Meanwhile, Back in Deadwood (Deadwood Humorous Mystery Book 6) (36 page)

“I wouldn’t say that.” He ran his hands up my arms, stopping to massage my shoulders. “Let me think about it. In the meantime, you can see if he’ll be hanging around town for the next few days in case we decide to pull him in and ask him for his thoughts on Ms. Wolff’s mirror.”

I let my head droop forward as he worked the tension out of my muscles. “Hey, Doc?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you have some kind of secret pact with my son?”

“Yes. We each shared a truth and agreed not to tell anyone else.”

“Is there anything I can do to make you tell me the secrets?”

“Probably not.”

“What if I ask you to tell me just one of the secrets while I’m wearing only my cherry-flavored lip gloss and purple boots?”

“Nothing else?”

“Not a stitch.”

“Wow, you play a tough game.”

“No, I play dirty, and I am willing to play even dirtier with you, but only if you cough up a secret.”

He turned me part way around so I could look at him, and then tipped my chin up. “I love it when you play dirty, Boots, but I promised your son, and I won’t crack, not even for a night of debauchery with his incredibly sexy mother.”

“Fine, then I’ll just have to beat it out of you.” I held up my fists, Rocky Balboa style.

“You know I love it when you get rough with me.” He captured my wrists and tugged me toward him, his mouth closing in on mine. “But please, Tiger, whatever you do, don’t go all windmill on me. I might laugh myself to death.”

“Mom?” Addy’s voice was like a flyswatter smack to the face. “Where are you?”

“Over here on the steps.”

She turned on the porch light, blinding me. “Hi, Doc. Mom, can Kelly go trick-or-treating with us tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. I need to think about it.”

“What? Why do you need to think about it?”

“Because, Adelynn Renee, you are grounded along with your brother.”

“Why?” she whined.

“For extorting hush money from him.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you need to pay him back two weeks of allowance that he gave you not to tell on him.”

“That’s not fair!” She stomped inside, screaming Layne’s name at the top of her lungs. “You’re dead meat!”

“Crap, I’d better deal with that before it ends in blows.”

Doc stood and pulled me up. “I need to head home anyway. I have some homework to do.”

“Oh yeah, is it math, reading, or science?”

“It’s history. Harvey is coming over to fill me in on his family history at the ranch.”

“You want to get to know his granddad before he climbs inside of your head?”

“Something like that.” He frowned down at me. “I also need to be prepared for whatever else is waiting for us out there.”

Chapter Eighteen

Wednesday, October 31st (Halloween)

Meanwhile, back at the haunted house …

I woke up in bed with the Harlem Globetrotters whistling sweet nothings in my ear.

It took several seconds of their theme song playing to realize that Jerry was trying to get ahold of me on my cellphone. I knocked over a glass of water on the nightstand reaching for my phone, which pretty much set the tone for my morning.

“Hello?” I said while reaching toward the floor for my pajama pants to sop up the watery mess.

“Sorry to wake you, Violet, but we have a team member down, and I need you to sub in for him.”

Overbalancing, I ended up falling out of bed and landing in the puddle of water. “Damn it!”

“I agree. It’s unfortunate, but Ben can’t go on camera today. He’s a sick mess.”

I lay on my stomach with my camisole top soaking up water, my mind trying to make sense of Jerry’s sports references through the sleep fog swirling in my head. “You want me to fill in for Ben this morning?”

“I want you to go straight to the Carhart house. Ray will meet you there with Dickie and his camera crew.”

“The Carhart house?” I rolled over onto my back, the floor cool against my bare shoulders. I wasn’t prepared to deal with Prudence today. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“You cleared a whole week of filming with both Ms. Carhart and the new owners, right?”

Unfortunately, yes. “I’m referring to me. I’d planned to spend today going over my cue cards so I’d be ready by tomorrow. If I go to the Carhart house this morning, I might be a mess.” Meaning I might totally freak out if Prudence messed with me, like she so loved to do.

“You’ll be fine once you get into the game,” Jerry spoke with authority. “You’ll be slam dunking your lines before you know it. I have faith in you.”

Darn it, why did he have to end with that? Now I felt like I had to do it so I wouldn’t let Coach Jerry down.

“All right.” I pushed myself upright, rubbing a tight muscle in my lower back. “What time do I need to be at the Carhart house and what do you want me to wear?”

