A Wild Fright in Deadwood (Deadwood Humorous Mystery Book 7) (45 page)

Surprisingly, I slept hard. Not a single nightmare had haunted my dreamland. However, that was probably why I was so stiff this morning. Ten minutes of hot water therapy on my shoulders and back made only a small difference. I was going to need to pop some ibuprofen to get up to speed today. I wrapped the towel around me, dragging my achy ass back to my bedroom and the white dress covered with red cherries that awaited me.

It took several more minutes to finally convince my legs to walk over and stand in front of the mirror. When I did, I cursed. I should have let the
lidérc
get me.

Old man Harvey had a heyday about my getup. “Howdy-doody, tooty-fruity! That fancy dress makes ya look built like a brick outhouse.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or bad. My knowledge of outhouses was limited, containing only tidbits about black widows living under the seats and slivers getting lodged in all the wrong places. I took the coffee he offered and slurped it down.

“I need your help getting the kids to school, Harvey. Jerry texted me this morning and wants me to come in early.”

“No need for Harvey to drive them in,” Aunt Zoe joined us in her robe. “Natalie called while you were in the shower. She’s going to swing by and take them to school this morning.”

“Why’s that?”

“She said she has something for you.”

“I won’t be here.”

“I’ll send her down to your office. Unless that will cause you problems.”

I shook my head. “We’ll be going over lines before heading up to Lead.”

“You’re wearing your charms?” she asked.

“Every single one.”

“Ya sure you don’t want to take Bessie with ya?”

Actually, I did, but I’d probably end up shooting the real Ray instead of the
lidérc
version. “I’m sure, but thanks for offering.”

Fifteen minutes later, the kids raced past me into the kitchen as I was heading for the door. After giving them kisses and warnings to keep out of trouble and have a good day at school, I saluted Harvey and then hugged Aunt Zoe goodbye.

“Be careful up there, Violet. If it figures out a way to escape its cage, it might come for you and the others.”

“If it does, I’ll introduce it to Ray.”

She chuckled and ushered me out the door.

When I arrived at the office, everyone but the orange-faced baboon was there. I asked Jerry about Ray’s whereabouts and learned that he’d called in sick. Damn it, there went my plans to infest Ray with a Hungarian devil.

I was standing outside the back door, practicing my lines in the cold morning air—which was an excuse to escape from Jerry’s constant adjustments to my outfit—when Natalie came walking up to me, a brown paper sack in hand.

“That’s some killer red lipstick, hot stuff,” she said. “You been out sucking blood from the local population again?”

I grinned. “Thanks for taking the kids to school.”

“My pleasure.”

“Aunt Zoe said you have something for me.”

She nodded. “I do.”

“Is it another piece of Rex’s car?”

“Nope, not this time.” She looked around, acting suspicious, reminding me of when she was about to stir up some trouble back when we were kids. “It’s this.”

She lifted the sack and held it out to me to take.

I looked at the sack but didn’t touch it. “Did you bring me some tequila to help me get through the day?”

“No.”

“It’s not a dead rat, is it?”

She snorted. “Why would I give you a dead rat?”

“I don’t know. Because you’re weird.”

“No, you’re the weird one, especially now.” Her smile took any sting out of her words. “But I still love your crazy ass.” She shook the sack. “Come on, take it.”

I did. Whatever was inside was heavy, like glass. I opened it and peeked down in it. “What is this?”

“Careful,” she said when I reached inside. “It’s broken in a couple of spots and has some sharp edges.”

I grabbed something cold and hard and smooth, slowly pulling it from the sack. I turned it right side up and froze, heart and breath and all … except my brain, which fired up the nightmare furnace.

In my hands was the top of the clown cookie jar that had been in Wolfgang Hessler’s kitchen. The tip of its yellowing pointy hat was broken off, and one piece of the ruffle circling its neck had taken a hit. Otherwise, the thick red sad lips, the black + signs covering the grayed out eye sockets, and the little button nose were still there. Only now, the lid was cracked and singed from the fire that had taken the rest of the house.

“No no no no,” I suddenly realized I was saying it aloud.

