by Ann Charles
I glanced at Doc. His eyes held mine, his mouth a thin pale line amidst his dark whiskers. Now I understood why he’d looked unsettled when he’d joined me outside, and the reason he’d kept searching the trees.
Garth sighed, pulling me back to his story. “The crazy part of it is the guy wasn’t after the money in my cash register. Every single bill is still in there. But look at what he did to several of the pieces I was working on.” He flicked the torn ear on the pronghorn’s head next to him. “It’s like he went around taking bites out of everything.”
Bites, huh? I chewed on my lower lip. Well, shit.
“Including poor Dorothy.” Garth pointed toward the hallway leading out front. “There’s a big chunk out of her hump. What kind of man would do such a thing to a stuffed camel?”
I rubbed the back of my neck, avoiding eye contact with the taxidermist. I had a feeling this was no man, at least not anymore. My gaze shifted to Cooper, who stared back at me with a furrowed brow.
“Luckily, he didn’t sink his teeth into the stag I just finished for a client over in Wyoming,” Garth said, nudging his chin toward a big, partially tarp-covered deer over near the door.
“Musta been a hungry son of a gun to try eatin’ your long-dead pals here.” Harvey eyed the pronghorn and shook his head.
“Ms. Parker,” Garth said. “Detective Cooper mentioned you might have had some experience with this sort of a troublemaker before.”
That was one way of putting it.
“Do you think the guy was on some sort of hallucinogenic drug?” Garth asked me.
I wished it were that simple. Rather than lie outright to the poor taxidermist, I asked, “You’re sure about that one-arm business?” There was one nasty other creature I knew about that was currently running around short an arm.
Garth nodded. “But ding-dang, he was strong. And he sure moved fast through the snow on just three limbs.”
Of course it did. A Nachzehrer wouldn’t be nearly as deadly if it were weak and slithered like a slug.
Fudge nuggets. I squeezed my clammy palms together and stared at the pronghorn’s eye sockets. This year was off to a rotten start. First a Hungarian devil made of smoke and shadow, and now this dickhead.
With any luck there was only one flesh-eating, ghoul-like terror waiting for me out there under the trees. But with Mercury now gone retrograde in the astrological world and all sorts of trouble brewing, I had a feeling I was going to be chewed up, spat out, and stomped on before this was all over.
Chapter Two
Thursday morning, January 17th
Speaking of trouble …
A grizzle-faced detective and his gum-flapping uncle were waiting for me when I finally dragged my sorry fanny out of bed, pulled on my robe and slippers, and staggered downstairs in search of brain fuel.
Harvey was kicking back at the kitchen table with his stocking feet resting on a nearby chair. Wearing rainbow suspenders over a white shirt, he looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Had he forgotten about last night’s macabre scene at Jones’ Taxidermy already? Because I certainly hadn’t.
On the table in front of him sat two, heavy-duty, yellow and black walkie-talkies. Where had those come from? My dad had bought the kids a set a couple of Christmases ago, but they were pretty rinky-dink, and if memory served me right, Layne’s had a cracked case wrapped in bright orange duct tape thanks to Addy’s fix-it skills.
“Mornin’, Sparky,” Harvey hollered at me even though I wasn’t more than three steps away.
I scowled at him, debating on turning around and marching right back to bed. Burrowing under my covers sounded like a great way to handle whatever had a usually cranky Deadwood detective darkening my doorstep first thing. Come to think of it, I probably shouldn’t have gotten up in the first place. It was my one day off this week, and I was going to have a nice, relaxing morning, damn it.
“You look like you woke up foamin’ at the mouth,” Harvey continued in spite of my raised hackles. “Did you get bit in the booty by that three-limbed ghoulie when I wasn’t guardin’ your backside last night?”
Gah! I growled under my breath. I needed a few swallows of caffeine before I could handle too much sunshine and smartassery from the ol’ boy.
