Deadwood Mystery 11 - Devil Days in Deadwood

by Ann Charles

  “Maybe I should jog home,” Cornelius said, doing jumping jacks outside the passenger door.

  “Get in the car, Speedy Gonzales.”

  I climbed behind the steering wheel and started the engine. My headlights lit up Prudence’s house. A shadow moved behind the curtains in the sitting room. The porch light went out.

  How in Hades was I going to find a lidérc and a freaking Duzarx?

  I cursed and shifted into reverse.

  Chapter Five

  “I’m sorry I’m late for our spying date,” I told Natalie a short time later.

  Her pickup had been parked next to my usual spot behind Calamity Jane Realty when Cornelius and I returned from the Prudence fiasco. After rejecting Cornelius’s request to run laps with him at the Rec Center, claiming my body was allergic to bouncing, I’d settled into the passenger seat of Natalie’s pickup.

  “It’s not a ‘date,’ Vi, it’s a stakeout.” Natalie waited for me to click my seatbelt before shifting into reverse. “The word ‘date’ implies that some kissing might be on the table before the night is through, and frankly, I’ve seen you kiss enough boys to know those lips of yours are crawling with cooties. Besides, you’re not my type.”

  I sniffed, my nose cold and a little runny. Natalie smelled sweet and citrusy this evening, like she’d taken a bath in raspberry lemonade before meeting up with me, whereas I probably smelled like last week’s meatloaf after sweating through Prudence’s freak show. “I am too your type.”

  “If you mean sassy and brined in tequila, then I guess you’re right.”

  “I mean blond and alpha. All I’m missing is a pocket rocket.”

  She giggled, easing through the parking lot. “I’m not that into blonds. Sorry, babe.”

  “Right. Next you’re going to try to sell me oceanfront property in Wyoming. Listen, just because I’m not tall, lean, and bristly with a shiny law-dog badge pinned on my shirt doesn’t mean I’m not lovable, too.”

  “You are mostly lovable, but I’m not into law dogs.”

  I faked a sneeze while saying, “Bullshit.”

  She waited next to the Rec Center for a pair of city work trucks to pass before taking a right onto Sherman Street.

  “Whatever you’re implying, I’m pleading the Fifth.” Natalie shot me a sideways glare, and then did a double take. She hit the dome light. “What the hell happened to your eye?”

  I touched my cheek. It was still throbbing. “I caught an elbow in the face, and you can’t plead the Fifth. I haven’t even asked you any questions yet about what happened between Cooper and you down in Arizona.” I reached up and shut off the interior lights.

  “That elbow must have knocked some marbles loose, because you’ve done nothing but pester me with questions since I got home.” She stopped at the light and then made a left onto Pine Street. “You’re supposed to dodge elbows, not catch them. Who was doing the throwing?”

  “Prudence.”

  “You got hit by a ghost?”

  “She used Zelda’s elbow.” I pointed at her. “You have managed to avoid answering every single sex-related question I’ve asked since you returned from the Sunshine State.”

  “Arizona is not the Sunshine State.”

  “Shut up and drive.”

  She took another left onto Water Street after the VFW, which led into the parking garage next door. Deadwood police, Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department, and other county vehicles filled many of the spots at the far end of the lot. A few random trucks and cars were parked in the VFW-designated spots closer to Pine Street.

  “That Prudence,” Natalie said as she slowed to a stop in front of a couple of empty VFW spots. “She’s got a wicked temper for someone who’s been dead for well over a century. You’d think that would’ve been plenty of time to mellow her out a little. One of these days, I’ll have to meet her.”

  “My throbbing cheek and I advise against that.”

  She shifted into reverse. “What did you do to piss her off this time? Make fun of her old-fashioned clothes?”

  “I tried to save Cornelius from her mind melding trick.”

  “Did it work?”

  While Natalie backed into a VFW spot and then killed the engine, I told her the quick and dirty version of what happened up at Zelda’s place—well, it wasn’t really dirty, except for all of the curse words I used when complaining about trying to get along with Prudence.