An hour and a half later, I pulled into the driveway at the Carhart house with a takeout tray of coffees sitting on the seat next to me. I brushed yet another dog hair off the new, dark rose pantsuit Jerry had bought for me. Between Elvis’s feathers and Red’s fur, I needed to start carrying a portable vacuum with me wherever I went.

Old man Harvey pulled in behind me, catching up to me as I reached the porch steps. “Yer gonna owe me big for this, girlie! I had company this mornin’, and she had some big ideas for breakfast.”

“I’ll take you out to breakfast another day to make up for it.”

“I wasn’t talkin’ about food, if ya get my drift.” He wiggled his bushy eyebrows at me.

“Come on! I can’t handle thinking about you and sex this early in the morning.”

“Well, if yer gonna insist I hold yer hand in a haunted house at the ass-crack of dawn, yer gonna have to deal with whatever I throw at ya.”

When push had come to shove, I’d chickened out on coming to visit Prudence without backup. Harvey hadn’t exactly cooed like a mourning dove when I’d woken him up shortly after hanging up with Jerry, but since he was my self-appointed bodyguard, I didn’t give him much choice about joining me.

Ray met us on the front porch, or rather, blocked us from entering. “What in the hell is
he
doing here?”

“He’s my acting coach today.”

Harvey leaned back on his heels, hooking his thumbs in his suspenders. “You missed a patch while shavin’, boy.”

“Where?” Ray rubbed along his jaw.

He pointed at Ray’s mouth. “Right smack dab in the center there, where that godawful sneer of yers is sittin’.”

Ray’s face scrunched up. “Stay out of the way, today, old man. Don’t even try to get your face on film.”

“I’m not purtied up enough for the camera today, so don’t go gettin’ yer balls in a vice over lil’ ol’ me.”

I held up the tray of drinks. “If you’re done beating your chest and flinging poo, Ray, I’d like to take these inside.”

He stepped aside. “You have one too many. Honey isn’t here today. She’s back at the hotel with Rad, too sick to get out of bed.”

“That’s some cold.” First Rad, then Honey, and now Ben. I needed to up my vitamin C so I didn’t come down with it next. “Come on, Harvey.” I balanced the tray in one hand and tugged the ornery buzzard in behind me by the suspenders. I didn’t want to give him the opportunity to change his mind about facing off with Prudence alongside me.

We found Dickie and Rosy in the kitchen discussing his preferred camera angles. They both fawned all over me for bringing them a caffeine hit. Dickie remembered Harvey from the day we found an old mining boot with some of the foot bones and dried flesh still in it out at the ranch. Rosy warmed instantly to the dirty bird, especially after he admired her tattoos and proceeded to tell her an unfiltered story about a “popular” prostitute in Winnemucca he’d known who had the words
Bulls Eye
written across her very rounded derrière. Luckily, Dickie had left the room by that point to take a phone call from Honey. Apparently, she was trying to run things from her hotel bed. Ray joined us in the midst of Rosy’s laughing and curled his upper lip at Harvey and me in turn. I thumbed my nose at him.

“Rosy, let’s get rolling,” Dickie called from the living room.

Ray caught my arm as we filed out of the kitchen. “I need to talk to you.”

Harvey paused on the threshold. “You might want to take care in this here house, boy.” He pointed at the ceiling. “The dead lady in the attic ain’t no fan of tough-talkin’ assholes.”

“I’m not afraid of any ghosts,” he told Harvey. “Especially some old broad who likes to play parlor tricks.”

I looked up, hoping the “old broad” had heard that. “He’s all yours, Prudence,” I told the ceiling.

“You two are real jokers.” As soon as Harvey left the doorway, Ray turned on me. “Listen, Blondie,” he said in a hushed voice. “Detective Hawke called me last night.”

Good, it was about time Hawke learned a phone number besides mine. I was getting tired of sending his calls to voicemail every day. “So?”

“He told me Eddie Mudder is missing.” When I didn’t react, he added, “He also said you were there shortly before Eddie disappeared.”

I kept silent. What else had Hawke mentioned? Was Ray privileged enough to know about the faceless body we’d found at Harvey’s, and that it had disappeared along with Eddie?

Ray’s gaze narrowed. “Why didn’t you tell me Eddie was missing?”

I did a double take. “I was unaware that you and I were on more than a barely speaking level.”

“I told you about Mr. Black.”

