An Ex to Grind in Deadwood (Deadwood Humorous Mystery Book 5) Paperback – September 4, 2014

by Ann Charles

  A broad shouldered, black haired man shot out onto the front porch, his handgun pointed at the sky, his gaze darting up and down the street.

  What the hell? He had to be one of Cooper’s pals.

  I climbed out of the Picklemobile and slammed the door behind me.

  “Hold it right there, ma’am!” he yelled from the porch, holding his hand out toward me like he was directing traffic. “You might want to stay in your vehicle until I clear the area.”

  My neck swiveled as I looked around for something or someone suspicious. “Clear it of what?”

  Cooper strode out onto the porch. “Would you put that damned thing away? You’re going to scare the neighbors.” His eyes landed on me, searching my face, narrowing on what they saw there. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?” he called down to where I still waited by the Picklemobile, shivering in the cool morning breeze.

  “I was busy.”

  “I called three times.”

  He had—first my cell phone when Rex was there, then my office phone which I’d forwarded, and then my cell again about twenty minutes after Rex had left. The last one I’d ignored because I didn’t think my blood pressure could stand a conversation with Cooper at the time. Whether or not I had the patience to deal with the detective was still up in the air, but he’d left me little choice this morning by demanding my presence … or else.

  “Three?” I hollered back. “You’re beginning to make me feel special, Detective.”

  “Oh, you’re special all right,” he said, and then muttered something I didn’t catch.

  “Can I come up there now?” I asked, planting my hands on my hips. “Or should I wait out here for you to give me a play-by-play of the walk-through?”

  Cooper pointed at the porch for an answer. As I started up the walk, he turned back to the guy with the gun. “This is Violet Parker,” I heard him say, “the one who received the phone call from Ms. Wolff.”

  The trigger happy traffic cop stuffed his handgun back in his shoulder holster, saying something I couldn’t hear with the truck rumbling past on the street behind me.

  “Yes,” I heard Cooper reply with an extra dose of terseness, “and I told you not to use my first name. Next time you slip, I’ll shoot you in the foot and enjoy a little paid stress leave for my troubles.”

  Detective Cooper’s first name was top secret according to Harvey, akin to the access codes to Area 51.

  I climbed the porch steps, my gaze darting between the two men in front of me. Cooper mirrored the gunslingers of the old West—all rigid features and lean length, reminding me of cut and dried rawhide. The other guy looked like he was straight out of an early 1970s police drama with his pork chop sideburns, brown corduroy jacket, and too thick and wavy black hair. James Garner from The Rockford Files popped into my brain once again; I couldn’t help it, the local station kept showing re-runs after the kids went to bed. However, while Mr. Garner had sex appeal, this new guy just had a square jaw minus the dimple.

  Cooper’s cohort stuffed his hands in his front pant pockets, tipping back on his loafer heels. He checked out my outfit, spending a few extra beats on my boots and hair.

  “Who’s your friend?” I stood next to Cooper, wondering if this were his boss.

  “Ms. Parker, meet my new partner on this case—Stone Hawke.”

  Stone Hawke? For real? That sounded like a character from a comic book or one of those gritty movies Quentin Tarantino was famous for making.

  I laughed, a sharp barking sound that echoed in the cool morning stillness. I knew it was impolite, but after Rex’s surprise visit, I’d sort of lost the reins on my control, and the horses were running away with the carriage while I held on for dear life.

  “You find something funny, Ms. Parker?” Cooper asked.

  “No,” I said, trying to stifle my chuckles with my fist. “There’s absolutely nothing at all funny about this morning’s events.”

  Cooper seemed to pick up on the bitterness in my tone. He stared harder at me, his detective x-ray vision contacts sliding into place. “What hap—”

  “Ms. Parker,” seventies superstar Stone Hawke cut him off, flipping a mini notebook open. “Would you please tell us what happened on Sunday, September 30th around twelve-forty-five p.m.?”

  This again? He had to be kidding me. I frowned up at Cooper. “So this guy here isn’t your boss?”