Tightening my bathrobe belt with a hard yank, I aimed my feet in the direction of the coffee maker and ran smack-dab into Cooper’s steely gray squint. He was leaning against the sink with his arms crossed, wearing blue jeans, a gray flannel shirt, and a crumpled brow. His hair was a mess of spikes and his jaw was prickly with stubble. Maybe if I turned him upside down, he’d come in handy as a foot scrubber.
Another yellow and black walkie-talkie was attached to Cooper’s belt. I cast a second look at the two on the table. What was going on? What was with the walkie-talkies?
More important, why were Cooper and Harvey in my aunt’s kitchen at the buttcrack of … I checked the Betty Boop clock over the sink … at the buttcrack of eight thirty-seven on a blustery Thursday morning? And where was Doc? My kids? Aunt Zoe? Elvis the chicken? Had I managed to stumble through an invisible door on my way downstairs and somehow crossed over into an alternate reality?
But first … coffee. I moved my feet along on my quest.
Outside the window over the sink, I watched as a spiraling gust of wind swirled onto the back porch. It whistled through the door jamb and peppered the kitchen window with tiny pellets of snow. The meteorologist hadn’t been kidding when he’d warned about that polar vortex blowing south and freezing the noses off the faces of the four presidents up on Mount Rushmore.
Lying across the bottom porch step was a pointed digging shovel with a blue handle—the one Layne had used to dig up my aunt’s backyard last summer while playing archaeologist. Dang it, how many times had I told my kids not to leave stuff on the steps? Someone was going to trip and get hurt.
I opened the cupboard door and grabbed a mug, shooting a glare Cooper’s way. He was standing too close to the coffee pot and I was still holding a grudge about his part in last night’s “police business” rigmarole that had kept me out way past my bedtime.
“Who let you off your chain already, law dog?” I asked, coming out of my corner of the boxing ring swinging.
His bristly jaw tightened. His focus shifted to my hair, his eyes lining up a shot. “Did you just climb out of the backseat of a clown car, Parker?”
Harvey sucked air through his teeth. “Careful, Coop. Yer tiptoein’ into a minefield there.”
I set the mug down on the counter. “Are you making fun of my hair, pork chop?”
The son of a gun was foolish enough to grin. “Where’s your big red nose, Bozo? Stick it in someone else’s business one too many times?”
I was too tired to pull my punches and socked him in the shoulder before he could dodge and weave.
“Christ, Parker,” he complained as he sidestepped, putting some space between us. “Nyce needs to work harder on taming you.”
A snort came from the peanut gallery over at the table. “There’s no taking a currycomb to Sparky, or any of her wild hairs.”
“Yeah, what he said.” I grabbed the coffee pot, peeking over at Cooper. “Besides, I barely hit you, big baby.”
“We’re supposed to be on the same side now, remember?” He smirked. “At least that’s what your boyfriend keeps telling me. Maybe Nyce should invest in a muzzle for you.”
“Keep it up, law dog,” I said while filling my mug partway, “and I’ll sic Natalie on you. She hits and bites.”
“Oh, Coop knows all about that wildcat’s fondness for bitin’, dontcha, boy?” Harvey snickered. “Along with her slappin’ and ticklin’. You should see how bruised up he is from the neck down after Nat spends the night with him.”
Cooper and I shared a grimace, but twenty bucks said his cheeks were redder than mine.
“Where is Doc?” I asked to change the subject.
“He escaped to the Rec Center,” Cooper said, nudging me aside so he
could refill his coffee cup. “It takes a lot of strength to wake up next to you every morning and face off with that hair of yours.”
When I threatened him with my fist, he chuckled and held up his hands in surrender.
Doc’s almost-daily trips to the Rec Center had more to do with the stress of being a mental medium with a nose for sniffing out ghosts in a town notorious for its overcrowded ectoplasmic population than putting up with my crazy curls. Then again, thinking about the worry lining Doc’s face in the dash lights as we drove home from the taxidermy shop last night, me and my “wild hairs” might be inspiring some extra adrenaline rushes for him these days.
