Better Off Dead in Deadwood (21 page)

The intensity of his gaze acted as an effective exclamation point. I took a step back.

“Define ‘messing’,” Harvey said, leaning against the porch rail.

“One. More. Time.” Cooper shook his finger in my face with each word. “I’m not fucking around anymore.”

“Got it,” I said, dead serious. Call me kooky, but I really didn’t want to go to jail.

After a final growl, Cooper strode to his unmarked police sedan parked at the curb. Through his passenger window, he kept us in his crosshairs as he drove away.

“Dang,” Harvey said, climbing the steps to stand next to me. “That boy’s mad as a bee stung dog.”

“When did you look at his case board?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then why did you act like you did?”

“I figured you’d been sandpapered enough for one night.”

I snapped the old boy’s suspender playfully. “Thanks for saving my bacon.”

“It’s my job. You sure have a way of getting Coop’s tail all bristly. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he’s sweet on you.”

That reminded me of Natalie and her theory about Cooper lusting after me. Natalie just had lust on the brain. At least she had before I broke her heart.

“He’s not sweet on me,” I said. It was time to put an end to that whole unfounded notion.

“I know.”

“You do?” I asked.

“Yeah, I said ‘If I didn’t know better.’” Harvey spared me a sideways smirk. “He’s sweet on someone else.”

My mouth gaped. “Who?”

“I’m not tellin’, so don’t even bother badgerin’ me about it.” He nodded across at Miss Geary’s house. “You think her young stallion is in there with her right now?”

My mind was still wondering about Cooper’s secret crush, but I gave a cursory glance across the street. “I don’t see his racy black sports car.”

“Maybe she lets him park in her garage like I used to.”

“Is that supposed to be a double-entendre?”

“Why do you have to make everything dirty?” he asked.

“I’m just following your lead.”

He grinned. “You’re an apt pupil.”

I grinned back. “Thanks.”

We both watched Miss Geary’s house while the crickets started warming up.

“I need you to go somewhere with me tomorrow morning,” I told him. “You busy?”

“Nope. Where’re we headin’?”

“The Carhart house. I have to talk to Wanda.” And her ghost.

He grunted. “Giddy up.”

* * *

Wednesday, September 5th

True to his word, Harvey stood on my doorstep the next morning at eight o’clock, all spit-polished and bushy-tailed.

Aunt Zoe was still sleeping after a late night working in her glass workshop out behind the house, so I fixed some toaster waffles to go with the store bought orange juice I put on the table. Ignoring the grumbles from Harvey about the lack of real breakfast food, I managed to herd everyone out the door without rattling the windows and doors.

Fitting all four of us in the cab of the Picklemobile for the ride to school would have been a tight squeeze, so Harvey chauffeured us in his extended cab pickup.

“It smells like dog back here,” Addy said as we sat at a red light.

Harvey looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Old Red usually rides in that seat when we go out checkin’ on my herd.”

“Mom says pets don’t belong inside vehicles.”

I scowled at her, knowing exactly where this was heading. “Now is not the time for another protest about animal rights,” I told her.

“If we don’t stick up for them, who will?”

“Shut it down now, Adelynn Renee.”

“Yeah, shut your big yap,” Layne said, shoving his sister into the side window. His tiredness from staying up too late last night was showing its bully face. Who knew a book on the geology of the Black Hills could be so riveting, but there he’d been at midnight, hiding under his covers with a flashlight in hand.

“Layne, knock it off and say you’re sorry,” I said, giving him a hard stare.

He mumbled something that vaguely sounded like, “Sorry.”

I turned back to his sister, who was rubbing her head where it had connected with the glass. “Addy, do you really want to go another round with me about this? Remember, you’re still in big trouble for painting Elvis’s feathers with my mascara brush.”

“I told you, Mom, Elvis needed racing stripes for the competition.”

“And I told you to stop using my toiletries on your pets.”

Turning back toward the front, I heard muffled wheezes coming from Harvey. I poked him in the ribs, and he wheezed some more.

