by Ann Charles
I ignored him.
“Settle down, Sunshine,” Mona told the buffoon. “It’s only been a couple of minutes.”
Mona Hollister had been on my side from the get-go at Calamity Jane’s. While she had a good decade and a half worth of birthdays more than me, she would still give Grace Kelly a run for her money in both fashion and class. I aspired to be like Mona when I grew up and got my shit together, only with crazy blond hair instead of her stylish auburn tresses.
“Sorry,” I said to Jerry. “I needed to stop off at home. I stepped in a slush puddle this morning and soaked my boots.” More like stepped in a steaming pile of trouble.
“No problem. We’re still waiting on Ben. How did the house showing go with the detective?”
After Harvey had called me this morning, I’d told Jerry what I thought was happening—Harvey, Cooper, and I were going out to see some houses. In reality, we’d seen a rundown shack. Unfortunately, something was home besides the owner.
“He’s interested in going back.” No lie there. Tomorrow morning I’d be in Slagton again, only this time I was dressing for it. Suede boots didn’t grow on trees, especially anywhere near my bank account.
“What house did you show him?” Ray asked with narrowed eyes.
Before I had to come up with an answer, Ben Underhill showed up full of warm smiles for one and all. He took the other end of the wraparound bench and filled us in on what he’d learned yesterday at a seminar down in Rapid City on new rules for selling historical buildings. Ben might be Ray’s nephew and share several of his uncle’s physical features, including dark hair and good teeth, but he was from the non-reptilian side of the family.
By the time coffee was delivered all around and lunch orders taken, my worries about Tiffany showing up to join us had eased.
Jerry started the meeting with a request for status updates. In his typical style, Ray gloated about all of his big-ticket clients. Mona itemized her impressive pipeline, while Ben listed statistics along with his potentials. I wrapped it up with my usual stumbling and stuttering. Public speaking was not one of my finer skills. I was much better getting my meaning across with a two-by-four.
Our meal arrived and we settled into eating and sharing property rumors and home staging ideas. My food went down easily in spite of the sneers Ray periodically shot my way. I thought about asking Jerry why he was talking to Tiffany in the parking lot earlier, but I didn’t want to give myself heartburn, so I held off for the time being.
I was finishing the last of my salad when Jerry glanced at his watch for the third time in the last few minutes.
Was he anxious to get back to work, or was he waiting for someone to join us? Someone with red hair, perky everything, and an ultra-competitive personality who was out to steal my job?
Jerry looked toward the door a few seconds later, his smile widening. “Here she is.”
“She who?” Ben asked, shooting me a wrinkled brow.
“My special guest.” Jerry stood, holding out his hand. “Thanks for coming. Everyone, you remember Rosy, of course, from the Paranormal Realty crew.”
Sweet manna from heaven! My smile matched Rosy’s. Boy oh boy, was I happy to see her pink cheeks and friendly eyes instead of Doc’s ex.
“Did you drive the moving truck through this snow?” I asked.
Rosy had recently purchased Cooper’s place from me. I’d grown fond of the reality TV show’s camerawoman, especially after she filmed me with an eerie clown-loving ghost and then did me the favor of deleting the footage to save me from the hell that would have followed had it gone live.
“No. I hired a company to deliver most of my furniture. The truck should be here on Sunday.” Rosy shucked her winter coat and slid into the booth seat next to Ben. “I just brought my camera equipment and some clothes and booked a room at The Old Prospector Hotel.”
She leaned on the table. Lugging a camera around for a living had beefed up her arms and shoulders. From the first time we’d met, something about her reminded me of those “We Can Do It!” posters from World War II starring Rosie the Riveter. She had the name for it and all.
“You’re staying at Cornelius’s hotel?” I asked. “But it’s under construction.”
“I know, but he gave me one hell of a discount that covers the cost of earplugs, and it’s only for a couple of nights. I’m in one of the farthest rooms from the action. Since I’m usually up at dawn, I’m good with it.”