  She leaned back in her seat, staring out the windshield. “Wow, who’d have figured Cornelius would be afraid of scarecrows.”

  “I would think you’d put more focus on the whole secret room full of terrors in his head tidbit, but you always were starry-eyed for the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.”

  “What can I say? I like guys with straw for brains.”

  In spite of being blessed with a high IQ, porn star lips, and a killer body, Natalie had the bad luck of attracting the wrong sort of guys, as in those who were looking for a quick roll in the hay with a hot babe. These losers would hang around until the next opportunity to stop-drop-and-roll with another sexy flame who came along, and then burn Natalie on their way out the door. This bad track record had inspired her to take a sabbatical from men last summer, and she’d held strong until Cooper had started lighting fires under her skin.

  I pshawed. “You picked up a rotten case of lie-arrhea down in Arizona.”

  “What? My last several boyfriends could certainly sing ‘If I Only Had a Brain’ and mean it.”

  She had a good point there. “Okay, so in the past that might have been true, but Cooper is no idiot.” He was a pain in the ass, certainly, but no fool.

  “Cooper is not my boyfriend. You need to put some ice on that cheek.”

  “I know, but I’m all out of frozen water at the moment.” I watched out the windshield as a Lawrence County sheriff’s pickup cruised by and parked in a spot down the way. “I thought you said we were going to spy on Detective Hawke.”

  “We are.”

  “Then why are we parked here? Is he hanging out at the VFW these days?”

  “Because he’s about to leave work and that’s his ride.” She pointed at a big, white Ford truck several spots down from us on the county parking side.

  “Is he allowed to park there?” I asked. “Are we allowed to park here?”

  “What is your preoccupation with illegal parking? It’s not like the parking police are monitoring these spots 24/7. Besides, we’re not officially parking here. We’re just pausing for a moment to collect our thoughts.” She grabbed my sleeve and yanked on it. “Now get down before someone catches us sitting in here.”

  We both wiggled lower into our seats. The bright lights overhead lit up the inside of the cab decently for any passersby, so we took turns peeking out over the dash.

  Natalie checked her phone. “Hawke should be out any minute now.”

  “How do you know what time he’ll be leaving today? What if he has another innocent bystander to interrogate, make fun of her hair, and then threaten with jail time?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You need to seek counseling about that hair hangup of yours.”

  “Said the beautiful, wavy-haired brunette. You’d be defensive too if you looked like a deranged circus clown in the mirror each morning and everyone poked fun at you because of it.”

  “Doc doesn’t poke fun.”

  I grinned. “That’s true. He gets his pokes in other ways.” I wiggled my eyebrows at her. “If you know what I mean.”

  She wrinkled her nose and reached out to give me the two-finger, Three Stooges eye poke, but I blocked it with ease.

  “I know what time he’ll be leaving because I was eavesdropping on him last night and heard him mention your name and then set up a meeting for twenty minutes from now.”

  “That’s why you called me to set up this date?”

  “It’s not a date.”

  “Fine, this stakeout.”

  “Yes.”

  I wasn’t surprised to learn Hawke w
as talking about me behind my back. The detective was determined to land me in the hoosegow one way or another. But I was curious as to why Natalie had been eavesdropping on the idiot. Something must have spurred her to don her Sherlock Holmes hat, pipe, and magnifying glass.

  Detective Hawke had been bunking in the late Ms. Wolff’s place on the floor below Natalie in the century-old Galena House apartment building for about a month now. He claimed to be guarding the apartment to make sure no intruders snuck in and stole any other key pieces of evidence in her unsolved murder case. But I had a suspicion it was more about trying to keep me away, since he blamed me for the evidence that had gone missing.

  Ever since Hawke had taken over Ms. Wolff’s unsolved murder case from Cooper, the detective had been dead set on somehow tying me to her death. What he didn’t know, though, was that I wasn’t the one taking things out of her apartment. That was somebody else. I was, however, responsible for her demise in the end, but that had been far from a cold-blooded murder, and the only way he could prove I had anything to do with her death was to build a time machine. Lucky for me, Hawke had trouble just clicking his pen most days.

