Better Off Dead in Deadwood

by Ann Charles

  “Prudence won’t pack up and travel with you?” I asked, serious. I wasn’t quite sure how this ghost thing worked for Wanda. Hell, I wasn’t sure of anything having to do with the ectoplasmic crowd, but after all of the inexplicable events I’d witnessed over the last few months, I was open to learning.

  “No. This was where she raised her son, where she and her husband enjoyed many happy memories. She’s too attached.”

  “Isn’t it also the place where she died?” I asked, curious to hear from Wanda if her version of what happened to Prudence might be different from the horrific demise Doc claimed to have experienced while sniffing around in Prudence’s memories.

  Wanda didn’t answer. Instead she looked down at her clasped hands. I was about to ask my question again when she nodded and said, “Yes, but she wants me to tell you those men can’t hurt her anymore.”

  “Prudence is here right now?” I asked, glancing at Harvey to see if I could read any doubt or disbelief on his expression.

  He was too busy licking the frosting off a brownie to even notice my attention had shifted to him.

  “Of course,” Wanda said, as if I were being a silly ninny. “She’s here all of the time.”

  Harvey reached for another brownie.

  I knocked my knee against his leg, frowning at the half-empty brownie plate. He scooted further away from me, dropping crumbs on the white shag rug in the process, and then dove into his brownie.

  Focusing back on Wanda, I asked, “How does Prudence feel about your leaving her?”

  Wanda went quiet again, staring at her hands. I kept expecting her to do something with them, something David Copperfield-like that resulted in a white dove poking its head out from her cupped palms.

  But nothing happened.

  The clock ticked.

  Something tinked over by the front window.

  Harvey chewed, swallowed, and then licked his fingertips.

  “She’ll be sad,” Wanda finally spoke, “but she understands it’s time for me to move on.”

  “Move on to where?” Harvey asked.

  “I’d like to get a condo down in Rapid,” Wanda said. “Maybe one down in Arizona, too. Somewhere warm when the snow falls.”

  I cleared my throat. “So, is that what Prudence wanted to talk to me about today? Selling her house to someone new?”

  “Oh, no, that’s what I wanted to talk about. Will you help me?”

  I thought of Ray’s howls of laughter when he found out I’d signed on to sell the Carhart house again, of Mona’s disapproving frown, of Jerry’s … Jerry’s what? Would he approve of my selling a house with such a sordid history? Would he think it was bad for Calamity Jane’s reputation, or would he be wooed by the almighty dollar?

  At my hesitation, Wanda’s eyes grew watery. “Please, Miss Parker. You’re the only real estate agent who will come within a stone’s throw of the house after Millie’s mistakes. Help me escape from all that happened here.”

  I wasn’t totally fooled by Wanda’s weepy plea. Twenty bucks said the waterworks were an attempt to get me to agree. But knowing what I did about Wanda’s experiences within these walls, I believed there was some truth behind her sales pitch.

  What would Aunt Zoe say when she found out I’d taken this place on again?

  And Doc?

  Oh, crap—Doc. I’d forgotten about his being my whole reason for calling Wanda yesterday. At least if I gave her a contract, I’d be able to get him inside the place alone with Prudence.

  “Would you be willing to drop the price another twenty thousand, if I have any trouble selling it?”

  She nodded. “I just want to be free of it.”

  I couldn’t blame her. I did, too. It spooked the crap out of me. “Okay,” I said, crossing my toes that I wouldn’t live to regret this.

  Wanda reached out and squeezed my hands between hers. Her palms felt coarse, like she’d been handwashing burlap bags for years. She closed her eyes.

  Figuring she was going to thank me, I opened my mouth to tell her it was no problem.

  Before I could speak, she cut me off with, “Stay away from the mine, Violet.”

  Only it wasn’t the wavering voice that usually came from Wanda’s lips. She sounded younger, her tone more melodic with an almost mid-Atlantic Eastern accent, like a young Katharine Hepburn or Grace Kelly.

  I shook my head feeling a bit like I’d been tipped on my side and everything had slammed into one ear. I tried to pull my hands free, but Wanda held on tight.

