Meanwhile, Back in Deadwood (Deadwood Humorous Mystery Book 6) (15 page)

Natalie implored me with raised brows. “It’s okay, he gave us his oath.”

I resisted the urge to flick her nose. She was supposed to help me on this.

All right, what was something totally wacky that Hawke might believe with enough decent acting on my part? Something that even I might believe if it were acted out in front of me?

Then it hit me.

Prudence.

Lord only knew I’d had my fair share of witnessing her peculiarities up close and personal.

I crooked my finger at Hawke. He and Natalie leaned in close, their heads almost touching.

“I can talk to ghosts,” I deadpanned.

Natalie curled her lips in tight. I suspected they were damming a flood of laughter, judging from the sparkle in her eyes.

“You’re pulling my leg, Ms. Parker.” He tucked his notepad and pen back into his pocket.

“I wish I was, Detective. Trust me, this ability is no gift.” I channeled Doc from months ago when he fessed up about his sixth sense. “I’ve tried everything, from large quantities of hard liquor to a handful of recreational drugs, but I can’t stop the voices.”

Hawke wore his skepticism like a mask. He wouldn’t be an easy sell on this, I could tell. It was going to take some time and finesse, both of which I lacked most days.

“So,” he pushed out his chest, impersonating a wall of disbelief, “am I to believe that the reason you have been involved one way or another in all of these murder cases around here is because you talk to the dead?”

“Exactly,” Natalie jumped in. “You can’t imagine how hard it has been for Vi—for both of us—to keep this hidden from everyone.”

“Come on.” Hawke smirked at us in turn. “You really think I’m that big of an idiot? That I would buy this load of phony baloney?”

“I told you this was a mistake,” I said to Natalie.

“There are no such things as ghosts,” Hawke added.

Yeah, I used to drink that flavor of Kool-Aid, too, but then I met Doc … and Prudence.

Natalie gave me a sideways hug. “It’s okay, sweetie. You were honest. We both know in our hearts that someday the truth will set you free.”

I thought about dredging up some tears, but I didn’t have it in me at the moment to crank on the waterworks.

“If you are truly hearing voices, Ms. Parker, it’s probably because you are either delusional or borderline schizophrenic. As I was just telling Detective Cooper last week, both mental conditions should be noted in your file as a possibility.”

His snide tone made me want to flip a personality switch and go Lizzie Borden on him. Delusional or schizophrenic? Name calling was the game he wanted to play, huh? And here I was just going to have a little fun with this ghost talking act, but after facing off for a few huffs with his condescending gaze, I had a change of heart.

I stepped closer to Hawke, invading his space as he so often did mine. Lowering my chin, I stared up at him through my eyebrows like I’d seen done in many creepy films over the years. “Tell me, Detective, have you ever looked in a mirror and chanted, ‘Bloody Mary’ three times?”

He smirked. “Why would I do that?”

Natalie knew the answer from one of our favorite Halloween childhood tricks. “It’s a well-known fact,” she told him in a spooky voice, “that if you chant ‘Bloody Mary’ in a mirror three times in a candlelit room, her bloody corpse will appear behind you.”

“Depending on her mood,” I continued, faking a shoulder twitch, “she’ll either try to scratch your eyes out, strangle you, or steal your soul.”

“That sounds like an old wives’ tale,” he said, but his smirk was gone.

I reached out and scraped my fingernails down his blazer. The corduroy made for a nice sound effect. “Are you sure, Detective?” I twitched again, throwing in a little hitching laugh. “How about you join me some moonless night in a haunted house and we test it out?”

“There is no such thing as a … haunted house.” His mouth said one thing, but he hesitated.

He should pay a visit to Prudence up in Lead. “If you say so, Detective.” I grabbed one of the big brown buttons on his blazer and yanked on it, tearing it off.

He jerked away in surprise. “Hey!”

I held the button in front of my eyes, peering at him through the tiny thread holes. “I like to keep souvenirs,” I said in a creepy little girl voice and followed it with a squeaky, high-pitched giggle.

