Dead Case in Deadwood (8 page)

The screen door
whapped
shut behind me. I tip-toed
across the living room’s hardwood floor, wondering if I’d find my aunt ready to
throw plates after Reid’s visit. I peeked around the kitchen archway and locked
eyes with old man Harvey.

His thick caterpillar eyebrows scrunched up at the sight of
me. "What are you sneaking around for, girl?" He kicked out the chair
opposite him at the table. "Have a seat. I have a bone to pick with you."

Now what? I skirted the chair and headed for the fridge,
which smelled like fresh lemons when I pulled it open. "Where’s Aunt Zoe?"

"In the basement sufferin’ from a case of ruffled
feathers."

I grabbed the pitcher of lemonade from the top shelf. "Did
Elvis get stuck behind the washer again?"

Addy’s pet chicken shared several quirks with its King of
Rock-n-Roll namesake—a cowlick (or in the chicken’s case, a comb that flipped to
the side in front), a love for peanut butter and bananas, and an ability to drive
some women crazy—namely me.

"No. She’s looking for shotgun shells."

That made me pause midway to the counter, pitcher in hand. "Shotgun
shells?" At his nod, I asked, "Is Bessie low on ammo?"

Harvey had named his favorite shotgun Bessie. I’d had the
pleasure of meeting the pee-my-pants end of Bessie’s double barrels up close
and personal the first time I’d visited Harvey’s ranch. Lucky for me I worked
for a realty office wanting to help him sell his ranch and not a bank trying to
take it away.

"Bessie is fine. The shells are for your aunt’s
shotgun."

"Does this have anything to do with a certain captain of
the Fire Department?"

"Yep. He’s knocking on the back door again … well, make
that the front door this time."

I lowered the pitcher onto the counter. "What are you
doing here?"

"Beatrice wasn’t home." He said it as if Miss
Geary, Aunt Zoe’s hot-pants-wearing neighbor, being gone explained everything.

"Was Reid here when you got here?"

"No, he dropped me off."

"Where’s your other pickup?" I reached for a glass
from the cupboard and palmed a weighty, blue-tinted drinking glass, one of Aunt
Zoe’s original pieces she’d blown in her glass workshop out behind the house.

"Coop is using it to move some of his stuff into
storage while you try to sell his place. Which reminds me, Coop wants you to visit
him tomorrow at the station."

That made it sound like Detective Cooper and I were going to
have a nice little picnic together. I was getting tired of hanging out in the
Deadwood Police Station. If we kept this up, the detective might as well make
me an honorary deputy so I wouldn’t have to sign in, anymore. "Did Cooper
say why he wants to see me?"

"Coop never explains why, he just barks orders and
expects everyone to follow them. It probably has to do with that damned corpse
of yours."

"It’s not mine." I cursed under my breath.

Cooper’s drill sergeant style brought out the ornery mule in
me. The fact that he kept wanting to talk to me about a dead body had my
heartburn trying to melt my esophagus. What part of "I don’t know, dammit!"
did he not understand?

Rather than burn through any more stomach lining about why
Cooper undoubtedly wanted to prod me again about the dead guy, I returned to
the subject of shotgun shells.

"So, what happened between Aunt Zoe and Reid?"

"How should I know?"

"Weren’t you sitting right here with them?"

"I was in the john. My damned prostate has me dripping
like a leaky pipe today."

I made a note to have that visual memory removed during my
upcoming lobotomy.

"When I came out, she was already spittin’ fire and
threatenin’ to fill him full of buckshot if he didn’t get the hell out of her
kitchen."

"Then what happened?"

"The fool laughed."

I grimaced.

"Exactly. That man has been around long enough to know
better than to even twitch a lip at a pissed off woman who owns a shotgun."

"I wonder what happened between them in the past that
has her so mad."

"Why don’t you ask her?"

"I did. She wouldn’t spill."

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Aunt Zoe had told me that
until I came clean on what was going on between me and Doc, she refused to
explain what her problem was with Reid. It was basic Spaghetti Western Mexican Standoff
101 stuff.

"Hmph. You get your big ole stubborn ass from her."

"Leave my big ole ass out of this."

His gold teeth gleamed through his wide grin. "Anyway, I
told Reid to get the hell out of here before she came back upstairs and filled
him full of daylight."

"Good thing he listened."

