by Ann Charles
“Shhhh.” He shot a look toward the dining room.
“Don’t shush me, Cooper. If you didn’t want the world to know, you shouldn’t have put on that public display of affection for one and all at the bar.”
“It’s not that I’m trying to keep it a secret, but I’d rather you didn’t broadcast it to the whole damned town.” He popped open a beer. “And I didn’t bend her over backward.”
“Practically.”
He pointed his beer bottle at me. “Not practically. You were drunk and not supposed to be watching. You’re remembering it wrong.”
I crossed my arms. “Whatever. Natalie didn’t say a word about the kiss, but that doesn’t mean anything because our conversation was short and I didn’t ask about it.”
He took a swig from the bottle. “Did she mention anything at all about last night?”
“She said her head hurt like she’d been run over by Santa’s sleigh, and she spent half of the night doing the tango with the toilet.”
“When I helped her up to her apartment, I told her to eat something before going to bed. She said she wasn’t hungry and promptly passed out on the couch.”
“Did you remove any restrictive clothing from her body, Detective? You know, to help her sleep better?” I winked at him.
His gaze narrowed. “What do you think I am, Parker? Some kind of sexual deviant?”
“I think you’re frustrating most days. Sometimes downright annoying.”
“Good. Then I’m doing my job.”
“How come I don’t remember you taking her up to her apartment?”
“Because you were snoring in the back seat by that point.”
I was just glad to make it through the night without tossing my cookies since Doc was there beside me in bed. There was nothing like a drunk, puking girlfriend to make a man want to run for the hills.
Aunt Zoe joined us in the kitchen again with Reid in tow.
I whistled, eyeing him up and down. “Wow, Reid. You look hot enough to catch fire.” His deep red shirt made his blue-blue eyes stand out. His salt-and-pepper hair was combed back, his mustache trimmed. His black corduroy pants and cowboy boots added a final suave look.
“Thanks, Sparky. You have crumbs on your cheek.”
I brushed off my other cheek.
“She’s saving them for later,” Cooper told him, leaning against the counter. “Why are you so dressed up, Martin?”
“I’m taking Zo to the Deadwood Chamber holiday party.”
Cooper’s brows climbed upward. “No shit.” He looked over at Aunt Zoe, who was slipping on a pair of elegant glass earrings of her own making. “Did you lose a bet, Zoe?”
She chuckled, reaching for the long wool coat that Reid held out for her. “Something like that.”
“Shut up, Coop,” Reid said, helping Aunt Zoe with her sleeves. “At least I have a date tonight. You’re stuck here with your uncle.” He smiled at me. “No offense, Sparky.”
“None taken. I thought we’d play a game of pin the tail on the donkey after you two left, but Cooper would probably get tired of being poked with tacks all night long and shoot me.”
“Zoe,” Cooper said, “how about I take you to the party and leave these two knuckleheads here.”
She patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks for the offer, but Natalie just pulled up outside. A little birdy told me you have something to talk about with her.”
Cooper’s steely eyes nailed me to the floor. “Jesus, Parker. Did you take out a fucking ad in the Black Hills Trailblazer?”
I raised my hands in surrender. “I was drunk last night. I can’t be held responsible for my loose lips.”
“What’s the deal with Natalie and Coop?” Reid asked.
Cooper cursed under his breath and went over to the refrigerator, stuffing the rest of the beers he’d bought inside.
“It’s police business,” Aunt Zoe said, grabbing Reid by the arm. “We’ll be home around eleven,” she told me.
“You sure?” I wiggled my eyebrows in the fire captain’s direction.
Reid grinned, wiggling his back.
“Positive,” she said, elbowing him as she headed for the door.
He grunted, and then waved at me before following Aunt Zoe.
After they were gone, I turned back to Cooper. “What are you going to do about Natalie?”
He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know yet.”
“But last night you said something about—”
The sound of footfalls in the dining room made me pause.
