by Ann Charles
“It’s not the ghosts I’m thinkin’ about. It’s the shrunken heads.”
I pulled my phone back and frowned down at the screen. Was he for real? I put it back up to my ear. “Shrunken what?”
“You heard me—heads.”
“Are you going to leave me hanging here or explain that?”
“Years back that place had a run of residents turn up dead, their heads all shrunken up weird like. The cops never could figure out who was behind it and how they’d gone about shrinkin’ the skulls.”
“You mean shrunken like what one of those tribes does down in the Amazon?”
“Sorta. From what I was told, they didn’t look the same as those, though.”
“Shrunken heads?” I repeated, feeling dazed.
“Did you stop off at The Golden Sluice after lunch to bend an elbow, girl?”
“I wish I was drunk.” This day was turning into a long unbroken string of bad moments. “What did they do about the dead residents?”
“The paper said their deaths were ruled as heart failure, callin’ them ‘natural.’ Now I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t figure someone’s head shrinkin’ up into a dried skull raisin is anything close to natural.”
His words painted a picture I didn’t want to think about so soon after a lunch of choked down rage followed by gut burning indigestion—and nausea thanks to a picture of cow pieces. Speaking of …
“What’s the deal with that dead cow picture?”
“I found that carcass out at the back edge of my pasture.”
“What did that? A mountain lion?”
“I don’t reckon, the bite marks are too big. Coop wanted me to take some photographs of it because he was tied up in meetings and couldn’t come out to see it until later.”
“Your nephew is keeping busy these days.” Detective “Coop” Cooper had his hands full with a slew of murders and unanswered questions. I was happy that he hadn’t been knocking on my door lately looking for more answers, since the ones I gave him usually made him grind his molars and glare holes through the back of my eyeballs.
“That’s your fault,” Harvey said.
A group of four Harley Davidson motorcycles rumbled past on the main road.
“You must be close,” he said. “I could hear those motorcycles in both ears.”
“I’m parked across from the hospital.”
“What are you doin’ there? Come get me at your aunt’s place. If you’re going to the Galena House, I’m comin’ along.”
Rather than argue, I did as told. Those shrunken skulls had me feeling edgy about walking into the haunted boarding house on my own. Three minutes later, he climbed into the Picklemobile.
“Head ‘em out, Rawhide,” he said, flashing me his two gold teeth. He smelled like soap but looked scragglier around the edges than usual.
“Your beard could use a trim.”
“I ain’t got no woman to impress right now, so I’m giving my trimmer a vacation.”
“I’m a woman.”
“Nah, you’re still a filly to me. Besides, you got your own stallion to nag. How’s sex treating you these days? You sure seem to be riding a lot looser in the saddle. I take it Doc is gettin’ the job done.”
That was a subject we were not going to touch. Ever. I answered with a squint and changed the subject. “How many residents had their heads shrunk?”
“I can’t remember. Two, maybe three.”
Turning onto the main drag, I headed for Williams Street. “How long ago?”
“I must have been knee high to a buffalo when the story came out. I remember my folks jabberin’ about it during a meal or two.”
They talked about shrunken skulls during dinner? That explained why no subject seemed off limits with Harvey while eating, including castration techniques and the ins and outs of two-dollar whores.
Williams Street ran the length of Deadwood up above Main, behind a row of southeast facing brown and burnt red brick buildings. I drove up the hill past the historic Franklin Hotel and made a right.
“Did they ever figure out why?” I asked.
“Nope. Like I said, they ended up calling it ‘natural’ and went on to the next crime.”
A Victorian boarding house loomed in front of us, reminding me of an unkempt gentleman down on his luck. Weeds stuck out of the wrought-iron fence like loose threads. White paint flaked onto the brown grass around its foundation joined by torn asphalt shingles from the roof. A faded rectangular sign confirmed I was at the Galena House.
I parked, squeezing as tightly as possible against the concrete wall in front of the house to leave room for passing cars. Streets on this side of Deadwood were made for horse carriages, not old pickups with side mirrors.
“Well, the woman who called and asked me to meet her here didn’t sound like she had a shrunken head,” I told him, “so we might as well see what’s going on.”
“A woman called you? What’d she say?”
“Something about nine sharks and that she needed to see me now because she’d be dead soon.”
He grunted. “No shit.”
We sat there staring up at the boarding house in silence. It was an old style Italianate. Some of the fine cornices had crumbled, but the two columns bracketing the porch stood tall and bright like they’d been recently painted. A shadow moved across the upstairs window. Was that the woman? As I watched, the shadow returned, obscured behind a white gauzy curtain.
Someone was waiting for me.
I pushed open my door as far as the wall would allow, still wondering how heads could be shrunken and then written off as something natural. Harvey joined me on the sidewalk leading up to the house.
“Let’s go see what this mystery woman wants,” he said.
The gate opened without a sound, giving me pause. I’d expected a squeak of resistance. The porch creaked something awful as we crossed to the front door.
I held up my knuckles to knock and Harvey bumped me aside, turning the knob and pushing it open.
“Harvey!”
“What? They’re apartments. Nobody knocks on the outside door. You have to go inside.”
