by Ann Charles
I sniffed the sachet. “What’s in it?”
“That’s not your concern.”
“How is a tea bag stuffed in my bra going to protect me from those toothy bastards in Slagton?”
“You need to trust me on this,” she said and hugged me tight. “Be careful out there, baby girl. Stick close to Doc.”
“Hug my kids,” I said, my voice thick, choked with worry that I might not return. “Tell them Doc and I will take them to the Rec Center another day.”
She nodded. “You’ll be back, Violet. I know it in my heart.”
“Yeah, but will I be in one piece?”
* * *
Step Three—Plan the Attack
I knocked on Doc’s door, hesitant to waltz inside since Cooper and Harvey were living there. The sight of either of them in their skivvies would haunt me for months, making me want to scour my eyes out with a pumice stone.
“Parker!” Cooper barked as he opened the door. Tufts of blond hair stuck up on one side of his head. Both eyes were red rimmed, the left one twitching. His T-shirt was on backward, the tag sticking out at his neck. “What in the hell is this text supposed to mean?” He shoved his cell phone in my face, almost ramming it into my nose.
I snatched it from him, shoving the grumpy bear aside so Cornelius and I could step in out of the cold. “What are you talking about?” Looking down at the phone, I read, Tall kid to Dominatrix. Your uniform nation has income as promised. Call me in you wacko.
Huh. I could swear I’d left a message in plain old, eighth-grade level English. My phone was cursed, dang it.
Cooper shut the door, leaning against it. “That message makes no fucking sense at all. Do you even know how to spell?”
“She knows how to read,” Cornelius supplied. “At least children’s books, anyway.”
I wrinkled my upper lip at both of them. “I know how to read and spell, thank you very much.”
“Then explain your message.”
Cornelius took the phone and read it. “I saw secret code language like this once on the back of a cereal box.”
I grabbed the phone back. “It says your informant is dead, Cooper.”
“What?!” I could have sworn the detective’s hair stood up all over for a few seconds before returning to its lopsided state.
Doc descended the stairs. The lines on his face told me he’d overheard what I’d told Cooper. “Who told you the informant is dead? Mr. Black?”
“No. Dominick was waiting at my SUV this morning before I went to my brunch meeting. He informed me that Cooper’s informant was no longer with us.”
“Jesus.” Cooper followed that with a litany of swear words before yanking his phone away from me. “Why in the hell didn’t you call me and tell me that?”
“You said not to bug you until later this afternoon.”
“I meant don’t bug me with inane shit. This,” he said, shaking his phone at me. “This was worth an immediate call.”
“Well, how am I supposed to know what you do and do not deem as important? The guy is dead. Waiting a few hours for you to get some much-needed sleep wouldn’t change that fact.” I crossed my arms. “Besides, I was a little busy immediately after I received the news and sort of forgot about the dead guy.”
“How in the hell could you forget about a dead informant?”
Harvey strolled out from the kitchen with crumbs in his beard. “Busy doin’ what?”
“I had a brunch meeting with my boss and coworkers.”
“Oh, I get it now,” Cooper said, crossing his own arms. “Real estate pow-wows are much more important than someone’s life. That makes complete sense.”
He could shove his sarcasm up his patootie. “For your information, Cooper, I received some news of my own today that blew me out of the water along with all thoughts of you and your damned informant.”
“What news?” Doc asked, leaning against the newel post.
“Jerry fired Ray.”
Doc’s eyebrows hit his hairline. “It’s about damned time.”
Cooper’s eyes narrowed into slits. “This isn’t going to end well.”
Harvey grinned so wide his ears almost caved inward. “Well, what do ya know? Pecos Bill has got somethin’ inside his head besides nits.”
“That reminds me,” Cornelius said from where he was inspecting a framed map of old Deadwood on Doc’s dining room wall. “You should throw your coffee cup away, Violet.”
“Why?”
“My eye in the sky recorded your ex-coworker taking it into the bathroom with him this morning before he left with his box of personal belongings.”
