Training Ivy [How The West Was Done 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (20 page)

She seemed almost entirely solid, as though she walked through a light fog, even though she only stood three feet from Neil. “I can
see
you,” he said with relief.

“Well, of course you can!” Minerva snapped. Her face relaxed as she lifted both hands to hover around his face. She was a mighty short woman, but shapely. Probably a bog-hopper from the twangy tones of her accent. “You’re looking even better than usual today, Neil Tempest.”

“I can’t lock Rodney back up,” he told her. “He’s kept his end of the bargain, and he’s not a murder suspect anymore.”

“Lock me back up?” Rodney cried in horror. “No, sirree Bob. You have no reason to take me again, sir!”

Rodney started going like sixty toward First Street and the town proper, but the second Minerva issued Neil a low warning growl consisting of
“Neil…”
he was back in action, flinging Rodney face first to the dirt and slapping the bracelets back on him.

“What’d I do, Neil? What’d I do?” poor downtrodden Rodney wailed as Neil dragged him back to the lockup building.

“Don’t worry, Rodney,” Neil assured him. “I’ll bring you a whole jug of forty rod and some beefsteaks and oysters from the Belle of the West.”

After sending a boy to the Bucket of Blood, Neil headed back to his office next door. He clapped his hands together and shouted, “How’s that, Minerva? See what I do for your love? I hope you’re happy now.”

Minerva didn’t appear to walk like regular humans. She floated, her eyes remaining at exactly the same level, as though she rolled along on a little wheeled cart. Not much on her seemed to move at all. It was as if someone merely pushed a cardboard cutout along, one of those the chiselers held up when making the fake spirit photographs.

But she had the depth of a few dimensions. If Neil walked around her backside a bit, the scene changed. The bow at the back of her apron was visible, even if her skirts didn’t rustle as she moved.

“Are you ogling my ass?” Minerva demanded to know.

What was the correct response? “Of course I am. Who wouldn’t ogle such a fine ass?”

Her face changed to one of proud modesty. But it was spoony—there were no various shades of other emotions in between. It was as though someone snatched away the “demanding” face and replaced it with the “proud” face. There were no gradations of emotion in between. In this way Neil formed the opinion that the succubus of Minerva Shortridge was a sort of projection from beyond the veil. But he would have to discuss that with Harley and Ivy, as they were much more schooled in spiritualism than he was.

When he entered his depot office—the line of telegram senders winding out Ivy’s door went clear around the building—Minerva did not have to use the door like regular folk. One minute she was outside the office, and in the flashing of a second, she was inside standing next to his desk.

“Hullo, Ivy!” Neil called over the little railing they’d erected to show where Ivy’s telegraph office stopped and Neil’s security office started. He wanted to know if she could see Minerva.

Judging from her agape, round-eyed expression, Neil guessed she could. His next step was to see if he could touch Minerva. She had touched him, albeit when she didn’t have any corporeal form to do it with. Neil wanted to know more about these spirit rules if he was going to be stuck practically married to Mrs. Minerva Shortridge.

Did anyone else in Ivy’s office see Minerva? Many townspeople would recognize her. And seeing as how she’d been buried three months ago, they would be particularly appalled to see her now.

Reaching a hand toward the rancher’s wife, Neil asked, “Can the others see you? Can Byron Jensen see you? Can Melville Brown?” Melville Brown was the new mayor, so it was particularly important he didn’t see Minerva.

Neil touched Minerva’s shoulder, relieved to find it solid. Experimentally he rubbed a thumb against the bare skin of her throat. It yielded like the proper substance of a throat yet seemed much colder than a normal woman’s and a bit like pudding.

“Only you can see me,” Minerva retorted without moving her lips. “And perhaps Ivy, because she’s in love with you.”

“She
is?
” Neil gaped like a schoolboy. “Tell me more, Minerva.”

Minerva’s cardboard shoulders moved into a shrugging stance. “She knows she’s in love with you and is eagerly waiting for you to marry her. Now kiss me, Neil. I’ve been waiting a long time for you to kiss me.”