“Grudgingly.”

“You should have told me about Eddie.”

“Why?”

“Because Mr. Black may be coming for me next.”

“Violet?” Dickie called from the other room. “You’re up now.”

“One minute, I’m touching up my makeup,” I called back. I dragged Ray to the pantry so they couldn’t hear us. “You think Mr. Black is responsible for Eddie’s disappearance?”

“Yes.”

“Did you tell Detective Hawke that?”

“Hell, no.”

“Why not?”

“I told you, even mentioning
his
name aloud puts me at risk. If the cops start throwing it around, he’s going to know I’m the source.” Ray frowned over at the kitchen entryway. “You didn’t run your mouth to the police, did you?”

“Of course not.” I didn’t want Mr. Black linking anything back to me, either.

“Jesus,” Ray combed his fingers through his hair, messing up the moussed look he’d been sporting. “This could go really bad fast.”

“You mean for Eddie?”

“Who cares about Eddie? I don’t want that big ugly bastard coming for me.” He poked me in the shoulder. “You should keep your head low, too, if you know what’s good for you.”

I poked him back. “Poke me again and I’ll bite your finger off.”

“You shouldn’t have killed his twin, Blondie. Now we’re both fucked.”

Oh, please. I was fucked for way more reasons than just killing an albino bully—if he really was dead and gone. Aunt Zoe had made my state of fucked-ness crystal clear yesterday, her warnings inspiring a red-eyed morning after a night of repeated pillow beatings followed by lots of tears, both anger and fear-filled.

“Yeah, well, good luck with that, Ray.” I pushed past him. “I need to go smile for the camera.”

Harvey was on his best behavior all morning as we moved through the house. Well, except in between takes when Rosy encouraged him to share more of his sordid past while she double-checked that her recording was actually capturing video and sound.

Ray on the other hand was downright surly, pulling me aside to chastise me for not delivering my spiel with enough gusto, for having a sloppy shirt collar, and for not using enough hairspray to tame my “curly mess,” which kept escaping the bobby pins. I understood him being scared shitless about Mr. Black coming for him, but I didn’t appreciate the butthead taking out his anxieties on me.

We were about to take a break for lunch when Dickie decided he wanted to go upstairs and do one more take. His choice of setting was the bedroom where I’d been tied up in the closet with a seam ripper my only weapon not so long ago. I had claustrophobic issues now in that room, so when Dickie told me I could wait for them down in the living room, he didn’t have to say it twice.

Harvey followed on my heels, muttering about how hungry he was while making a beeline into the kitchen. I sat down on the sofa that the Brittons had bought from Wanda along with the house.

“Been all quiet on the ghost front so far,” Harvey said when he joined me, plopping down on the other end of the couch.

I heard the sound of crackling paper and looked over to find him with his hand buried in a box of Chicken in a Biskit crackers.

“What are you doing?” He must have gotten into Wanda’s pantry.

“Eatin’.” He shoved a few crackers in his mouth. “Wanda won’t miss these. Stale as cardboard.”

I leaned toward him, my hand out. “Share, please.”

He scooted away, hugging the couch arm.

I slid closer. “Quit being so stingy.”

“Stay back, girlie,” he tossed several crackers my way. “I don’t want you touchin’ me none.”

“You’re the one with cooties, not me.”

“It’s not yer cooties that I’m fussin’ about. I don’t want that kooky ghost tappin’ into here,” he touched his temple. “She don’t need to scramble my brains any more than she already has.”

I chomped on a cracker. Harvey was right; they were stale, but my stomach didn’t care. “I have a feeling Prudence won’t be bugging us today.”

“Why’s that? You lock the ol’ gal in the attic?”

“No. I left her a present under the bathroom sink.”

“What sorta present?”

“Her box of teeth.”

Harvey harrumphed. “A harebrained idea if ya ask me.”

“Why? That’s what she’s been wanting ever since I took her collection of teeth out of the attic.”

“What she’s been wantin’ is to chew the fat with you.”

“You’re wrong.” I held out my hand for more crackers. “She’ll leave us alone now, at least for today.”

“That there box of teeth is like a big piece of cheese in a rat-filled house.” He went to dump some crackers into my palm, but too many spilled out at once. Crackers scattered all over the carpet at our feet. “Shit-fire.” Bending over, he picked up a couple of crackers, blowing each of them off and then shoving them in his mouth.