by Ann Charles
He shrugged off his coat, glaring at me. “Not until I shower, thanks to you and your latest fuckup.”
“Newsflash—there’s no shower here.” I pulled my other arm free of the smelly garment. “And it wasn’t a fuckup.”
“It definitely wasn’t part of the plan.” He stomped his boots on the mat. “I need to talk to your boyfriend before I go to his place and hit the shower, so move aside.”
Cooper was living temporarily at Doc’s house when he managed to escape his job long enough to sleep. Harvey was bunking there, too, along with his yellow lab, Red. It was a regular stag house, only my stag was hanging out in my bed more often than not lately, letting the other two enjoy his home without him.
“I need to talk to Doc, too,” I said. “So get in line, because I was here first.”
“Christ, Parker, we’re not in third grade. There is no damned li—”
The overhead light came on, silencing us in the midst of our fifth tiff of the day. We were off to a dandy start.
The sound of a particular someone clearing his throat made Cooper and me turn.
Doc stood on the threshold of his office’s back room, his arms crossed, his brow furrowed. His dark eyes widened as he inspected us from head to toe. Then he sniffed, cringing. “What happened to you two?”
Cooper pointed his thumb my way. “Your damned girlfriend took a whack at a hybrid turkey back in Slagton with a two-by-four and the thing exploded in my face.”
“Holy horny toads, Cooper! For the umpteenth time, it was not a stupid turkey. I saw it. If that was a bird, then I’m an alligator. And for the record it exploded on all of us, you just happened to be front and center in the blast zone.”
Doc cocked his head to the side, his gaze settling on me. “Was it Puff the Magic Dragon?”
Cooper and I exchanged frowns.
“Doc thinks he’s a comedian,” I said. When Cooper continued to frown at me, I explained, “Get it? You said a bird and I said a reptile, so Doc mixed the two and came up with a flying dragon.” Still nothing from the stone-faced detective. “Listen, if you’re not going to share our sense of humor, then you could at least pretend to laugh so that hanging out with you isn’t on a par with hugging a crotchety porcupine.”
“I get it, Parker,” he bit out. “I’m just trying to figure out why you feel the need to kill instead of maim. Just once, can you not kill something?”
I raised one eyebrow. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”
“She has you there, Coop,” Doc said with a chuckle. “And she has maimed you multiple times.”
“You’re a regular Rodney Dangerfield today,” Cooper grumbled.
“I get no respect.” Doc even sounded like Dangerfield when he used the comedian’s favorite catchphrase. He crooked his index finger toward me. “Come here, Killer.”
I hung my smelly coat and purse on the hooks he had recently installed on the back wall and joined him, peeking around his shoulder into his back room. A row of computers lined the floor, a maze of cords snaking everywhere. “What’s going on?” Then I noticed the one-horned Viking helmet next to one of the monitors. “Is Cornelius moving in?”
Cornelius Curion had a penchant for ghosts. His need to communicate with the dead was spurred by an ancestral line containing ghost whisperers and seers, along with plenty of old money to finance his love of all things wispy. From his stovepipe hat, dark round glasses, and gangly limbs, to the haunted hotel on Deadwood’s Main Street that he’d recently purchased, eccentricity fit him like a floating white sheet. In spite of Cornelius’s kookiness, he’d grown on Doc and me, securing a place not only in our lives but now apparently in Doc’s office, too.
“He’s experiencing technical difficulties.” Doc cupped my chin, turning my face one way and then the other. “It’s a little early in the day for an execution, isn’t it?”
“It was an accident,” I explained, noticing the smudge on Doc’s hand when he let go of my chin. I thought I’d gotten the worst of it off before we’d climbed into Harvey’s pickup. I was going to need a wire brush to clean off all the ashes. Cooper might need two showers as covered as he was.
“Tripping is an accident,” the detective said, hanging his coat next to mine. “You belted that thing square in the face with a two-by-four full of nails.”
I rolled my eyes at his fussing. “It was sort of an accident mixed with instinct.”