She leaned back over his map table, pulling Neil with her. She threw her ankles around the backs of Neil’s thighs, and he was effectively pinned to the table, unable to move.

“Minerva, Minerva,” he tried to say.
Maybe she can hear my thoughts. Minerva, Minerva. This is going to look mighty strange in front of the mayor. At least let Ivy get rid of those people who want to send telegrams.

Not too surprisingly, he could hear her thoughts almost as crisply and loudly as when she seemed to “speak” them.
All right. But you’re making hot berserk love to me after she gets rid of them.

Wondering how that would work out, Neil was released and asked Ivy to close up shop for a while. Several men looked askance at him, and Melville Brown asked if there were any suspects in the J. Walter Weatherman murder. Neil felt asinine admitting there weren’t, especially when he was sitting here canoodling with an invisible sweetheart. Neil couldn’t explain that the invisible paramour would be the one to tell him how to find the murderer.

Ivy bolted the door and made a beeline for where Minerva was poised on the edge of the map table, pert as could be. Ivy shook her hand. “Nice to meet you.” Ivy looked at Neil with wide eyes. “Wow. She’s solid. Mostly.”

Minerva pulled her hand back as though burned. “Well. I can’t say as I’m glad you’re around, but you could be handy to stand guard.”

And before Ivy could protest this rudeness, Minerva abruptly vanished, only to reappear perched on Neil’s lap as he sat at his desk chair.

She felt about half as heavy as a regular corporeal human, and it was distinctly eerie. Neil’s brain raced, trying to think up a tactic to avoid pleasuring a demanding ghost. Sure, if he was a bachelor cove, he would have given the randy rancher’s wife a whirl. But in the past week Neil had undergone a vast change. Since meeting the bountiful Ivy Hudson, he had no desire to touch another woman. He hadn’t even looked twice at Philomena Clancy, long considered to be the most desirable belle in town, when he’d passed her by this morning.

So Neil squirmed, taking Minerva firmly by the upper arms, lifting her. It occurred to him he could use mind control, or whatever it was called, to get her off his lap. If they could hear each other’s thoughts, and she could pelt him with objects, why could he not exert a similar control over her? Neil concentrated, envisioning her rising from his lap, and she did seem to become lighter.

Yet at the same time, she once again read his thoughts. She flung her arms around his neck and cried, “Why do you want to be rid of me, Neil Tempest? I’ve already died once for the shortcomings of a thoughtless, mean man. I could not bear it if you were to deny me!”

“Listen, Minerva!” Ivy stamped over to the desk and pointed a finger at the specter. “This is my man. You can’t horn in with your saucy strumpet ways!” Ivy, too, put her hands on Minerva’s shoulders, but Ivy’s hands seemed to go through the luminous figure of the rancher’s wife, and she couldn’t even grasp her as Neil could.

“You can’t touch me, you whorish judy!” cried Minerva. Neil wondered at her usage of his own term. Surely Minerva Shortridge had never been to Australia. She must have been reading his mind.

A pounding came at the office door then. “Neil! Ivy! It’s me!”

“Harley!” cried Ivy and leaped to unbolt the door.

Neil succeeded in standing and dumping the undesirable ghostly wench from his lap, and she now appeared standing near the door. Harley entered, oddly enough wearing a derby.

“Where did you get that hat?” Neil demanded.

“Oh, over at Freund and Brothers,” Harley said. “I thought it might be interesting to see—”

“Aiiiiii!”
Minerva shrieked. “It’s him! The strangling murderer who tossed me into the manure pile!
Aiiiiii!
” Her image began to waver, turning back into the shimmering silhouette she’d been before materializing herself. “Arrest him right now, Neil Tempest!” Her voice, too, was fading back into the tinny, mechanical voice of earlier.

“What?” Harley chuckled. “My dear Mrs. Shortridge. I can hardly have been your murderer, since I didn’t even come to town until several days ago. I just bought this hat at—”

“It’s
him
!” Minerva pointed a shadowy finger at Harley. “The murderer who reeked of forty rod and put the snake on my shotgun to make it look as if the reptile shot me to death! Neil, handcuff him!”