“Ewww.” I wasn’t going to touch that mug with a ten-foot pole.
“What spurred Jerry to fire Ray?” Doc asked.
“Your ex. It appears Tiffany tattled on Ray, who was working with her behind my back to steal Jeff Wymonds. Jerry doesn’t condone playing dirty like that and kicked Ray off the team permanently.”
“Apparently your boss’s ethics outrank his billfold.” Doc slid his coat on. “But why would Tiffany turn on Ray?”
Good question.
“After I finished choking down that nugget,” I said, turning to Cooper, “Eddie Mudder called to tell me that Mr. Black was waiting at the morgue to talk to me about something urgent. Which leads to why we are going to Slagton today instead of after Detective Whineypuss gets his beauty rest.”
Cooper’s mouth tightened. “What exactly did Black have to say?”
I repeated the juggernaut’s message, what I could remember of it, anyway.
“Damn, Killer.” Doc stepped closer, dropping a kiss on my forehead. “You’ve had a busy morning.”
He didn’t know the half of it. I hadn’t filled him in yet on Jane’s ghost leaving a laundry list for Cooper. “I could use a vacation from this Executioner gig.”
“You and me both.” Cooper rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “So, what’s the plan? We return to that old Plymouth for another showdown?”
“I hope ya can stay upright in yer boots this time,” Harvey said.
“These puppies won’t let me down.” I held up one of my thick-treaded snow boots. “Neither will my war hammer.” At least my fingers were crossed that was the case.
“Are we leaving Curion here?” Cooper asked. “Or dropping him off somewhere?”
“He’s coming with us.”
Cooper’s mouth hardened. “That’s a mistake, Parker. This isn’t a skip through the woods with a picnic basket.”
“I know that, law dog,” I shot back, bristling. “So does Cornelius.”
Doc searched my face, his head tipping to the side. “What are you doing, Violet?”
“I’m stacking the deck.” I looped my hand through Cornelius’s arm and tugged him over to the group. “We need a wider channel than I can offer on my own.”
“Why?” Cooper asked.
“Because the Wild Hunt clock won’t stop cuckooing, and I have a feeling that the hunter is waiting at the gate to come through.”
Harvey snorted. “Waitin’ fer what? An invitation?”
“Waiting for me, and we’re going to need help to sneak up on this son of a bitch before it gets the jump on me.”
* * *
Step Four—Charge into Battle
The trip up Strawberry Hill in Harvey’s pickup went way too fast. I sat in the back between Harvey and Cornelius, still working out a plan of attack for Slagton while a certain hard-headed detective vetoed most of my ideas before I could finish my sentences.
“Do you have a better idea, Cooper?” I groused, glaring at the back of his head.
His hands white-knuckled the steering wheel. “I have at least five better ideas than you standing in the middle of the road like a damned sitting duck.”
“She’d be a standin’ duck,” Harvey said. “We need to stop at my ranch fer a few minutes, Coop.”
“Why?” Cooper asked.
“I need to grab some ammo for Bessie.”
“Viol
et.” Doc’s tone was meant to calm me, along with the look he gave me from the passenger seat up front. “Let’s hear what Coop has to say.”
I pinched my lips together, meeting Cooper’s glower in the rearview mirror. “I’m waiting.”
“If we stick together and secure one area at a time, our chances of getting out of this without casualties is far greater.”
“And what area do you propose we secure first?” I asked.
“We start at my informant’s place. It’s at the edge of town and provides us with a starting point. Then, we can decide if your idea of splitting into two teams is worthwhile, or if we should continue together.”
I looked at Cornelius, who had remained quiet throughout most of the drive. “What do you think of Cooper’s big plan?”
“I prefer the plan involving the least chance of dying.”
“Stick with me and Bessie.” Harvey leaned forward and told him around me. “Sparky here will land you deep in trouble without a shovel.”
“Hey,” I said, elbowing him. “That’s not always true.”
“In this case,” Doc said, “it probably is.” He faced forward again.