But was she good with all of the ghosts Cornelius had lured there over the last few months via what Doc referred to as his Pied Piper abilities?
Jerry cleared his throat. “I invited Rosy to join us today because I’ve hired her to help prepare for the release of the Paranormal Realty episode starring Calamity Jane Realty in January.”
I fidgeted with my spoon. I’d sort of wished all of the filming we’d done last fall for that reality television show would disappear into thin air like some of the others I’d killed around that time.
“Prepare how?” Mona’s tone was wary and for good reason, too. Jerry’s marketing ideas often made at least one of us grind our molars down to nubs.
“She’s going to hang around and do some filming for our website blog.”
“We have a website blog?” I asked. I hadn’t noticed a blog tab the last time I’d visited the site.
“Not yet, but we will come January.” His grin was as wide as his huge shoes. “We’re going to have a collection of ongoing vlogs there. My goal is to have several ready to post for each of you by the time the show goes live.”
“Vlogs?” Ray asked through a brittle smile.
“A video blog,” Rosy answered. “Jerry wants me to spend time with you guys, creating both a video biography and several short pieces of video fun stuff for your future fans.”
Jerry’s head bobbled with excitement. “Each of you will have your own page on the website with a collection of vlogs.”
“Each?” Mona’s smile was tight. “Don’t you mean just Ben and Violet, since they were the only two on film?”
“Oh no, Red. You don’t get out of it this time. Each of us, including myself, will have videos. We’re the number two realty office in the region, and I aim to have us in the top spot by spring.”
The waitress brought a cup and the coffee carafe, pouring some at Rosy’s nod.
“What sort of stuff will you be recording?” Ray’s tanned brow wrinkled at the edges where his latest injection of muscle relaxer hadn’t reached.
“Don’t worry,” Jerry said. “It will be partially scripted, at least at first.”
“Who’s writing the script?” Mona asked, her pinched lips giving away her feelings on the whole plan.
“Rosy is.”
I nailed the camerawoman with a raised brow. She winked back. “I help a lot with the script for the show. I actually started out writing scripts before being seduced into stepping behind the camera.”
“So this is your big news?” I asked, wanting to make sure he wasn’t going to pull a mid-court Hail Mary shot and have Tiffany show up in a cheerleader outfit.
Jerry nodded. “I’m excited to get Rosy busy with her camera. We have a lot to do before the website goes live, and lucky for us Rosy is hanging around here for the next month while she settles into her new digs up in Lead.”
He ordered dessert to celebrate and more coffee. For the next half hour, we brainstormed concepts for our individual vlogs. I tried to pretend I wasn’t worried about what Rosy might see on camera when filming me after our last experience, but the reassuring grins she aimed my way in between bites of her apple pie à la mode said I was doing a bad job of hiding my fears.
As we all stood to leave, she touched my arm and nudged her head toward the hallway leading to the restrooms. I followed her into the ladies’ room.
After checking underneath the stalls, she leaned back against the door and stared at me while chewing on her lower lip.
“Is everything okay with Cooper’s place?” I asked,
wondering what had spurred this impromptu bathroom rendezvous.
“Yeah. I need to talk to you about something else.”
“What?”
“Cornelius Curion.”
Cornelius? He seemed to be on the minds of multiple people this morning. “What about him?”
“He called me a couple of days ago.”
“To invite you to stay at his hotel?”
She shook her head. “He wants me to join you two on a hunting expedition.”
I was going hunting? That wasn’t going to work for me since I didn’t own a single piece of camouflage or bright orange clothing.
“Did Cornelius say where we were going?” I asked. Or what we were hunting?
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, in addition to my camera gear, he told me to bring a rope ladder.” She crossed her strong arms. “Then he mentioned something about a ‘Hellhole.’ ”
Chapter Three
As afternoons went, mine sucked big boughs of holly.
It turned out that while Tiffany Sugarbell hadn’t yet been hired as a new employee of Calamity Jane Realty, she had officially stolen one of my clients.