“Are you okay, cara mia?” Doc’s eyes zeroed in on my mouth.
“I am now, mon amour.”
He sucked a breath through his teeth. “That’s French, Tish.” His hand slid around the back of my neck, pulling me toward him. “What flavor of lip gloss are you wearing this morning?”
Doc must be desperate if he was willing to kiss me while I was covered with the charred remains. “You’ll have to see for yourself.”
Cooper’s hand shoved between us.
I contemplated biting it.
“Enough lovey-dovey shit. We have a problem here. A big one, thanks to Parker and her need to kill without prejudice.”
Doc released me. “Coop, you have a true gift when it comes to ruining a moment.”
“You’re sleeping in her bed.” Cooper lowered his hand. “Take your moment then. Here and now we need to sort out this mess before it turns into an all-out shitstorm.”
I pshawed his squawking about the sky falling. “This is a mere squall.” I led the way out to the front office, hopping onto the edge of Doc’s desk.
Cooper followed, stalking to the front door and flipping the Open sign to Closed. He shut the blinds covering the door and then moved to the front windows, frowning in the direction of the Deadwood police station.
After giving me a questioning glance, Doc lowered into his chair behind the desk. “What’s really going on here, Coop? You’re off your game.”
“And don’t blame it on me.” I beat him to the punch.
Cooper plowed his fingers through his hair, stirring up a small puff of dust. “Today’s visit was not on the radar. None of this Slagton shit has been.”
“Detective Hawke doesn’t know about this?” I asked, my upper lip wrinkling at the mention of Cooper’s official partner in crime solving.
Detective Stone Hawke made me mad enough to eat fire ants. The pea brain had a fascination with proving I was a witch. Not the sexy sort, with a cute black mini-skirt and tight corset, but rather the green kind with hairy moles and thick yellow fingernails. He had made it his current life goal to pin all of the wrongful deaths that were filling the police’s unsolved cases drawer on me. I was one final straw from shoving his head down a toilet and flushing repeatedly.
“Not at the moment,” Cooper said. “But if my informant is missing, I need to report it.”
“What makes you think he’s missing and not out having a picnic in the woods?” I asked.
“His lack of appearance today.”
Doc steepled his fingers. “Was there any evidence of foul play?”
“Besides the cat-urkey?” I joked, receiving a squint from Cooper for my efforts to lighten the mood. “Get it, fowl play? Wait, better yet, we could call it a sabertooth turkey. What do you think of that name?”
Doc laughed out loud. “Sabertooth turkey?”
A hint of a smile crossed Cooper’s lips. “Keep it up, Parker, and I’m going to shoot you.” He turned to Doc. “There was no evidence indicating a problem, but he should’ve been there.”
“You see any footprints in the snow around the house?” I asked.
Cooper shook his head. “Only ours.”
I crossed my arms. “Just because you’re a cop doesn’t mean you have to say anything to your buddies in blue about this.”
“Not yet, anyway,” Doc added. “Not until we’re sure the informant is actually missing.”
“Maybe he went out hunting,” I threw out.
“Why would he set up a meeting with me and then go hunting?”
“He’s old and forgetful.” When Cooper ga
ve me an exasperated look, I added, “What? Not all of us are half robot, Cooper, with computers for memories.”
He started pacing. “I don’t think he went hunting. There was a Remington 12-gauge shotgun and a Ruger 10/22 rifle hung over the fireplace. Both were well-used but clean and ready to fire.”
“What else did you notice in the house?” Doc pressed.
“There were dirty dishes in the sink.”
I snorted. That could be almost any house, especially one with two children, a pet chicken, and a cat. “Like stinky dirty with mold growing on them?”
“No mold. The food remnants were relatively fresh.”
So, he’d been there recently. “Did you check the fridge?”
“He didn’t have a refrigerator.”
No refrigerator? That reminded me of a house in Lead where my predecessor in the Executioner business, Prudence, still resided in her now-translucent form. Prudence’s house had a fridge, but never any ice cubes. “How’s he keep his beer cold?”