  Cooper shook his head. “He’s just anoth—”

  “Ms. Parker,” Detective Hawke interrupted Cooper again, gracing me with what I was sure he thought was a warm and fuzzy bear sort of smile. He tugged a pen from an inner pocket in his corduroy jacket and clicked it open, closed, and open again, like he was testing it for quality control purposes.

  Each click made my shoulders scrunch a notch tighter. What was it with the Deadwood cops and those damned click pens? Were they issued as interrogation torture devices?

  “Would you mind retelling the events of that day,” Hawke continued, seemingly unaware that my eye had twitched at his last click, “including every detail you can think of in that curly blonde head of yours.”

  “Oh, shit,” I heard Cooper say under his breath before he took a step backward.

  Click, click, went Detective Hawke’s pen.

  My eye twitched again.

  Then something splintered in my brain.

  “No.” I spoke in a growl, sounding all demon-possessed like the little girl in the Exorcist. At any moment, my head would spin clear around.

  Hawke’s thick black unibrow scrunched in the middle as the two sides of his forehead collided in a curious display of plate tectonics. “No, you wouldn’t mind retelling the events?”

  CLICK. CLICK!

  I swiped the pen from his thick fingers, dropped it on the floor boards, and stomped on it over and over with my boot heel until it broke into several pieces. Then I scooped up the pieces, grabbed Detective Hawke’s wrist, and dropped the remains in his palm.

  “No,” I said, “I am not going to tell my story one more time.” I tucked back some curls that had come loose during my stomp-fest and straightened my coat, taking a moment to calm down, steady my voice. “Detective Cooper has all versions of my story already written down. You can read his notes and catch up.”

  His jaw unhinged, Hawke turned to Cooper. “Why didn’t you inform me that your witness is unstable?”

  “She’s not usually like this. She’s obviously—”

  “Pre-menstrual?” Hawke interjected.

  Cooper winced and took another step back. Smart cookie.

  I stepped really close to Detective Hawke, my fists clenching. I didn’t like what I saw, especially all of the hairs in his nose. “Listen you ass-scratching baboon, insult me one more time and it will be your testicles under my boot heel next.”

  Whirling on Cooper, I snarled. “Are we done standing around out here? Because I have some serious crap to deal with back at work and the sooner we do this, the sooner I can return to what I do best.”

  “Messing up my cases?” Cooper asked, a grin ghosting his lips.

  Actually, it was panicking, but that wasn’t very cool sounding and I needed a good exit line. “Selling real estate.”

  Oh, man, that was so lame.

  Cooper’s grin fully surfaced. “Is that the best you could come up with?”

  I shoved him in the chest as I stalked past him. “I’ll come up with something all right. Something you can stuff right up your ying-yang along with that stick.”

  “Ying yang? You’re slipping, Parker,” he said from behind me, following on my heels.

  “Yeah, well I’ve had a really crappy morning, so cut me some slack.”

  “What happened? You didn’t get another phone call, did you?”

  No, this time trouble had walked right through the front door.

  Detective Hawke trailed behind us keeping a safe distance. Becoming a eunuch must not have appealed to him.

  “No call,” I told Cooper. I didn’t feel like spilling
anything else right now. The burn from seeing Rex again was too raw, still oozing.

  “Your family’s okay?”

  “Uh-huh.” I passed the stairwell, heading toward the door crossed off with crime scene tape.

  “Doc’s fine?”

  I hoped so. There was the chance that Tiffany had him tied up and muzzled in her basement by now, though. “Yes.”

  “Ms. Beals and your aunt are good?”

  I stopped in front of the door to Ms. Wolff’s apartment, frowning back at Cooper. “What’s the deal?”

  His eyes widened for a split second. “What do you mean?”

  “Are you putting on a show for your new partner or something?”

  “A show?”

  “Yes. You’re pretending to have a human heart and care about my problems all of a sudden.” My gaze bounced between the two detectives. “Oh, I get it now. You’re playing the ‘good cop’ role today, aren’t you?”

