by Ann Charles
Natalie set her beer down with a thunk. “Rex the ex?”
I nodded and leaned forward, telling them about Rex’s visit this afternoon in a low voice so the kids wouldn’t hear.
“That no-good cocksucker,” Natalie bit out when I was finished. “I’m going to teach that limpdick-loser a lesson for messing with my girl.”
Cooper shook his head at her. “Nat, you need to be careful. Rex is pawing at the ground right now, looking for a fight. You don’t need to end up with a target on your back, too.”
Natalie visibly bristled. “I can handle Rex.”
“I don’t doubt that,” he shot back. “But I don’t like you getting in the middle of this. With emotions running high, it could go south fast.”
Before Natalie could tell Cooper to go to hell, which she appeared to be on the verge of doing, I held up my hands. “Listen, you guys, if anyone is going to go toe-to-toe with the jerk, it’s me.”
“I don’t think so,” Doc said, weighing in, his tight gaze daring me to object.
“Nyce, you need to be even more careful than Nat,” Cooper said. “Detective Hawke is just waiting to find something to pin on you so he can rope you into this, too.” When Harvey started to speak up, Cooper pointed at him. “Same goes for you, Uncle Willis, so leave Bessie out of this.”
“Well, then,” I said, feeling like my hands were tied. “I guess that leaves Aunt Zoe to fill Rex’s ass full of rock salt.”
She smiled. “It would be my pleasure.”
Cooper sighed.
“So.” Aunt Zoe came over and took Doc’s and my dishes. “Did you three notice anything in the Sugarloaf Building that will help us find the lidérc?”
I shook my head. “Although the ward that was messed with before that allowed the lidérc to get free appears to have been restored. I’m guessing Dominick has the place ready to cage the devil again once I find the damned thing and return it.”
The sound of footfalls coming our way from the dining room silenced any further talk about the lidérc.
“Um, Mom,” Addy said, carrying her empty plate and bowl over to the sink. “Can Kelly come over tomorrow and spend the night?”
Kelly was Addy’s best friend. Her dad was Jeff Wymonds, whom I wanted to talk to regarding his conversation with Hawke up at the Golden Sluice. Maybe picking up Kelly would give me an opportunity to ply Jeff for information.
“Sure. You can call her after supper and let her know I’ll pick her up tomorrow. I just need to know when her dad will be home so I can ask him about something.”
My eagerness to talk to Jeff, who I usually tried to avoid like three-day-old roadkill, earned me a raised eyebrow from Doc.
Addy danced at the news, and after grabbing a couple of apple pie bars, she turned to Doc. “Can you come help us with the TV? Layne hit some button on the remote and we can’t figure out how to get back to Andy and Barney.”
“Sure, squirt.” Doc pushed back from the table. “We’re not done here,” he told me and then followed Addy, who skipped out of the room.
“Why do you want to talk to Jeff all of a sudden?” Aunt Zoe asked after Addy was out of earshot.
“Just to see how things are going,” I said with as much vagueness as possible.
“Violet Lynn, tell me you’re not going to try to get information out of him about Tiffany,” Aunt Zoe said.
“I’m not, I promise.” Finding out what Tiffany was doing to sell his house when I couldn’t was old news.
“Why do I get the feeling there is something more to you offering to pick up Kelly, then?”
I gave her a big fake smile. “You’ve been sniffing too many glass furnace fumes, that’s all.”
“That silly smile means you’re definitely up to something.”
“What? Would it make you feel any better if I offered to take Natalie with me to get Kelly?”
“No,” both Aunt Zoe and Cooper said in unison.
Natalie glared at Cooper. “Why in the hell can’t I go to see Jeff with Violet, Coop? Do you think I’m going to do something illegal there, too?”
“I never said anything about you doing something illegal around Rex.”
“You insinuated it.”
I frowned between the two of them, trying to remember if Cooper had insinuated that, or if Natalie was just hungry to fight with the detective tonight … or to do something else equally as passionate.
Cooper scowled back at Natalie. “Whenever you and Parker get together, something usually happens that lands you both knee-deep in shit without a shovel.”