“So, what’s got you takin’ up fisticuffs right out of the sack, Sparky?” Harvey pulled a chocolate chip cookie from Aunt Zoe’s old Betty Boop cookie jar in the middle of the table and settled back into his chair.
I returned to my brain fuel, dumping enough sugar in it to light my rocket for a good hour or two. “It’s your nephew’s fault.”
“What did I do?” Cooper frowned at me over his cup.
“Besides comparing me to a clown?” I took a sip of coffee and recoiled slightly. Holy hairy chest, that was strong stuff! Someone must have added an extra big scoop to the brew for more oomph. After yesterday’s hoopla, I needed to soften the caffeine blow to my stomach.
“For one thing,” I said on the way to the fridge. “You wouldn’t let me leave last night when I wanted to get the hell out of there, insisting that I stay for an extra hour in the freezing cold while you played Sherlock Holmes.”
“If the perpetrator who broke into Jonesy’s shop had decided to return for more chew toys, you needed to be there, Executioner.”
Cooper’s reminder of my other job—killing troublemakers—drew a sigh from me. All right, so he had a good reason to keep me around until all of the other officers had cleared out, but still …
“Couldn’t you have waited until morning to be so dang thorough? Hell, I’m surprised you didn’t pull on a pair of rubber gloves and check poor Garth and his fat ol’ dog for polyps.”
Harvey chortled and reached for another cookie while I grabbed the milk from the fridge.
“Welcome to Police Procedures 101, Parker.” Cooper returned to his post next to the sink. “Unlike your investigation methods, which seem to involve pins, blindfolds, and donkey tails most days, I like to turn over every leaf before exiting a fresh crime scene.”
I poured milk into my mug until the coffee almost spilled over the rim. “Second,” I said through clenched teeth, “you’re here in my aunt’s kitchen right now instead of Doc, and he doesn’t make fun of my hair.”
“You started it today.” Cooper crossed his arms. “You’re just mad because I finished it.”
“Yer stallion took the younguns to school so you could get some extra beauty sleep on your big day off.” Harvey grinned and took another bite of cookie. “Judgin’ from those red lines crisscrossing yer eyeballs, you could use another hour or two to get the job done.”
I pointed a threatening finger the old buzzard’s way before turning back to Cooper’s steady stare. “And third, if you’re in my face first thing in the morning …”
He scoffed. “It’s almost nine o’clock, Parker. That’s not ‘first thing.’ ”
“That means you’re here to piss on my parade,” I continued. I didn’t even get to take a victory lap last night after kicking some Hungarian devil ass, darn it. “Now I’m figuring that you probably came over here to order me to help you find your three-limbed ‘perpetrator,’ but since nobody got hurt last night, I have more important matters to deal with first.”
His jaw tightened. “More important than heading off one of your damned others before we have another bizarre homicide on our hands?”
“They aren’t my damned others, Cooper.”
“You do realize that if someone gets killed, we’ll have Detective Hawke lodged even farther up our asses, not to mention the FBI.”
I made a face at the name of Cooper’s partner in crime-solving. Detective Stone Hawke … a man whose ego would overshadow King Kong’s.
Unfortunately, Hawke and I had gotten off on the wrong foot right out of the gate when I’d stomped on his silly pen. I probably shouldn’t have threatened to grind his pea-sized balls into dust under my boot heel at the time, but in my defense, I’d been having a bad day, and he’d made the dumbass choice of insulting my hair along with my intelligence. Things between us had spiraled southward from there.
Currently, Hawke believed that I was the top suspect in several of the unsolved murder cases sitting on his desk. And that I was a witch—the ugly potion-making kind with grand plans to spread evil throughout the Black Hills; not the cute mini-skirt wearing ones who fixed spilled-milk messes with a nose wiggle and a blink.
Oh, and he was also under the illusion that I could see and talk to ghosts, but that misconception was partly Natalie’s fault for encouraging me to …
“What could possibly be more important?” Cooper interrupted, bringing me back to the present. “Getting your nails done for your damned television debut on Sunday?”
“No, you big robot chicken.” Oh dear, I needed more caffeine before I threw out any additional insults.