Jeff Wymonds had signed a contract for me to sell his house last summer. It was a modest one-story rambler in Central City that had cleaned up pretty well with a lot of sweat and elbow grease, some of which had been mine, but our first open house had started with a bang. And by bang, I meant BOOM!!! Good-bye, garage roof. Even though Jeff’s insurance company had fixed the roof, I hadn’t been able to hook any potential buyers since hanging my sign in his front yard. Between the lack of bites and Tiffany’s multiple seduction attempts to lure him away, Jeff had succumbed to the red-haired siren.
He called me shortly after I’d returned from lunch with the news that he’d taken the client-stealing, two-bit whore up on selling his place. At least I think that’s what he said, although my brain may have thrown in a contemptuous adjective or ten.
Jeff’s call had sent my afternoon into a tailspin. After he’d apologized all over the place, he’d asked if Addy could spend the night with his daughter this evening, promising he was staying home alone to hang out with the girls and string some popcorn for fun while watching The Grinch on television. In spite of my teeth still gnashing about his using his penis meter to choose his Realtor, I agreed. Maybe his leaving me was for the best, since I’d refused to let him plow my fertile fields and plant his seed within a hundred-mile radius of my uterus.
Ray’s gloating grin when he heard the news about Jeff Wymonds accelerated my downward spiral. I had no proof, but I was ninety-nine percent sure he had been working on the sly with Tiffany to screw me over on the Wymonds deal. Or screw Jeff via Tiffany. Either way, it appeared Jeff and I both got screwed.
Jerry’s disappointed frown when he returned from an afternoon appointment and heard that I’d lost a possible sale to Tiffany made me feel like gum on the sole of one of Ray’s fancy Tony Lama cowboy boots. I’d spent the rest of the afternoon fuming in silence. Ray and Tiffany were tag-teaming up on me. What would they pull next? Woo Cooper away from me?
My pipeline was sounding hollow from a lack of sellers. I did have several interested buyers thanks to Jerry’s billboard ads, but since they came in based off a giant photoshopped picture of me sporting a pen between my super-sized red lips, I wasn’t expecting any long-term commitments, especially if Tiffany played the temptress card again.
I needed more properties to list.
And more buyers with bulging wallets.
And more time focused on selling real estate instead of killing sabertooth turkeys. I snorted at that. I was partial to that silly name even if Cooper wasn’t.
Finally, five o’clock came and I was able to scurry home and hide in Aunt Zoe’s cozy yellow kitchen while hugging her Betty Boop cookie jar. I’d scarfed down three cookies before she found me grumbling to myself at the kitchen table.
“What’s going on at work?” Aunt Zoe asked, heading straight to the sink to wash her hands. Her long silver-streaked hair fell in soft waves over her shoulders.
“How do you know something is up at work?”
“Baby doll, you’ve attached yourself to the cookie jar.” She searched my face while drying her hands. “That usually means something isn’t going well at work. If you were snuggling with a tequila bottle, I’d be worried you hit another snag with the cops or worse.”
“The tequila is next. I needed to lay a foundation of sugar and flour first.”
She tossed the towel on the counter. “Spill it, Violet Lynn.”
I pointed a cookie at her. “You’re all snazzed up. Got a hot date?”
Smoothing her sparkly tunic over her black velvet bohemian skirt, she avoided my gaze. “Tonight is the Deadwood Chamber of Commerce holiday party.”
I grabbed another cookie. “You didn’t fully answer my question.”
Crossing the room, she snatched the cookie from my hand. “That’s enough cookies. You’ll spoil the dinner Willis is planning for tonight.”
Whenever anyone called Ol’ Man Harvey by his first name, it took my brain a moment to put the two together.
I reached for another cookie, but she took the jar away from me.
“I’m going to the party with Reid,” she admitted, taking a cookie for herself.
My mouth fell open. “Reid Martin?”
“Yes. Close your mouth. You still have cookies in there.”
I obeyed, finishing my bite and swallowing before saying, “Reid, as in the captain of Deadwood’s Fire Department?”
