Nearly Departed in Deadwood (30 page)

      “How’s Addy?” he asked, as soon as the front door closed behind me.

      “She’s well, thanks for asking.” Hands on hips, I waited for what he really had to say.

      Doc glanced toward Calamity Jane’s door, then seized my arm and towed me around the far side of the building where a mostly empty parking lot was our only audience.

      I was in no mood to be jerked around this morning. My back to the brick wall, I demanded, “What’s going on, Doc?”

      “I was thinking about Jeff Wymonds a lot last night.”

      That made me pause. I thought I was the only one who laid awake obsessing about Jeff. “Well, he is a handsome man.”

      Doc opened his mouth, then closed it. His eyes drilled mine. “You think so?”

      “Not really.”

      His smile rounded the corners of his eyes. “Good.”

     
Good?
Peachy, another mixed signal to spend hours analyzing. “But Natalie does.” I couldn’t resist the dig.

      He shrugged. “Her tastes seem quite eclectic.”

      “You don’t know the half of it.” Then I remembered with a twang in my gut that he’d be paying her a house call this evening. “Although, you will after tonight.”

      “Probably,” was his vague response to my little jealous poke. “Anyway, I want you to take me to Jeff’s house.”

      “Why?”

      “I want to see it.”

      “How did you know Jeff was my client?” I hadn’t even drawn up the contract yet.

      “I overheard you yesterday at lunch.”

      “Oh, yeah.” I kept forgetting about lunch.

      “And Harvey called me last night.” Doc’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “He told me about Jeff’s proposition in the ER.”

      My neck flash-burned. “Harvey has a bucket mouth.”

      “So you’ve said before.”

      “Well, I can’t show you Jeff’s house yet. It’s not ready. We have a lot of cleaning up to do first.” A garbage truck’s worth of cleaning.

      “I don’t care. I want to see it.”

      As thirsty as I was for a sale, I wasn’t seeing any palm-tree-lined mirages in this housing desert. “You’re up to something, Doc.”

      “I’m just curious.”

      “What do you think you’ll find at Jeff’s?”

      Doc shrugged. “He’s still not above suspicion.”

      I agreed, but was too stubborn to let Doc know. “He’s going through a nasty divorce.”

      “Harvey mentioned that.”

      “His daughter is having serious issues with depression.”

      “You feel sorry for him now?”

      “Not to mention that he saved Addy’s life.” Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but he did rescue her.

      “All of which makes him a more sympathetic person-of-interest.”

      Doc wasn’t going to budge on this one, I could tell. Sighing, I tucked a breeze-loosened curl behind my ear. “Trust me, his house is not your style.”

      “Really.” Doc caught my hand and didn’t let go. “What is my style, Violet?”

      “Ummm.” I stared at the circles he was making on my palm with his thumb, feeling reverberations from his touch in too many places to count. He was scrambling my brain. “Blue.”

      “Blue?” His laugh was low, deep. “I was thinking it was more vibrant, more ... I don’t know ...
violet
, perhaps.”

      I looked up into his dark eyes. “You’re flirting with me.”

      “You noticed, huh?” His thumb moved to the inside of my wrist, still circling.

      “What are you doing, Doc?”

      “Something I shouldn’t.”

      “Then you’d better stop.”

      “I know.” His fingers climbed up my forearm. He leaned closer, his breath quickening, matching mine.

      “You’re not stopping.” Nor did I want him to, not until he’d reached my toes.

      “You mess with my head, Violet.”

      “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

      “It is.”

      “I don’t understand why.”

      He let go of my arm and stepped back, the fire in his eyes banking. “I want to see Jeff Wymonds’ place.”

      His ability to snap in and out of lust made me want to beat him with my shoe. My inferno still raged, my breath still labored, my heart still galloped. No fair!

      I gave in. “Fine, but I’ll have to call Jeff and see how he feels about it.” Maybe I’d figure out a way to ask why he’d tossed those clothes in the Dumpster while I was at it. We seemed to be on much friendlier terms now that I was his agent— and therapist.

      “Thanks.”

     
Whatever
. I stared over Doc’s shoulder, across the parking lot, not wanting to look at him any more if I couldn’t touch him. He sure knew how to suck the helium right out of my balloon. “Anything else?” I asked.

