by Ann Charles
She grabbed a half-full bottle of wine and shut the door. “Dominick was at the party.” Tugging out the cork, she chugged several gulps.
Uh-oh! “He didn’t try anything on you, did he?”
She lowered the bottle. “He followed me into the women’s restroom to give me this.” She drew a piece of paper from the inside of her shirt and held it toward me.
“What is it?” A love note? I took it from her.
“Read it.”
I opened the note and read aloud, “ ‘Your time is running out, Scharfrichter.’ “ I crumpled the note in my hand. “Blimey, he’s relentless.”
“That’s not all,” Aunt Zoe said, taking another swallow of wine.
“What else did he say?”
“It’s not what he did or didn’t say.” She gulped more wine.
“Aunt Zoe, stop drinking and explain, damn it.”
The bottle lowered again. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “I didn’t give him a chance to say anything else. I ran out of the bathroom before he could get into my head, but the son of a bitch followed me out. In front of a crowd of Deadwood’s business leaders, he drew me to him with his damned mind game.” She scrubbed her hand down her face. “He got in my head so fast, Violet. My charms were worthless, not even a hint of protection against him. What a fool I must have looked, mooning over him like that.”
Having seen Aunt Zoe moon over Dominick in the past, my face heated for her. “Did you kiss him?”
She grimaced. “I tried to.”
“What do you mean, tried?” Doc asked.
“Reid stepped in before I could actually plant my lips on Dominick’s. He pushed me aside and punched the bastard square in the face.” She planted her fist in her open palm. “Bam.”
I covered my chest with my hand. “Oh, no!” Dominick could break through brick walls with his bare hands. “What did he do to Reid?”
“He didn’t do anything. There were too many people watching.” She crossed her arms, frowning out the window in the back door. “He just rubbed his jaw and smiled at one and all. You know Dominick, all handsome charm and slick charisma.”
That was the shine on her from Dominick’s magic still talking. I didn’t find him charming at all, only tricky and dangerous.
“But on his way out the door,” Aunt Zoe continued, “he walked by Reid and warned that his time was coming.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I winced on Reid’s behalf.
Aunt Zoe’s face creased. “I’m afraid to find out.”
* * *
Saturday, December 15th
The bright light of dawn found me alone in my bed with Bogart the vegetarian cat lounging between my ankles. My daughter’s shy cat rarely made an appearance outside of Addy’s room, so I wasn’t sure how I warranted Bogart’s companionship this morning or her purring. Maybe she sensed something about me that I needed to heed, like impending death in a derelict mining town full of shotgun-toting whangdoodles.
Sheesh! Enough with the negativity.
I sat up, leaning forward to pet her, and froze.
I wasn’t the reason she was purring.
Under Bogart’s front paw lay a mouse. It blinked and wiggled its whiskers as the cat licked its ears, cleaning the mouse like it was one of her own freaking kittens.
I screeched.
Bogart shot off the bed and out the door in a blur.
The mouse rolled onto its feet and took a run straight at me. I squealed and threw up the blanket, sending the mouse airborne. It cartwheeled across the room, squeaking as it twirled, and landed on my dressing chair. For a second the two of us stared at each other in silence, breath held, and then it made a mad dash into my closet.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I scrambled off the bed and shut the closet door, jamming dirty socks in the space between the door and the floor.
I leaned against the door, breathing a sigh of relief. I had the beast contained for the moment. I looked around my bedroom for something to use as a mousetrap. Dang Doc for sleeping at home last night. I could use a big hunka-hunka man to … Elvis! Of course! I’d watched Addy’s chicken chase mice around the backyard several times this fall, pecking at their hindquarters as she raced after them.
After a dash to the basement to collect a mouse-hunting chicken, I shut Elvis in my closet with a grimace of what carnage I might find when she finished the job. Thankfully, my purple boots were downstairs by the front door, safe from the bloodshed. Elvis squawked from the other side of the door. Then something thumped against the wall.
