I arrived at her apartment with Harvey in tow?

I frowned at the picture caption. “It says here it’s a Miss Hundt.”

“Hundt means
hound
in German. Wolff is wolf. Suspiciously similar, don’t you think?”

“So you think she’s one and the same?”

“I don’t think, I know.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Didn’t Prudence the ghost call the timekeeper ‘Ms. Hundt’ when she spoke to you through me last time we paid her a visit?” At my grimace and nod, he continued. “And you and I both realized that when Prudence was asking you to bring her the timekeeper, she meant the keeper of time, aka clocks, aka all of those Black Forest clocks on Ms. Wolff’s wall.”

“Right, the creepy, nightmare-spurring wall.”

“But what makes me even more certain this is Ms. Wolff is the fact that I saw her up close. I know her face.”

“You mean from when we had the séance in Ms. Wolff’s apartment and you joined with the ghost of Big Jake Tender?”

Doc nodded.

Big Jake had been in Ms. Wolff’s company when he had died almost a century ago. During one of Doc’s adventures as a ghost medium in the boarding house Big Jake had built, Doc had witnessed this scene and more through the dead man’s eyes. I shivered just remembering that séance and how close we’d come to losing Doc in the past for good.

“You’re positive this is her?”

He nodded again.

“How can you be so sure?”

“If you saw an old black and white picture of John Wayne, would you know it’s the Duke?”

“Of course. But I’ve seen the Duke hundreds of times on TV.”

“Ms. Wolff was hovering over Big Jake while he died. Her face is sort of stuck in my mind, the stricken look of pain over losing him still fresh.”

I stared at the photo again, searching the background with this new information in mind. That back wall with the clothing and sign about hats struck a chord. “That’s it!”

“What?”

“The different sized clothing and shoes in her closet, and all of those hat boxes full of fancy hats. They were from when she ran this store.” There’d been dresses and shoes from various time periods. I’d thought maybe they were clothes from the costume room of the Homestake Opera House up in Lead. Turned out they were just leftover stock.

“That makes sense.” Doc took the book back from me, rubbing his jaw as he scrutinized the photo. “I was able to go back through some of the history books at the library and figure out which building this store operated out of and what’s there now.”

“The building is still intact?”

“Yes, it houses the Candy Corral.”

“The one owned by Ms. Wolff’s buddy, Zuckerman?”

“One and the same. We need to pay her a visit.” He took the book from me. “You in the mood for some chocolate?”

“Only every time I take a breath.” I’d thought about visiting Zuckerman to ask her a few questions a week or so ago but then had gotten distracted with enjoying a regular life. It was time to follow through on that idea and find some more answers about the whole Ms. Wolff fiasco and why she’d had my son’s picture stuck in the frame of her bedroom dresser mirror.

My cellphone rang in my purse. I pulled it out. It was Mona, my favorite coworker and real estate idol. Had she heard me through the wall? Maybe I had another new client next door waiting for me. “I need to take this.”

Doc nodded and stepped back, giving me space.

“Hi, Mona. What’s going on?”

“I have an urgent message for you.”

“From Layne?” My son tended to call with false emergencies involving the need for supplies for his latest chemistry experiment or archaeological dig in Aunt Zoe’s backyard.

“No. Eddie Mudder.”

“Eddie Mudder?” I repeated, snagging Doc’s attention. “What did he want?”

Why would the remaining owner of the local funeral parlor want to talk to me all of a sudden? We hadn’t spoken since that horrible night back in August.

“He said he needs to talk to you about something extremely urgent.”

Was I unknowingly on the verge of death and he wanted to get a jump on planning my funeral? “Okay, I’ll swing by the funeral parlor after I finish up the Carhart house paperwork today.”

Doc shook his head at me, showing his feelings on that plan of action.

“Eddie explicitly stated he does
not
want you to come to the funeral parlor. He made that very clear and left a phone number for you to call tonight at ten.”

“That seems a little odd.”

“Well, Eddie wouldn’t really fit in with Beaver Cleaver’s family.”

True, but he’d be a shoo in for the Addams Family with his resemblance to Lurch. “Thanks for letting me know, Mona. I’ll be over there shortly. I’m just looking at something next door at Doc’s.”

“I hope it’s something that makes you smile.”

There was something in her tone that made me think she said that for a reason other than wanting me to be a happy camper. “Why do you say that?”

“Jerry phoned in earlier from the conference down in Rapid. He’s calling an emergency huddle for tomorrow morning. We all need to be at Bighorn Billy’s at nine sharp.”

“Super duper,” I said without smiling. My boss’s huddles usually revolved around new marketing ideas, such as the catastrophic one that landed me on a huge-ass billboard off Interstate 90 coated in bright red lipstick and wrapped in a pink silk suit—his version of a sexy Realtor. I was of the opinion I looked like a vampire-poodle dipped in Pepto-Bismol. “I’ll be over there shortly.”

“Tell Doc ‘hello’ for me.”

“Will do.” I hung up and proceeded to spew everything that Mona had just told me in one long breath, including her ‘hello.’

“Wow,” he said when I had finished. “You were starting to turn blue there at the end.”

“Why does Eddie want to talk to me all of a sudden? Do you think it’s about George and what happened? Does he know about the bottle of mead I stole? Does he think I had a hand in messing up his family business?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to be there tonight when you call.”

That flipped my frown upside down. “You’re coming over after we get Harvey all settled in at Cooper’s?”

“If that’s okay with you and your aunt.”