Natalie threw down her napkin and pushed back from the table. “Cooper, I need to talk to you in Zoe’s workshop.” Her harsh tone made it clear this was possibly going to end with someone losing his head, praying mantis style—minus the copulation part.
Harvey and I shared a raised-brow glance.
Reid sucked air through his teeth. “You sure have a way of making the ladies gnash their teeth, Coop.”
“Says the kettle, Martin.” Cooper stood, beer in hand. His face was all granite with craggy edges as he held Natalie’s stare.
“Do you really want to do this now?” I whispered up at Natalie.
“Yep, and you’re coming, too.” She locked onto my forearm, hauling me out of my chair.
“What?” I stumbled after her toward the back door. “Why? What did I do?”
“You’re the one who lit this damned fire.”
Chapter Seven
There were moments in my life when being abducted by aliens for sphincter probing purposes appealed to me—like now.
After Cooper closed the door to Aunt Zoe’s workshop, Natalie, he, and I faced each other in a Mexican standoff. ZZ Top blared from the stereo my aunt kept near her worktable, providing the background drumbeat for our tension-laden moment while singing about an immoral shack outside of La Grange, Texas.
Cooper stood in front of the door in his usual wide-legged cop stance with his arms crossed, blocking my easiest escape route. His eyes were narrowed in a gunslinger glare that currently had Natalie centered in the crosshairs.
Natalie’s gaze darted back and forth between Cooper and me. Her forehead was lined as she muttered something under her breath. The unsettling glint in her eyes reminded me of a boast she’d made one drunken night years back about madness swirling in her family’s DNA soup.
I fiddled with the zipper on the jacket I’d managed to grab and pull partway on as I was being dragged out the back door. Grimacing, I glanced from Cooper to Natalie; from the ceiling to the concrete floor that could use a sweeping; from the glass furnace to the metal tools hanging on the wall next to my aunt’s cluttered worktable; and back to Cooper and Natalie … and then the large window behind them, which I flirted with crashing through like a Hollywood stuntwoman.
Unfortunately, I was allergic to most forms of pain, including the kind that came from smashing through a window. It turned out that direct contact with pain often made me break out in colorful bruises, such as the shiner that now resembled a purple crescent moon tattoo next to my right eye according to the family heirloom mirror hanging on the wall.
On a positive note, the purplish-black eye would go nicely with my purple boots. Heck, maybe I could make this tough-girl look work for me somehow. Jerry could put me on a billboard in a pleather sadomasochism getup, including a whip and my new mace, with the tagline: Call Violet Parker for ass-whipping “service” beyond the sale. Oh, better yet: Let Violet turn your domestic fantasies into realty! Or how about …
Cooper cleared his throat. “What the hell is going on with you?”
“Nothing,” I shot back too quickly and then covered my mouth.
His steely eyes stayed locked onto Natalie. “I wasn’t talking to you, Parker.”
Natalie lifted her chin, apparently gearing up for a fight. About what, though? “We need to talk, Coop.”
He nodded slowly. “But not with Parker here.”
“Righty-o!” I clapped my hands together
, one hundred percent in agreement with Detective Crabbypants tonight. “If you’ll step aside, Cooper, I’ll get out of—”
“You’re not going anywhere, Vi,” Natalie interrupted before I made a single move toward freedom, sounding a lot like Aunt Zoe when she put her foot down.
I cringed, resigning to stay put. “Okey-dokey, then. I’ll just take a seat over here and plug my ears.”
I moved behind the worktable, turning down the stereo before dropping into Aunt Zoe’s tall chair. The cinnamon-scented air freshener that dulled the fumes associated with a glass furnace wasn’t working its usual calming magic on me tonight. I shifted in my seat, trying to find a comfortable position to wait out the impending Old West showdown between the law-dog version of Clint Eastwood’s “Blondie” and Natalie “Angel Eyes” Beals.
Cooper’s jaw tightened as he looked my way. “Why does Parker have to stay?”
“Because I said so, Coop.” Natalie stood her ground with her hands on her hips. “Besides, what I need to tell you concerns all three of us.”