  I shifted in my seat so I could look her in the eye easier. “So, is spying on Hawke a new obsession for you, or is there a reason behind your madness?”

  “It all started when I overheard him talking on the phone Wednesday morning before he headed into the station.”

  “Were you standing outside of Ms. Wolff’s apartment with a stethoscope pressed to the door?”

  “No, I was not standing outside of her door with a stethoscope, silly.” She peeked over the dash and then slid back down. “I was on my hands and knees listening through the old floor vent.”

  I smiled at the image she painted. “And what did you hear?”

  “He’s after you.”

  I huffed. “He’s been after me since I stomped on his pen and threatened to do the same to his testicles.”

  “I know that, but I mean the butthead is really digging deep now.” Her eyes narrowed. “He knows about your past.”

  “You mean Rex being the father of my kids?”

  It wouldn’t surprise me if that were the case. While I hadn’t included Rex’s name on their birth certificates, there was other paperwork on file that he’d signed saying he agreed to give up all rights to his biological children. A little sniffing around would dig up this sort of detail on my past.

  That reminded me. I needed to tell Natalie about Rex’s visit in the parking lot earlier this afternoon. That could wait until later, though.

  “Well, yes, but not just that.” She checked again for Hawke before returning to me. “I heard him talking to someone on the phone about your last job.”

  “You mean at the car dealership in Rapid?”

  “Yeah. So I followed him when he left Wednesday, and he didn’t go to work. He drove down to Rapid and met up with your old boss.”

  She’d followed Hawke all of the way to Rapid City? Wait, that shouldn’t be a surprise. Natalie had once tracked the Bitch from Hell, aka my sister, all of the way to Santa Fe, New Mexico, because she’d stolen my favorite purple boots. When Natalie locked her jaws onto something, there was no shaking her until she was good and ready to let go.

  If only Susan had stuck to swiping my material items and kept her hands off of my identity, which she’d used to marry me off to a now-dead rich guy. Gahhh! But that was a headache to deal with some other time. Hawke was enough of a migraine for now. Wait, that was too nice of a description for him. He was more like a swollen, burning hemorrhoid.

  “So, Hawke met with that sleaze ball?”

  I wondered if my ex-boss tried to grab Hawke’s ass like he had mine several times. Probably not. Hawke dressed in 1970s drab plaid suits, looking like a regular on the Barney Miller sitcom my grandpa loved to watch. My old boss had been more into curvy new mothers hard up enough on cash that they were willing to put up with a squeeze here and there for that weekly paycheck.

  “Yep, and I’ll bet your purple boots they were talking about you.”

  “No betting my boots. Doc likes them too much.”

  “And then last evening,” she continued without taking my boots off the table, “I followed him to the Golden Sluice and Jeff Wymonds showed up. They shared a booth and a couple of beers.”

  Jeff Wymonds was a past client of mine who’d been stolen away from me by Tiffany Sugarbell, Doc’s gorgeous ex. Tiffany was the opposite of me in just about every way, including straight red hair, tiny hips, and a set of hooters so pert I could hang my laundry from them and they still wouldn’t droop.

  “So you went inside the bar after Hawke? I’m surprised he didn’t catch you watching him.”

  “No, I parked across the street in my black spy van and listened to them with a high-tech microphone that can pick up the sound of voices through several walls,” she said in a smartass tone, which inspired an ear flick from me. She knocked my hand away. “Of course I went inside. Only I used the back door in the kitchen so they wouldn’t see me.”

  “You just waltzed through the kitchen without anyone asking you why you were there?”

  “I know the owner and the cook.”

  Of course she did. Natalie knew everyone in Deadwood and Lead.

  “But I couldn’t hear what Hawke and Jeff were saying because there was a new jukebox in the back of the bar cranking out classic rock and roll tunes.”

  “Damn.”