Cooper turned onto the road leading to Harvey’s place and Slagton.
“I’m going to need to keep one of those chimera things alive,” I told Harvey.
“How in the hell are we supposed to do that?” Cooper butted in.
“I’d tell you, but you’d actually have to listen to my idea for once.”
“Shut up, Parker.”
I looked at Harvey. “Do you have anything that might help me catch one of them in your barn? Or did Cooper’s pals clean you out?”
“The only traps I have left are too small to do ya any good.”
“How about one of those big burlap bags I saw stacked in a stall? If I knock one out, we can stuff it in there and tie it down in back.”
“With those teeth?” Cooper interfered. “It would chew its way free in a heartbeat.”
I crossed my arms. “Yeah? Well, maybe I’ll tie you up with it so it can chew on you, too.” I nudged Harvey in the knee. “Grab me a bag.”
He nodded.
Cooper steered onto the gravel drive leading to Harvey’s place. He hit the brakes a moment later in front of the barn, leaving the pickup idling. “Make it quick, Uncle Willis.”
“Help me out, Sparky.”
After exchanging a quick frown with Doc, I followed Harvey to the barn. I held my old fleece-lined parka tight at my collar while he fiddled with the lock and chain on the barn doors. The temperature was dropping by the minute, I could swear. The sky seemed darker, more chilling even. Or maybe my gloomy mood was distorting my view.
A few seconds later, we filed inside. The musty smell of hay and dust reminded me of the night we’d had a séance in here. That thought led to a flashing image of the dead guy we found in Harvey’s old safe. Shaking off the memories of that mess, I followed the ornery buzzard over to an upright refrigerator that looked to be a leftover from the 1950s. He pulled open the door. Several green steel boxes lined the dark shelves.
He hauled one out and handed it to me. “Hold this.”
The steel box was as heavy as a watermelon. “What is this?”
“It’s an ammo can.”
“Why’s it so heavy?”
“Because it’s full of ammo.” He shut the refrigerator door. “Shotgun shells for Bessie.”
“Are those other ammo cans full of shotgun shells, too?”
“Nope. They have ammo for my other guns, along with a few hand grenades I’ve bought off the Internet.”
Criminy. I took a step away from the fridge, putting distance between the grenades and me. “Are we done?”
“I wanna grab two more things.”
I trailed after him into a corner of the barn. Shadows made it hard to see. He lifted a rusted steel door in what looked to be a grain storage bin and pulled out a wooden box from the dark chute. I heard something scuttle across the beam along the wall next to me and stepped closer to Harvey. He pried off the lid of the box with his handy screwdriver and pulled out two long candles with curling black wicks.
“Here we go.” He handed one to me. “Keep that some place safe.”
I held it up in a shaft of light coming through a crack in the wall, trying to get a better look at it. “Why is there waxy cardboard wrapped around this candle?”
“That ain’t yer typical candle. Be careful with that stick, Sparky.”
Stick? I frowned at him. “Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”
“Okay, it’s not what ya think it is.”
I held it out toward him. “I’m not carrying this.”
“Don’t be such a baby.” He grabbed the stick, pulled my collar open, and stuffed it inside of my coat. “Don’t let Cooper see it. He gets persnickety around dynamite.”
I held completely still, barely breathing. “Can you blame him?”
“What’re yer eyes all buggy like that fer?”
“Are you kidding me? How old is the dynamite you just crammed between my boobs?”
His face scrunched in thought. “I’m thinkin’ not more than twenty years or so.”
Hadn’t Cornelius said after a year, the nitroglycerin in dynamite can start to sweat through the wax-coated paper, making it unstable as hell?
I gulped. Fuck. I was now loaded down with an ammo can full of shotgun shells and an old stick of dynamite. One wrong move and I’d be nothing more than a black spot on the ground.
Harvey left me standing there sweating. When I didn’t scurry after him, he turned back. “Come on, girl. We got us some huntin’ to do.”
