Nearly Departed in Deadwood (29 page)

      “What’s wedding tackle?” Addy asked.

      “A kind of fishing pole,” I answered, skirting the subject again, practically twirling as I danced through introductions.

      Harvey snorted and smacked his leg.

      “And this is Dane Nyce,” I turned to Doc, unsure why I chose to use his real name. “Another ... friend of mine.”

      Doc shot me a one raised-brow stare, then stood and held out his hand toward Wolfgang.

      “Are you from around here, too?” Wolfgang asked.

      “Nope.” Doc pulled his hand free and indicated toward the chair he’d just vacated. “Have a seat.”

      “No, thanks,” Wolfgang said. “I don’t plan on staying long. I just wanted to make sure Addy was okay and give her this.” He pulled a small pink box from his pants pocket and held it out to Addy, who blasted him with both dimples and grabbed the box.

      “Addy,” I chastised. “What do you say?”

      “Thanks, Wolfgang.” With Kelly’s help, Addy tore open the box. She squealed down at a rhinestone-covered unicorn broach.

      The broach reminded me of the crystal I’d found in his bathroom and pocketed. Unfortunately, Aunt Zoe had washed my lawn-mowing clothes the next day and I hadn’t seen the crystal since. I had a bad feeling the washing machine ate it, and unless I came across the crystal again, I wasn’t going to bring it up to anyone, especially Wolfgang.

      “Also,” Wolfgang continued, turning toward me. “I wanted to see if her mother wanted to reschedule our date to Saturday night.”

      It took me a couple of seconds to realize he meant me. Saturday? Wasn’t I doing something that night? Feeling the weight of all six pairs of eyes on me, I just smiled like an idiot. “Sure. Same time, same place?”

      Wolfgang nodded. “Wear that red dress again. I have something special planned for you.”

      “I need to get going,” Doc said, digging into his pocket and coming out with car keys. “See you later, Squirt,” he said, winking at Addy, like he had at me not five minutes ago, but without the heat.

      Her dimples appeared again. “Bye, Doc. Will you sign my cast later?”

      “You bet, kid.”

      Relief and disappointment churned in my gut. While having both Doc and Wolfgang in the same room made me feel like I was juggling lit torches, I didn’t want Doc to leave.

      I grabbed Doc’s arm as he passed in front of me. “Thanks for your help today.”

      His grin flashed so fast I would have missed it if I’d blinked. “Anything for a
friend
, Violet.”

      I watched his broad shoulders as he strode away, my teeth gnashing at the frosty edge in his tone. What was that supposed to mean? He’s the one who’d laid down the no-sex law.

      “Addy,” Wolfgang said from behind me. “How about you and your friend join me for a tour of the gift shop’s candy rack?”

      “Can I, Mom?”

      I turned, smiling for everyone’s benefit when what I really wanted to do was lie on the floor, kick my feet, and scream for five minutes. “Sure, but only one piece of candy this time—and a milk carton of Whoppers does not count as one item, Adelynn.”

      Wolfgang and the two girls strolled off down the hall that led to the gift store. I sighed, dropping into my chair.

      “Well,” Harvey said, mirth in his voice. “That was fun.”

      “How do you know Wolfgang Hessler?” Jeff asked me, his eyes narrowed with a hint of suspicion.

      “He’s a client,” I said, then added, “and a friend.”

      “Really?” Jeff rested his elbows on his knees.

      I frowned at the leer in his tone. “Yes.”

      “Well then, Violet Parker,” Jeff said in a hushed voice that had Harvey and I both leaning forward to hear it. “I’m already a client, so how do I get to be one of your so-called ...” he made quotation marks in the air with his fingers, “
friends
?”

      The glint in his eyes as his gaze traveled down my throat and lingered on the top button of my blouse made me cross my arms over my chest.

      “And do you charge your clients by the hour or by the job?”

      Harvey’s bark of laughter echoed through the room.

     
Chapter Nineteen

     
Thursday, July 19th

      Another bouquet of daisies greeted me at Calamity Jane’s early the next morning. They lay across my desk, their perky petals beginning to wilt. I wanted to throw them on the floor and jump up and down on them.