“Apparently cold beer isn’t high on his must-have list,” Doc said. “A hunter without a freezer for his game meat is a bit odd, though.”
“There was a rusty deep freeze in the dining room.”
The guy must like to keep his frozen goods close at hand. “Were there any human heads in it?”
That earned me a smirk. “He’s an informant, Parker. Not a serial killer.”
I shrugged. “You never know. Maybe he needed to take on a second job to make ends meet.”
The back door creaked and then slammed shut. We all paused, waiting as boots clomped on the doormat. Harvey joined us a few floor creaks later, his thumbs wrapped around his suspenders.
“What took you so long?” I was the first to speak.
“I was doing a little spyin’ fer ya.”
“Spying?” My heart skipped a couple of beats. “Spying on whom?”
“That hornswoggler who’s out for yer blood.”
“You’ll have to be more specific than that,” Cooper said. “Violet’s list of enemies doubles by the day.”
I wrinkled my nose at the detective.
“Yer boss and Tiffany Sugarbell. Apparently, there was a parkin’ lot meetin’ that you weren’t invited to.”
My shoulders cinched up tight around my neck. “Crud,” I muttered. I was hoping that possibility would fall flat on its face.
“What’s going on with Tiffany?” Cooper asked.
“My rat-bastard coworker is trying to get Tiffany hired.”
“At Calamity Jane Realty?” At my nod, Cooper cringed. “I’d better make sure we’re all stocked up on crime scene tape at the station.”
“Ray has this big idea that if he gets Tiffany in there, I’ll get fired.”
If assholes could pay for fake tans and talk real estate, then Ray Underhill is what they’d look like. The jerk had been trying to get me canned since the first day I started at Calamity Jane Realty. We tended to rub each other wrong daily, periodically producing enough friction to light one of us on fire. Unfortunately, he’d never exploded in my face, unlike whatever it was I’d killed earlier in Slagton. However, there were times I’d like to aim a two-by-four at his huge arrogant head.
“Yer boss may be thick-skulled on some of the finer things about women,” Harvey said. “But that boy is hot to trot and already a-saddled.”
I wasn’t even going to try to decipher that. “Meaning what?”
“Two fine-lookin’ heifers in the pasture are better than one.” Harvey did a little giddy-up jig. “I need to go tap the ol’ maple tree and let the sap drip.” Without another word, he headed back down the hall, shutting the bathroom door behind him.
I looked over at Cooper. “What exactly is the law defining wrongful death versus accidental death?”
Doc crossed his arms. “Hiring Tiffany would be a mistake after all Jerry’s done to build your sales. Those billboard ads aren’t cheap.”
My face warmed at the reminder of the two billboards starring me caked in makeup posed in asinine positions now gracing both east- and west-bound lanes of Interstate 90.
“True,” I said, “but Tiffany has hot sex written all over her.” With her long red hair, Barbie-like waistline, and rock star boobs, she had male clients panting after her on sight alone.
“You think you don’t?” Doc asked.
“I’ve told you before, you’re biased.”
“More like smitten,” he said, openly admiring my curves.
“Want some advice, Parker?”
“Advice? From you?” At Cooper’s nod, I braced myself. “Sure.”
“I’ve watched Tiffany and you go head to head multiple times.”
My cheeks darkened. Unfortunately, that was true. Tiffany was really good at humiliating me in front of Cooper.
“You let her bully you.”
“She intimidates me.”
“Do I intimidate you?”
Was this some kind of police interrogation trap?
“Do I?” he pressed.
“Sometimes.”
“How do you handle me?”
“I hit back.”
“Exactly. Maybe you should pretend you’re dealing with me. Better yet, pretend she’s Detective Hawke. You’ve been holding your own with him since the first time he clicked his pen at you.”
“I don’t know if I—”
“Quit being such a namby-pamby. Now, if you’re done crying about Nyce’s ex, let’s get back to the problem at hand—my missing informant.”
“I have a thought on that,” Doc said.