Natalie joined us in the kitchen, faltering when she saw Cooper standing there. She recovered quickly, but her smile was banana-wide, looking almost manic. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I said too quickly.
Her gaze narrowed.
Cooper shot me an exasperated glare, and then he turned back to Natalie. “How are you feeling after last night, Beals?”
His question weighed heavy in the air, layered with all sorts of hidden undercurrents and sexual tension.
Her cheeks darkened as she held his gaze, but then she glanced down at her pink fleece shirt and pretended to wipe something off it. “A little hung over, but otherwise same ol’, same ol’.”
“Do you remember anything that happened?” I fished.
She took her sweet-ass time answering—at least it felt that way for me. It must have been an eternity for Cooper. “Well,” she said, moving over to the refrigerator, hiding her face in it. “I remember a lot of tequila talk.” She pulled out Aunt Zoe’s pitcher of lemonade. “Oh, and you sucking at pool.”
“I didn’t suck.” At least I thought I’d done decently. Or maybe I was thinking of another tequila pool party we’d had.
She set the lemonade on the counter next to Cooper, bumping him aside so she could reach the glasses. “What do you remember besides me out-drinking you?”
“I held my own just fine, thank you very much.” I crossed my arms. “Didn’t I, Cooper?”
He smirked. “You were equally shitfaced when I showed up.”
It was shortly after his arrival last night at the bar that he’d kissed Natalie, although there’d been some words first, but I couldn’t remember them.
“Yeah, but Vi passed out first, so I won.”
“You remember me carrying you up to your apartment?” he asked.
She poured the lemonade, her forehead creased. “You didn’t carry me. I walked on my own two feet.”
“You call that walking?”
“I call it staggering.”
“More like leaning heavily.”
She set the lemonade pitcher on the counter and hit him head-on with a stare. “What’s your point, Detective?”
His eyes searched hers.
I waited with my breath held to see if he’d bring up the kiss.
“Did you sleep okay?” he asked, chickening out.
She looked away first, carrying the pitcher back to the refrigerator. “I don’t remember that either.”
Either? I caught the hurried frown she shot him before opening the fridge door. She was hiding something, and I’d bet my purple boots it had to do with Cooper’s lips and her reaction to his kiss.
Rather than push her further in front of Cooper and add to the tension swirling around us, I decided to change the subject.
“Did you hear any ghosts last night?” I asked.
Natalie lived in the Galena House, my only remaining listed property besides Harvey’s ranch out in the boonies where dead body parts kept showing up. The Galena House was an old multi-story, Italianate-style boarding house that had been built in the late 1800s by Big Jake Tender, a freed slave known for his large stature, impressive abilities, and legendary feats. Over the decades, the house had passed down from one generation to the next. It now belonged to Jake’s great-great … and maybe one more great in there … niece, Freesia. While Freesia appreciated the bones of the building and all of the hard work her family had put into it for generatio
ns, she was a young, single woman trying to make ends meet. The Galena House needed repairs beyond her abilities and cash flow. Enter Natalie, a handywoman extraordinaire, who was helping Freesia fix up the house to sell so that Freesia could be free to roam and find her own place in history.
“No ghosts,” Natalie answered. “Ever since you guys played musical chairs with the attic ghosts, I haven’t heard a peep.”
Last week, Doc, Cooper, Cornelius, and I had held a séance in the attic of the Galena House. Our purpose had been to find a killer from the past. As it turned out, the answer had been in the mirror all along.
Anyway, before we’d had the séance, Natalie had been hearing noises in the middle of the night. Sounds like footfalls on the stairs and golden oldie country tunes coming from an unplugged antique radio in the attic. Doc had guessed the noisemaker to be Big Jake Tender in his ghostly form, whom Doc had run into at a séance in one of the downstairs apartments months prior. Apparently, Big Jake’s love for Ms. Wolff, who’d lived in the house during his lifetime, had been undying—at least his ghost thought so and kept playing the golden oldies to remember her. I’d used that same antique radio as a channeling device for the séance. Maybe that séance had sent Jake on his way to whatever came next.