Grumbling about my daughter and her damned weird pets, I escaped to the shower, putting the cat, mouse, and chicken from my mind as I washed my skin twice. Lord only knew where else that mouse had crawled while in my bed.
As I shampooed my hair, my thoughts returned to last night.
Doc had ended up taking Reid to the hospital emergency room to have his swollen hand X-rayed. Initially, when Reid joined us in the kitchen shortly after Aunt Zoe’s tale of the evening’s events, he balked at having his hand examined by a doctor. His stubbornness made Aunt Zoe drink, stomp, and cuss more. When she threatened to grab her shotgun and give Reid another reason to go to the ER, he’d wisely caved. Since she was too tipsy by that time to go with him, Doc volunteered.
Around midnight, I received a text from Doc saying Reid had no broken bones, only a lot of swelling. Instead of returning to Aunt Zoe’s, he decided to go home and research late into the night to prep for our pending Slagton visit. When I joked about not making it through the night without him next to me, he sent me a heart picture and told me to come see him at work around lunchtime. His request for me to wear the red lace bra and panties that he loved earned him a heart picture in return.
Before crawling under my covers, I’d gone down to let Aunt Zoe know about Reid’s hand. She was out in her glass workshop toiling away, the effects from the wine gone judging by her steady hands. The swear words were still flying, though. When I asked how long she planned to stay out there, she said, “When I can think about tonight without wanting to scream the house down.”
My thoughts snapped back to the present as I rinsed the shampoo from my hair and shut off the shower. When I returned to my bedroom, all was quiet on the battlefield. I peeked in my closet and found Elvis nesting on a pair of my knockoff sheepskin boots. The mouse was nowhere to be found. For the time being, I was happy to be ignorant of its whereabouts.
I left the closet door open a crack and headed to the kitchen, which was empty. A fresh pot of coffee steamed on the counter. Movement outside the kitchen window drew my gaze. I watched Layne lift a lopsided ball of snow. He set it on two bigger snowballs, giving his snowman a head. The sound of Aunt Zoe cheering made me look down. She sat on the back porch steps, a steaming mug in her hand, her long silver-streaked hair draped over her shoulders. I soaked in the scene, my heart warming at the matching grins on both of their faces.
I poured myself a cup of coffee, planning to head out to join them.
The doorbell rang.
Setting my coffee on the counter, I padded to the front door. I peeked out through the curtains, making sure it wasn’t Dominick Masterson here to terrorize my aunt some more. Instead, Cornelius stood on the porch in his long black overcoat and stovepipe hat.
I opened the door. “Cornelius, what are you doing here so early?”
The man usually didn’t like to be awakened until after eight-thirty-seven. My awareness of that fact, sad as it was, showed how long I’d been involuntarily acting as Cornelius’ assistant.
“Hello, Violet. I’ve come to take you fishing.”
Fishing? Knowing Cornelius, I doubted he was talking about using fishing rods and worms.
I peered around him. “How did you get here?” Currently, he didn’t have a car and relied on various Deadwood taxis to get around town, but there was no taxi to be seen out at the curb.
“My mode of transportation is not relevant to this conversation.”
He reached out and touched my robe’s lapel. “Where on earth did you find a trench coat made of pink terrycloth?”
“It’s a robe, Cornelius, not a coat.”
“Why are you wearing a robe at this time of day?”
For Pete’s sake, it wasn’t even eight yet. “That’s not relevant to this conversation,” I threw back at him. Cold air swirled around my bare ankles, making me shiver. “Come inside.” I held the door wide for him to join me, closing it quickly behind us. “What do you mean, you’re here to take me fishing?”
“We need bait.” He took off his round sunglasses and looked down his long nose at me. His cornflower blue eyes seemed extra bright for so early in the day, his smile lifting both corners of his mouth for once.
“Who are you and what have you done with the real Cornelius?”
“Violet, quit being silly. Now,” he pulled off his gloves and stuck them in his pockets. “Do you have any monkey skulls? A howler monkey would be preferable, but I suppose we could make do with a common marmoset.”