“Vi? Are you okay?” Natalie reached out toward me.

The world around me tunneled as I stared down at the clown’s ghoulish frown. All sound faded, replaced by a cackling laugh that made me want to find a closet in which to hide. Then the laugh died out, and I heard two words. They were breathed more than spoken:
Kill … her.

A screech flew from my throat, and I let go of the lid.

Chapter Twenty-One

Natalie caught the clown cookie jar lid before it hit the ground, her years of playing catcher on the school softball team still evident by her quick reflexes.

“Dang it, Vi. Don’t drop it.” She took the paper sack from me and slid the lid inside.

“Where did you get that thing?” I wiped my hands off on my coat, wishing I could as easily wipe away the memories that flashed back at the sight of it.

“I went to the Hessler house last night—well, what’s left of it.” She rolled the top of the sack closed.

“You went there at night?”

“I had to, otherwise someone would’ve seen me.”

“Why in the world did you go
there
?”

“To sift through the piles of debris and ashes,” she said, as if it should’ve been obvious.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Is this what you do for fun at night now that you’re not having sex?”

She grinned. “Well, I have to get my kicks somehow.”

“What’s next? Grave digging? Necrophilia?”

“You know what they say about necrophilia?”

I nodded. “It puts the ‘fun’ back in funeral?”

“And the ‘rot’ back in erotica.”

I wrinkled my nose. “You’re sick.”

“But not as twisted as you.” She held up the paper sack. “Anyway, I was reading one of Terri Reid’s books and had an idea for our séance.”

“Does Terri have a séance how-to guide in her books?”

“No. The heroine doesn’t actually do séances because the ghosts come to her on their own, but in one of the books she’s given a personal item by a ghost as a reward.”

“So you want to reward me?”

“No, smarty-tart. I want to give you something personal from Wilda. Maybe it will help draw her ghost to you.”

I didn’t like the sound of this one bit, but I let her finish.

“But since Wilda’s been gone a long time, I had to settle for second best—a familiar object from her home.”

Familiar? More like bone chilling. “That’s probably a bad idea.”

“Not according to Cornelius.”

“When did you talk to him?”

She broke eye contact. “I ran into him.”

“Where?”

“In his suite.”

“You went to Cornelius’s suite?”

Her gaze returned to mine. “I thought it would be helpful if I knew the lay of the land before we meet there for the séance. In another one of Terri’s books—”

I didn’t let her finish. “Nat, aren’t those books about fictitious characters?”

“Yes, but I’m sure Terri did lots of research on the paranormal.”

“But still, we’re talking fiction.” I pointed at the sack. “This shit is for real. I’m for real. You need to understand the difference.”

“Trust me, after what I saw out at Harvey’s place, I get the difference. But you need to be open minded. There are others who might be able to help you be more successful when you screw around in the past. Besides, this ghost business isn’t even your line of work. Cornelius and Doc are the experts, and if Cornelius is on board with me bringing the piece from the Hessler house, you should be, too.”

I frowned down at that sack as if it held a venomous snake.

“I’m only trying to help you, spaz.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that house really creeped me out. Seeing the lid to that spooky clown cookie jar brought those feelings back in full force.”

The door creaked open behind me. “Violet,” Jerry said, “they’re heading out.”

“Okay. I’ll be there after I make a quick call to a client.” I needed to let Katrina King know that whoever was in charge of the Sugarloaf Building had gotten back with Mona finally—the building was NOT for sale. I wondered if that decision had come from Dominick Masterson himself, wherever he was hiding, or one of his minions who was running his business in his absence.

After the door closed, Natalie asked, “You sure it’s a good idea to go back up to that building so soon? Your aunt gave me the short version of last night’s fun and games while the kids were rounding up their school stuff this morning.”

“Hell no, but I need to be there with the film crew in case something goes south with that thing up there.”

She leaned in and hugged me “Be safe, babe.”

“That’s rich, coming from a girl who touched the end of an electric cattle prod.”

“That was your brother’s handiwork. There’s not much I won’t do on a twenty-dollar bet.” With a wink she left.