“Of course. We can talk about this some more.” I tapped the book he still held. “And if you’re a good boy, maybe I’ll let you take a peek at my fur-lined underwear.”

He laced his fingers through mine and lifted my hand to his lips. “Yabba dabba do, Boots.”

Chapter Three

Monday, October 22nd

Meanwhile, back at Bighorn Billy’s …

Ray Underhill planted his stupid ass across the table from me at Bighorn Billy’s. The fake-tanned cretin stared at me with nothing but contempt. And here I’d thought spending yesterday morning with a faceless corpse and two prickly detectives had sucked.

I sneered at him.

He sneered back.

Where was Harvey’s heirloom wired-trigger shotgun when I needed it?

Jerry Russo, the owner of Calamity Jane Realty, dropped into the seat between Ray and me, breaking up our Mexican standoff. With his hair still damp and his cologne overpowering the smells of breakfast happiness that wafted out from the kitchen, I guessed Jerry had come straight from the Deadwood Rec Center.

While I preferred to start my day slamming the sleep button and then hitting the coffee pot, Jerry preferred his slamming and hitting done on the basketball court. In his younger years, he had played ball professionally until he’d hurt his shoulder. That was when he had married into the real estate business. His marriage had ended long ago, but his love of real estate sales had stayed true. Unfortunately, so had his lust for marketing.

Jerry waved our waiter over. “Have you guys ordered yet?”

Mona, looking stunning in her pink mohair sweater, peered at him over her rhinestone-rimmed reading glasses. “Only coffee.”

“And some vitamin C,” said Ben Underhill, holding up his glass of orange juice.

Poor Ben had the horrible lifelong affliction of being Ray’s nephew. I liked Ben even though our friendship had gotten off to a rocky start thanks to a creepy blind date and his uncle doing his damnedest to get me fired. Ray had been dead set on Ben taking my place at Calamity Jane’s, and for a while I’d been sweating daily about losing my job to him. In the end, Jerry had decided to keep me on board and hire Ben, too, creating what he called his “five-man realty dream team.”

Luckily for Ben, he came packaged with testicles and a love of basketball. He and Jerry had hit it off from the start thanks to Jerry’s matching package. My package, on the other hand, did not include balls of any sort, period. While Doc might be happy about that fact, when it came to fitting in at work, a pair surely would have come in handy.

The five of us took turns placing our orders, starting with me. While I waited for everyone else to finish, I tapped my foot along with Johnny Cash, who was singing through the overhead speakers about walking the line. The Man in Black’s words fit my life at the moment, considering the monumental efforts I was making lately to keep my job, protect my kids from their sperm-donor of a father, and not end up in jail again.

Oh, and to avoid my Aunt Zoe.

I loved my aunt dearly, but she insisted on trying to tell me more about how I had come from a long line of killers and what that meant for my future. Thankfully Aunt Zoe was leaving today for an important glass art conference she went to every year down in Denver and not returning home until next weekend. That gave me a week of reprieve from dodging her and her warnings about the destiny that was waiting for me. As far as I was concerned, the destiny she was referring to could take a number and go to the back of the line … or just go away. I had no problem being destiny-less. Getting my kids to adulthood in one piece would be enough of a challenge.

Jerry clapped his big, basketball-sized hands together, jerking me out of my reverie. “Okay, let’s get this ball into play. Ben, we’ll start with you. Share with the team what’s in your playbook today.”

Jerry spoke in Sport-uguese. Luckily for me, I’d played ball back in high school eons ago, so I could translate with only a few fouls.

Ben dug in, telling about the one pending sale he had and the various pipeline possibilities. Ray followed with more of a long-winded gloat than a status report. Mona came next, her pendings still plentiful even in the cooling market. I brought up the rear, fast forwarding over my lack of any potential buyers for Jeff Wymonds’ house and Cooper’s place, skipping Harvey’s ranch and the dead guy mess entirely, and wrapping up with the final paperwork to be signed yet for the Carhart deal.

“What about the rental for Rex Conner?” Jerry asked.

The sound of that sonuvabitch’s name was all it took to make a red haze coat my vision and a wildfire race through my lungs. I closed my lips, swallowing down the ball of fire that threatened to spew forth and sizzle the blond eyebrows right off Jerry’s rock-hewn face.

“Have you found a rental that comes close to fitting his needs?” Jerry dumped a sugar into his coffee, unaware that I was sitting there struggling not to morph into Tolkien’s Smaug.

Sure, I’d found the perfect rental for Rex the-piece-of-shit Connor. It was an ice hut on a lovely frozen lake in Siberia. No wait! Russia’s frozen tundra was not far enough away for the man who had fathered my twins and then left before they were even the size of jelly beans. Maybe one of Saturn’s moons would do.

“Not yet,” I answered.

“Surely there has to be something out there that would make him happy.”

Surely there was, but I refused to give it to the dickhead. Rex wanted me to pretend to be his wife. He’d even tried to blackmail me into the role earlier this month. He wanted my kids to play along as well, creating the instant family he needed to get the highfalutin job promotion he was trying to land up in Lead at the old Homestake Mine turned scientific research lab.

The biological father of my children was one big bowl of rat bastard stew, and I kicked myself daily for ever letting him seduce me into bed way back when. However, I loved the two children for whom he had donated his sperm during a two-for-one special deal—the same two children who had no idea that Rex was their father. Nor did they know that their dad was back in town trying to mess with my world in order to get some stupid promotion.