Harvey snickered and pulled a chocolate chip cookie from Aunt
Zoe’s Betty Boop cookie jar. "I ain’t ever seen your aunt so fired up
before. Reid really steams her buns."

In more ways than one, I’d bet, judging by the man’s charm
and good looks.

"Speaking of steamed buns," Harvey said, "did
you pay a visit to Doc today?"

"Yeah, why?" Did Harvey know something about
Tiffany’s phone call?

"I figured." He pointed a cookie at me. "Just
wondering how much he appreciated that there dress you’re about to fall out of."

"Oh, shut up." I yanked up the knot at my sternum,
tucking my boobs in behind the fabric as best I could.

Harvey was the only soul in town who officially knew about
my rolls in the hay with Doc. The old buzzard might be a blow hard, but his
beady eyes didn’t miss a thing when it came to the soap opera that was my life.

After one last tug, I wrinkled my nose at him. "And quit
looking at my chest."

"When you leave them hanging out like that, anyone with
half a testicle can’t miss ‘em. Doc still has both of his jelly beans, right?"

My neck warmed. "None of your business, old man."

He wheezed out a few laughs. "That’s what I figured."

I finished pouring my glass of lemonade, shoved the pitcher
back in the fridge, and stole half a soft cookie from Harvey’s grasp. No sooner
had I dropped into the other chair when the basement door banged open.

Aunt Zoe strode into the kitchen, her jaw rigid, her long
silver-streaked hair pulled back in a ponytail. Cobwebs stuck to her red knit
shirt and faded blue jeans.

She slammed a dust-covered box of shotgun shells on the
table. "Where is that bastard?"

"He had to go see a man about a fire." Harvey grabbed
two more cookies.

"Wise choice." Aunt Zoe stomped over to the sink
and cranked on the faucet.

Behind her back, Harvey and I exchanged raised brows and
shoulder shrugs, and then played tug-o-war with the cookie jar. I won.

I hugged Betty Boop to my chest to hide my exposed cleavage
before sneaking a peek at my aunt.

The obvious question about her and Reid bounced on the tip
of my tongue like an Olympic high diver. But in the end I valued my hide too
much, so I crammed another cookie between my lips instead.

"What are you doing home so early, Violet?" Aunt
Zoe asked, drying her hands on a plaid kitchen towel.

"Finding my happy place." I said through a
mouthful of crumbs and chocolate. I was fairly certain chocolate chip therapy
would help me in my search, especially while sitting in Aunt Zoe’s sunny,
yellow kitchen.

Harvey wiped cookie bits from his beard. "Who popped
your balloon, little girl?"

Where to start? I decided to skip all of the gut-twinging
parts involving Doc and Tiffany sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, for obvious
reasons.

Aunt Zoe tossed the towel on the counter. "Is this
about your sister moving back in with your folks?"

I paused mid-chew, my vision coated in red for several
seconds.

No. Huh-uh. I wasn’t going to focus on that problem, either.
Instead, I announced, "I have a new client. He’s going to pay with cash."

"I have just the ranch for him. How does he feel about
headless corpses?"

Knowing Cornelius, he’d probably kick up his heels at the chance
to talk to one. Could a decapitated ghost talk? Maybe it could mime to
Cornelius about how it ended up clutching my damned business card and save me
from earning any more of Cooper’s squinty-eyed glares.

I swallowed and sat back, shoving Betty Boop Harvey’s way. "He
wants to buy a hotel."

"That’s good news, isn’t it?" Aunt Zoe dropped
into the seat between Harvey and me. "Jane must be thrilled to have a cash
buyer interested in such a big property."

"He wants to buy the Old Prospector Hotel."

"Oh," Aunt Zoe winced. "That’s too bad."

Harvey grunted. "I used to date one of the
housecleaners who worked there. She swore on her mama’s grave those ghost
rumors were true."

"My new client would agree with her. He claims he can
hear ghosts
and
communicate with them."

"No shit," Harvey said, squinting. "I could
use somebody like that."

"You could use a ghost whisperer? Why?"

"Well, he’d need to speak a lot louder than a whisper.
My grandpappy never could hear well after that dynamite accident when he was a pup."

"Are you saying what I think you’re saying?"

"Probably not. You like to use a lot fancier words than
I do most of the time."

"You believe this guy can actually talk to ghosts?"

"I don’t know. Let’s take him out to my place and see."