“Although,” Natalie continued, pulling me out of the past. “After all of the tequila I had last night, I probably wouldn’t have heard a marching band playing on the floor above me. When I crashed onto my couch, it was a head-on collision that knocked me out cold until I relocated to the bathroom to begin my worshipping of the porcelain goddess.” She sat down at the table, raising her drink toward Cooper. “Thanks for the blanket and pillow.”
He nodded once.
“I wonder if Big Jake is gone for good now,” I said.
“Gone to where, though?” Natalie asked, taking a sip of lemonade. “All this talk about multiple planes and physical mediums has me scratching my head a lot lately.”
“Physical medium” was one of the labels Cornelius and Doc had given me, due to my ability to find frightening creatures on other planes of existence and somehow drag them back to this one. That was only one of my many new talents I’d discovered that left me staring at the woman in the mirror and wondering who in the hell she really was.
“Scratching your what?” Harvey asked, joining us in the kitchen.
I did a double take. “Where did you come from?” I hadn’t heard the front door open or close.
“My momma’s womb.” He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “Yer stallion is here, too.”
I glanced over Harvey’s shoulder. “Is he wearing his invisibility cape?”
“He was hoofin’ it upstairs to change.”
Doc had brought a few sets of clothes over this last week, stowing them in my closet. If he was going to keep spending the night, which was an integral part of my diabolical plan to make him my sex slave for life, we were going to have to make some space in my dresser drawers.
Harvey hustled over to the counter, inspecting Cooper’s groceries. “Ya forgot the cheese for the kids, boy.”
“It’s in the refrigerator.”
Harvey handed Cooper the head of cabbage. “Get to choppin’.”
Layne burst into the kitchen, spreading several sheets of paper on the table in front of me. “What do you think, Mom?”
I picked up one of the sheets. He’d drawn a medieval-looking sword with a long blade dripping blood. I complimented him on the detailed work on the handle.
“That’s not a handle, Mom. It’s called a hilt.”
Lately, Layne had been spending his recess in the library reading instead of going outside to get some fresh air. My son took after his father with his big science brain. If it weren’t horse anatomy 101 Layne was reading about in some huge tome, then it was other complex subjects such as the Maya or Deadwood’s ghost-filled past. The kid devoured books like he was a Himalayan monk locked up in a mountain temple. It appeared that his latest fascination was medieval weapons.
Layne picked up another drawing and held it in front of my face, talking excitedly about pommels, grips, scabbards, and more, making my head spin. While Layne pointed out the details of his weapon collection, Natalie kept sneaking peeks at Cooper, who was too busy helping his uncle make supper to notice. Every time she’d find me catching her in the act, she’d glance down, pretending to focus on her glass of lemonade.
Doc interrupted the scene, striding into the kitchen and stealing my attention with his faded jeans and black Henley.
“Hubba hubba,” I whispered.
He stopped to drop a hello-kiss on my mouth. “Molasses cookies?” he asked, his voice low and husky.
“Let me guess, I have more crumbs on my face?” I wiped off both cheeks this time and my nose, too.
His eyes crinkled in the corners. “Your kiss was extra sweet. I’m going to need more later.”
“I left a few in the jar.”
“I wasn’t talking about cookies.” Doc left me and my heart smoldering and walked over to the cupboard, pulling down plates. “Layne,” he said, holding out the plates, “you want to help me set the table?”
“I can help you,” I offered, starting to rise.
Doc shook his head. “It’s not your turn, remember?”
“Yeah, Mom,” Layne said, pushing me back into my seat. He dropped his artwork on the table. “Tonight is guys’ night. You just sit there and look pretty for us boys.”
Chuckling, Doc handed Layne the plates. “Nice touch, kid.”
I picked up a couple more of his drawings. Damn, Layne had even noted details on lengths and widths on several of the weapon diagrams. “Hey, Layne, did you copy these from one of the books at the library?”
