Dead Case in Deadwood (36 page)

She lowered her empty glass to the table. "What’s going
on?"

"Nothing."

"Violet Lynn, cough it up."

I sighed and rested my forehead on the table. "I found
out that Doc isn’t into marriage."

"Who told you that?"

"He did."

"What? What preceded him saying that?"

I sat upright. "Well, he didn’t actually come right out
and say he’d never marry, but it was inferred."

Her gaze narrowed. "Why don’t you just tell me what
happened and let me determine what may have been inferred."

Fine. "I asked him why he broke up with his
ex-girlfriend, and he told me it was because she wanted to get married."

I skipped the part about Tiffany and her competitive sex
streak. I wished I could go back in time and skip it myself. The sooner I could
purge that notion from any association with Doc, the better.

"That doesn’t mean Doc won’t want to marry you someday."

"Aunt Zoe, if he didn’t want to marry a gorgeous
redhead with a killer rack, no stretch marks, a successful career, and no kids
hanging off her skirt, why would he ever want me?"

"Because you’re you."

Right. That explained everything so clearly. Of course he would
be head-over-heels for me because I was me—the one and only Violet Parker,
bumbling clown extraordinaire.

I patted Aunt Zoe’s hand. "You’re biased, dear. Not everyone
finds me as charming and loveable as you do."

"And you’re blind to your own beauty, but that’s a good
thing. It’s probably one of the main things that makes you irresistible to men."

"Irresistible, sure." If I were irresistible, I
wouldn’t get Doc’s voicemail all of the damned time. "You should sell
snake oil for a living."

She waved me off. "Violet, how much do you like this
guy?"

That was a question I asked myself hourly some days.

"I don’t know." I drew invisible hearts on the
table. "Sometimes he’s all I can think about. Other times, I feel like
moving forward with a relationship with him is only going to hurt everyone
around me. And if he leaves town someday …" I didn’t want to finish that thought,
so I stopped.

"He just bought a house, remember? That’s not a sign of
a wandering man."

"A house is not a ball and chain." Like my kids
and I would be. "I’m so confused when it comes to him."

She watched my finger trace the hearts. "Do
you
want to marry him?"

I sputtered for a moment before saying, "No, of course
not." Then I added, "Not right now, I mean."

Aunt Zoe watched me with raised brows.

"Well, probably not, anyway."

Her lips twitched.

"Maybe someday, though," I admitted to myself as
well as her. "Or not. But I’d like to know that the option might be there
in the future."

Aunt Zoe grabbed my hand, stopping me at half a heart. "Besides
the fear of hurting Natalie’s feelings and Doc someday leaving you, what’s
holding you back?"

I looked at the back door. "I have two kids out there
who each could really use a father figure in their lives."

Rex Conner.

Absolutely not!

"If I start bringing a man around, I’m basically telling
them that he is potential father material. If there’s no future with Doc, my
heart isn’t the only one at risk here."

"True," Aunt Zoe said, "but I don’t know that
you’re correct in assuming Doc isn’t willing to put a ring on your finger
someday just because he wouldn’t put one on his ex’s finger. You’re comparing
apples to oranges here."

I hoped she was right. I really, really did. But until I had
something more concrete than wishes and daydreams, I wasn’t going to admit to
my kids that Doc and I were anything other than just friends.

And the same went for admitting anything to Natalie. I knew
she was in my life for the long haul, she’d proven that to me time and again.

Was Doc?

Rather than spend the rest of the afternoon mutilating
daisies while asking the universe if Doc would ever love me or love me not, I
decided to take a bath. A tub full of bubbles would help me escape from my
troubles. At least that’s what it said on the bottle.

I grabbed the dog-eared book Natalie had left sitting on her
side of the bed along with my cell phone, just in case Cornelius changed his
mind and called to free me from my channeling duties.

The book turned out to be a quirky romance narrated by the
hero’s mule. While the coconut-scented bubbles tickled my nose, I tried to sink
into the story and not think about ghosts and demons, or a certain dark-eyed
tormentor, or any Abe Lincoln look-a-likes. But the narrating mule reminded me
of the stuffed, bald-nosed beast of burden down at the Old Prospector Hotel.