"You truly believe you have ghosts?"

Doc and I had had a conversation several weeks ago on this
very subject. During a visit to Harvey’s, Doc’s so-called smell radar had rung
his bell so hard upon stepping through Harvey’s front door that he’d been
knocked down. Literally. Falling right onto me.

Later, when I’d questioned Doc about the whole incident,
he’d mentioned smelling a ghost at Harvey’s—one that had been there for a long
time. But whether I believed Doc or not, I couldn’t tell Harvey anything about Doc
and his admission, due to my promise to keep my lips zipped regarding Doc’s
sixth sense.

"Yes, I told you that before when you asked if I
believed in them, remember?"

Oh, yeah. That was right after Harvey had figured out Doc
and I were fooling around. It’s no wonder I’d blocked out the ghost bit. I
could only handle one closeted secret at a time.

"And you think it’s your grandpa?"

At his nod, I glanced at Aunt Zoe to see if she was buying any
of this. She stared down at the cookie in her hand, her brow pinched. I had a
feeling her mind was elsewhere, probably at the lynching of a certain fire
captain.

Back to Harvey. "What makes you think it’s your
grandpa?"

"The ghost hits the liquor cabinet every night at nine,
just like my grandpappy used to do."

"Define ‘hits.’"

"Opens the liquor cabinet door, sometimes both of them."

I waited to see if he was going to deliver a punch line, but
apparently there wasn’t one. "Maybe your cabinet is just off-balance."

"Really, Miss Smarty Pants? And gravity works its magic
at the same time every night?" He shook his head. "It’s got to be Grandpappy.
My pa always reminisced about his daddy’s drinking habit, said you could set
your clock by him. In the end, the damned firewater killed Grandpappy’s liver, taking
him along with it."

"So, you want my client to confirm it’s your grandpa?"

"No, I want your client to ask Grandpappy where he
buried those damned jars of money. I’ve dug up the whole yard and can’t find
‘em anywhere."

"I have a metal detector down in the basement you can
use," Aunt Zoe said, rejoining us. "Maybe it would detect the lids if
there are no coins in the jars."

"I’ve tried metal detectors. There’s somethin’ in the dirt
out there that makes the radars go all scatterwonky." He scratched behind
his ear. "No, I need Violet’s ghost talker. He’d go right to the source."

I groaned and shook my head at Aunt Zoe. "I can’t
believe we’re having this conversation."

"Stranger things have happened around these parts,"
she explained with a shrug.

"I’ve always wanted to ask my grandpappy if that old
story about the two miners trapped in the mine up behind my barn is true or
just a tall tale."

"This is crazy, Harvey."

He continued as if I hadn’t tried to inject some rationale
into the conversation. "According to the old timers, the miners had three
bags full of gold that they’d stolen from the mine superintendent’s safe in
Slagton. They were stashing the gold when the mine caved in, trappin’ them."

Harvey’s words went in one ear and out the other. I was busy
trying to envision Cornelius talking to ghosts in Harvey’s living room. "Even
if ghosts do exist, how could they talk without a larynx?"

"The old timers swore that for decades after the
cave-in, if you went up in the mine, hiked back to the rock-fall, and stood
really still and quiet-like, you could hear someone tap-tap-tapping on the
other side of the timbers."

Chills spread across my shoulders and down my arms. "Ghost
or no ghost, that’s just creepy."

"I remember hearing that story years ago in the Golden
Sluice up in Lead." Aunt Zoe said, referring to the gritty local bar where
I’d met one of Lead’s high-ranking, tail-chasing, council members weeks ago to
talk about a potential sale. Unfortunately, that buying client of mine now sat
in jail awaiting trial. Such was my luck in the realty business.

Zoe continued. "The miner who told us the tale used to
live back in Slagton before the government evacuated most of the town. He
refused to go back to Slagton, swearing there was something in the water that
turned everyone sour in the head. How did he say it? ‘Made ‘em just not right,
anymore.’"

Harvey nodded. "That’s why my pa called them Whangdoodles.
One step short of plum-shit crazy."

I tried to rub away my goose bumps. After the last story I
heard about Slagton, which involved a milky-eyed demon who supposedly dug up
the graves in a local cemetery and chewed on the bones, there was no way I’d go
to Slagton. Not even with a six-pack of fully-armed Navy Seals leading the way.