Surprisingly, apartment number four wasn’t up the wide, oak staircase that looked to have been refurbished, the varnish still glossy. It was at the end of a long white hall that smelled like fresh paint. I could see drips of white here and there on the edge of the dark blue carpet.
An old-fashioned brass knocker in the shape of a grandfather clock made a solid thwack on the wooden door thanks to Harvey.
“I’m supposed to knock seven times.” I added six more thwacks.
His bushy eyebrows rose. “Any other instructions I should know before we step inside?”
“Yeah, stay out of trouble. I don’t need Detective Cooper harping on me about dragging his uncle into any more of my schemes.”
I looked back down the hall. The light coming in through the front door windows seemed to lessen. Rain must be moving in, the gray clouds thickening even more. That or it was an omen. I chewed on my lower lip. I preferred the rain prediction, even if it would give me a helmet head of frizzy curls.
Harvey knocked again with the brass clock, seven more times. We waited, passing shoulder shrugs and frowns back and forth.
I put my ear to the door.
“What do ya hear?”
“Ticking,” I said.
“Like a bomb?”
“No. Like a clock ticking.” But there were no footfalls. No floorboards creaking either. Nothing but tick-tock, tick-tock.
“Are you sure she said apartment four?”
“Positive.”
“Is her number still on your phone?” When I nodded, he pointed at my purse. “Give ‘er a call back.”
“Good thinking.”
“That’s why you need me along. I’m the brains of this operation. You need to focus your purty head on smilin’ for more billboards.”
I wrinkled my nose at him. Pulling up her number, I hit the call butt
on and listened. My phone rang in my ear. On the other side of the door, a phone trilled in response. After the tenth ring, I hung up.
“Maybe she had to run out,” I said. “We can come back some other time.”
Harvey reached out and turned the knob. The door creaked open. “Or we could let ourselves in and wait for her to come home.”
I stepped back, my heart picking up speed. “Harvey! We can’t go in there. I’ll end up in jail again if Cooper finds out.”
“She called you. We’re just bein’ friendly and lettin’ ourselves in to save her the trouble.”
He walked inside the shadow-filled entryway and then stopped short. “Well, I’ll be a frozen cow pie.”
I inched up behind him. The ticking sound was much louder on this side of the door. “Wow.”
Covering every square inch of the walls in the foyer and living room beyond were clocks. Ticking, ticking, ticking.
“I’ve heard the sayin’ timeliness is next to godliness,” he said, “but this is taking things a little too far.”
“That’s not how the saying goes.”
“It was in my grannie’s house. She threw pots and pans at us when we were late for dinner.” Harvey moved further into the apartment. “Hello? Anybody home?”
I followed, still gaping at all of the clocks. The constant noise in the room would drive me to drink. “It’s no wonder she sounded cuckoo on the phone.”
Harvey snorted. “You need to work on your stand-up comedy routine.”
Something smelled funny in the place. “You smell that, Harvey?”
“Hard to miss.” He hit the light switch on the wall. A clearer view of the clocks didn’t make me feel less like running back out the door.
The longer I stood there, the more the smell made me want to gag. “We need to get out of here.”
He glanced my way. “You feelin’ itchy?”
Clear to my toes. “Uh-huh.”
“Me, too.”
“I think it’s all of these damned clocks.” And that odor.
“Nah, that’s not what’s got my boots itchin’ to skiddaddle.” His voice sounded wheezier than usual, hesitant. “I’m more worried about that thing over in the corner.”
“What thing?” I followed his gaze, frowning at a wrinkled pile of clothes in the corner near a rocking chair. A pointy-toed shoe stuck partway out from under the fabric on one side, an L-shaped gnarled stick jutted out on the other.
“What is that?” Grabbing onto one of Harvey’s suspenders, I led us closer.
Harvey reared back when we drew near. “Yep, that’s what I thought,” he said.
My breath caught as my eyes registered what was mixed in with the pile of clothes. That wasn’t a stick; it was an arm. A bony, gnarled arm.
And there was a leg sticking out from under the end table.
Harvey kicked the shoe aside.
There was the other leg.
I couldn’t look away from the gnarled flesh and bones. It was so macabre that it seemed unreal. Except for that smell. I retched and covered my nose and mouth with my arm.
“Didn’t she say something about being dead soon?” Harvey asked me.
I let out a squeak, which was all my vocal chords would allow in their frozen state.
“She wasn’t lyin’ then, was she?”
Harvey bent down and pointed at something small and round that rested against one of the rocker bases of the chair. “You see that?”
“Oh, my God!” I clutched his arm. “Is that …”
“Looks like we got us another skull raisin.” He stepped back, dragging me out the door into the main hall.
I fumbled with my phone, my hands trembling, and held it out to him. “You need to call Cooper, Harvey.”
“Me?” He pushed my hand away. “I ain’t callin’. That boy’s gonna be all horns and buck snorts when he hears you found another dead body. This is your show, girl. I just came for the dance.”
“Fine, you big chicken.” I called Cooper.
“What do you want, Parker.” He sounded bristly, as usual.
