Dead Case in Deadwood (6 page)

Genetically advanced, huh? Did he have wings under that
black coat? "What are you talking about, Cornelius?"

"I have this extra ability."

Great. Here we go again. It all made sense now, the
references to the haunted places, his quirks.

"Let me guess," I said. "You can see ghosts."
Him and everyone else but me in this town.

"No, I can’t see them."

Oh. Okay. "So, what’s the problem then? Is it about the
money? Do we need to look into financing?"

I’d help him fill out the paperwork if I had to in order to
sell him the damned place. Another vehicle to replace my dead Bronco wasn’t
going to be cheap, neither were Addy’s new glasses, the two pairs of shoes I
had to buy for Layne, plus school supplies—ugh! The commission I made off of
Doc’s house would only stretch so far.

"No," he waved me off. "I have plenty of cash
to pay for this place."

Thank God. "What then?"

"I’m a ghost whisperer."

I stared at him for a couple of blinks. "Come again?"

"I can summon and talk to ghosts."

Cornelius and I struck the mother lode in the Old Prospector
Hotel.

Gold-colored carpet softened our footfalls, gold faux-silk
wallpaper coated the walls, gold-painted tiles shimmered on the ceiling. If
Deadwood had a hidden rainbow, we’d found the leprechaun’s stash.

With a fake smile etched on my face, I led Cornelius through
several banks of jangling slot machines. Heads turned as we walked through the
casino’s cooled air, mumbles and sniggers following in our wake. All of the
attention made me miss the smoke that used to fill the air before Deadwood
enacted the no smoking in casinos law. We could use a cloud of exhaled nicotine
to hide behind.

A full-sized stuffed mule weighed down with prospecting gear
stood next to the front desk. A plaque at its hooves claimed "Socrates"
had belonged to the hotel’s original owner. Decades of petting had rubbed bare
the top of poor Socrates’ nose.

I’d have to bring Addy and Layne here someday to see the old
mule. Then again, Addy might get the idea in her head of rescuing Socrates. Thank
God he was too big to fit in her bicycle basket and too dead to be a pet.
Although, Layne might be interested in Socrates’ skeleton.

Cornelius pocketed his glasses and pointed at the mule. "Is
that for real?"

I could ask good old Honest Abe the same question, but since
he was a client and the sale of this hotel would ensure I kept my job, I just
pinched my lips together and nodded.

We sidled up to the front desk where a young receptionist stood,
her gaze glued to her computer screen. With her gold lamé shirt and sun-kissed long
blonde locks, she reminded me of Addy’s Safari Skipper Barbie.

"Welcome to the Old Prosp—" Her jaw gaped at the
sight of Cornelius, who tipped his top hat at her.

I waited a few seconds to see if she’d snap back to life on
her own. When she didn’t, I waved my hand in front of her face. "Hi. I’m
Violet Parker from Calamity Jane Realty. We’re here to see the manager."

"The manager?" she repeated and dragged her focus
back to me, frowning as if I’d spoken Portuguese.

"Yes. The manager." I spoke with a dose of
enunciation. "I’m with Calamity Jane Realty. We have an appointment."

"Uhhh, okay. Hold on." She stole one last peek at
Cornelius, and then scurried through a door behind her marked
Office
.

"That went well," I said under my breath.

Cornelius stroked his goatee, a smug look on his face. "I
tend to have that effect on people."

I wished he’d save his special effects for some other time,
preferably without me in the same town. I’d been building enough of a tarnished
reputation in Deadwood without his help.

"There are definitely ghosts in this place,"
Cornelius said loudly enough for any passersby to hear. "I sensed at least
one over near that group of Triple-Seven slot machines. Maybe three."

Before I had a chance to recover from my flush of
mortification and shush him, the office door opened and Tiffany walked out.

Tiffany.

As in Doc’s gorgeous ex-girlfriend.

The Jessica Rabbit look-alike.

My flame-haired rival.

It was my turn to gape.
What in the hell was she doing
here?

Tiffany’s eyes moved from me to Cornelius and back, her
smile smooth and wide, as if she was selling tooth whitener on a pop-up
Internet ad.

Jeez, she was good. Not even an extra blink at the sight of Cornelius
leaning on the counter beside me.

