Better Off Dead in Deadwood (47 page)

“No, it’s going to have to be something stronger.”

Cooper strode back toward us, his face rife with creases showing his frustration and anger. “Did the paramedics give her the ‘all clear’?” he asked Doc.

“Yep. Only scrapes and bruises this time.”

“I’m sitting right here, Detective,” I said, waving my hand in front of his steely gaze. “Fully conscious and able to speak for myself.”

He turned to me, looking like he might sink his teeth into my hand and rip it off, so I sat on it. “Any bites, Parker?”

I frowned. What? Had I said that last thought aloud? “Bites?”

“Yeah, your buddy over there has a nice chunk taken out of his arm. It’ll leave an interesting scar.”

Caly had bitten him? What the hell? That must have been why I’d heard Cornelius cry out in pain right before I called Caly’s name.

“No, she didn’t bite me,” I answered.

“She just lifted you off the floor and strangled you,” he said in a dry voice.

I nodded.

“In the same manner that she strangled Helen Tarragon,” he continued, same tone, same pinched smirk.

I nodded again. I’d gone over these details twice already. Maybe I’d get Cooper a hearing aid for Christmas this year.

“And just to confirm,” Cooper continued, “we’re talking about a five-foot-tall, slender, young girl who probably weighs around one hundred pounds coated in mud?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Do you often weigh your women while they are coated in mud, Detective Cooper?”

“Just answer the damned question, Parker.”

“Caly’s older than you think,” I said, thinking about her conversation with Dominick that I hadn’t fully relayed to Cooper. “And she probably weighs more like one-oh-five,” especially with all of those metal spikes added in. “Oh, and don’t forget her very high heels.” I sure wouldn’t forget her clacking around in them anytime soon.

Cooper’s nostrils flared, looking all bullish. Uh oh,
el toro
alert. I leaned toward Doc, keeping my focus on the detective in case he started pawing the ground. “You didn’t happen to see a red cape, fancy jacket, and a matador hat down in the prop room, did you?”

“Get her out of my sight,” Cooper told Doc through a clenched jaw. “But don’t take her too far. I’m not done with her tonight.”

“That makes two of us,” Doc said and held out a hand to help me down. “We’ll be at my place.”

He was willing to touch me now all of a sudden? Why? And what did he mean with that “two of us” comment? If he was breaking up with me after the day I’d had, I just might go grab one of those zombie arms from the prop room and beat him with it.

I took his hand, needing his touch more than his help. After Cooper strode off, I said, “What about my kids?”

“Harvey and your aunt are taking care of them. I called while you were giving your story to Cooper the second time and let them know you were fine, but would probably be detained for quite a while.”

I looked over at Cornelius, who gave me a call-me gesture. I nodded, and then remembered that my cell phone was waterlogged and sealed in an evidence bag. I wondered who had had to fish it out of the toilet that I’d not gotten around to flushing after peeing. I’d have picked Cooper for the job.

As Doc led me toward the theatre exit at the back of the huge room, Abe Jr. waved goodbye, his bandaged arm a stark reminder of Caly’s venom. Further up the aisle, Peter Tarragon stared straight ahead as we passed, his expression dazed, shell-shocked. He was either putting on a great performance for the cops, or he still sort of liked his wife in the end.

I held tight to Doc’s hand all the way to the parking lot, moored to him while flashbacks of Caly’s deeds kept replaying in my brain, rocking my calm.

The ride to Doc’s place was quiet, filled only by the growl of his Camaro’s eight cylinders. I stared blindly into the darkness, still trying to comprehend the shitstorm I’d gone through, trying to figure out the meaning behind Dominick’s words and Caly’s threats.

He pulled into the detached garage and killed the engine, shutting the garage door with the push of a button. In the silence, we sat there for several seconds just breathing, lit by the overhead light.

I looked out through the windshield. “You don’t have any pinup girl posters on the walls in here.”

“I’m waiting for your Calamity Jane Realty ads to come out.”

I’d forgotten all about Jerry and that stupid photo shoot. Groaning, I covered my face, noticing one of my eyelashes had fallen off sometime during the evening’s shenanigans. I flipped down the visor, grimaced at the creepy clown look I had going on thanks to the makeup streaking down my face, and peeled off the remaining eyelash—the glue had loosened thanks to tears, sweat, and Caly.