      A flicker of sun-glare by the Mudder Brothers Funeral Parlor caught my eye. I squinted through my sunglasses, recognizing Ray’s vehicle parked behind the two-story building, the back of his SUV wide open.

      “Yes. Are you still going to dinner tomorrow night with your secret admirer?”

      I dragged my gaze back to Doc. “Of course.”

      “Don’t.”

      “I have to.” I had no choice now. He knew Addy’s name.

      One of the funeral parlor’s double back doors opened. As I watched, Ray walked to his driver’s side door, leaned in, and grabbed a pair of gloves. He slid them on, looking left and right, and then marched back inside the building.

      “No, you don’t, Violet.”

      “Well, I am. End of discussion.”

      “Fine.” Doc’s tone said it was anything but. “You’ll let me know when you get the
okay
from Jeff?”

      Both of the funeral parlor’s back doors swung open.

      “Uh, sure.”

      This time, Ray had company—a short, beefy guy, with a white buzz cut. Together, they hauled a big, wooden crate out through the double doors and hefted it into the tail of Ray’s SUV. The weight of the crate made the vehicle’s springs bounce.

      “What is
that
?” I whispered.

      When Doc turned and followed my gaze, I realized I’d spoken out loud. “What?”

      First the Missing posters, now a heavy crate from a funeral parlor. Something told me Ray was up to no good, and I was not going to get much sleep until I knew what degree of
no good
it was. However, I didn’t need Doc harping on me about this, too. “Never mind. It was just a coyote.”

      “Violet, your nose twitches when you lie.”

      I covered my telltale appendage with my hand. Before Doc could drill me with any more questions or glares, I tossed out an “I’ll call you later,” and raced back to Calamity Jane’s.

      Mona’s fingernails were still tapping away when I dropped into my chair. I shot a sideways peek at Ray’s desk. Somehow, I needed to get everyone out of the office, because before the day was through, I planned to do a little rummaging.

      * * *

      An hour after Calamity Jane’s closing time, I sat alone in the office, staring at the key lying on my desktop.

      All afternoon I’d been in and out, running petty errands for Jane, managing to sneak some peeks in Ray’s desk drawers here and there. Unfortunately, the only thing I’d found besides the ordinary desk-drawer paraphernalia was a Rec Center Programs’ schedule. While this piece of evidence had a possible tie-in to the pool, it wasn’t exactly a bloody knife.

      Jeff had stopped by during one of my ins, signed the sales contract I’d typed up, and left his house key. He’d begged a favor—babysit Kelly tonight. Something about his brother over in Spearfish needing his help.

      I’d agreed. For one, Kelly was already at Aunt Zoe’s, according to the last call I’d received from Layne requesting spaghetti for supper. Her spending the night caused no hardship for me and meant I could keep a close eye on her and my daughter. For two, I’d thought more this afternoon about Emma’s jacket, the one that Jeff had thrown out, as well as Doc’s description of Jeff—
a sympathetic person-of-interest
, and recognized a golden opportunity when it landed on my desk.

      Jeff hadn’t blinked an eye when I’d asked his permission to pay a visit to his house this evening to assess what we’d need to do to prepare it for sale. Now, the only question was, did I have the guts to follow through and go play Miss Marple?

      I flipped open my cell phone and dialed Harvey’s number. He picked it up on the third ring.

      “Harvey, it’s Violet. I got Jeff’s house key, and I’m thinking about heading over to take a peek inside.” I’d feel more comfortable snooping while my backup sat waiting for me in my Bronco, his shotgun by his side. “What are you doing right now?”

      “Talking to the cops.”

      That made me blink. “What? Why?”

      “I caught something in one of my traps. So I called Coop. He brought some friends to the party.”

      “What did you catch?”

      “An ear.”

     
Ear?
“Like a coyote’s ear?”

      “No. A human ear.”

      I had to have heard that wrong. “Come again?”

      “Part of the scalp, too. Looks like the trap tore it right off.”

      I cringed. “Oh, Jesus.”

      “But there’s something funny about it.”

      “Besides the obvious?”

      He grunted. “There’s no blood.”