“I need you at the Galena House on Williams Street.”
“I’m busy here. Someone has to solve these damned murders you keep stumbling into. Why do I need to come there?”
I cringed, anticipating the explosion that was sure to follow what I was about to say.
Harvey nudged me. “Just tell him, girl.”
“Parker,” Cooper’s voice grew growlier. “Is my uncle with you?”
“Yeah, and … uh … he wants me to tell you that he found a dead body.”
I hung up as the shit hit the fan.
Chapter Two
The sky had fallen.
Outside, the rain dumped in buckets. Mixed with pellets of hail, it pinged on the Galena House porch roof and plunked off the hood of the Picklemobile.
Inside, Detective Cooper thundered. I could hear him barking orders to his buddies in blue, his rumbles resounding down the long hallway and pouring out the front door.
“I can’t believe you pinned this tail on my ass,” Harvey said from where he leaned against one of the white pillars, his arms crossed over his chest.
“What?” I pulled my cell phone from my sweater pocket. “You found her first.”
“I was here helping you.”
“If you’re gonna be my bodyguard, you’re going to have to get used to getting your hands dirty.”
He stuck out his chin. “I’ll play in the mud any day, especially if bikinis are involved, but I don’t like blood on my hands.”
“I didn’t see any blood.” How could there be no blood?
“You know what I mean, girl.”
I joined him at the column, frown and all. “Seriously, did you notice any blood?”
“Nope. But that corner had a lot of shadows.”
“I didn’t smell blood either.”
Harvey nodded. “That other stink hid everything else.”
“It’s like all of the juice was sucked right out of her.” I cringed, thinking about how her arms and legs had looked like gnarled twigs covered in flesh. “How can that be? She was just talking to me.”
“Are you sure she and your caller are one and the same?”
Now that he mentioned it, no. “You think someone else might have called me from her phone?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Why? To lure me here?”
He stroked his beard, taming some of the stragglers. “That’s another possibility.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, pondering Harvey’s question some more. “What? A setup then?”
“Could be. Or a warnin’.”
A warning? I shivered, tightening my sweater belt.
“You have been meddlin’ in some kooky shit lately, what with those white-haired weirdos.”
“Those white-haired weirdos have been meddling with me not the other way around.” Ever since I had run into two of them at Mudder Brothers Funeral Parlor, I’d turned into a magnet for the super pale population in the hills.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out. “It’s Doc.”
“Coop said no phone calls.” Harvey checked over his shoulder. “He’ll bust your balls if he catches you gettin’ all leaky-mouthed on the phone.”
Yeah, but it was Doc. For him I’d take my chances with the detective’s temper. “Run interference for me.”
“Fine, but you better be quick as a hiccup.” He left the column and slipped between the yellow strips of police tape crisscrossing the doorway.
I held the phone to my ear. “Hi, Doc.”
“What do you mean you found another body?” The sound of his baritone voice warmed my chills even if it was tight with tension.
“You got my text.” It wasn’t a question. I’d sent him a message as soon as I’d hung up on Cooper’s curses.
Doc didn’t bother with an answer. “Where are you?”
“The Galena House.”
“That’s up behind the old Fa
irmont Hotel, right?”
I leaned my shoulder against the column, looking out over the backsides of the buildings bellied up to Deadwood’s Main Street. They didn’t look so fancy from behind, more cluttered and disheveled, like the back of a film studio where real life took place. “Yeah, on Williams Street.”
“I’m on my way.”
“You can’t come right now.” As much as I would have liked his company at the moment, he needed to stay away.
“Why not?”
“Detective Cooper and his pals are here asking questions and taking pictures. I’m not even supposed to be talking on the phone. If Cooper finds out—”
Someone plucked my phone from my grip.
I whirled around. There stood Cooper. He’d confiscated my phone. His steely eyes had a frosty sheen, reminding me of the little balls of hail bouncing on the lawn.
“I said no calls.” He held the phone up to his ear. “What did she tell you, Nyce?”
I jammed my hands on my hips, hitting him with a glare of my own. Why did he assume I was on the phone with Doc? It could have been a client or my boss. And what happened to my bodyguard running interference for me?
The detective’s gaze narrowed as Doc told him something that I hoped wasn’t the truth. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you to keep this information to yourself for the time being.”
“Doc isn’t going to say a word,” I said under my breath. Nobody kept secrets like Doc. He hid a doozy of his own that would ruin his livelihood as a financial planner if it were leaked.
Cooper’s head cocked to the side as he listened some more, then he snorted. “As a matter of fact, she did.”
I did what? What had Doc told the detective about me? I held out my hand for my phone.
Cooper smirked at my hand, my phone still pressed against his ear. “Sounds good. I’ll see you Wednesday night. It’s your turn to bring the beer.” He handed the phone back to me. “Say goodbye, Parker.”
I took my phone. “What did you tell him, Doc?”
“Nothing he doesn’t already know.”
“Parker!” Detective Cooper wasn’t playing nice today.
“You’re being extra pissy this afternoon, Detective,” I poked him in the shoulder. “And here I was kind enough to bring you more work to help you feel useful.”