“What did Dominick Masterson say to you before he made his grand exit?” Doc asked, watching me wipe my makeup off with my jacket sleeve.

“Something about it being all in my hands now.”

“That was it?”

“Well, before he said that, he cut me with his thumbnail and then sniffed my palm.” I held out my palm with the square bandage on it—my only injury besides the small slash on my face thanks to Caly’s fingernail and a few bruises on my neck where she’d tried to strangle me. “Dominick stared at my wounded hand for a moment, and when he looked up I could swear his eyes were all black and eerie looking. Then he blinked and they were back to normal.”

“And this is the same hand you used when you stabbed Caly’s arm—the arm that shriveled and turned to ash?”

“Yeah.” I mirrored his frown. “There was a bit more to their conversation than I shared with Cooper.”

“I figured that. You hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Harvey told me you didn’t get a chance to eat earlier.” He shoved open his door. “Come inside, I’ll cook you a steak.”

Right then and there, I knew it as sure as I knew the sun would rise yet another day over Deadwood—I’d fallen totally, head-over-heels, gob-smack in love with Doc. There’d be no walking away from this relationship if it crashed and burned. He’d ruined me for life. I didn’t even give a flippin’ shit anymore that he’d gone to Cooper behind my back.

And in that moment, I understood exactly why Aunt Zoe refused to open the door to her home and heart even an inch for Reid to slip back through. She couldn’t handle the pain of loving and losing him twice in one lifetime.

The feelings flooding through me made my heart shake, rattle, and roll with both excitement and dread. Falling in love was a sure-fire ticket to the Isle of Temporary Insanity, and I already had frequent flyer miles from too many trips there and back, especially since moving to town.

Doc waited for me by the door, and then walked beside me without touching again. What was going on? Was he pissed at me or not? He held the front door open for me. I resisted the urge to poke him in the ribs for messing with my head and followed him into his kitchen, dropping onto the barstool he pulled out for me.

“Okay,” he said, sliding a cold beer in front of me, and then grabbing a cast iron skillet from a hook next to his stove. “I’ll cook, you talk. This time, give me the real story—the full one, not the abridged version.”

So I did, starting with the moment I’d walked out his door after our fight until the moment he’d joined me in that dark, empty pool. I told him every detail I could remember about Helen, about Caly and Dominick, and what was said about Jane. I ended with how Cornelius had fit into the evening’s events.

Doc listened with a periodic head nod or frown. I finished as he set a plate with the thick cut of steaming steak in front of me. I leaned down and breathed in the heavenly smell of cooked meat, groaning with the first bite.

I swallowed and followed it with a gulp of cold beer. “Outrunning a bitch from hell makes a girl hungry.”

His grin made the corners of his eyes crinkle. “I think you had help.”

“Cornelius did distract her.” And screwed up my initial getaway plan. I took another bite of steak.

“I’m not talking about Cornelius. Don’t you think it’s a little odd how that elevator just showed up when you said you didn’t push the button?”

I nodded, chewing.

“And what about those double doors that you were able to open but Caly had to break through? And the door knob that turned after you locked it, but Caly wasn’t there yet?”

“I still can’t believe someone so petite could tear both doors from their hinges. She must have had cans of spinach stuffed in her bra.”

“She also splintered the oak door to the props room,” he reminded me.

“I’ll never forget the way she threw Helen like she was nothing more than a rag doll.”

“My point is that I think someone was leading you away from Caly, helping you escape from her.”

I pointed my fork at him. “You had to leave the pool because of a ghost, didn’t you?”

“Yes, a boy.”

Cornelius’s troublemaker? “Did he drown in the pool way back when it was actually filled with water?”

“No, he suffocated. Based on what I could tell from the outfit worn by the nurse who tried to help him, he was a casualty from the 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic. They’d shut down the theatre that fall due to the rapid spread of the disease and started using the building as a makeshift hospital.”

“You think he may have been helping me get away from Caly?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Why? Why help me and not Helen?”

“Maybe he had been trying to help Helen and then you showed up and he had to choose.”