      I glanced over at Mona, who seemed to be battling the rooster for sunrise bragging rights lately. Her fingernails clackity-clacked away on her laptop, as usual. Her jasmine-scented calling card drifted around me, competing with the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee. “When did these flowers arrive?”

      “Yesterday afternoon.” Mona looked at me, her eyebrows spiked, her rhinestone-studded reading glasses resting on the tip of her nose. “Speaking of yesterday, where were you?”

      “In hell.” I cast a glance at Jane’s closed office door. Light leaked out through the bottom crack. I’d forgotten about the property information that Jane had asked me to dig up until I had Addy settled at home with her new cast.

      Grateful for the library’s extended summer hours, I’d grabbed Layne and raced across town. Disappointment had tightened my chest when I didn’t find Doc sitting in his usual chair in the South Dakota room. I’d spent the next half-hour scanning books, all the while lecturing myself about why I needed to pluck this crush I had on Doc before its roots dug in.

      I pulled the information I’d copied for Jane from my tote and asked in a lowered voice. “Did Jane notice I didn’t come back from lunch?”

      “Of course, but I told her you were showing some houses.”

      “Thanks. I owe you.”

      Mona waved away my gratitude. “So spill. What happened?”

      I retrieved the pink envelope from the bouquet and then dumped the flowers in the trash. “You’ll never believe it.”

      “Does it involve a horse skull or a chicken?”

      The fact that my life was now predictably threaded with equine and poultry subplots made me want to throw back a couple of Zoloft and chase them with a splash of Southern Comfort. “The latter. Addy followed her chicken into a mine, fell down a shaft, and broke her arm.”

      Actually, Addy informed me after we left the ER that she had tripped over Kelly’s foot
by accident
and stumbled into the shallow, test shaft. Later, long after Addy’s eyelids had drifted closed, I tossed and turned in the quiet dark of my bedroom, wondering if I should have been focusing on Kelly instead of Jeff all this time.

      Could Kelly’s obsession with death have had anything to do with the disappearance of the other girls from her swim team? Maybe her morbid fixation, born last summer, had just taken a while to float to the surface. Maybe she’d lied about what really happened to her best friend, Emma Cranson, on that fateful August day. Maybe the other girls had also fallen
by accident
into shafts in some of the many mines littering the outskirts of Deadwood—shafts too deep for anyone to be fished out of alive.

      “How’s Addy doing today?” Mona’s question tugged me out of my shadow-filled thoughts.

      “When I left home, she was supervising Layne. He’s helping her build a chicken trap.” Addy was determined to rescue Elvis from the mine, even though I’d grounded her from entering any holes in the earth for the next six months.

      I stared down at the tiny envelope in my hand, running my finger over my name scrawled in purple ink. Anticipation and dread tightened my stomach.

      Mona’s fingernails returned to their key-pecking routine, but her gaze bounced between her screen and me. “Did you have a nice lunch with Jeff Wymonds?”

      Mona knew of my suspicions about Jeff and the missing girls. She had never agreed on a
guilty
verdict, her jury was still open to hearing more evidence.

      “It turns out he’s pretty torn up about his wife leaving him, needs to sell his place to pay what she’s demanding in the divorce settlement, and wants to hire my services.”
In bed as well as in real estate
.

      My cheeks warmed at the memory of his misconception about my profession. However, as Harvey had so kindly pointed out on our way to the Bronco after Addy’s cast-fitting, I now had a career to fall back on when I ran out of unemployment benefits.

      “That’s good, right?”

      “I guess.”

      “Is he still on your list of suspects?”

      “I don’t know.” My jury had begun deliberations. While I was swaying toward him being innocent, I wasn’t willing to let him leave my line-up just yet.

      I tore open the envelope and extracted the card. My secret admirer’s latest poetic stab filled the front of it.

     
The roses will be red

     
On our table with a view.

     
Reserved under “Adelynn,”

     
I’ll be waiting for you.

      The sight of Addy’s name made my legs shaky from the neck down. I slumped into my chair.

      “What’s it say?” Mona hovered over me, her forehead crinkled with concern.

      I handed the card to her and scrambled for my cell phone.

      She scanned it. “How does he know Addy’s name?”