By the time I’d gotten my skin good and wrinkly, I was plenty
wound up about all of the things that could go wrong at the séance, including
the possible appearance of Fire Captain Reid and Detective Cooper. Another
creepy demon paled in comparison to the two of them.

I trailed drops of water into my bedroom. From the window, I
watched Layne digging in the yard near the back fence. A shovel and hard soil
would make for a wonderful physical release where the bubbles failed, even if I
had to shower afterward. I pulled on an old pair of jeans and a T-shirt and headed
outside to join him.

Two hours later, my arms and back ached. I leaned on my
shovel. In my digging frenzy, I’d unearthed a football-sized rock mixed with
rose-quartz, an old tin can and spoon, two rusted railroad spikes, and the jaw bone
of some small animal. Aunt Zoe’s house must have been built on top of an old
trash dump.

Addy joined us, admiring our dig findings. She disappeared
into the house, intent on locating Layne’s book on animal bones so we could try
to decipher the owner of the jaw bone.

At the sound of the back door banging shut, I looked up
expecting to see Addy lugging the book. Instead, Aunt Zoe waltzed our way,
carrying a tray loaded with three glasses of lemonade and my cell phone.

"You have a phone call," she said. When I took the
phone, she mouthed Harvey’s name.

"Hey, Harvey."

"We have a slight problem," he said, his voice
hesitant.

"What’s up?" I took a drink of lemonade, the tart sweetness
making me pucker after an afternoon diet of Black Hills dust and dirt.

"We may know who the corpse is."

We?
Had Harvey cloned himself? "Who is it?"

"Well, I’m not sure, but it looks a little like one of
the local yokels from Slagton who takes care of the cemetery back there—well,
he used to."

I walked a few steps away from Layne. "How did you
figure that out? Was it the single testicle?" Just thinking about my close
encounter of the testicular kind made me cringe all over again.

"Nope," he said.

Through the phone, I heard another voice in the background
say my name.

My heart picked up speed. "Harvey, where are you?"

"At home."

"Is someone there with you?"

"Yep, Coop’s here. And some of his boys."

Cooper? I realized then that when Harvey used the word "we"
earlier, he’d been referring to "we," as in Cooper and his merry men
in blue.

If the cops were milling about, the
slight
problem Harvey
had mentioned must be a little more significant. My gut tightened. "Are
they there to take you to jail?"

He snorted. "Of course not. Why would they?"

"Because of the corpse. Because it was found on your
land. Because you know who it is and you didn’t tell Cooper the first three
times he asked."

"Whoa, girlie-girl. You’ll break your neck if you keep gallopin’
at that speed. I didn’t tell Coop at first because I didn’t have a clue who it
was before."

"What’s changed?" I asked, sipping more lemonade.

"Old Red found the head."

What?!
"Was it in your cemetery?"

"Nah, that’s the funny thing. He found it in the old
shitter."

"You mean your bathroom?"

"No, I mean in the old outhouse behind the barn."

"What was it doing there?"

"Bein’ eaten on by the pack rats—well, the soft parts,
anyway."

"Oh, errggg." I gagged a little in the back of my
throat. "That’s just nasty. How did it get—"

"Coop says I gotta go now."

Of course, Detective Cooper would interrupt during the
exciting, need-to-know part. "Give him my love."

I heard Harvey say, "Coop, Violet sends her love."

"I was kidding." My cheeks warmed.

Cooper mumbled something in the background that made Harvey chuckle.
"He gave you some love back."

I bet he did.

"I’ll fill you in later," Harvey told me.

"No, you won’t," I heard Cooper say clear as a
bell this time. "This is police business, not Realtor gossip."

The phone went dead.

I glared at the screen, wishing I had a doll that looked
like Cooper and a cushion full of pins.

"What’s going on?" Aunt Zoe joined me, her voice
quiet so the kids couldn’t hear.

I filled her in on what little I’d just learned about Harvey
and the head. When I finished, her lips were pinched tight.

"Well, I’m glad Detective Cooper is out there with
Willis. He’ll get to the bottom of this mess."