Back at the pickup, he took the can of ammo from me and placed it in the bed of his pickup, along with a couple of burlap bags he’d grabbed.
“You don’t want to shove your ammo under the seat?” I asked.
“Yer clock box is takin’ up too much room.”
“What about the dynamite?” I whispered.
“Hold onto it in case ya need it in a jiff. I’ll carry the other one.” He tucked it inside his heavy-duty winter coat.
“Would you two move your asses!” Cooper said out the driver’s side window. “Daylight is wasting.”
“I’m going to shove this fancy candle up your nephew’s ying-yang if he doesn’t stop snarling at me.”
Harvey snickered. “That will open his channel plenty wide.”
We piled into the backseat … well, eased inside was more like it since we each had an old stick of dynamite keeping us warm and worried. I felt every single bounce on the road to Slagton, holding my breath half of the time, fingers and toes crossed I didn’t go ka-boom before I even reached the old mining town’s sign.
Sleet peppered the windshield and roof of the pickup, the small pebbles of ice ricocheting off, sounding like static in the cab. Meanwhile, Cooper filled the time by telling Doc and Harvey about Jane’s appearance in the office this morning and her cryptic list, agreeing to give Doc the names of the buildings sometime soon to research. I told them about the other message from Jane regarding Ray not being alone and let it sit out there for all of us to ponder.
Cooper slowed the rig as we neared the informant’s shack.
“Do you see anything?” I asked Cornelius.
“Living or dead?” he replied.
Cooper slammed on the brakes. “Holy shit.”
My heart rocketed off the ground. “What?”
“That’s not good,” Doc said, frowning out the windshield.
I leaned forward, peering through the sleet. Up ahead on the right, where the informant’s house had been, was a pile of charred, wooden remains with a crooked stone chimney rising from the middle of the burnt mess.
Was that how Dominick knew the informant was dead?
“Somebody throwed a sprag in yer wheel,” Harvey said to his nephew. Tapping his coat where his stick of dynamite was hidden, he gave me an exaggerated wink. “Looks like we’re gonna have to go with Plan B
, Sparky.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The stick of unstable dynamite wedged between my boobs had my heart feeling a mite twitchy.
“What’s Plan B?” Cooper asked, squinting at his uncle in the rearview mirror.
“Sparky has a notion,” Harvey answered, throwing me to the wolves—or in this case, to the law dog.
Cooper’s glare shifted to me.
“We need to split up,” I told him, returning to an earlier idea I’d voiced that he’d promptly shot down.
“Parker, I don’t—”
“She’s right,” Doc interrupted. He pointed out the windshield. “Take us to the old store building.”
Cooper’s shoulders tightened, but he didn’t argue with Doc. I resisted the urge to rub my “rightness” into Cooper via a noogie on his hard head and peered out Cornelius’s side window instead. I searched the trees, looking for falling snow or any other sign that the chimeras were hiding somewhere in the shadows, and then did the same out Harvey’s window. It looked clear, but my gut said otherwise. Those bastards were hiding out there somewhere, watching, waiting to pounce. I just knew it.
When Cooper slowed to a stop in front of what was left of the mining company store, Doc held up the handgun Cooper was letting him borrow. “The Glock has fifteen rounds in the magazine, right?”
“Yep. It’s loaded and ready. Remember, aim for the head.”
“Right.” He scratched his jaw. “We need a distraction. You think you and your uncle can come up with something?”
“What do ya got in mind?” Harvey asked.
“I don’t know. Something loud. Maybe try to draw them toward that Plymouth we fought next to yesterday. You need to keep them busy long enough for Violet to go inside and make it back out again. Cornelius and I might not be able to fend them off if they come while we’re helping her.”
“Inside where? The store?” I asked.
His gaze shifted to me. “Inside the darkness. You need to figure out why that clock keeps cuckooing.”
“It’s still cuckooing?” Cornelius asked. At my nod, he stroked his goatee. “Intriguing.”
Annoying was more like it. The constant cuckooing would make me pull my hair out soon if I couldn’t make it stop.