“Yes, that Reid.”
“The same man you threaten to fill full of bullet holes every time he crosses your threshold?”
“Not every time, and I shoot pellets, not bullets.”
I waved off her correction. “Nine times out of ten, then.”
Her dark blue eyes narrowed.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“There’s nothing to understand. I asked Reid to join me in case Dominick Masterson shows up.”
Ahhh, the Earth’s magnetic poles were realigning and all was well again in the land of Deadwood.
Dominick had recently taken a strong liking to Aunt Zoe. Normally, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing considering how charismatic and heart-palpably handsome he was. However, Dominick was the devil’s first cousin in Aunt Zoe’s eyes. He had the ability to charm the pants right off her, literally, and could wipe out all of her resistance in one smoldering glance. Lucky for me, Dominick was not human, and I’d been born with a natural resistance to his kind and their tricks due to my Executioner genes.
“So, you’re taking Reid as a bodyguard?” I asked.
“Exactly.”
“Is tonight going to end up like that old bodyguard movie with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston?”
“You mean The Bodyguard, and no. Reid understands the rules and has agreed to keep his hands to himself all evening.”
I grinned. “Yeah, but can you keep your hands to yourself?”
“Of course.”
“Liar.”
Her chin jutted. “I’ve answered your questions, now you answer mine. What’s going on at work?”
I spilled the beans about Tiffany stealing Jeff from me.
Aunt Zoe’s mouth thinned. “That explains why Jeff was acting so antsy earlier when he came by to get Addy for the night. He must have been worried you’d told me about his switching agents.”
“Probably.” I sighed, sitting back. “I understand his wanting to mix things up and try a different agent. I just wish he’d picked someone other than Doc’s ex.”
The doorbell rang.
“That’s probably Reid,” she said, kneading her hands together.
“I’ll get it,” my son, Layne, called out. He tromped down the stairs.
Aunt Zoe shot a worried glance toward the dining room. “Don’t let Tiffany get to you, kiddo.” She checked her reflection in the side of the chrome
toaster. Unfortunately, it was smeared with my kids’ fingerprints. “You’ll have to keep a brave face and pretend losing Jeff was not a big deal or she’ll figure out a way to keep throwing salt in your wounds.”
The sound of Layne’s voice coming closer made us both turn. My son bounced into the kitchen, followed by Cooper, whose arms were laden with grocery bags.
“Why look, Aunt Zoe,” I said as Cooper set the bags down on the table. “The Grinch came down off his mountain to have a Christmas feast with us poor little Who-folk.”
That earned me a squint. “Funny, Parker. You have crumbs on your face.”
Of course he’d notice that. I brushed off my cheek. “I’m saving them for later. What’s with the groceries?”
“Uncle Willis called the station and left me a list of things to pick up for tonight.”
“You’re making supper?” If we weren’t having Harvey’s carnitas, I was going to need more cookies.
“No, he is. It’s my turn to pay for it.”
I tugged open one of the bags. “What all did you buy?”
He pulled the bag out of my hand. “That’s police business.”
Aunt Zoe chuckled. “Better be careful, Coop. She’s pissed off and hungry. She’s liable to bite first and apologize later.”
The doorbell rang again. Layne headed to get the door with Aunt Zoe on his heels.
Cooper unloaded the bags, placing a six-pack of beer, two packages of taco shells—corn and flour—peppers, limes, a head of cabbage, shredded cheese, and several different brands of salsa on the counter next to the stove. I joined him, inspecting his take.
“There’s no meat,” I said.
“Uncle Willis slow-cooked the pork at Nyce’s house.”
I licked my chops. “Did you hear anything from Slagton?”
“No.” He handed me the empty bags. “Who is coming tonight?”
I stuffed the bags in the pantry. “Your uncle, Doc, and you for sure.” When his mouth drooped a little at the corners, I added, “But I invited Natalie, too. She was down in Rapid this afternoon and said she’d try to make it back.”
His frown deepened. “Did she happen to mention anything about what happened last night?”