“Why do you have to check on your herd, Mr. Harvey?” Layne asked. “Do some of the cows get lost?”

“Lost, stolen, even shot. Old Red is pretty good at sniffing in the wind and finding a missing heifer.”

That dog was also good at finding missing human heads, like the one belonging to the decapitated body the yellow lab had dug up out in Harvey’s cemetery—the body with my business card still clutched in its hand. Turned out the head was still on the property. Old Red had found it in the defunct outhouse behind Harvey’s barn. Now if only the dog could find the rest of the body that went with the torn scalp and human ear that Harvey had found in his bear trap a couple of months ago.

Addy sighed. “I sure wish we could take Elvis with us when we go places in the Picklemobile.”

I ignored her billboard-sized hint and stared out the window at a couple of teenagers hugging on the sidewalk. His hands were on her butt, her arms inside his fleece jacket. Ah, young love. My heart panged for Doc, darn it.

I blinked back to reality and my daughter. “That chicken is not allowed inside the pickup. Period. I have enough trouble keeping her feathers off my clothes.”

“Elvis molts on you because she loves you,” Addy said.

Harvey pulled up in front of the school and let the engine idle. He turned around in the seat and grinned at Addy. “Maybe tonight we can make a chicken carrier you can tie in the back of the Picklemobile so Elvis can travel along without messin’ up your momma’s glad rags.”

“Yes! Can we, Mom?”

“We’ll talk about it after school,” I said, tired of thinking about that dang chicken this early in the morning. I stepped down to let both kids out my side. After I planted a kiss on the tops of their heads, I sent them on their way.

When I crawled back in the pickup, Harvey was messing with the radio dials. I pulled my dark green knit sweater over my matching short sleeve shirt. It was supposed to warm up into the seventies today, but it sure didn’t feel like it this morning.

Harvey settled on a station playing Willie Nelson’s
On the Road Again
and headed up the highway that took us through Central City and then on into Lead. Not a half mile out of Deadwood, we passed Reid. He was driving the big red dually truck that had the fire station’s namesake on the side.

“Damn,” Harvey said, “he looked like he’s been rode hard and put up wet.”

Harvey was right. Reid appeared drawn, almost haggard. “Maybe he’s not a morning guy,” I said.

“Maybe he’s got barrel fever,” Harvey said.

“What?”

“He’s been bending the elbow too much.” When I continued to frown at him, he added, “He’s hungover. Do I have to teach you the English language, girl?”

I ignored his smartass grin. “Maybe Reid just needs some more caffeine.” I always needed more. Feeding it to me intravenously would be easiest some mornings.

“Is your aunt still all puckered up about him?”

“If that means wanting to shoot him on sight, then yes. I don’t know what happened between those two in the past, but she can’t seem to forgive and forget.”

He shook his head. “Life is too short for holdin’ grudges. You must have gotten that bull-headed streak of yours from her.”

“I’m not bull-headed. I’m determined.”

“That’s not what Doc calls it.”

What does Doc call it? “Leave him out of this.”

“No can do.”

I tried to divert him. “Did you ever talk to Doc about your uncle’s mule?”

“Not yet. Did you get a hold of him last night after I left?” he asked.

“No, it was way too late.” Many more nights of Harvey staying until all hours of the morning in Aunt Zoe’s living room and I was going to go over to Miss Geary’s myself and beg her to take Harvey back. As much as I enjoyed the company of the ornery coot next to me, I missed Doc—even the sound of his voice on the telephone.

“You need to tell him about Coop’s threat to arrest you,” Harvey said, turning left down Lead’s main drag.

“I doubt he wants to hear about that.” It would only make him groan, and not in the good way I preferred.

“Humph.” It was more of a sound than a word coming from Harvey. “I disagree. That boy’s taken to you like a lean tick to a fat dog.”

“You do realize you just called me a ‘fat dog,’ right? I’m going to have to bite you now.”

“Don’t go gettin’ all lathered up. That’s just a turn o’ phrase. You know Doc would wanna be told about Cooper threatenin’ to throw you in the pokey.”