Ah-ha! So, this impromptu rendezvous was going to be about Detective Hawke’s snooping, not whatever went down between Natalie and Cooper in Arizona. Whew! I could handle that without squirming. I grabbed a pencil and a piece of scrap paper from Aunt Zoe’s worktable and drew a smiley face on the paper in spite of the frown Cooper was still aiming at me.
“Fine,” he said, focusing on Natalie. “Let’s hear it.”
“Okay. Here goes.” Natalie wrung her hands together, blowing out a long breath. “First of all, I want you to know that the time we spent together down in Jackrabbit Junction was … nice.”
He grunted. “Nice?” He spit out the word like it tasted rotten. “It was a hell of a lot more than ‘nice,’ and you know it.”
She held out her hands, palms up. “You’re right, Coop. I’m sorry. You were amazing in and out of your uncle’s bed.”
When those last two words registered in my brain, I tried to make like a turtle and tuck my head down between my shoulder blades. Focusing on the scrap paper, I doodled like my life depended on it.
Cooper let out a frustrated sigh. “I take it you’ve told Parker about us.” He didn’t sound one tiny bit happy about me being in the know regarding Natalie and him dancing the mattress mambo.
“Not everything,” Natalie defended. “She doesn’t know about the fire.”
“What fire?” I asked, looking up at her.
“Or about you getting shot,” she continued.
I gaped at Cooper. “You got shot in Arizona?” I turned back to Natalie before he could reply. “Did you shoot him or was it Crazy Kate?”
During one of our phone calls over the New Year, Natalie had told me about her cousin, Kate Morgan, who was suffering from what sounded like pregnancy-hormones-induced psychotic episodes.
“Neither,” she told me, but her focus stayed put on Cooper. “All I told Vi was that we slept together, which she’d have figured out anyway as soon as she saw me acting goofy around you tonight.”
She wasn’t really goofy. It was more like she hadn’t eaten in days and Cooper was wearing a steak necklace.
“Fine, Parker knows.” He glanced my way, scowling when I mimed cheering and celebratory fist pumps.
Sheesh! So much for showing my support the next time he got laid.
“If this is what you brought me out here to talk about,” Cooper continued, settling his hard gaze back on Natalie, “how about explaining why you’ve been avoiding me ever since you returned to town.”
She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “I’ve barely been back.”
I wasn’t buying her indifference, and judging by the rigid expression on Cooper’s face, neither was he.
“You’ve been in town for over seventy-two hours,” he pointed out.
I did the math in my head. “He’s right.”
Natalie conceded our arithmetic with a nod. “But I haven’t been ‘avoiding’ you, per se.”
“That’s bullshit,” he ground out between clenched jaws.
Two red splotches bloomed on her cheeks. “I met you on Wednesday afternoon to collect my pickup keys, remember?”
“Handing back your keys in the police station’s parking lot as I was heading out on a call doesn’t count.” He lifted one blond eyebrow. “What the fuck is going on, Nat? I thought we’d made it past these sorts of games in Arizona. Or were you just using me to blow off some steam after being on that damned sabbatical for too many months?”
I winced at the sharp bite underlying his words. Apparently he’d been counting the individual minutes within each of those seventy-two hours since she’d returned.
“I wasn’t using you, Coop.” She spoke calmly, as if there wasn’t a snorting bull pawing at the floor not ten feet away from her.
“Then tell me what the hell is going on here, because when I left Jackrabbit Junction, you gave me the impression that we’d be picking up here in Deadwood where we left off down there—in and out of bed.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, Coop, but …” She trailed off, puffing her cheeks and then blowing out a long breath. “We have a problem here.”
“I agree. Parker needs to go away and let us finish this discussion in private.”
“I second that motion,” I said, raising my hand.
“Stop taking his side, best friend,” Natalie said.
My cheeks warmed with guilt. She was right. Why was I taking Cooper’s side? The bozo had been a butthead to me since he arrived at the Sugarloaf Building earlier. I returned to doodling Doc’s name repeatedly with hearts in place of the O’s.