“Is it normal for a ghost to be able to lock doors and push elevator buttons?” I thought about Cornelius claiming the boy ghost had taken his hat and hidden it in that crawlspace.

Doc shrugged, taking a drink from my beer. “What part of ghosts existing is normal?”

I guessed that for Doc, ghosts were as normal as cornflakes and milk. “In your experience, then, how many other ghosts have you come across who could physically move things?”

“Only a couple.”

“Is this little boy as strong as Prudence?”

“No. It’s one thing to use psychokinesis to move things or turn locks; it’s a whole other level to inhabit another person, speak through them, and maintain control of the helm so to speak while suppressing them at the same time.”

I swallowed. “Do you think the boy knew about Caly all along?”

“Are you even chewing that steak?”

“It’s a blend of inhaling and chewing, smartass.” I took another bite.

“Maybe he knew,” Doc answered my previous question. “Maybe he saw Caly kill Jane.”

“Is there any way you can go inside him and find out?”

He pushed away from the counter, crossing his arms. “No. Communicating with the dead is not as easy as they make out on TV. At least not for any mediums I’ve ever come across.”

I absorbed that as I ate. “Do you think ghosts can talk to each other?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you should ask your friend Cornelius about that. He’s the official ghost whisperer.”

The doorbell rang.

“Cooper,” I said and snarled in the direction of the front door.

“Down, tiger,” Doc said with a chuckle and went down the hall to open the door.

While he was gone, I picked up the T-bone and tore the bits of meat from the bone I couldn’t get with my fork.

“Real classy, Parker,” Cooper said, striding into the kitchen. “Especially with that makeup job.” He turned to Doc, who followed on the detective’s heels. “Where did you find her? On the set of
The Planet of the Apes
?”

I could always count on Cooper to point out that I looked like shit after a day spent wrestling alligators and psychotic bitches from hell. I patted my curls and plucked out a piece of straw mixed in the mess.

“I had to choose between Zira or Violet,” Doc said, winking at me. “Violet won—she has better hair.”

I dropped the T-bone on the plate and wiped my mouth on the napkin Doc held out. “Wasn’t Zira a chimpanzee?”

“And a doctor,” Cooper supplied. “I’d have picked the smart one.”

Flashing the detective my greasy middle finger, I carried my plate over to the sink. “Can we hurry up and get this over with? I want to wash this whole mess off in the shower and then bury my head under a pillow for a few hours.”

Whose shower and pillow was still up in the air, but my vote was for Doc’s if he’d share with me.

Cooper stole my barstool. “Sure. Walk me through your actions again, from the moment you pulled into the parking lot until I found you in the pool.”

“We’ve gone through this twice already.”

“Third time’s a charm.” He pulled out the notepad he’d been scribbling in earlier when I’d given him my statements and clicked his pen.

When I finished, he wrote one last scribble and closed his notepad, stuffing it back in his pocket. “We found the knife,” he told me.

“You mean the one Helen had in the bathroom?”

He nodded.

“Was it a prop?”

“No. But there wasn’t any blood on it.”

I could have sworn Helen buried it in Caly’s shoulder. “Maybe Caly wiped it clean after pulling it out.”

“Maybe. We’re checking the sink area thoroughly for blood splatters—the toilets, too. We also dusted the handle for prints and sent them off for analysis.” He stood. “What I can’t make sense of is you claiming Caly was stabbed with this knife and she didn’t react to it at all. Yet when you stuck her with a piece of broken mirror, Caly’s arm did the shrivel-and-blow away routine that your pal Cornelius confirmed.”

“Weird, huh?” I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t make sense of it either.

“This so-called weird stuff seems to happen to you a lot these days, especially when it involves sharp objects.”

“It’s only happened twice.” I suddenly put two and two together. My eyes widening, I looked at Doc. Caly had white-blonde hair. She’d complained about her contacts to Dominick. “Holy shit,” I whispered. “Caly is an albino.”

Of course, it made sense now. Her arm had disintegrated just like the big nasty albino I’d stabbed at Mudder Brothers; and she’d left the same barbed hook at the bottom of The Open Cut next to Jane’s body.

“Great, another disappearing albino case for me to solve,” Cooper said, his face one big scowl. “You know, your little incidents are starting to sound like Scooby Doo episodes.”