  “When Hawke finished with Jeff, he went back to the apartment, and I heard him talking to someone else about you on the phone.”

  “Let me guess. He thinks I’m a witch.”

  “That’s old news. This is worse.”

  “Worse how? I’m a warlock now?”

  “No, this time it was about Coop and you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He thinks that you two are working together. He told whoever was on the phone that he’s going to start watching Coop closer now, too. He plans to try to build a case against him, showing he’s been aiding and abetting you in these unsolved cases.”

  I held up my fist, imagining popping him in his big square jaw. “That lousy son of a bitch.”

  “He’s getting desperate, Vi. There’s no telling what he’ll do next.”

  “You need to tell Cooper this.”

  “Yeah.” She sniffed. “Probably.”

  “There’s no probably about it. Cooper needs to know that Hawke is determined to link him to me and take us both down together.”

  “I know, it’s just …” she trailed off, peering over the dashboard.

  “It’s just what?”

  “Never mind.” She ducked a little, but kept watching out the windshield. “There he is.”

  We waited for Detective Hawke to climb into his pickup and head out of the lot before returning topside. Then Natalie started her truck and followed him into the dark evening, keeping at what I hoped was an inconspicuous distance.

  Hawke led us away from Deadwood and past the hospital toward Lead. Before he came to the US-385 turnoff, he pulled into the parking lot set aside for Mickelson Trail users that was across from the power station in Pluma. Bighorn Billy’s Diner, where my coworkers and I met regularly for lunch meetings, was just a bend in the road away.

  Natalie drove on past the small lot with me slinked down in the seat. She made a left on Pluma Hill Road. A short distance up the hillside, she turned her pickup around, pulled off on a wide shoulder, and killed her lights. She’d parked so that we could watch Hawke from the shadows under a stand of pines without leaving the warmth of her truck cab.

  “Nice parking. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you’ve been up here before spying on someone else.”

  “Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t. Some secrets I can’t share, not even with my best friend.”

  Chuckling, I sat forward, trying to see better. “What’s he doing down there?”

  “I don’t know. I think he’s still sitting in his pickup. Let’s t
ake a closer look.” She pulled out two pairs of binoculars, handing me one. “Freesia let me borrow hers.”

  Freesia was the owner of Galena House. She also happened to be one of my clients, since she wanted to sell the old boarding-house-turned-apartments and focus on a future free of constant repairs. “She knows about this spying mission of ours?”

  “Of course. She’s been helping me keep an eye on Hawke’s comings and goings since he returned from his forced leave of absence that you inspired.”

  I snorted. “That was Prudence’s doing. She’s the one who taught him how to bark.”

  A check through the lenses confirmed Natalie’s suspicion—Hawke was still sitting in his truck.

  While we waited to see what Hawke was going to do next, I checked my messages. Doc had replied to my text letting him know that Cornelius and I had made it out of Prudence’s place alive and were heading back to Deadwood. He wanted to know the lowdown on Prudence, her reaction to Cornelius, and about the Duzarx.

  I hesitated on texting him back. Telling the truth involved a lot of thumb typing and my phone was infamous for changing words on me.

  “I need to call Doc,” I told Natalie. A phone call would save time.

  “Right now?”

  “It’s easier than texting.”

  “We’re on a stakeout, Vi. You can’t call your boyfriend while spying on bad guys. It’s just not done.”

  “Fine, but Doc and I have this policy about telling the truth, and I don’t want to lie to him about what happened up at Prudence’s place.”

  “Are you going to tell him about the black eye?”

  “It’s just a cheek bruise.”

  Natalie chuckled. “If you say so.”

  I pulled down the visor. “It’s not a black …” The dimly lit mirror told a horror story. I gasped and then groaned.

  Natalie flipped the visor mirror closed. “Keep that shut. Hawke might see the light.”

  “He’s way over there.”

  “We can’t take any chances.”

  I patted the tender skin around my eye. “I need to put some ice on this before it gets even worse.”

  “Grab some snow from under those trees.” She pointed at where a plow had pushed it into a pile.