  “Stay away until you’ve read the book,” Wanda continued in the voice that was strangely soothing, yet chilling all at once, leaving the hairs on the back of my neck sticking up. “You have much to learn.”

  The book? The same one Lila had stashed upstairs in this very house? The one I’d sneaked out of here that Doc was currently hiding for me? The one written in Latin that I couldn’t read?

  All of the saliva drained from my mouth, leaving my tongue flopping like a marooned fish. “P-P-Prudence?” I stuttered. “Is that you?”

  “I saw them throw another into the hole,” Wanda said in the odd voice, her eyes still closed. “I saw them throw it like it was nothing more than a bag of potatoes.”

  I gaped over at Harvey to make sure I hadn’t been cannonballed into some freaky hallucination.

  He sat staring at Wanda, his whole body frozen with a brownie held midway to his lips. His eyes darted to me and then returned to our happy-go-lucky oracle.

  I tried to get past this being some bizarre delusion and grasp what Wanda had said about the bag of potatoes. “You saw them throw what, Prudence?” I asked, half-expecting Wanda to open her eyes and start laughing, the joke on me.

  “The body,” she said. “They threw the body in the hole. They threw it all of the way down.”

  “Who?” I asked, scooting closer in case she whispered. I didn’t want to miss her reply. “Who threw the body?”

  “The undead ones. Two of them.”

  Undead? I mouthed the word zombies to Harvey. He nodded and shoved the last of the brownie in his mouth.

  “But it didn’t take this one,” she said, sounding puzzled, bewildered. “It always takes the bodies, but not this time.”

  “What didn’t take the body, Prudence?” I asked.

  “Why didn’t it take the body?” she seemed mired in her own question, her grip loosening.

  I grabbed onto her as she tried to pull free, not wanting to break contact, disrupt whatever conduit we’d created. “What didn’t take the body, Prudence?” I asked again.

  Wanda moaned, her eyes still closed. Suddenly her grip returned tenfold, my fingers squeezed in a painful clasp. Her eyelids flew open, revealing the whites of her eyes, her focus literally turned inward. She hauled me toward her in a strong tug, yanking me half off the couch. Before I could right myself, she leaned forward and sniffed the crook of my neck, stopping at my earlobe.

  “It’s as I thought,” she whispered, her breath hot on my ear. “You will be the next one.”

  Terror seized me, hugging the air from my chest.

  Then Wanda’s hands slid free of mine and she blinked back to normal, her eyes no longer rolled back, her smile returning with a hint of timidity.

  “More tea?” she asked, as if she hadn’t just scared my soul into the next state.

  “No!” I shot to my feet and rushed toward the foyer. Fresh air! I needed fresh air … and maybe a defibrillator.

  After a brief struggle with the deadbolt, I surged out the front door and leaned against one of the thick porch posts, sucking in lung-filling breaths.

  Harvey came up behind me and touched my arm. “You okay, girl?” He handed me my purse, which I’d run off and left.

  “No,” I said, letting go of the post to cling to him. “I don’t think so.”

  “Your hands are hotter than a nun’s knees.” He touched my cheek and forehead. “But the rest of you feels just fine.”

  Wanda stood on the threshold, holding the s
creen door open. “Should I call an ambulance?”

  “No, I’m fine.” The last thing I needed was Reid or Cooper catching wind of my being here. “Things just got a little …” disturbing, hair-raising, spooky as hell, “claustrophobic in there.”

  “We should probably get goin’,” Harvey said to Wanda. “Violet’s been down in the joints lately.”

  I’d been what? In what joints? Where?

  “You should have told me earlier,” Wanda said to me. “I have some wonderful herbal tea that will take care of all of your aches and pains. I drink it every morning.”

  Homemade herbal tea? That might explain the freak show that had just happened in her sitting room. What was in that tea? Had she slipped me one of her homemade herbal concoctions, spurring me to start hearing voices? What was that strange spice in my tea?

  “Maybe next time,” Harvey answered for me, leading me toward the steps.