  “Violet,” Cooper started, crossing his arms over his chest. “I was—”

  “If this is the disrespect all of your witnesses show you,” Detective Hawke said, all high and mighty toned, “I can see why you’re having an issue with solving your cases lately.”

  “Pipe down, Rockford Files,” I snapped. “Cooper’s inability to solve murders has nothing to do with me.”

  “First of all,” Cooper grated, “Ms. Parker’s disrespect for officers of the law has no correlation with my open cases.”

  “I do not disrespect all cops,” I clarified. “Just you two.”

  “Second,” Cooper nailed me with his steely gray glare, “you have a lot to do with why these damned murders aren’t solved yet and you know it.”

  “Me?” I rolled my eyes. “Oh, jeez. Here we go again with how I keep screwing up your investigations.”

  “Is she hiding evidence from you?” Detective Hawke asked, his hands back in his front pockets.

  Cooper’s face pinched. “No, she’s not hiding evidence.”

  Au contraire, but now was not the time to bring up that tidbit about the demon guidebook I hadn’t told him about or any of the other stuff.

  Detective Hawke’s gaze bounced between Cooper and me, his mouth morphing into an ugly sneer. “Are you screwing the witness again, Coop?”

  Without warning, I stomped my heel down on Detective Hawke’s toe. Hard.

  He squealed and did a one-footed jig.

  I debated on clapping along.

  “Violet,” Cooper said, his mouth all wavy lined, hovering between a smile and a frown. “Please try to keep your hands and feet to yourself.”

  “Fine, but you’d better advise your new partner to filter his comments.” I pointed up at Hawke’s red face. The fury radiating from his eyes could have heated a small house. “I’m a woman on the edge today, so back off.”

  His only response was a wrinkle of his upper lip.

  Good. At least we both knew where we stood—he didn’t like me one iota and I hoped a tornado would blow through and whirl him far, far away. One detective was all Deadwood needed. Two of them would only muck up the murder messes more.

  Cooper tore the crime scene tape off the jambs, unlocked the door, and opened it. He held his hand out for me to enter before him. “Shall we begin, Ms. Parker?”

  “This is going to be so much fun,” I muttered and stepped over Ms. Wolff’s threshold.

  Chapter Eight

  Time had gone on without Ms. Wolff. Her wall of clocks proved it. Each one still ticked away, the hands showing different times as their pendulums swung to and fro.

  Ms. Wolff’s apartment was shrouded in gloom, which added a cloud of doom to my overall mood as I stood there in the living room remembering how my last visit had gone. I sniffed, glad the odor that had been in here on Sunday was absent. Looking around, it appeared that the body and its smell were the only things that had been removed.

  “Holy shit,” Detective Hawke said, coming to a stop next to me, his shoulder bumping mine. “This victim had a serious case of OCD.”

  His comment confirmed my suspicion that this was his first time in Ms. Wolff’s apartment of horror. I hoped he’d at least flipped through the pictures before coming along for the tour.

  I turned to Cooper, who stood back, giving me breathing space. “What do you want from me?”

  He glanced around the room, and then centered his focus on me. “I want you to snoop around, just as you would if you had sneaked in here in your usual style.”

  The normal, testy Detective Cooper had returned. Good. I preferred fencing with him over holding hands and singing campfire songs. “Where should I start?”

  “Here is as good a place as any.”

  “You sure this is wise, Cooper?” Hawke asked. “She knows not to get her fingerprints on anything, right?”

  Hawke must have thought I’d lived under a rock for the last decade. I’d seen enough episodes of forensic crime television shows to know to look and not touch. I shot Cooper a disgusted grimace. “Did you really have to bring Barney along? This would go much smoother without your sidekick.”

  “The choice was not mine.”

  What did that mean? I’d have to tell Harvey about Stone Hawke and see what he knew about Cooper’s new partner. “So Rock here will be tagging along on all of our future adventures?”

  “Lady, the name is Detective Stone Hawke, or just Detective Hawke if that’s easier for you to remember. Not Barney, not Rock. And for your information, I happen to outrank your pal, Detective Cooper.”