I swallowed a gulp of coffee, trying not to get sidetracked by my anxieties about the Paranormal Realty television show that mixed ghost hunting with house selling, in which I’d unhappily co-starred recently that could possibly be the end of my career selling real estate. Or at the least, the end of selling houses to normal people rather than ghost groupies.
“For your information, detective, I have an imp to catch, and from what I’ve been told that’s not going to be—” The telephone hanging on the wall rang, interrupting my excuse for a moment. “Easy.”
Coffee in hand, I headed over to the table and dropped into the seat opposite Cookie Monster’s bearded twin. “What’s the story on these walkie-talkies?” I asked Harvey.
I picked one up. It felt solid and sturdy, unlike the set my father had given the kids. The black rubber edging acted as grip protection against an accidental drop.
The phone rang again.
“Coop’s frettin’ about keepin’ our chit-chats top secret. Says he don’t trust cell phones much anymore, especially yours. Some nosy-nelly might be listenin’ in.”
Cooper had previously had me create a texting group, including Doc and me and a few others in our little circle of comrades, for emergency-only communication purposes when it came to dealing with possible “perps.” Apparently, he’d leveled up to the paranoia zone in the game.
The phone rang again.
“So one of these is for me?” I asked, pushing the black buttons on the front of the device. The digital screen remained dark.
“Aren’t you going to get that, Parker?” Cooper asked, thumbing toward the wall phone.
“No. If it’s the school, they’d call my cell phone.” I pushed a button on the side of the walkie-talkie, but nothing happened. “And Jerry gave me the day off, remember? In spite of your attempt to ruin my day before it even gets rolling, I’m going to sit here and enjoy my coffee along with your uncle’s rated-PG company.” I nailed Harvey with a gunslinger glare. “That means no cringe-inducing anecdotes about busty babes from any Nevada cat houses.”
The phone rang for a fourth time.
I pulled my cell phone from my robe pocket and checked for missed calls just to be sure. Nope. If someone really needed to talk to me, like Doc or Natalie or one of my parents, they’d call my cell phone.
“What about a yarn from the poke parlor?”
“No.” I stuffed my phone back in my pocket.
“Tales from the bunny ranch?”
“Still no.” I pushed another button on the walkie-talkie. Nothing, same as before.
“How about eye-poppin’ adventures from the bouncy house?”
The phone started to ring for the fifth time, only to stop midway through.
Either the caller had give
n up, or Aunt Zoe had picked up the call out in her glass workshop where she was working on another wedding order. This time, her creations were unique, rose-colored champagne glasses for each member of the bridal party, the bride and groom’s families, as well as several of the guests. Apparently, the soon-to-be-married couple were counting on some extra rosy optimism to give their wedded bliss a boost.
Cooper came closer, looming over us like an ominous thundercloud. “Parker, we need to come up with a plan on how to catch whatever that thing was that broke into Jonesy’s shop last night.”
I sighed, scratching my thumbnail down the rubbery side of the walkie-talkie. “I told you already, I have an imp to catch.”
“Is there some special Executioner rule that says you can only hunt one asshole at a time?”
“No, but I’m a little busy with all of the hoopla my boss is insisting we do to prepare for Sunday’s TV premiere party.”
We were down to just three more days until Jerry’s big ghoul-themed shindig with all sorts of hoity-toity guests and several big-screen televisions where I would get to watch my career swirl down the crapper without needing to squint. I’d tried to bow out of it more than once, but Jerry had me by the collar and was dragging me into the limelight whether I liked it or not. Three more days. Crikey!
Cooper harrumphed. “Like I said, painting your nails.”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “Don’t you have a criminal somewhere to chase, law dog?”
Harvey leaned forward and fished out another cookie, offering it to me. “He’s hopin’ to chase some tail first.” He winked at me. “You know, the female sort.”
Grinning, I grabbed the cookie and dipped it in my coffee before taking a bite. The chocolate was soft and sweet—nothing like the detective breathing down my neck.