“I’m not going to get thrown in the pokey.” At least I didn’t plan to end up there.

I watched the houses go by out the window. After Cooper’s latest warning, I’d decided to toe the line and keep my nose free and clear of his business, Wanda and Prudence aside, that was.

“By the way,” I told Harvey, “as far as Cooper is concerned, this morning’s visit is about selling the Carhart place. Got it?”

He nodded. Wanda Carhart’s drive was just ahead on the right. Harvey pulled in and cut the engine.

“You sure you want to face this demon today?” he asked, his fingers still on the wheel.

I didn’t have much of a choice. I didn’t know how else I could get Doc inside Wanda’s house without breaking and entering, and Cooper didn’t need any extra reasons to arrest me.

“As much as I ever will be.”

“We could just talk to her on the porch,” he offered.

I stared up at the two story house in all of its Gothic-Revival-style finery with its steep cross gables and point-arched windows. The new layer of cheery paint all trimmed in chocolate brown reminded me of a summer morning and flower-filled garden, the front porch begging for a swing and some glasses of lemonade.

Here it was, the site of my near sacrifice. The house was like an oleander flower, beautiful yet deadly. Prudence and the Carharts weren’t the only victims of its poisonous past; there had been another murder committed decades ago. One born of jealousy—of love soured into hate.

I’d avoided driving anywhere close to the Carhart house since I’d been carted out of it in an ambulance a few weeks ago.

“I’ll be okay,” I told Harvey.

I glanced up at the attic window, staring at the white lace curtains, half expecting them to be drawn back by a woman in an old fashioned, high-necked dress stained with blood. Goosebumps rippled up my arms.

“As long as Prudence plays nice,” I said partially under my breath.

“What are you talking about?’ Harvey asked.

“Wanda says the ghost who lives here wants to talk to me.”

“The same ghost that warned you about staying away from one of the mines?”

I frowned at him. “How did you know about that?”

“I sat next to Wanda last week during Jeb Haskell’s funeral.”

“Criminy! Another Haskell died?” That was the fourth Haskell to die since I’d moved to Deadwood this spring. “How many more are left?”

“Enough to fill the Mudder Brothers parlor, lobby, and porch.”

When I just gaped at him, he added, “Those Haskell boys had a hankerin’ for wide-hipped women who didn’t believe in birth control.”

“This world needs more men who hanker for wide-hipped women,” I said, considering the girth of my own hips since having twins.

His blue eyes sparkled. “This world needs more wide-hipped women who like to ride—”

“That’s enough!” I hopped out the door before he could finish that sentence.

Hoofing it across the yard in front of the house, I wrapped my fingers around the wires of the eight-foot high chain-link fence that edged the property, staring through the wire diamonds. On the other side, past a narrow strip of land covered in knee-high dry grass, the earth fell away, forming the uppermost dirt ring around Homestake’s non-operational Open Cut mine.

Harvey joined me, linking his fingers in the fence, too.

“You have to wonder how her body got down there,” I said, peering across the half-mile width of the pit to the different colored bands of earth lining the other side.

“Word at the bar is that there were no tire tracks on the mine floor before Johnny Law arrived. No footprints around the body, either.”

“How can that be?” I stood on my tiptoes to see as far down as I could, unable to see the bottom at its twelve-hundred foot depth. “Short of her being dropped from a helicopter, which somebody around here would have heard.”

“That’s the stumper.”

“No prints,” I whispered. I thought of the bloody hook on Cooper’s board. Did anyone other than Cooper know about that? Well, Cooper, me, Doc, and whoever analyzed and shelved the evidence. “Any mention of a murder weapon?”

“Nope. Plenty of jaw flappin’ about it, though.”

I opened my mouth, wanting to tell Harvey about the hook, but hesitated. On one hand, he was a good friend who helped me whenever I needed it and supported me when I was up against his very angry nephew. On the other, if word got out about that hook, Cooper would know it was me who ran my mouth.