Meanwhile, Back in Deadwood (Deadwood Humorous Mystery Book 6) (27 page)

I started up the stairs and then remembered Ray’s role in the freaky events that had happened the night George Mudder was killed. Did Ray know something about the albino goon’s twin that could help me keep Layne safe?

I came back down. “Ray? What do you know about George’s killer?”

His cheeks darkened to a deep red, his gaze narrowing. “What the fuck are you digging at, Blondie?” he said under his breath. “You sure you want to dance this dance with me again now that Detective Hawke has you under a microscope?”

Crikey! How many people had Hawke been running his mouth to about me lately? If he kept it up, the detective and I were going to have a fist-to-gut chat about my feelings on police harassment.

I glanced at the top of the stairwell, making sure we didn’t have an audience. “Calm down, Ray. I don’t want to fight about this. I just need to know what you know about that big white-haired goon who threatened to perform surgery on you with a scalpel and then killed George.”

Ray closed the distance between us. “Listen close, Violet, and get this through your pretty little blonde brain. What I was doing with George Mudder prior to you butting in and making a mess of everything is none of your goddamned business.”

I held my finger up under his stupid fake-tanned face. “First of all, I didn’t butt in. You screwed up somehow and tipped the goon off.”

“If you’re as smart as everyone thinks you are,” Ray continued, all menacing with a muscle in his jaw pulsing, “you’ll keep your nose out of it.”

He and Cooper really had a fixation with my nose. I raised another finger under his. “Second, I’m not asking what you were doing with George; I’m asking what you know about the white-haired creep who tried to cut you into pieces of sushi.”

He rested back on his heels. “Why?”

“Curiosity.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute.”

“Okay, let’s just say that ever since that night, I’ve been thinking.”

He snickered. “Blondie, you should skip thinking and stick to doing what you do best.”

“What’s that, Ray? Saving your imbecilic, chauvinistic ass? Because while you keep telling the cops and others your tall tale about how things went down in that autopsy room, you and I both know the truth—had it not been for me, you’d be dead.”

“If it hadn’t been for you, I would have never been found out and George would be alive.”

“How is your screw up my fault, Ray?”

His mouth opened and closed like a dying fish, no words coming out. He looked away, his face scrunching into something even uglier than normal. “Because you put me off my game with your threats.”

I placed my hand over my chest. “Little ol’ blonde-haired me messed with your big smart manly head?”

“Fuck off, bitch.” He glared at me. “We’re done here. Get upstairs and let’s finish this shit for today.”

I would love to, but I wasn’t done with him. “I’m not going up those stairs until you tell me what you know about the white-haired goon’s twin brother—and don’t pretend you don’t know who I’m talking about.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, his lips pressed tight like a stubborn child.

“Come on, Ray. I need your help.” When he continued to stand there with his lips zipped shut, I grabbed one of his arms and squeezed. “Damn you, Underhill. Listen, Eddie Mudder told me that the albino’s twin brother came around looking for my son. I’m afraid of what’s going to happen if the brother finds Layne.”

When Ray still refused to talk, I threw up my hands. It was that or wrap them around Ray’s dumb thick neck and squeeze. “This is bigger than you and me, Ray.” I looked around for something to kick besides Ray’s shins, but the concrete walls could mean a broken toe and ER visits cost a ton of money, so I snarled through my teeth at the jackass avoiding my glare. “What was I thinking? Like you’d actually try to be something other than the selfish prick you always are and help me keep my child safe.”

I started up the steps, done with the horse’s ass.

“The other albino goes by the name Mr. Black.” Ray’s voice made me pause midway up the stairs.

I came back down a few steps. “That’s ironic, considering the color of his hair.”

Ray shrugged. “That’s about all I know. Black stayed in the background, letting his brother—or whatever he was to him—act as the front man.”

“You think they might not be brothers?”

“I don’t know what they are or were, and I was smart enough not to ask questions. It was George’s business; I was just there to find out a few answers for the cops as part of the deal. In the end, I got sloppy because you had me off my game. George tried to protect me from those two goons, as you call them, and was murdered for it.”

George was hiding Natalie from the one who was threatening Ray that night, too. “I’m sorry George was killed. He seemed like a kind man.”

“Too kind. That’s what got him into trouble. He couldn’t say no, and those two assholes preyed on that weakness.”