"Right." No offense to Cooper, but I wasn’t so
confident in his or the Deadwood Police Department’s ability to save the day.

It was nothing personal, in spite of Cooper’s talent for
being the world’s biggest butthead. It was just that after facing off with
Wolfgang and then Lila, I’d come to realize that the cops weren’t superheroes.
They simply were men and women with more training than the average Joe, who had
sworn to try to keep the public safe. Most of the time, they were able to react
to situations only in which shit had already hit the fan, like at the Carhart
house, where I’d been present to witness the actual shit flying.

The screen door slammed shut, jarring me back to the sunny
present day. Well, not so sunny, anymore. With dusk just a little over an hour
away, shadows were growing. So was my apprehension. In spite of Doc’s
assurances earlier, my gut was of the opinion that tonight’s ending wasn’t
going to include "they lived happily ever after."

"I found it, Layne," Addy said, lugging a thick
book over to where Layne kneeled over the hole I’d dug.

"Are you going to head out to Willis’s place?"
Aunt Zoe asked.

"I can’t. I need to sing and dance for my client until
he’s convinced that the Old Prospector Hotel is worth another twenty grand."
I debated on telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth to Aunt Zoe, but
I bit my tongue. Her tolerance for my crazy antics had limits, which I didn’t
feel like overstepping today.

"If you need to go into the gallery tonight, Miss Geary
said she’d let the kids hang out at her place. They worship her tarts."

"So does Willis," Aunt Zoe said with a smirk. "Oh,
wait, you said, ‘tarts.’ My mistake."

"Aunt Zoe!" I slapped her arm in fun, chuckling.

"Actually," she said, "The kids and I have
plans to veg in front of the National Geographic channel tonight. There’s a
special about sharks on later. You know how much I love all of those teeth."

Her mention of teeth sobered me right up. What in the hell
was the deal with taking people’s teeth? To what end? One of these days I was
going to brave asking Cooper what he did with that box of teeth. Was he having
each tooth analyzed, or did he just tag the box and shove it onto a dusty shelf
in the police property room?

"Thank you for being such a wonderful aunt." I
gave her a quick squeeze.

I needed to go get ready for tonight’s big show. What did
one wear to a séance? The last one had been a surprise, so that didn’t count. With
Doc joining the party, I sort of wanted to wear something that would make him
want to touch me.

But logic reminded me that we weren’t there to flirt and
fondle. This was about money, lies, and a dead prostitute. And to think I once
worried that the real estate business might be too boring for my taste.

After I kissed the kids on their sun-warmed heads, I headed
for the shower. Forty-five minutes later, I rolled into the parking lot behind
Calamity Jane Realty. Jane’s shiny black Mercedes was parked askew, taking up a
spot and a half. Doc’s Camaro was nowhere to be seen.

I pulled into a spot three down from Jane. Doc stepped out
the back door of his office before I could kill the Picklemobile’s engine—or at
least maim it, since I doubted the green machine could be murdered with bare
hands.

Whistling under my breath, I watched him cross the parking
lot. His faded blue jeans crinkled and clung in all of the right places, his
dark gray shirt boxed his shoulders, making them look even broader, sexier.

My pulse quickened—for real, just like some infatuated
heroine in a romance novel. I touched my neck, feeling it flutter there like a
moth caught in my palms. Holy cupid’s balls, I was so in over my head with this
man.

Doc opened the door and climbed inside, his eyes widening
when he caught sight of my ensemble. His grin followed suit.

I slid down in the seat, feeling overly gothic in my black
tunic, leggings, eyeliner, and platform boots. The only things missing were the
black lipstick and nail polish. I’d settled for red instead on both counts.

"Morticia Addams,
cara mia
," he said,
lifting my hand to his lips. "How are Wednesday and Pugsley this evening?"

There was nothing like some Addams family humor to put me in
the mood for a séance. "I can’t be Morticia. My hair isn’t black and I only
speak English. Well, except for
Oui
and
Mon cher
," and other
phrases I’d learned from Pepé le Pew.

"Oh, Tish, that’s French," he replied in a
Gomez-like Spanish accent and kissed his way up to the soft skin on the inside
of my elbow.