Dead Case in Deadwood (32 page)

"It’s a woman’s prerogative to be slightly tardy,"
I told him.

"Yeah? Well, I took the liberty of ordering for you."

"What? Why?" I wasn’t
that
late.

He shrugged. "It’s a man’s prerogative to be slightly
impatient, especially when a stack of papers is waiting for him back on his
desk."

My neck heated, guilt at making him come to me spurring the
truth from me. "Sorry, but after Cornelius’s antics last night—"

"And this morning."

I sighed. "And this morning, I’m not comfortable with stepping
inside the police station."

"Policemen don’t bite, Ms. Parker." His eyes
crinkled at the corners. Was that his version of a smile? If so, it had skipped
right over his lips. "But I can’t speak for our ghostly pal in Cell B."

The waiter interrupted my glare. I waited for him to set
down the two full coffee cups he’d brought and leave. "Why the sudden
interest in Cornelius? From what Mona told me, the murder in New Orleans was half
a year ago."

"A tip came in."

"What tip? From whom?"
Ray?
No, he wouldn’t
go that far, would he? I remembered his smirk this morning, the smugness plastered
all over his face.

Of course! It all made sense. He knew that if he could waylay
Cornelius by siccing the cops on him, I wouldn’t be able to get a second offer
in before the final deadline.

I white-knuckled my coffee mug, a burning knot tightening
behind my sternum. The asshole was hedging his bet. He must have searched
online, sniffing for Cornelius’s dirty laundry.

Cooper watched me with his steely gray eyes, his rugged face
giving nothing away. "It doesn’t matter who gave us the tip."

Was Cooper protecting Ray? Why?

"How long have you known Mr. Curion?" he asked.

"Interrogation over coffee, how lovely." I grabbed
a creamer and poured it into my cup.

Cooper probably asked blunt, uncomfortable questions during
sex, too. I could hear him now …
How long have your breasts been slightly
lopsided, Ms. Parker? When was the last time you had a thorough pelvic exam?
Did you use one or two prophylactics the last time you had sexual intercourse?

"Just answer the question, Ms. Parker."

I stirred my drink while trying to look innocent of some
crime I hadn’t committed. The way Cooper could make me feel guilty with just
his eyes made me grind my molars. "About a week."

"How did you meet him?’

"He walked into my office, asked for me, and said he
wanted to buy a hotel."

"He actually asked for you in particular?"

"Yes."

"How did he know your name?"

"I don’t know." I dumped some sugar in my coffee
to offset Cooper’s lack of sweetness.

"You didn’t wonder about that?"

Yes, but Cooper’s hint of scorn tickled my ornery bone. "No,
not really."

"Did he have one of your business cards?"

I tried to remember. "I don’t think so."

"Has it never occurred to you to ask why he chose you
to represent him?"

"Nope." Hell, yes, but more in a
dear-Lord-why-me
sort of way, not for the reason the detective was asking.

"You do a background check on your buyers, don’t you?"

"If you’re referring to their credit history, then my
answer is sometimes."

He scoffed. "A complete stranger walks into your office
and asks for you by name. Shouldn’t this have been one of those times,
especially considering your record for attracting the criminally insane?"

He had a point, and I didn’t like him poking me with it. "I
didn’t dig into his background because he showed me the money."

"Is that Realtor jargon for something in particular?"

"Yes. It means he took a wad of cash from his pocket
and showed me that he had money."

"Christ! And you trusted him on that alone?"

I leaned forward. "Not all of us interrogate every
person we meet. Some of us just like to take people at their word."

One of his dark blond eyebrows shot upward. "And how’s
that been working out for you so far?"

"Oh, bite me."

His grin showed all of his white choppers. "Where
should I start?"

"I thought you said policemen don’t bite."

"I lied. I do."

Being that Cooper was made up of sharp angles and stainless
steel, I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a joke, an attempt at flirting,
or a threat. I decided to ignore it and ask for an answer that would play a
role in making or breaking my career. "Are you going to arrest Cornelius
for murder?"