      “No blood?” I was still having trouble bending my mind around the first tidbit. An ear?

      “Nope. It’s like it’s been licked clean.”

      Yuck! My stomach clenched. “What the hell?”

      “And it took the damned squirrel I used as bait to boot.” A voice mumbled something in the background. “I gotta go, Coop needs me out back.” The phone went quiet.

      I sat there listening to the silence for another minute, wondering what was hiding in the hills behind Harvey’s barn and who was missing an ear.

      Shaking the bizarre conversation with Harvey from my thoughts, I returned to the question at hand—was I going to go search Jeff’s place or not? As much as I hated to admit it, I wanted to call Doc, but he was at Natalie’s, having dinner. I didn’t want to think about what was for dessert.

      I took a deep breath, grabbed my purse and the key, and headed for the back door.

      As I climbed Jeff’s front porch and hauled open the duct-taped screen that had been hung back up, a cloud covered the sun. Figured. Just what I needed. Mother Nature to add some special effects to my task.

      I steadied my hand, shoved the key in the lock, and turned the knob. The door popped open. The shadowed foyer waited beyond, exhaling stale cigarette smoke.

      Coughing, I pushed the door wide. “Hello? Anyone home?”

      The thump of the door against the wall behind it was my answer. I stepped inside. The screen door’s spring rasped with a metallic creak as it closed behind me, the latch clicking shut. I could have sworn it echoed.

      I fumbled with the light switch, breathing easier under 60 watts. The kitchen meandered off to my right. I’d seen that room before, and the laundry and bathroom beyond it, so I veered left, through the dining room, through the archway, into a living room.

      A leather recliner held court in front of a TV cabinet filled with electronics galore. The chair’s sweat-stained armrests and scarred seat cushion, along with the worn, dirty carpet at its base, reminded me of its owner. A lumpy sofa leaned against the far wall, below a long window exposing the tattered backyard. I could see the dirty water in Kelly’s kiddie pool from my vantage point. The only thing suspicious in this room was the fluorescent green circle painted on the wall next to the TV.

      I tiptoed deeper into the house, passing a small nursery on my left. Tiny clothes were stacked high on top of a changing table. The crib disassembled, leaning against the wall. Donna must not have come with a moving truck yet.

      On my right, another bathroom. I didn’t want to look in there after what I’d seen in the toilet in the other bathroom on my last visit.

      Next on the right, Kelly’s room. I flicked on the light, barely able to see the pink carpet under the piles of scattered clothes and dolls and stuffed bears and books. A picture of Addy sitting on a green dinosaur was tacked to the wall above Kelly’s headboard. I weaved through the mess and leaned in close to see it. Addy was waving at the camera.

      The front screen door banged shut.

      I gasped, my knees buckling, dropping onto the bed.
Shit!
Was Jeff home? I held my breath, listening with every muscle.

      “Violet?” a baritone voice called.

      I almost fell off the bed. Stumbling to my feet, I found Doc in the kitchen, sniffing. Wearing a pair of khaki pants and a white, rolled-sleeved, Oxford shirt open at the collar, he made my breath catch again. I shoved aside my stupid lust and asked, “What in the hell are you doing here?”

      He crossed his arms, a muscle ticked in his jaw. “You shouldn’t have come here without me? It’s not safe. Why didn’t you call?”

      “I forgot.” I lied with a straight face.

      His lips thinned. “You forgot to call me, but you remembered to call Harvey?”

      Ah, that explained Doc’s sudden appearance. Damned Harvey. “I didn’t want to interrupt your date with Natalie.”

      “It’s a business dinner,” he clarified.

      Not according to Natalie. “Why are you here instead of there?”

      “I rescheduled.”

      “Why?”

      “Something came up.”

      “What?” I pushed.

      His stare pegged me to the wall. “You.”

      “What’s that supposed to mean?”

      “You figure it out.” He grabbed my wrist and tugged me toward the dining room. “Come on, give me the tour.”

      He didn’t let go as we moved from room to room, retracing my steps more slowly, breathing deeply throughout. In Kelly’s room, Doc noticed the picture of Addy. “Is that what you looked like at her age?”

      “Basically, but my hair was curlier. I wish I had Addy’s straight hair.”