  Was I supposed to be impressed? He’d picked the wrong citizen to show off his shiny badge to if so. “You outrank him, all right,” I said, strolling over to the clock wall. “You smell like you’ve been flea dipped in cheap aftershave. If you’re looking to entice a member of the female population with that stuff, stick to dabbing it on not splashing around in it like a dog in a mud puddle.”

  Hawke turned to Cooper. “Do you put up with this kind of mouthy talk from her all of the time?”

  “More often than not. But sometimes I arrest her.”

  That won him one of my middle finger salutes.

  “I remember the women in Deadwood being more friendly,” Hawke said.

  Cooper scoffed. “If you were looking for a farmer’s daughter sort of welcome from the local female population, you rode into the wrong town, partner.”

  “Stone Hawke,” I tried that on for size, stepping closer to check out the clocks that were at my eyelevel. “That sure sounds like a made up name for a cop to me, something I’d find in an action-adventure novel. Did your mom like to read, Detective Hawke?”

  The detail on each clock was intricate, incredibly so for something carved out of a tree. The wood was polished so much it looked plastic in the low light.

  “Leave my mother out of this.” Hawke grumbled to himself as he stomped over to the window.

  “Cooper.” I turned to find his steely gray eyes glaring at Hawke. It took him a second to return his focus to me. “I’d like a better look at these clocks, but it’s too dark in here. Can I open the curtains?” Although, with it raining outside, that probably wouldn’t help much.

  He seemed to follow my train of thought. “How about a flashlight?” he offered, joining me at the wall.

  “That’ll do.” I held out my hand.

  He offered a palm-sized flashlight, handle out. When I reached for it, he pulled it back. “Be careful. If you flick this switch and push that button there, it’ll zap you.”

  “Of course, it will. Even your flashlight is a weapon.” I shook my head. “I’m surprised it doesn’t shoot bullets, too.”

  “It never hurts to be prepared.” He handed the flashlight over.

  “Now you sound like your uncle.” I carefully switched it on, making sure I didn’t electrocute myself and add another fatality to Cooper’s case board.

  I shined the light on one of the clocks. From what I could tell, it had wooden hands, dial, and pendulum. I’d bet the cuckoo and all of the decorat
ions on it were made of wood, too, no plastic on this puppy. “What kind of wood do you think this is?”

  “Walnut,” Cooper said without question.

  “How come you’re so sure?”

  “I’m a detective. They pay me to be sure.”

  I peered at the next one over. The design was different, this one with leaf carvings—poison ivy from the looks of the three leaf bunches—instead of birds of prey. Again, it was highly polished with wood components. “There’s no dust on them.”

  “Like I said,” Hawke came up behind us, making it two too many detectives in one spot, “she had a serious case of OCD. I’ve seen others with it. They get fixated on something, like washing their hands, and can’t leave home because they keep washing and washing. All these damned clocks must have kept the victim busy night and day.”

  I sidestepped over to one of the clocks that wasn’t working, shining the light on it. Carved hunting dogs were affixed to it. But something about them made me uneasy. I looked closer, studying the carved pieces, noticing that they seemed furrier than most hunting dogs, more ferocious, posed in menacing positions with a young girl cowering between them. Then it hit me—they weren’t dogs, they were wolves. I shined the light back into the opening in the clock face to see if there were other wolf carvings glued onto the piece that must usually spin, but I couldn’t get a clear angle on what was hidden inside the clock. I nudged it with the flashlight, but it was stuck. I looked above the opening and noticed a skull at the apex mixed in with the leaf carvings and almost dropped the clock.

  “What are you doing, Parker?” Cooper asked.

  I swallowed my unease, getting back on track. “Trying to see something.” And trying to figure out why this one had stopped.

  “Why are we wasting so much time on these stupid clocks?” Hawke snapped. “We should be going through her dresser, pulling up the carpet in her closet, looking for something worthwhile, not admiring her collection of cuckoo clocks.”

  I wished good ol’ Stone would roll across the room and let some moss gather on him for a bit. Ignoring the new guy, I told Cooper, “I want to take this one off the wall.”

  “Why?”