We stood there in an awkward silence for a moment. I had no idea what to say to Ray when he wasn’t acting like a dickhead toward me. Footsteps crossed overhead.

“Violet?” Jerry’s deep voice echoed down the stairwell. “Ray? Where are you two?”

“Thanks for telling me Mr. Black’s name,” I said quietly so Jerry couldn’t hear us.

“If I were you, Blondie, I wouldn’t ask around about him too much.”

“Why? You think the cops will come after me for badgering you for information?” I half-jested.

“It’s not the cops you should be afraid of now.” Something in his expression gave me pause.

“Ray, does Detective Cooper know about Mr. Black’s name?”

He shook his head.

“Why not?” I would have thought he’d have spilled all of the details during Cooper’s post-murder interrogation.

“Because George warned me about Mr. Black.” He looked at his hands, then back at me, his expression haunted. “And George wasn’t prone to exaggeration.”

I took another step down, my grip on the stair rail tightening. “What did George say?”

“That Mr. Black has a fetish.”

“A fetish for what?”

Ray’s gaze was flat, serious. “Body parts.”

“Oh, Jesus,” I whispered, remembering the barbed hook Mr. Black’s brother had threatened me with, the same bloody weapon left at the bottom of the Open Cut next to Jane’s shredded body. “Here there be monsters.”

Chapter Fourteen

Meanwhile, back in the garage-turned-morgue …

Later that evening, after wolfing down a meal of pork chops, candied yams, and apple dumplings thanks to Harvey’s handiwork, Aunt Zoe and the old buzzard sat drinking coffee at the kitchen table while Doc and I washed and put away dinner dishes.

The kids were upstairs in their room serving out their punishment after getting into an argument after dessert. Layne had barely finished swallowing his last bite of dumpling when he declared he didn’t feel good and asked if he could stay home from school again tomorrow.

Addy had expressed her skepticism about his illness in her typical sisterly way. “Liar! Mom, he’s trying to skip out of school because he’s being a big baby.”

“I am not!” Layne had emphasized his rebuttal by reaching out and punching her shoulder with so much aggression that I was stunned for a moment.

Addy let out a warrior yell that would have made Chief Crazy Horse’s stone-chiseled profile smile. She swung back before I could catch her arm, clocking Layne in the cheek, leaving a nasty red welt that was still there after icing his cheek off and on for the last half hour.

So up in their rooms they sat, grumbling about how neither had been treated fairly during my ten-second mock-trial before I’d delivered their sentences.

I rinsed the soap off the green and blue colored glass serving plate, one of Aunt Zoe’s experimental pieces, and carefully handed it to Doc. “Sorry about that fiasco with the kids after supper.”

He took the plate and started towel drying it. “Addy has a wicked backhand. She takes after her mother.”

His grin became a chuckle when I flicked rinse water at him. He snapped my butt with the towel, making me squawk.

“Violet and Doc,” Aunt Zoe interrupted our cavorting, “don’t make me send you both to your room, too.”

Harvey snorted. “That’d be like shuttin’ a bull in a stall with a heifer in heat.”

I hit Harvey with a double-barreled squint. “I am not in heat, thank you very much.”

He opened the lid of Aunt Zoe’s Betty Boop cookie jar, and grabbed an Oreo. “You’re sure showin’ signs of estrus what with the way you were chompin’ at the bit at supper, droppin’ silverware and then yer napkin, knockin’ over yer water.”

“I was having trouble focusing, that’s all.” He would too if he had an albino with a body part fetish asking around town about him.

He took a bite of the Oreo, getting crumbs in his beard. “Then there’s all of your caterwallin’ lately, particularly around the kids. Reminds me of the way my heifers would wander around the pasture lookin’ for a mate, mooin’ night and day until a bull would mount up and put ‘em out of their misery.”

I heard Doc laughing under his breath and smacked him on the chest, avoiding his all-seeing gaze. It wasn’t my fault that there always seemed to be someone or something interfering with us spending any alone time in his bed, or his office, or his garage, or anywhere. A girl had needs, too, especially when the guy was as talented at multitasking in the sack as Doc.

“See,” Harvey grabbed another cookie. “Look at you getting all touchy feely.” He sniffed the air. “Hell, I can smell your pheromones clear over here.” He pointed the cookie at me. “Girl, you’re in heat.”