Her white knit shirt and matching skirt hugged her in all
the curvy places. I sucked in my baby-stretched stomach. With that perky
figure, there was no way she’d ever pushed out a kid—let alone two within
minutes of each other.

"Hello." She held her hand out to Cornelius, who
had removed his top hat at the sight of her. "I’m Tiffany Sugarbell from Canyon
Realty."

Sugarbell.
I grinned, remembering Harvey’s crack
about Tiffany being Tinker Bell’s porn-star cousin.

"Ms. Sugarbell." Cornelius took her hand, bowing
his head a bit. "What a pleasure to meet you."

Her Stepford wife smile landed on me.

I tried to mimic her expression, stretching my cheeks toward
my ears, and held out my hand. "Violet Parker from Calamity Jane Realty."

"Yes," she said, her eyelids narrowing a fraction
as she took my hand. "We’ve met before."

We had. Twice. First with Harvey, then with Doc. Only the
last time, her hand had been slapping Doc’s face instead of squeezing my hand
in a silent challenge. Dang, the wench was strong. I pulled free, my knuckles
throbbing from being crushed in her Kung-Fu grip.

Cornelius’ cell phone rang from somewhere within his black suit
coat. He dug it out. "Excuse me a moment, ladies." He walked away
from us. "I told you not to call me until tonight," he said as he walked
away.

I turned to Tiffany, who was staring at me point blank, her
smile now set on dim. I decided not to waste time with talk about the clouds or
lack of them.

"I’m surprised to see you here, Tiffany. I thought you
were with Roughlock Realty."

She snorted. "Not anymore. They were too mom-and-pop
for my taste, dealing mainly with locals." She eyed Cornelius as if he was
marbled with fat and delivered fresh from the butcher. "I prefer to play ball
with the big boys, especially if they’re from out of town. That’s where the
money is."

Ah, realty as a sport. She would enjoy sparring with Ray,
then.

"Where is Leroy?" I asked. Leroy was the guy I’d
talked to when I’d called Canyon Realty this morning to set up the walk-through.

"He ate his last greasy hamburger at lunch and keeled
over."

Holy crap!
"He’s dead?" I could still hear
his wheezy voice in my head.

"Nah, it was just a little heart attack."

"Just a little one?" A heart stopped for any
length of time seemed like a
big
problem to me.

She waved off my concern. "It’s his third. The doctor
told Leroy’s wife that if the greasy food didn’t stop, Leroy’s heart would, and
the next time it would be for good."

That meant I’d be trying to help my ghost-whispering client
buy a haunted hotel from a guy who had a ticking time bomb in his chest. Just
my luck.

"Should I contact Leroy then, if Mr. Curion decides to
put an offer on the property? Or you?" Or could I hear what was behind
Door Number Three, please?

"I’m taking it over. Leroy and I will split the
commission."

Splendid. I couldn’t wait to be reminded on a regular basis that
Doc had had sex with Tiffany. Maybe I should find out what her favorite
positions were so that the images in my head were accurate during my spasms of jealousy.

She pursed her lips. "How long have you been with
Calamity Jane’s? I don’t remember seeing you around before that open house I
had up on Terry Peak last month."

"I started working for Jane this spring."

"Doc Nyce is a client of yours."

It wasn’t a question, but I nodded, anyway.

"He says you’re good."

At what? The realty business? Keeping secrets? Knocking
boots?

Why was he talking about me to Tiffany? More importantly,
when
was he talking about me to her?

"Oh, yeah?" I tried my damnedest to feign
indifference.

"He said you got him a nice deal on his new place."

Had she been in there? How many times? Naked?

Criminy!
This insanity had to stop. What was it about
Doc that turned me into such a green-eyed, untrusting, paranoid nutcase?

"We were in the right place at the right time," I
said, and changed the subject before we started comparing notes on Doc’s kisses.
"Have there been any previous offers on this hotel?"

"Just one, but the buyer backed out early after
learning it had a reputation." She looked at Cornelius. "How’d you
find this guy?"

"He just walked in the front door and I was available."
She didn’t need to know he’d come looking for me in particular. That would open
a nest of questions I’d rather avoid.

"Like he fell out of the sky, isn’t that crazy? How’d
he hear about the hotel?’

"The Internet."

