Better Off Dead in Deadwood (44 page)

As I reached the top step, I realized I’d gotten turned around in the old building. When I’d made my way to that bathroom before, I’d gone via the opera house lobby. This particular stairwell dumped me out at the art gallery located in the front of the building looking out at Main Street. Frickety frack!

Stopping to cross my legs for a moment, I debated my options—go back downstairs and pee in the alley, or head up the next flight of stairs and see if I could find a bathroom up there. Fingers crossed that my post-children bladder would hold on a bit longer, I climbed up the next set of stairs.

At the top was a wood door with a glass window. I peered through the glass, recognizing the old library from the tour Cornelius and I had taken last week. Back before the big fire in the early eighties, this was where the Lead library had been housed. Now the books and librarians were all next door.

The room was lit thanks to the hallway light shining through the open door across the way. If memory served me right, there was a unisex bathroom in that hallway.

I tried the old library door handle, surprised to find it unlocked. What were the chances? A janitor must be around somewhere, or the room was left unlocked during rehearsal.

Skirting the old librarian’s desk, I charged into the hall. The bathroom was right where I’d remembered it.

Sweet porcelain gods! I’d made it.

I grabbed the door handle and pulled. The door didn’t budge.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” I cried and kicked the door, the effort almost making me pee my pants.

I leaned against the door, goosebumps now coating my skin from the pain. The whirring of the elevator gave me a start, but I had to pee so badly now I didn’t care if someone caught me up here.

The elevator …

The bathroom Helen had been crying in was right next to the elevator one floor below me, I was almost positive. I rushed over and hit the elevator down button, glancing at the set of stairs next to it. I didn’t think my bladder could handle another set of stairs without letting loose. The elevator doors slid open seconds later. I scurried inside and hit the first floor button. The “L” button below it was lit up. Someone else was playing elevator tag with me.

My eyeballs were drowning by the time the bell dinged for the first floor. I dashed out the door, made a sharp right, and scurried down the hall to the women’s restroom. The door swung open with ease and I could have sworn angels from heaven sang out. I hit the lights and flew into the first stall. I barely got my jeans down before my bladder gave way.

“That was close,” I whispered, closing my eyes in relief.

One long sigh and many, many seconds later, I was standing again, buttoning my jeans, when the bathroom door creaked open. Without thinking, I climbed up on the toilet seat and squatted down so my feet wouldn’t be visible.

In the gap under the door, I caught a glimpse of white as someone passed by. At the same time, a strange mewling hum reached my ears. Then I heard a stall latch clatter into place.

What in the heck? Was someone crying?

The main bathroom door banged open, smacking into the tiles next to my stall wall. I barely managed to stifle my gasp of surprise.

A short shriek came from the other stall’s occupant.

“Where are you, my little pretty?” asked a high-pitched voice that sounded almost child-like.

Clack, clack, clack …
A pair of black boots with steel-spiked heels passed in front of my stall. They looked like something my sister would wear when man-hunting for one of my boyfriends.

The scrape of something metallic along the stall doors made the hairs on my arms stand up.

“Please,” a woman cried out, her voice squeaky with fear. It had to be the woman in white who’d come in first. “Please don’t hurt me.”

I knew that voice. My brain scrambled to make the connection.

Clack.

Scrape.

Clack.

Scrape.

“I won’t tell a soul, I swear,” the first woman said.

Then I knew with cold certainty and my heart thumped in my ears. It was Helen Tarragon.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Shit.

Why this bathroom? Why now? What was I? Some kind of psychic magnet for damsels in distress? I should have peed in the damned alley.

What was I going to do? My gaze darted around the stall—a roll of toilet paper and a little plastic trash can for tampons and sanitary pads. That was it. I had no weapons, no way of helping Helen short of throwing Harvey’s smiley-face keychain and my phone at whoever had chased her in here.

My phone!

Tugging it free of my jacket pocket, I pushed the wake-up button and stared down at my screen. The battery showed a thin red sliver, and the reception was down to just one bar.

Double shit.

The scraping and clacking stopped at the same time. “Of course you won’t tell,” Miss Spikey Heels said. I frowned at the ceiling. How did I know that voice? “Because I’m going to take that knife from you and cut out your tongue. Then I’ll slice the rest of you apart piece by piece as you watch.”

I froze. Was she serious?

The mewling started up again.

Hands trembling now, I opened my phone’s address book, scrolling down. My finger hesitated over
Doc
. Right above it was
Detective Cooper
. If what Doc said was true and Cooper really wanted to help, he’d better get his ass over here pronto.

I tapped Cooper’s name and typed:
Need help ASAP!! Helen in trouble!!!!

After I’d hit Send, I realized he had no clue where we were. I added:
Girls bathroom main floor Opera H—

My shoe slipped off the side of the toilet rim. I caught myself without making a sound, but my phone slipped from my grip. I watched in horror as it splashed right into the toilet, the screen with my text for Cooper on it going black as it sank.

Silence came from the other side of the stall door.

I winced.
Way to go, numb-nuts.

Clack, clack, clack.
The boots came into view under my door. “Come out, come out whoever you are,” she said in a sing-song voice.

I had a brief déjà vu of playing a deadly game of hide-and-seek with Wolfgang while his house sizzled and crackled with flames.

Now what? Short of keeling over dead, which sounded tempting for a split-second, there was no escaping whoever was on the other side of the door. I climbed down off the toilet seat and unlocked the door. Using it as a shield, I poked my head out.

My jaw fell open. “Caly?”

The pixie was covered in spikes—from her white-blonde pokey hair to her heels, including a dog collar, wrist bands, and a belt that she had wrapped around her knuckles. For a moment, I wondered if I’d gotten mixed up in some kind of kooky sexual fetish, hide-and-seek game Helen and Caly liked to play. But then I remembered Caly’s threat about cutting Helen to pieces and confusion mixed with fear to create an uncomfortable flutter in my chest.