I went back inside and made the call to Katrina King, leaving the no-deal message on her voicemail. Then I grabbed my stuff.

“Here we go again,” I muttered and headed out to my SUV to lead the way up to the Sugarloaf Building … and whatever awaited us there.

* * *

Not much awaited us there except a lot of clomping around overhead. It was the same sort of song and dance I’d heard from the first floor last night. Since nobody else on the Paranormal Realty crew seemed to hear it, I was able to make it through several hours of filming without more than a few cringes at the heavy thudding moving back and forth across the ceiling, which almost sounded like pacing at times.

I had little doubt that the
lidérc
knew I was downstairs. At one point, it sounded like it was jumping up and down right over my head. But as long as it was locked up in its cage and nobody sneaked upstairs to explore its lair, I wasn’t too worried about things going haywire.

Reid had made doubly sure no sneaky visitors would check in on the creature by installing an additional padlock on the second floor door. He’d also posted his official fire department DO NOT ENTER signs in a couple of key locations—the entrance to the outside stairway and the door at the top of the stairs. A piece of wood had been nailed over the hole in the downstairs’ door that I’d made with my war hammer.

We were wrapping up and getting ready to head back down to Deadwood later that afternoon when my cell phone rang. I looked at the number not recognizing it, and stepped away from where Rosy and Rad were packing up their equipment to take the call in private.

“Hello?”

For a moment all I heard was breathing, mine and the caller’s. A light went on in my head. Before the voice on the other end started to speak, I knew what was going to be said and a flair of irritation burned white-hot in my chest.

“We want what be—”

“Fine!” I was tired of this prank calling bullshit. I refused to let the game be played by someone else’s rules. “You want the damned book, Caly? Come and get it, you spiky bitch. Tomorrow night at ten-forty-seven at the Sugarloaf Building.” I took a chapter from Cornelius’s book on down-to-the-minute rendezvous times to throw her a curveball. “Don’t be late!”

I hung up on her, muted my phone, and returned to helping Rosy and Rad load up their stuff. I’d call Cooper later and let him know what I’d done, which I doubted would elicit any praise from him. He’d want to be the one to make the game rules, but I was not his pawn.

For the rest of the afternoon, I focused on showing a few houses to an older, soon-to-retire couple who’d stopped by on my return from the Sugarloaf Building.

Natalie joined Aunt Zoe, the kids, Doc, and me for supper. After Addy and Layne headed to their rooms to finish their homework, the four of us adults sat around the kitchen table, talking about the weather, work, my kids—normal stuff for once. The break from the insanity that was my current life warmed my soul, making me feel normal again.

Doc’s fingers caressing the back of my neck reminded me that killer or not, I was still very much a girl who wanted someone to curl up next to every night. Someone without feathers or a beak who didn’t leave non-golden eggs hidden throughout my room in the morning.

I thought about telling the three of them about the phone call from Caly and my response but kept quiet, wanting to enjoy this happy moment a bit longer.

“Where’s Harvey?” Natalie grabbed a beer from the fridge.

“Another date,” Aunt Zoe answered, opening the lid to her Betty Boop cookie jar. She pulled out a snickerdoodle and offered it to Doc, who shook his head. I on the other hand took it. I was not one to turn down sugar, especially when it was in the form of a cookie.

The cookie jar reminded me of another—one with a clown head on it that was in Natalie’s possession. I turned to Doc. “Last night when we were in the Sugarloaf Building, you mentioned something about precognition.”

He nodded once.

“Is that the same thing as someone using an object that was associated with a person when he or she was alive to lure their ghost after they are dead?”

“That would be more along the lines of a retrocognitor.”

“A what?” Natalie asked.

“Precognition is used to determine a possible future. Retrocognition, on the other hand, is based on acquiring information from past lives. Some believe it can be used to prompt for events that happened between physical lives when the consciousness existed in a different dimension.”

I let that soak in for a moment. “But not just any medium can use retrocognition?”

“Correct.” His fingers stopped caressing. “What’s with these questions?”

I looked over at Natalie, who’d returned to the table. She’d conferred with Cornelius about the lid, but I was curious how Doc would feel about her plan.