  “Will you be bringing by a sales contract later, or should I come down to your office to sign the paperwork?” Wanda asked.

  I’d forgotten all about the house sale. “I’ll call you after I get everything typed up and you can stop down.” I wasn’t coming back to this house while she stood inside of it.

  I let go of Harvey when we reached the bottom step, feeling almost back to normal, the invisible corset no longer constricting my lungs.

  “Oh, Willis,” Wanda called, still standing in the doorway.

  We both turned.

  “Be sure to tell that sweet nephew of yours that he should come by for more tea and cookies sometime soon.”

  I only knew of Harvey having one nephew, but maybe there were multiple Coopers running around the Hills. I shuddered at the notion of Cooper having a clone—I’d rather face off against the albino twins.

  “Are you talking about Detective Cooper?” I asked.

  “Of course. He was very kind when he stopped over last week. And what a wonderful sense of humor he has. He must get that from you, Willis, because his daddy was a real pisser.”

  I blinked. Cooper? Sense of humor? Wanda must have been drinking her special herbal tea that morning, too.

  “What was Coop doing here?” Harvey asked.

  “He asked me some more questions about the call.”

  Harvey’s gaze narrowed. “What call would that be?”

  “The one I made about the body,” Wanda explained, as if the Black Hills Trailblazer had run a front page story on it that we’d apparently missed. “Prudence insisted. She was so upset about it all.”

  I frowned. “So, Detective Cooper came here to ask you questions about Jane Grimes’ murder?”

  She nodded. “Twice—the night Prudence was so distraught and a couple of days later.” She smiled, staring off toward the Open Cut. “He’s so well-mannered. And my,” she touched her chest, “what a handsome man he’s grown into.”

  Well-mannered? The same man who cussed me out on my front porch last night? I would have laughed aloud if my heart wasn’t ramming into my ribs, trying to break out and high-tail it down the road. We needed to leave before Cooper or one of his crew stopped by for more milk and cookies.

  “We need to get the hell out of here,” I said under my breath to Harvey.

  If I had known Wanda was part of Cooper’s murder investigation, I’d have insisted she meet me somewhere that offered more cover from the cops and less potential for me winding up in jail.

  “Good to see ya, Wanda,” Harvey said, grabbing my arm and tugging me toward his pickup.

  I waved at Wanda as I beat feet after the old buzzard. “I’ll call you soon.”

  Neither of us said another word until he’d backed out of the drive and the Carhart house was shrinking in my side mirror.

  “Damn,” Harvey said, shooting me a bushy-browed grimace. “I’m not sure what just happened back there, but it was a hell of a long ways from ordinary.”

  “Which part? The news about Wanda being the one who called in to report about Jane’s body or the parlor trick where she whispered cryptic warnings and scared the crap out of me?”

  “That was no parlor trick, girl, and you darn well know it.” He made a right turn. “Now I know Wanda’s banjo hasn’t been tuned right ever since she married that no-good drunk, but that wasn’t Wanda holdin’ your hand. It wasn’t her voice, and those sure as shootin’ weren’t her words.”

  He slowed to a stop and shot me a frown before turning left onto Lead’s main drag, heading down the hill toward Deadwood.

  “What did she mean about reading some book before goin’ in a mine?” Harvey asked. “What book?”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, worried about what I was about to disclose for multiple reasons. After hearing Prudence’s warning, getting busted by Cooper for withholding evidence was now the least of my fears. But could I be putting Harvey at risk by telling him the truth?

  “Damn it, girl,” he said with a growl, as if he could hear the waffling in my head. “If you don’t tell me, I’m going to start pinching again.”

  He was right. He’d stuck his neck out for me with Cooper and practically held my hand back at Wanda’s. It was time to come clean. Mostly clean, anyway. Besides, those pinches hurt.

  “Wanda—I mean Prudence—was referring to a book I took from the Carhart house after the big showdown with Lila. A book they were going to read from while sacrificing me to some demon.” At least that’s what I’d assumed when Lila had carried the book into the room while dressed in her sinister-looking brown robe.