“I’m not a namby-pamby,” I said to Cooper.
“Then quit playing victim around Tiffany.” He turned to Doc. “What’s your thought?”
“You hold off on reporting anything until tomorrow.”
“What’s tomorrow?” I asked.
“Another trip to Slagton to pay a visit to Coop’s informant, only this time I’m coming along.”
“You think you’ll be able to detect a ghost?” I asked.
Doc looked at Cooper. “Did you see any ghosts back there?”
Cooper shook his head.
“Then probably not. However, some do tend to hide, and in that case I might sniff one out.”
Doc had been dealing with ghosts since childhood. When he wasn’t in his office playing financial planner, he was finessing his skills as a mental medium. Over the years, he’d gone back and forth between fine-tuning his ghost interaction skills and trying to bury them in a dark corner of his mind so he could enjoy a normal life. Since coming to Deadwood, he’d given up on normality, especially after meeting me and finding out my purpose in this world—executing troublemakers who don’t belong on this plane of existence.
At least that was what Aunt Zoe told me I was supposed to be doing. Lately, I’d been more focused on keeping out of jail and not dying a painful death since my enemies often came equipped with big muscles and sharp claws. Reading the family history book about Executioners in my ancestral line could help me stay alive, but the nightmares spurred from what I read in those pages messed with my head too much. Doc now kept the book and helped prepare me as much as possible for what lay in wait for me.
“If it’s not about seeing a ghost,” I said to him, “then why do you want to go along?”
“Because I have a theory.”
The wrinkles lining his forehead inspired a few of my own. “You think somebody is up to something fishy?”
“I think somebody is dangling bait.”
Bait? I’d used bait myself when hunting trouble in the past. “What are they trying to catch, a monster?”
“More like an Executioner.”
No sooner had Doc spoken his sobering theory, my cell phone rang playing the Harlem Globetrotters theme song. That was my boss on the line, Jerry Russo, the ex-professional basketball player turned realty guru.
I gulped, another round of doomsday bells clanging in my head.
When I answered, Jerry told me to meet him in an
hour at Bighorn Billy’s Diner for an emergency huddle with the rest of the Calamity Jane crew. I sent a prayer to the real estate gods that Tiffany wouldn’t be joining us today and hopped off Doc’s desk. Before my meeting, I needed a good scrubbing to wash off the remains of my last kill.
Doc walked me to the back door. I passed Harvey in the hall. Apparently his tree was done dripping sap.
“I’ll see you tonight,” I told him.
It was his turn to cook supper for whoever joined us at Aunt Zoe’s place, where my kids and I were living for the time being. On the way out to Slagton, Harvey had mentioned something about carnitas and his momma’s blue-ribbon coleslaw, and I was holding him to it.
Doc kissed me at the door. “Raspberry,” he whispered, taking a second taste before helping me with my stinky coat.
“I’ll see you tonight?” I asked, shouldering my purse.
He was still staring at my lips. “Definitely.”
“And tomorrow morning for breakfast?”
His gaze met mine, heat spreading through me. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“If you’re going to use me for a foot warmer again all night long.”
“How about I use you for a hand warmer instead?”
“Deal.”
I zipped home, stuffed my coat, boots, and clothes in a garbage bag until I decided if I should keep or toss them, and took a shower. Both kids were at school and Aunt Zoe’s pickup was missing, so I had no distractions and set to work removing the dead creatures’ ashes from all of my nooks and crannies.
When I arrived at Bighorn Billy’s Diner, Tiffany’s Jeep wasn’t in the parking lot. I breathed a sigh of relief, but didn’t fully lower my shields. It would be typical of Jerry to surprise us with Tiffany breaking through a GO TEAM! paper banner midway through the meal.
Inside the diner, Jerry waved at me from the large back corner booth already occupied with two of my three coworkers. He stood to let me slide inside. When standing next to Jerry with his fair-haired Thor build, I often felt like a hobbit minus the hairy feet. At least I had the curly hair for the role.
“You’re late,” Ray said as I slid into the booth.