“Sorry, no monkey skulls here,” I said with a straight face. “But my son reconstructed a horse skull last summer and we’ve found all but three of its teeth.”
“A horse, huh? That might …” He stopped at the sound of clucking behind him, turning around.
Elvis stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at us with her head cocked sideways.
“Did you get that damned mouse?” I asked her.
In answer, she cocked her head to the other side and clucked.
“What did she say?” Cornelius asked me.
“I don’t know. I don’t speak chicken.”
Elvis clucked again, and then she leaned her head down. When she lifted it back up, the mouse dangled by its tail from her beak.
I watched with a gaping jaw as Elvis fly-hopped down the stairs holding onto that damned mouse the whole time. It squeaked as she hit the bottom step.
I opened the front door for her. “Take it outside, Elvis.”
To my surprise, the bird strutted over the threshold and onto the porch. She flew down the steps, holding on tight to the mouse’s tail.
“Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit,” I said, speaking in Harvey-ese. I laughed. “Can you believe that crazy chicken?”
Cornelius joined me in the doorway. “How long have you known that bird?”
“My daughter chicken-napped her last July.”
Elvis strutted along the sidewalk, veering around the side of the house and out of view. Maybe I should have been more specific on where to drop the mouse.
I closed the door. “Now, where were we? Oh, yeah, drinking coffee.” I headed for the kitchen.
Cornelius followed.
“Why do you need monkey skulls?” I took a sip of coffee.
He walked over to the refrigerator and opened the door. “For good luck. Skulls ward off evil influence. I prefer smaller monkey skulls because they fit in my coat pocket.”
“Ew! Remind me never to borrow your coat.”
He bent lower, searching the fridge. “Where do you keep your ginger?”
“On Gilligan’s Island with Mary Ann and the sexy Professor.”
I’d grown up with a big crush on Russell Johnson and his broad shoulders and windblown hair. Maybe he was the reason I had a hard time resisting smart men, a weakness that had landed me neck-deep in trouble in the past. By trouble, I meant pregnant with twins from an egocentric scientist who wanted nothing to do with his offspring. Although I’d scored with Doc, who I had little doubt could give my ex a run for his money in the big-brains department.
“I was more fond of Mrs. Howell and her pristine white gloves.” Cornelius shut the refrigerator. “I’ve been reading an old German spell book that I picked up years ago in a pawn shop outside of Cologne. It was written by a male witch.”
“You mean a warlock?” Or were males called a wizards?
“A witch is a witch regardless of his or her gender.”
“Witches can be men or women, got it.”
I took another drink of coffee, thinking about Detective Hawke accusing me of being a witch. Cooper had warned me repeatedly to watch my Ps and Qs around Hawke when it came to playing along with the dipshit’s witchy idea. So far I’d failed on keeping my big mouth shut—cackling at him like the Wicked Witch of the West and casting phony penis-shrinking spells I made up on the fly. If only I could hire a monkey to fit with fake wings …
“… and found a love spell you can use on the Tall Medium,” Cornelius said.
Say what now?
The “Tall Medium” was what Cornelius called Doc rather than the three-letter nickname everyone else on the planet used. There were so many questions that popped in my head from the last bit of Cornelius’s sentence that it took me several seconds to sort through them.
I took a gulp of coffee this time. “A love spell, you say?”
He walked over to the table and pulled the lid off Aunt Zoe’s Betty Boop cookie jar. “If you put a turtledove’s tongue in your mouth and coerce the Tall Medium to kiss you, he will fall deeply in love with you and never be able to love any other.”
Tempting as it was to make Doc my love slave for life, I wasn’t thrilled about sticking a dead bird’s tongue in my mouth. “Why are you reading a German spell book?”
“I would think it’s obvious.”
Sure it was—to the mentally deranged. I chugged the last half of my coffee, beer-bong style. “How long have you known how to speak German?”