  “What’s in this book?” he asked.

  “Scary pictures and a lot of Latin words.”

  “Does Coop know about this book?”

  I shook my head. “And if he finds out now, I’ll need three lawyers to save me from spending ten years in prison for withholding evidence.”

  “Where are you hidin’ it?”

  I didn’t want to out Doc in case everything went south. “A safe place.”

  We rolled to a stop, caught in a traffic snarl. Up ahead of a line of traffic, I could see the flashing hazard lights of a delivery truck.

  “So, why would Prudence want you to read this demon book before you go into some mine?” Harvey prodded.

  “I don’t know.” Cross my heart and hope to die on that answer. Prudence’s warning made no sense, especially since the only Latin I knew was printed on the money in my purse.

  I looked out my window and realized we were sitting in front of the Lead library; the Historic Homestake Opera House was just ahead on the right.

  In one of the large plate-glass windows of the art gallery that fronted the opera house building, a movie-sized poster advertised Better Off Dead—A Zombie Wedding Musical. An image of Mrs. Tarragon in her zombie bride outfit filled the top two-thirds of the poster. The title was plastered across the bottom third in a font that dripped blood on Peter Tarragon’s name and directing accolades.

  After the heated conversation I’d heard between the two of them, the poster took on a whole new meaning.

  “How well do you know Peter Tarragon?” I asked Harvey.

  “Enough to know he thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow.”

  “Do you think he’s capable of killing someone?”

  “Girl, we’re all capable of killin’ someone. It’s just a matter of if we choose to pick up the hatchet or not. Now Tarragon may be pretty puffed up with air, but that’s all it is—just hot air.”

  As the vehicles ahead of us eased around the delivery truck, Harvey inched forward, grumbling under his breath. We reached Siever Street and Harvey took a right, escaping the backup.

  “I overheard Tarragon and his wife fighting yesterday,” I explained to Harvey. “She said something about not letting him do to her what he did to Jane.”

  Harvey grunted. “Did you tell Coop about that?”

  “Sort of. I made some interrogation suggestions. That’s when I slipped about seeing his case board.”

  At the junction with Julius Street, Harvey paused in th
e middle of the street, letting the pickup idle. He craned his neck to look out my window.

  From this corner of the block, the side and back of the tallest part of the opera house was visible—all six stories that led up to the roof high above the stage of the theatre. Around the backside, four doors placed at different theatre levels split up the layer upon layer of orange-brown brick; the black wrought iron railings and steps leading down from them looked sturdy in spite of the building’s age. A set of double glass doors exited out the bottom of the structure at street-level, a flight of concrete steps leading to the ground.

  Harvey took a hard right and backed into a narrow gravel parking lot across from the historic brick building.

  My gut tightened. “What are you doing?”

  He shut off the pickup and scratched his beard. “She said the undead ones threw Jane’s body in the pit.”

  Yeah, I remembered. Prudence’s voice replayed in my thoughts, giving me goosebumps again. “We shouldn’t be here, Harvey.”

  “Let’s go beat some bushes, see what we can shake loose.”

  I jammed my feet against the floor. “Absolutely not.”

  “Just a quick looksee.”

  “I’m not going in there.”

  “What’re you scared of? Them zombies aren’t real.”

  For one thing, running headlong into a killer wasn’t on my to-do list for this morning. For another, “If Cooper catches me within twenty feet of the Tarragons, I’ll be behind bars before you can say, “Boo!’”

  “Cooper’s not around right now.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was on the lookout for his car as I was driving. It’s nowhere around. Besides, it’s Wednesday.”

  “What’s so special about Wednesday?”

  “Didn’t you look at his calendar last weekend?”

  “No, why would I?”

  Harvey shook his head at me. “If you’re going to keep up this sleuthing on the side, you need to pay attention better.”

  I didn’t want to sleuth on the side. I didn’t want to sleuth out front either. I just wanted to raise my kids, sell real estate, and enjoy a lot of peanut butter fudge ice cream and Doc—separately or together, I wasn’t picky.