“No.” He set a plate in front of me. “I saw them in that old book about women gladiators that I found in your room.”
More like sneaked from my room. I’d been doing a rotten job of reading the family history book about previous Executioners in our family line. Having the flu hadn’t helped my ability to focus. One night when I was passed out during my flu coma, he’d come into my room to check on me and found the book on my bed. Unable to resist, my curious child had “borrowed” the book without telling me, hiding it under his bed so I wouldn’t know he was reading it.
Doc paused in the midst of setting out silverware. “You drew them from memory?” He kept the book at his place now, so Layne wouldn’t have been able to copy them.
Layne nodded. “They were cool weapons.”
“Let me take a look at those.” Doc joined me, leaning over my shoulder as he stared down at Layne’s penciled sketches. “Damn, he did an amazing job with the details,” he said under his breath, pointing at one that looked a lot like the very ax a juggernaut-sized troublemaker had used to try to slice me in half during one of our séances at the Galena House.
Natalie leaned over my other shoulder, frowning down at one of the war hammers he’d drawn that resembled the one I had hidden in my closet at this very moment. “What’s this for?” she asked, pointing at the long spike sticking out the opposite side of the hammer.
“Piercing armor,” Layne explained. He lined up the silverware on the cloth napkins. “In medieval times, a warrior had to break through the heavy plates used to protect the enemy’s chest and back during battle.”
“Yikes,” Natalie said, handing it to Cooper, who’d come closer to take a look.
He stared at the war hammer for a few seconds, his forehead wrinkles deepening. When he looked up at me, his scowl was back in full force.
What? I mouthed.
He snorted in reply and returned to helping his uncle.
Ten minutes later, the table was set and the food was almost ready to eat when my daughter’s chicken, Elvis, came strutting in from the dining room.
I growled. “What is she doing out of her cage?”
Layne shrugged. “Addy couldn’t find her before she left with Kelly.”
I reached for the damned bird, but she do
dged my hand. “Do me a favor, Layne, and go put Elvis in her cage for the night.”
He scooped up the chicken and headed down into the basement, where Addy had made a two-story henhouse for the bird.
As soon as he was out of earshot, Cooper said, “Where is that war hammer, Parker?”
“Somewhere safe, why?”
“Don’t you think it’s quite a coincidence that your son drew a picture of it?”
“That’s not my war hammer he drew.”
“What makes you so certain?” Natalie asked.
“Because I know my weapon. It’s similar, but mine has the horns curling around the headpiece. The horns on the one he drew pointed straight out, more like spikes.”
“You need to take care and not let your son find that weapon,” Cooper warned. “It’s listed as stolen evidence at the police station and should it turn up in one of your offspring’s hands, Detective Hawke would be all over your ass again.”
“Detective Hawke can kiss my—”
The thudding of shoes on the basement steps made us both turn.
Layne rushed through the door, his eyes wide. “Mom, guess what?”
“Elvis laid a golden egg?” Harvey teased.
“Funny, Harvey, but no.”
I shrugged. “I have no idea what has you so breathless all of a sudden, Layne.” He’d probably discovered a new species of insect inside Elvis’s cage.
“You remember that spooky clock Addy found in a box next to the stairs?”
“You mean the box that had my name on it?” The box containing a Black Forest cuckoo clock with a carving of a pointy-eared beast with a long snout that I suspected was some sort of Hellhound–werewolf mix? The one I’d stuck down in the basement in spite of Aunt Zoe’s protest so that I didn’t have to listen to its incessant ticking with ever-growing anxiety.
“Yeah, that one.”
Of course I knew that clock. I’d recently learned that it had been a gift from the other albino-looking juggernaut, Mr. Black, who was supposedly a sentinel acting as my ally. He had come clean about his anonymous gift via a short note after my last visit to Ms. Wolff’s apartment in the Galena House. Mr. Black was also a Timekeeper and had the job of training me in that same role, which I now shared with him.