“The problem I brought you out here to discuss has to do with Violet, too,” Natalie told him.
He scoffed. “Why does that not surprise me?”
“Listen here, Bitter Betty,” I said to him, popping up from the chair with my finger aimed at him. I was tired of surly sons of bitches jabbing and sucker punching me today. The solid blow from Prudence via Zelda’s elbow earlier was the final straw. Cooper could find someone else to be his punching bag tonight.
“Sit down, Violet.” Natalie stole the wind from my sails, adding a “Please” when I hesitated. After my hind end had returned to the chair, she told Cooper, “I heard something worrisome from Detective Hawke the other night.”
His shoulders stiffened. “What were you doing with Hawke at night?”
“She wasn’t with Hawke.” I butted in before Cooper got his tail kinked. Detective Hawke had a history of flirting with Natalie, thinking he had a popsicle’s chance in hell at getting her to give him more than the time of day. “She was merely listening through the floor vent.”
Cooper’s body uncoiled slightly at my clarification. “What did you hear?”
“Hawke suspects that you’re compromised.”
“Compromised how?”
“I heard him tell someone on the phone that he thinks you are working with Violet. He said he’s going to be watching you along with her now, trying to find some evidence that will prove his theory about you two being in cahoots. Then he’s going to turn you in along with Violet.”
Cooper’s face hardened all over again. I half expected to see fracture lines appear below his crinkled brow. “Fuck.”
“That’s not all,” I said, turning my scrap paper over. “Tell him about what we saw earlier, Natalie.”
While I doodled some more, she filled Cooper in on the secret meeting she’d caught Hawke having with Jeff last night. Then she told him about the rendezvous earlier with Tiffany next to the Mickelson Trail.
When she finished, Cooper scowled from her to me and back. “You two were spying on Hawke tonight?” He didn’t sound happy at all about our stakeout.
I chanced a peek at him, running into his hard stare. “If we say ‘Yes,’ are you going to yell at us again?”
“What do you mean ‘again’? I haven’t yelled at either of you tonight … not yet, anyway.”
“Yeah,” Natalie said, “but the night is yo
ung.”
Cooper huffed, plowing his fingers through his hair and leaving behind a choppy wake of tufts. “Jesus, you two.” He sounded more tired than pissed. “You both make me want to crawl inside a whiskey bottle for a week.” He focused on Natalie. “Especially you.”
“I’m sorry, Coop.” She took a couple of steps toward him, but then stopped short, as if she’d reached the end of her leash. She clenched her hands together so tight that her fingers turned almost white. “I’m torn about what needs to be done here, but we can’t ignore Hawke and the potential shitstorm he could start.”
“You’re right, but I want you to back off—both of you—and let me handle this.”
“No can do, Coop. You’re too close to the fire this time. You need to be careful, same as Violet.” She stared down at her clenched hands. “Same as me.”
“Natalie …” he started.
“I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” she blurted out, still staring at her hands, before continuing in a lower voice. “I mean alone. We can still see each other on the street, or here at Zoe’s place, but—”
“I disagree,” he cut in.
“But,” she plowed onward, louder now, “we can’t be spotted alone together, especially by Hawke.”
Cooper cursed at the ceiling.
“Because if Hawke catches wind that you and I are anything more than pals these days, he’ll probably come after you even harder since I’m Vi’s best friend.”
“Are you forgetting that you kissed me in front of two Deadwood officers that day at Freesia’s place? Do you think he didn’t hear about that little show you put on?”
“Yeah, but nothing more came of that. Besides, those two officers are used to me flirting like that.”
His nostrils flared. “Really?”
“Coop, don’t look at me like that. What I did in the past cannot be held against me right here and now. If you’ll remember, you wanted nothing to do with me then.”
“That’s right.” I took Natalie’s side this time. “That was back when she was just a local girl. And we all know how you felt about dog paddling in the local dating pool prior to now.” I grinned in spite of his dagger glare. “Don’t you just love it when irony swings back around and wallops you upside the head? You know, like I did with my purse earlier at the Sugarloaf Building.”