It was Ivy’s turn to lose control of her emotions. “I’ve had enough of you, you slutty harridan! You showed us an earthquake and a dead body burned in the Elks Club, and now you’re trying to tell us that our dear friend Harland Park is the culprit. You’ve seen him before without that hat on, so you know he’s not the murderer. Go away and leave us, and stop throwing things at my beloved Neil!”

That seemed to do the trick. The enraged silhouette blew up into a bonfire that emitted no heat, just a roaring vortex of blinding flame that reached to the ceiling but left no charring. Harley and Neil both clutched Ivy protectively as they backed away from the plume, and one last object smacked Neil on the shoulder before the flaming column suddenly vanished. It left no trace of having ever been there.

Harley bent to retrieve the object as Neil squeezed Ivy tightly to him. “I’m sorry about that, Ivy. We won’t need her assistance anymore.”

Ivy shouted at the ceiling. “Do you hear that, Mrs. Shortridge? Unless you have some vital clue to impart to us, even an earthquake won’t induce us to talk to you!”

“What is it?” Neil asked as Harley came toward them with a jug. He took it from Harley and sniffed it. “Forty rod. This jug wasn’t in this room. I drink upon occasion, but never this stuff.”

“All right,” said Harley. “Now we know the murderer drank forty rod. That narrows it down to pretty much every man in town.”

“And woman,” said Ivy.

Harley continued, “I just came from Dr. Evenson’s office. He autopsied Minerva’s body and concluded she
was
strangled. He saw breakage in the cervical vertebrae. Her neck,” he clarified to Neil, who always felt profoundly stupid in Harley’s presence.

“You have to admit,” said Ivy, “she’s always correct in what she tells us.”

“Yes,” said Neil, feeling his own neck. “I just wish she didn’t get so fresh and hot over me.”

“Well, can you blame her?” Harley grinned. “Look who she was married to.”

“Yes,” Ivy agreed. “And you probably met her when she was living on this planet. That’s where she probably developed her attraction to you, watching you swagger down the street in your leather chaps.”

“I don’t really care,” Neil grumbled. “I just want to find her murderer so she can be set free from this plane. Once we find him, she’ll be free to move on and stop haunting us mortals.”

“You’re starting to sound like us, like a true spiritualist,” said Harley.

“All right, Deputy Tempest.
El Dekhal
. You must prove you can take my member into your mouth.”

Harley was being a lascivious son of a bitch, he knew. It was in his nature to be this way, but his approach had been changing in the past week. Now, for instance, he wanted only to be lascivious with these two—
El Dekhal
, the housebreaker, and
El Ladid
, the delicious one.

But it had been his idea to canoodle about now in the telegraph office. Why not, when the doors were already barred, the customers driven away? No wonder Neil folded his arms before his chest, watching Harley sitting in his chair, choking his enormous prick in his fist.

Neil asked, “What, then, do we call you? What is your Arabic name for an insistent cock that won’t take no for an answer? A cock that is too big to be taken into one’s mouth?”

Harley had a ready answer for that. “
El Bessis
. From the moment it gets stiff and long, it does not care for anybody, lifts impudently the clothing of its master by raising its head fiercely, and makes him ashamed while it feels no shame.”

Neil grinned with approval. “That makes sense. When are you finishing this book translation? Will anyone be willing to publish it?”

“It would be quite scandalous,” Ivy said with excitement, her face flushed. She had rolled her telegraph chair into Neil’s part of the office and sat now with moist lips, a sheen of sweat on her forehead, vaguely caressing the upper slope of her breast as she observed Harley stroking his own cock.

Harley said, “I have a private backer in England who has been paying me for my translations. It would have to be printed privately, of course. We have subscribers.” He angled his prick toward Neil and observed the hungry, wolfish look in the deputy’s eyes. “Get on your knees, Neil. Your mouth is bigger than our feminine cohort’s, and you had a carnivorous way of licking my balls at the Elks Club.”