"No. He’s just a person of interest at this time. More so
now that we know what he does for a living."

"Talking to ghosts doesn’t make you a killer."

"It could if you wanted to extricate a spirit from a
young girl who claimed to be possessed and things didn’t quite go as planned."

I sighed and took a sip from my coffee. It tasted old and weak,
mirroring how I felt right then. "Why couldn’t I just have a plain, boring
client who doesn’t believe he sees dead people?"

"You do."

"I guess Jeff Wymonds is pretty vanilla." And he
didn’t believe in Casper and his pals.

"I was talking about me."

Setting down my coffee cup, I chuckled. "You’re not
boring, Detective."

He sat back in his seat. "You don’t think so?"

"No. Your T-shirts come with bullet holes in them."

"That comes with the job."

"Right. In real estate, we just get business cards."

He laughed. I stared at him in shock, wondering if I’d
really heard it come from inside of him or if I’d just imagined the sound.

"That reminds me," he said. "What are you
doing Friday evening?"

I could feel my eyes widen. Was he asking me for a date? No,
surely not. Damned Natalie for even putting these uncertainties in my head.

Cooper didn’t like me. Period. I’d bet my pathetic savings
that if given the green light by his superiors, he’d be happy to shove me in
the back of his sedan, drop me off at the state line, and tell me to keep
heading west until I ran out of land.

I shrugged. "I’m not sure yet, why?"

"I was wondering if you’d be interested in coming over
after I get off of work."

I just looked at him with my tongue imitating a bump on a
log.

"Is that a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ in your world, Violet?"

We were back on a first name basis now that the
interrogation lights had dimmed.

"Why do you need me to come over?"

"I don’t
need
you to come over, but I thought
you’d like to do a final walk-through before you put my place on the market."

Oh, we were back to me being his Realtor. "Of course I
can come by."

"You’re sure you don’t have any funeral viewings to
attend that evening?" His tone held a note of suspicion that made my ears
perk up.

"I’m not going to dignify that with an answer," I
said all cool and collected. The Fonz would have given me two thumbs up.

The waiter stopped by just then to drop off our lunch: chef’s
salads with dressing on the side. This was what Cooper ordered for me?

"I noticed you are watching your weight," he
explained when I sent him a questioning glance.

"You ‘noticed’ it, huh?"

"Paying attention to what people say and do is my job."

I chewed my lip. What else had he noticed about me?

He dug into his salad. "Speaking of Mudder Brothers,"
he started.

We
hadn’t been.
We
were trying to avoid that
subject completely.

"A call came into the station last night about a
possible prowler sighted over by the funeral parlor. The caller said the person
in question had a slight limp and looked a little bowlegged." Cooper
squinted at me. "You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?"

Harvey!
Damn it, he’d been seen. That must have been
why the cruiser came by with that spotlight.

I maintained steady eye contact with Cooper, knowing he was scrutinizing
my every blink. "I didn’t make any phone calls," I said, playing
obtuse.

He took another bite, chewed slowly, and then swallowed, his
gaze unwavering. "Where were you last night around seven thirty, Ms.
Parker?"

"Working late." I popped a cherry tomato in my mouth
and smiled around its sweet burst. "Where were you, Detective Cooper?"

"Playing poker."

"Natalie said she saw you buying beer after the Bingo
hall let out. How long do your poker games usually last?"

"Long enough to run out of beer. Did you happen to see
my uncle at some point after you left work?"

"No. I went home and spent the rest of my evening with
Elvis. Did you need to talk to your uncle about something?"

"Yes, but he was not answering my phone calls. Who’s
Elvis?"

"My daughter’s chicken. Maybe Harvey was a little busy
with one of his old flames and didn’t hear the phone ring. Some people enjoy after-supper
activities other than cleaning guns and getting shot at."

He nodded, stabbing another bite of salad. "Maybe, but
those are two of my uncle’s favorite hobbies, outside of pursuing the opposite
sex. Are you sure he didn’t pay you a visit last night?"

"Positive." In an effort to remove Harvey from our
conversation, I switched subjects. "Have you found out anything more about
that foot and hand left hanging in the trees?"