      “I don’t know.” How in the hell was I supposed to keep my little girl safe with so many monsters prowling throughout this damned town? I punched in Jeff Wymonds’ phone number. It rang twice and then I heard a click. I didn’t wait to hear his voice. “Jeff, it’s Violet. Have you been sending me flowers with little notes?”

      “No,” he answered. “Why? Should I be? Is that how I become one of your special
friends
?”

      “No. Goodbye, Jeff.” I ended the call and sighed. “This can’t be good, can it?”

      “What can’t be good?” Jane asked, pouring a cup of coffee.

      I’d been so busy gnawing on my knuckles, weighing the pros and cons of shipping my kids to boarding school in another state, I hadn’t heard the clomp of her heels on the floor. “Uhhh.”

      “The city planners’ idea to add another stoplight on Main Street,” Mona said, covering for me ... again.

      “Oh, right.” Jane joined us at my desk, her gaze locked onto me. “How did it go yesterday afternoon?”

      “Pretty well.” I knew she was referring to my supposed house-showing jaunt, but Addy was alive and breathing, Wolfgang wasn’t pissed at me for standing him up, and Harvey had landed a date with one of the hospital’s blue-haired candy-stripers. All in all, Lady Fortune’s umbrella had shielded me and mine from what could have been a real downpour. “Here’s that information you wanted.”

      “Thanks.” She took the copies I held out. “So where did you go yesterday?”

      I sat up in my chair, doing my best not to fidget. “All over Deadwood.” No lying there. Harvey and I had covered the town from one end of the gulch to the other.

      “Any bites?”

      “Just a nip,” I answered, thinking of Doc’s stinging
anything for a friend
chomp. “But today is a new day.”

      “I like your attitude, Violet.”

      “Thanks.” I smiled. Mona had taught me during my first week at Calamity Jane’s that optimism would carry me a long way with the boss toward the sweet land of good graces.

      “I’d like it even more if you had something to show for it.” Jane nodded her head at the Sale Pending board.

     
Me, too!
I gulped, but kept my chin held high. “I will.”

      “I hope so, Violet. I really do.” Jane squeezed my shoulder. “Let me know if there is anything I can do to help get your name on the board.”

      I waited until Jane had returned to her office and closed the door before crawling under my desk and huddling there with my arms wrapped around my knees.

      Mona rolled aside my chair and peeked in at me, her reading glasses dangling from her neck. “Vi, what are you doing?”

      “Hiding.”

      “From whom?”

      “The world.”

      “Sweetheart, you’re going to need to find a better hiding spot to accomplish that.”

      The sound of someone clearing his throat spurred Mona upright. I peered out from under my desk and spotted a pair of black boots draped with blue jeans standing smack-dab on the front door’s threshold.

      “Hi,” Mona said, all polish and business. “Can I help you?”

      I heard a sniff, then a deep, all too familiar voice. “I need to talk to Violet.”

      I closed my eyes and groaned mentally. Why him? Why now?

      “She’s unavailable at the moment,” Mona said without hesitation. “Can I take a message for her?”

      “Okay.” I could hear the grin in Doc’s tone. “But isn’t that Violet under her desk?”

      Mona shuffled her feet. “It might look that way, but—”

      “I’m coming out now, Mona.” I crawled out under the fluorescent lights and hauled my sorry ass to my feet. Doc’s lazy grin was supersized this morning, reaching from one ear lobe to the other. I straightened my shoulders. “Don’t ask.”

      His brows lifted, but he obeyed. “I need to talk to you.”

      Brushing floor dust from my orange capri pants, I rolled my chair back in place and pointed at the one across from my desk. “Have a seat.”

      “No.”

      The sharpness in his voice stopped me mid-sit. It was my turn to do some brow lifting.

      “Let’s talk outside.”

      I stood, but held my ground. What was Doc’s issue with sitting inside Calamity Jane’s four walls? As I stared at him, his gaze flickered behind me toward the coffee maker.

      “Why outside?” I asked.

      He glanced at Mona, who’d returned to her laptop. “It’s private business.”

     
Liar
. “All right.”

      I grabbed my sunglasses and joined him under the cloudless, cerulean sky. The smell of pine trees and exhaust surrounded me. A warm breeze ruffled my collar and plastered Doc’s faded red T-shirt against his chest.