She checked her cell phone, and then asked, "How do you
like working with Ray Underhill?"

I’d rather eat a bowlful of hissing cockroaches soaked in
rat piss. "It has its ups and downs."

She leaned in close. "Has he tried to get you into the
sack yet?"

Her bluntness caught me off guard. As much as I wanted to
confide to a peer about the crap I’d dealt with from Ray, I thought of Jane’s
policy about badmouthing coworkers. For all I knew, Ray could be using Tiffany
to set me up for a fall.

"Ray’s been a perfect gentleman for the most part."
That lie even tasted bad.

Tiffany’s sculpted eyebrows raised. "We are talking
about the same Ray Underhill, right? Fake tan, fake smile, fake charm, fast
hands?"

Yep, that was the same dickhead. Although, I’d only
witnessed Ray’s charm when he’d used it on his clients. "I think so."

"Hmmm. Maybe I have him pegged wrong." She frowned
at my hair. "Or he’s not into blondes."

"That’s probably it."

He would never be into me, mind or body, not as long as I continued
to stand upright and breathe oxygen.

Wait! Maybe that’s what Ray was doing with the Mudder
Brothers crates—necrophilia. I cringed at the morbid nosedive I’d taken and
tried to pull out of it.

"I think he prefers redheads." Like Mona. And
Tiffany.

"They all do," she said with a smirk, "at
first."

And we were back to the "Tiffany Does Doc" show in
my head, damn it. How much did lobotomies cost these days? Maybe I could sign
up for a payment plan.

I tried to steer my head away from the images of tangled
legs and focus on learning more about Ray, the lesser of two evils. "Have
you worked with Ray a lot?"

"A little bit here and there over the years."

"He’s a good salesman," I baited.

She shrugged. "He knows a lot of people with money to
burn."

"I wish I knew what tree he was finding them in,"
I muttered. "I could use a few more hanging around my desk at work."

Tiffany looked me up and down, her alabaster forehead wrinkling.
"Violet, can I be honest with you?"

Oh, crudmeister. This couldn’t be good. Where’d I leave my
Kevlar vest? "Sure."

"I don’t understand your hair."

My hair? I hadn’t seen that coming. I tucked some loose
curls behind my ear. "What’s to understand?"

"You’re not using it to its potential."

My hair had potential? For what besides ensnaring small
flying animals?

"You should put some volumizer in it, fluff it up a bit
more, work the Dolly Parton angle."

Make it bigger? Was she serious? I wouldn’t be able to fit
through doorways.

Tiffany looked down over my hips. "You definitely have
the curves for it."

I looked down over my so-called curves, trying to suck in
the extra speed bumps. "I don’t know. I’m a little light up top to pull
off Dolly." Make that a lot light.

"Nah. You just need a push-up bra."

In addition to the one I already had on? My chin would be
resting on my boobs. A blush raced down my neck, bee-lining toward my substandard
cleavage.

"Or you need a better one." Tiffany added. She
must have smelled the embarrassment smoking out of my pores. "In the
meantime, try this."

She adjusted the knot of fabric at my sternum, tugging it and
refitting, and then pulling on some of the fabric near my armpits, exposing
cleavage I didn’t realize I had. She stepped back and eyed me again. "That’s
better."

I frowned down at the tops of my boobs puffing out of the
dress, looking a cup size bigger. How’d she do that? I had a hell of a time
just making them point in the same direction most days.

"Now shake your hair out, like this." She did a
shake and fluff with her red locks and motioned for me to try it.

Glancing around to make sure nobody was watching, I took out
my hairclip and followed her directions, curls flying everywhere.

"That’s it." She scrutinized me like a sculptor
eyeing a big pile of clay. "Now you look like a woman who knows how to get
what she wants."

Right. I shoved some curls out of my face. Just like that,
buyers would start lapping at my feet. I wished.

"Trust me," she said. "I know what I’m talking
about. I haven’t won all of my awards for my brains alone. I know how to flip a
property—any property. And dressing the part is half of the secret."

"Thanks."
I think.

I felt like I’d just gone through a makeover to increase my
curb appeal, and I couldn’t quite figure out why she’d offered her services.
Would she be so willing to give advice if she knew that I was sleeping with the
guy who got away?