“Well, well, well,” Caly practically purred. “If it isn’t Cornelius’s little friend.”

Little? I hadn’t been “little” since I got knocked up with twins, and compared to Caly, even in her big girl heels, I was an Amazonian queen.

The handicapped stall door behind the sprite-turned-dominatrix swung open without a sound. My favorite zombie bride crept out, her index finger held to her lips. In a glance, I noticed her veil was missing and her makeup looked smudged. If this were some role-playing farce, Peter was going to be pissed when he saw her.

I focused back on Caly, going along with Helen the zombie because she was less spikey. “Listen, I won’t hold you two up. I just needed to—”

Caly reached out and pinched my lips shut.

Funny, I hadn’t noticed her long, sharpened fingernails before. Did Cornelius know she had this sadistic streak? Maybe that was one of the things he liked about her.

In my peripheral vision, I saw Helen pull something from behind her. Something thin and—oh, my God, it was a knife!

Surely, it was a prop. It had to be a prop, right? This was what Caly had been threatening to use moments ago. It must be part of their game—

Before I could finish my thought, Helen swooped in with a battle cry and planted the knife into Caly’s left shoulder blade.

I stared into Caly’s face, waiting for it to contort in agony, for screams of pain to follow. But the only movement was her lips twisting upward in a grin that would have scared the piss out of me if I’d had any left.

“That was a really foolish thing to do, Helen,” Caly said and let go of my lips.

How did … How could …
What was going on?!!

This had to be part of the zombie wedding musical play. They must have come up here to practice a scene. That had to be what this was. I just happened to get caught in the middle of it … so they were improvising.

Helen stumbled backwards, her eyes widening as Caly took a step toward her.

Clack.

I saw the knife lodged in Caly’s back. It looked real, but there was no blood around the blade. Dang, the special effects for this play were going to kick ass.

Caly cackled.
Clack clack.

Helen spun around and tried to escape into the end stall. Caly’s hand snaked out and snared her by the hair, yanking her back out.

Grabbing onto the stall door, Helen struggled for freedom. The terror on her face looked so real that I stepped free of my door-shield and reached for her.

Helen craned her neck in my direction. Her eyes were extra wide, fear rimming them. “Run!”

My feet stayed glued to the tiles as shock overrode my instinct to flee.

Caly grabbed Helen around the neck and lifted her completely off the floor, as if she were nothing more than a Chihuahua.

My gaze sped from Helen’s dangling toes and the torn, blood-splattered hem of her zombie wedding dress up to her face. Her skin was ashen, her mouth gaping at me, her eyes bulging.

Holy shit! How did a pixie lift a full-sized woman clear off the floor like that?

“Put her down!” I shouted and took another step toward her.

“No,” Caly smiled at me over her shoulder. “Not until I’m finished. Then it’s your turn.”

Tears ran down Helen’s cheeks. She struggled, clawing at Caly’s grip. The whites of her eyes were red, her gaze darting frantically before landing on me again.
Run!
she croaked then reached down and jammed her thumb into Caly’s eye.

Screaming, Caly whipped Helen into the closed stall door hard enough to break it clean off its hinges.

My adrenaline kicked into overdrive and I flew out of the bathroom.

The door across from the elevator was locked.

The elevator! No, it would take too long. I raced past the stairs that led up and sprinted to the door at the end of the hall. It would take me to the opera house lobby.

A loud crash and the sound of glass breaking rang out from the bathroom.

I slammed into the door to the lobby. It didn’t budge.

Fuck!

Behind me, the elevator dinged, the doors opening. What the …? I didn’t remember pressing any buttons.

I waited to see if someone stepped out. When nobody did, I raced back and inside, punching the button for the next floor down several times. “Come on, close!” I cried.

A thud came from the hallway, sounding like the bathroom door slamming open. I jammed the door-close button again and again.

Clack, clack, clack, clack.

Oh, Jesus, why couldn’t I have been wrong?

“Close, close, close, close …” I whispered the order to the elevator as I backed into the corner.

Clack, clack, clack.

The doors started to shut. Something big and white flew in, crashing into the wall next to me.

I screamed as the doors closed, shutting me in with Helen Tarragon, who stared up at me with one sightless red-rimmed eye. A long, wide splinter of mirrored glass stuck out of her other. Blood oozed out her eye socket and dripped onto the elevator floor, its coppery scent wafting up to me. I started to retch at the same time as I gasped for air.

Panic screeched in my head, but something compelled me to tear loose a strip of satin from Helen’s hem. I wrapped it around my palm and fingers, protecting them.

The elevator dinged, announcing my arrival on the ground floor. With no time to spare, I squinted and reached down with my satin covered fingers, grabbing the broken piece of mirror. It pulled free of Helen’s eye socket. The squishy-slurping sound nearly made me throw up all over her blood-covered dress. Trying not to think about what I was doing, I wiped the blade of glass off on her dress and held it out in front of me as the elevator doors slid open.

I stumbled into the dark basement hallway, discombobulated by what I’d just witnessed. Someone had shut off the overhead lights, damn it. Which way was the Picklemobile?

A commotion of
clacks
and
thuds
came from the stairwell to my left.

I turned right, away from Caly. Staggering into a run with my arms out in front of me in the darkness, I smacked into the double doors. With a quick tug, I opened one. The floor and walls in the covered pool section of the hall were lit in an orange glow from the outside streetlights that shone through the glass exit doors. I pulled the door shut behind me and leapt all six steps at once, racing past an open doorway on my left. I was halfway to the exit when I remembered the dead battery in the Picklemobile and slid to a stop.