I was certainly getting sweatier with humiliation by the moment, damn it. “Harvey, zip it before I come over there and gag you with your suspenders.”

He smirked at Aunt Zoe. “I bet she’s so fertile Doc could plant a nail in ‘er and grow a horseshoe.”

I turned to my beloved aunt, who looked like she was doing her best to keep a smile from falling out through her tucked in lips. “I swear to God, Aunt Zoe, if you encourage him any further I will call a certain fire captain and tell him you’re in heat, too.”

Reid had phoned me when I was leaving Lily Devine’s house, asking if Aunt Zoe had made it home safe and still single. I’d confirmed both, crossing my fingers the latter was true. It would be really easy to hit the redial button and tell Reid to come over and take a look at Zoe for himself.

Her eyes got all squinty. “Don’t you dare, Violet Lynn.”

Harvey hooted. “Tell Reid we need him to stop by and put out his old flame.”

Aunt Zoe leaned over and tried to cram another cookie in Harvey’s mouth, making the old cuss snort and chortle even more. He winked at Doc. “I got ‘em both all lathered up now, don’t I?”

“You’re going to need a chair and a whip if you keep this up, old man.” Doc tucked Aunt Zoe’s serving dish away in the cupboard.

The phone on the kitchen wall rang, breaking up the cookie wrestling match going on at the table. I waved Aunt Zoe back to her corner and answered it. “Hello?”

“Parker.” It was a statement from Cooper, not a question.

“Well, if it isn’t Little Miss Sunshine.” I covered the mouthpiece and told the three eyeballing me, “It’s Cooper.”

I said, “To what do I owe the pleasure of hearing your melodious voice?”

“Did you have pot brownies for dessert tonight, Parker?”

“Nope. Your uncle made apple dumplings sans marijuana. But if you want to grab some joints from the evidence room for an after dinner toke …” I purposely let that comment trail off, not trusting Cooper to catch the jest in my voice about doing something illegal in his jurisdiction.

“Real funny, Parker. You can practice your stand-up routine some more tomorrow at the morgue.”

“I can what?”

“You need to meet Detective Hawke and me at the Mudder Brothers morgue first thing in the morning.”

“Why?”

“Because you were the last known witness to go in there the night Eddie and the body disappeared.”

“But you already took my statement three times during breakfast at Doc’s.”

“Detective Hawke has some new questions to ask you.”

“Come on, Cooper. Can’t you help me with a get-out-of-jail-free card on this one?”

“Nope, and if you don’t show up, I can guarantee Detective Hawke will come to your place of work with a warrant. He’s picked up your scent now, and there’s no shaking him.”

“My scent?”

“Yeah, like a hunting dog. Get it, Parker? Or do I need to draw you a picture with stick people?”

I blew a raspberry in the mouthpiece. “Draw a picture of that, Coop.”

“Your level of maturity astounds me some days. And it’s Detective Cooper to you.”

I sighed. “Fine, what time do I have to be there?”

“What time do you start work?”

I didn’t have to be in super early since I had been on camera today, but Cooper didn’t need to know that. “Eight-thirty.” I padded the time so they’d think I had important work to get to right away in the morning and not drag out the interrogation any longer than necessary.

“Be there at seven,” Cooper said. The line went dead.

I hung up the phone and then flipped it off for good measure. “Harvey, someone needs to teach your nephew some phone etiquette.”

“Give him a break. His mama fed him castor oil for constipation when he was just a babe.”

What in the world did that have to do with him being a dick to me on the phone?

“What was that about?” Doc asked, hanging the dish towel on the rack.

I told all three of them about my appointment at the morgue first thing tomorrow. When I finished, Aunt Zoe’s frown matched the one lining Doc’s face. Harvey scratched at his beard, working Oreo cookie crumbs loose.

Aunt Zoe was the first to speak. “Why can’t they ask you these questions at the station?”

“Probably because Cooper knows the only way he’s going to get me inside that station is by dragging me in handcuffed and kicking.”

“This here sounds like one of Hawke’s ideas, not Coop’s,” Harvey said. “I’d bet my left nut that dandy is trying to show off how big and red his rooster comb is in front of ya.”

“He better be careful flashing his comb around,” I griped, “or I just might blast a hole through it with ol’ Bessie.”