“Parker!” Cooper hollered, rounding the front of the barn, interrupting my ghost story. He strode our way, his eyes narrowing as he took in our trio huddled together. “What’s going on here?”

I looked at Hawke. “Shhhh. He doesn’t know.”

“What don’t I know?” Cooper stopped next to his partner. He must have his bat-hearing cranked up today.

“About Violet’s fear of the dark,” Natalie said.

“She has nyctophobia,” Hawke went along with us, staring down at my fist that still clasped his button.

Cooper glared at his partner’s profile. “Parker is not afraid of the dark.”

“I am, too.” At least I was now that there were things in it that I couldn’t rationally explain away.

“What in the hell are you playing at?” Cooper asked me.

Uh oh. I didn’t think I had the acting skills to pull this off in front of Cooper, too.

I turned to Natalie. “Would you be so kind as to allow me a moment with Cooper?”

Natalie wrapped her hand around Hawke’s bicep, patting it like he was straight from Muscle Beach. “Detective, didn’t you have some questions you wanted to ask me?” She tugged him away from Cooper and me, leading him toward the house. “How about we take a walk around the ranch while we talk in private?”

She led him off as easy as the Pied Piper. Cooper and I watched them go, me with a sigh of relief, him with a growl in his throat.

“What in the hell is that about?”

I shrugged. “He called her last night and arranged a meeting here today, wanted to ask her a few questions about Sunday.”

Cooper growled again.

“You seem to be stuck on repeater mode today. Where’s your uncle?”

“Going through the tool shed, looking for more bottles. We found four stashed in those hen boxes after you left.”

“I didn’t leave, Detective. You sacrificed me for your own gain.”

“If you’re gonna play with the big boys, you need to get thicker skin.”

“Well, if you’re gonna play with the big girls, you need to grow a set of …”
darn, he already had balls
, “claws.”

The lines on his face softened. “Can we not talk about your sex life anymore, Parker? I don’t want to spoil my lunch.”

I started to hit him back with something about at least having a sex life, but I wasn’t feeling that rabid at the moment, especially while Cooper was watching Natalie fawn over Hawke as they disappeared behind the house. Although, from the sound of the woman’s voice coming through my phone last night, he might have one, too. Just not with Natalie.

“When you’re done sputtering over there,” he continued, “care to explain to me off the record how you knew there was mead in those bottles at Mudder Brothers?”

Instead of answering, I lobbed a question back at him. “Why did you hide the bottle Harvey found in the hen box from your partner?”

“That’s not your concern.”

“You tell me your secret, I’ll tell you mine.”

“Hey,” Harvey called from the front corner of the barn. He waved us over. “You two are gonna wanna come see what I just found.”

Cooper took off toward his uncle at full stride. I hustled after him, my stomach fluttery at the pinched look on Harvey’s face.

“Did you find more bottles?” I asked as I fell in step next to Harvey, who led us toward the one building I hadn’t been in before.

“Nope. I found somethin’ a bit hairier.”

“Like what?”

He held the door for us and then walked over to a section of the wooden floor that was missing some boards. A crowbar and several planks had been tossed next to the gaping hole.

I let Cooper go first, happy to play second fiddle.

“Is it a body?” I asked, wincing my way closer.

There was something furry at the bottom of a pit.

Several things furry, actually.

Cooper pulled his pen from his pocket. “I don’t think so.” He leaned partway into the hole and poked one of the hairy tufts.

It didn’t roll over and bite him, thank the heavens.

Harvey held out a hay-baling hook. “This here’d make a good fishin’ hook.”

Cooper took it.

What he pulled up made me recoil. “What in the hell is that thing?”

“I’m not one hundred percent sure,” Cooper spun the hook this way and that, “but it looks like a mask.”

It was the kind of mask worn completely over the head with a neck attached to it and all.