“I can’t speak German. It’s too guttural and full of hard sounds. I prefer Spanish.”
“I thought you said you don’t speak Spanish.” Ironically, Natalie and I had been speaking pig Latin at the time he told us that.
“I don’t.” He plucked out a molasses cookie and inspected it. “However, I prefer the sound of it over German.”
“If you don’t know German, how are you reading the spell book?”
“Via a translator, of course.”
“So you have some sort of German-talking cricket in your pocket?”
He took a bite of the cookie and groaned loud enough to make me jump. “What is this morsel of ecstasy?”
“Uh, that’s a molasses cookie.”
“I’ve had molasses cookies before. They are dry and crunchy. This is soft and melts in my mouth.”
“Maybe you’re confusing molasses with gingerbread.”
He shoved the rest of the cookie in his mouth, moaning as he chewed. “Are you aware,” he said before he swallowed and grabbed another from the jar. “In the late Middle Ages Europeans used ginger to stimulate arousal in men and women?”
Was that why he was looking for ginger in the fridge? “So I need to pick up some turtledove tongue and ginger root at the grocery store in order to woo my Tall Medium?”
“Feathers from a rooster’s tail pressed into his palm works, too,” he spoke through a mouthful of cookie.
And miss out on sticking the dead bird’s tongue in my mouth? No thanks. Tail feathers made for boring foreplay.
I set my empty coffee mug in the sink, looking out at Layne who had made a second snowman, this one smaller than the first. As I watched, he adjusted their stick arms, lining them up so they were holding hands. Wasn’t that sweet? I smiled, my son’s tender nature making my eyes misty. The first girl who broke his heart would die a thousand painful deaths via the pointy end of my war hammer.
Another round of groans and moans played out behind me.
“Cornelius,” I said as I watched Aunt Zoe jam a row of different-colored glass buttons on the smaller snowman’s middle section. “Does this German spell book have anything to do with you wanting to take me fishing this morning?”
“Yes,” he mumbled.
Layne noticed me in the window and waved. His smile filled his cheeks, pink from the cold.
“What are we trying to catch?” I waved back, blowing Layne a kiss.
I had a feeling Cornelius wanted bait for that spooky Hellh
ole he’d found under Calamity Jane Realty.
“Wilda Hessler’s clown.”
My heart screeched to a stop.
I rather preferred the Hellhole.
Chapter Five
A half hour later, my Honda SUV crunched along the snow-covered streets. My white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel had nothing to do with the icy roads, though.
In the midst of sharing molasses cookies for breakfast with Cornelius, I’d received a call from Cooper ordering me to meet him four hours earlier than we’d discussed last night. My neck was still bristling from our short but loud conversation over the phone. For one thing, I did not have a big fat nose. For another, I didn’t appreciate the high and mighty detective demanding I drag my sad sack to Doc’s office in forty-five minutes and then threatening me with an “or else!” When I told Cooper where to shove his “or else,” he told me to quit being such a pansy and proceeded to blame today’s return trip to Slagton on me.
Of all the nerve! That bullheaded man and I were going to come to an understanding one of these days that would probably end with one of us sporting a broken nose—again. Maybe I could train Elvis to drag Cooper out by the tail next time he was over for supper.
Or just peck him on the ankle under the table.
“You’re being excessively challenging this morning, Violet,” Cornelius said from the passenger seat.
I guffawed. Hell, I was just getting revved up. He should have seen me battling the killer mouse earlier. “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” I said through clenched teeth.
I predicted an all-out brawl with Cooper before the sun set, envisioning climbing on his back, monkey style, and beating him over the head with a banana. While I suspected the stubborn oaf was suffering from tension overload that was partly due to sexual frustration thanks to my best friend’s long legs and full lips, he didn’t need to use me as his punching bag.
“You could use an internal cleansing to calm your nerves and open your mind,” Cornelius said. He was still trying to convince me to help him fish for a dead girl’s clown doll, or rather the ghost version of it.