A month ago, Layne had found a human foot dangling from a
tree limb with a sprig of mistletoe stapled to the big toe. A couple of weeks
later, a hiker up on Mount Roosevelt had found a hand in similar style—hung
from a tree and stapled with mistletoe. Cooper had sent both parts to a
mysterious CSI lab somewhere far, far away where it took weeks to hear results.
Real-life crime scene evidence deciphering didn’t move nearly as fast as it did
on television.

"Nothing yet," he said over the brim of his coffee
cup.

"What about the ear caught in that trap behind Harvey’s
barn? Has anyone missing an ear showed up in your system yet?"

Last month, something started killing the wildlife around
Harvey’s ranch. So, being made up of fifty percent piss and the same amount of vinegar,
Harvey had set an illegal trap instead of calling the Sheriff, whom he liked to
curse about.

Between the ear and the decapitated guy, the possibility of
a sale of Harvey’s place didn’t look promising. Short of selling it as a
haunted house, which Harvey also claimed it to be, I had yet to come up with an
idea on how to spin these events and secure a sale … or even a single
lookie-loo.

"The ear is still at the lab."

Of course it was. I was beginning to think that was police
code for mind-your-own-business.

"But," he paused, "I do want to talk to you
about the corpse."

I lowered my fork. Sharing salad over a decapitation just
seemed crass. "What?"

"We’ve figured out the name of the individual who owns
the phone." When I just looked at him, he added, "The phone the text
came from that named you and your aunt."

Oh, right. The subject of our conversation days ago right
before I’d thrown up on Cooper’s tie. "Who owns it?" My grip on my
fork tightened, the metal pressing into my skin.

He took another drink of coffee before replying. "Rex Conner."

No.

It couldn’t be.

No. No.

My heart jackhammered in my ears muting the outside world. I
could see Cooper’s lips moving, but could only hear two words over and over.

Rex Conner.

Rex Conner.

Rex Conner.

What in the hell did that lousy, good-for-nothing bastard
want?

Cooper’s lips stopped moving. He reached across the table
and pinched my forearm.

"Ouch!" I rubbed my arm and glared at him. "Stop
using Harvey’s tricks on me."

"How do you know that name? And don’t even try to tell
me you don’t know it after what I just saw in your eyes."

I hesitated. If I told Cooper the truth, that would lead to
another truth, and then another. There were things in my life that needed to
remain buried, that’s why I’d dug the holes so deep in the first place.

But if I didn’t fess up and Cooper figured it all out, he
really would bite me. Or shoot me. I wasn’t sure which was worse.

Either way, I was screwed six ways to Sunday. Wait, double
that.

"Okay," I said, clenching my icy hands under the
table.

When I didn’t cough it out immediately, he leaned across the
table. "Tell me, Violet. I need to know for this investigation."

"Rex Conner is the father of my children."

In spite of the rage that kept clawing up my throat and a twitchy
eye, which Cooper so kindly pointed out—three times—I made it through the rest
of lunch without a hitch.

Cooper wrote down the scant bit of information I could give
him on the kids’ father, and then changed the subject back to selling his
house. Smart man.

Rex Conner.
His name alone made me snarl and paw at the
ground like a mother bear.

After I left Cooper and Bighorn Billy’s, I drove up
Strawberry Hill, noticing the storm clouds stacking up to the west. Mother
Nature and I both needed to let off some steam. If only I had lightning bolts
at my disposal.

About a mile up the hill, I turned left onto a dirt road
leading away from humanity. Four bends in from the highway, I hit the brakes, shifted
into park, and shoved open the door. I hefted a thick branch I found in the
ditch; it felt just about right to use as a club. I looked around at the
surrounding trees. Any good-sized pine would do.

A flash of memory from the last time I’d laid eyes on Rex Conner
was all it took to let the fury fly.

"You God damned—"

I whacked a big pine, the branch reverberating in my hands.

"—self-worshiping—"

A piece of the branch splintered off.

"—whore-mongering—"