“That reminds me of something Lon Chaney Jr. would have worn during the filming of
The Wolf Man
,” I whispered, stepping closer, trying to make sense of it along with Cooper. “Do either of you two remember any reports of Sasquatch sightings in the Black Hills?”

“No.” Cooper sat back on his heels, holding the mask out toward his uncle. “Well, what do you think?”

“That’s not mine.” Harvey leaned over the hole, pointing into it. “Neither are all t’others down there.”

Chapter Eight

Thursday, October 25th

Meanwhile, back in Deadwood …

I spent the night running from the wolf man. Only it was Detective Hawke instead of Lon Chaney Jr. chasing me, and the mask looked more like what Cooper had pulled up from the floor cache in Harvey’s shed than the furry faced old movie version. The sideburns were Hawke’s, though, along with the unibrow and the obnoxious personality.

After dragging my tired ass to the shower, I scrubbed off my nightmare sweat. If only I could wash away the qualms I had about all of those masks as easily.

Cooper had found eight in all, each a little too realistic for my comfort. Harvey had sniffed and inspected each mask, much to my gasps and screeches of disgust, declaring one after the other had real human hair. After the third mask and my third mention of lice and fleas and Lord knew what else might be living on those masks, Cooper demoted me to watchdog and made me go stand in the doorway.

We’d managed to hide the masks back in the cache and return to the front of the barn before Hawke and Natalie returned from their walkabout. I sneaked a thumbs up at Natalie when Hawke wasn’t looking. She returned a thumbs down and then pointed at me and mocked strangling me to death.

If that was how she felt after a half hour in Hawke’s company, she was going to love going out on a date with him and prying his lips open with alcohol and whatever else it took (otherwise known as Plan B).

That had been the end of our adventures at the ranch for one day. Compared to all of that heart palpitating fun, sitting at my desk back at the office had been a real sleep inducer. With Doc down in Spearfish all day and then having the guys over for poker that night, I was reduced to texting a few words about the masks and the bottles of mead, telling him to call when the poker game ended and I’d fill him in with the details.

By the next morning, he still hadn’t called. I’d decided not to read anything into his silence other than the guys had been there late, and he was being considerate of my ongoing need for beauty sleep.

The quiet lasted through breakfast, what with the kids still not speaking to me. After my night of full moon hunts and terrorizing howls, I was happy to let my eyes glaze over while I looked out the kitchen window at Aunt Zoe’s glass workshop.

Ah, sweet, soothing silence. No fighting, no yelling, no guilt trips for ruining anyone’s life by letting a kind, helpful, handsome man come into our world. I could get used to living in this foreign land brimming with peace and tranquility.

After I dropped off my muted kids, I made a detour on the way to work and stopped at the Tin Cup Café. I needed an excuse to call Doc and find out how poker went with Cooper and his hundreds of questions—a way to butt into Doc’s evening’s events so I didn’t sound like the nosy girlfriend that I was. I paused outside the coffee joint’s front door, soaking up a ray of warm sunshine on this chilly morning, and pulled up Doc’s number.

Three rings in, he answered. “Morning, Violet.” Doc used my name instead of one of my nicknames. How odd.

I double checked that I’d called the right guy, and then stayed my original course “I’m grabbing some coffee, you want one?”

“Definitely. The game ran late last night. Make it a double, please.”

That confirmed my suspicions regarding the lack of a phone call. I heard a male voice say something inaudible in the background, and then the sound of a door closing. “You still at the gym?”

“I skipped it this morning.”

If he wasn’t at the gym, what was with that voice and the door? Maybe I self-prophesized my future and really could hear ghosts now.

“Are you at home still?”

“Yep.”

“Is somebody there with you?”

“Cooper just left.”

“You mean Detective Cooper?”

“That’s the one.”

“Did you win a breakfast from him in last night’s game?”

“Hey, there’s an idea for a wager.” I heard some shuffling sounds through the line. “He spent the night.”

“So, are you two romantically involved now or was it a slumber poker party?” Both ideas made me giggle.