Rattling the Heat in Deadwood

by Ann Charles

Hmmm. “I could swear I’d written ‘new’ on my phone.”

  I pulled it out. Nope, “nude” it was.

  Doc chuckled, putting his arm around me as he led me carefully along the edge of the wrought iron fence. “Harvey told me you wouldn’t be able to last more than a few days without me before you got randy, what with you being in heat more often than not.”

  What was with that old man and me being in heat? Criminy. Next, he’d be putting an article in the Black Hills Pioneer about the state of my estrous cycle.

  “So who are you going to need a grave for now?” Doc asked.

  Several huffs of steam in the cold morning air later, I’d filled him in on Tiffany’s latest scam.

  His frown lines made an appearance. “And Wymonds thought you might be desperate enough for a sale that you’d sleep with him to keep him on as a client?”

  I shrugged. “He’d probably have settled for letting him shove his tongue down my throat again, but I’m not playing that game. I don’t fool around with …” I looked up at his grin, knowing what he was thinking. “You are an exception, Mr. Nyce.”

  “And you, Ms. Parker, are exceptional.” He squeezed me into his side. “What are you going to do about Tiffany?”

  “There isn’t much I can do if she’s going to throw herself at male clients. No sale is worth my dignity.”

  “Glad to hear it. Is Wymonds going to stay with you or switch?”

  I shrugged. “It’s up to him. I told him that I was doing the best I could and I’d be sorry to see him go, but I wasn’t that kind of a saleswoman.”

  “Good. Maybe I need to remind Wymonds that I don’t like to share.” He turned me toward him, his brown eyes serious when he stared down at me. “Don’t let Tiffany get to you. You’re a better Realtor.”

  “You’re biased.”

  “Definitely, especially when you’re wearing a skirt and boots.” He kissed me, warming my lips for a few seconds. “Did the clock start up yet?”

  I shook my head, turning back to the fenced-in gravestones. “What grave are you looking for?”

  “It’s unmarked.”

  “Are you acting out the ending of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly?”

  “Something like that.” He pointed at the largest gravestone inside the fence.

  “Hessler,” I read aloud, frowning. “Is this Wolfgang’s family?”

  “Yes. That’s Wolfgang’s maternal grandfather, the one who started the jewelry store.” Doc pointed at the smaller headstone beside it. “That’s his wife. She died giving birth to Wolfgang’s mother, whose grave is on the other side of the big one. Next to Wolfgang’s mother’s stone is Wilda’s marker.” He indicated a smaller gravestone with a little chubby angel carved into the corner.

  I stuffed my hands in my pockets to warm them, staring at Wilda’s gravestone. The little girl who had terrorized Cornelius was no angel. Not with those freaky black empty eyes and that half-burned clown doll she kept shoving in my face.

  On the other side of Wilda’s marker was Wolfgang’s plot, his grave still a fresh scar on the earth. “I didn’t realize they’d buried him here,” I told Doc, leaning into him.

  “Neither did I until I started looking into his family’s history.”

  “Where’s Wolfgang’s father buried? There’s no headstone for him.”

  “He was buried with his family up in the South Lead Cemetery. It’s the one up near Cooper’s place.”

  Wolfgang’s mother had never taken her husband’s name. Instead, he’d adopted her family name. Apparently, money trumped tradition in the Hessler family.

  Something in his sure tone made me realize he’d already been up to that cemetery to confirm it. “So why are you here? I’d think a cemetery is a tough place for you to hang out.”

  Normally, the dead were attracted to Doc and tended to rush him like a swarm of killer bees.

  “Rarely do I ever come across a ghost in a cemetery. I have a theory that none of them want to be here, where they are reminded that they are dead day after day.” He took me by the hand and pulled me along the fence to where Wilda and Wolfgang were buried. “I came to see if I’m right about something.”

  “About what?”

  He took the stick he’d been holding and reached over the fence, tapping the ground behind Wolfgang’s grave, and then behind Wilda’s.

  “What are you doing, Doc? Is that Morse code for ‘Wake up, sleepyhead’?”

  “Sexy legs and slick wit this morning. Lucky me.” He moved behind Mrs. Hessler’s stone and tapped the ground around it. I heard the sound of stick hitting stone. Doc let go of my hand so he could lean farther over the fence. He poked the stick around something in the ground, clearing away the snow, leaves, grass, and other debris. The stick scratched over the surface of what appeared to be a small rectangular stone.

  Doc grunted. “It appears the Hessler family had something to hide, just as I suspected after that picture.”

  “What picture?”

  “I found a picture in an old newspaper article. It was taken in front of the Hessler jewelry store. Wolfgang’s father was holding a little girl who I figured was Wilda. Next to him, his wife had a baby in her arms, which had to have been Wolfgang based on the date of the newspaper. But between them was a third child.”

  “A third? I thought there were just the two kids.”

  “So did most, but there was a third. From what I can tell by the birth records, Wilda had a twin sister.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I need to research some more.”

  “And you think this rectangular marker is the twin’s grave?”

  He nodded.

  “Why wouldn’t they have put a name on it? Or a year of birth and death?”

  He rubbed his jaw. “I don’t know that yet either.”

  “What did she look like? Were they identical?” The thought of two little ghostly versions of Wilda running around made me shudder.

  “It was hard to tell in the picture.”

  “Why? Was it blurry?”

  “No, it was clear enough.”

  “Then why couldn’t you tell?”

  “Because in the picture,” he said, “the child in the middle was wearing a costume.”

  “A costume?”

  He nodded. The troubled frown on his face made me want to go back home and hide under my bed. “A clown costume.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Cornelius wasn’t “home” when I made it to work with his bag of groceries. “Well!” I huffed at the locked door leading to the upstairs apartment. “So much for our early meeting about Jane’s ghost.”

  I took the bag of groceries I’d picked up for him into Calamity Jane’s, storing the eggs in the little fridge under the coffee maker until he returned.

  Mona was the only one in the office, apparently getting an early start on her day. Her sweet jasmine perfume mixed with the smell of fresh coffee. The aroma of both, along with her warm greeting, put a smile on my face when I settled in behind my desk. Tiffany Sugarbell and the Hessler clown be damned.

  “Did Jerry ask you to come in early?” she asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

  “No. Cornelius wanted to talk to me about …” I rolled up my tongue before it spilled Jane’s name. “Uh, about a property he might be interested in.”

  “Really? He can afford to invest in another property while he’s remodeling the hotel?”

  I shrugged. “His grandfather died a short while ago. From what I can garner, he comes from a family with very deep pockets.” I did my best to remain vague so as not to complicate my lie in case it came back to haunt me like several other Deadwood ghosts.

  “Lucky him. I’ll be right back,” Mona said, heading toward the restroom.

  The door shut as my cell phone rang. I looked down at the number and grunted, taking the call. “Good morning, Cornelius.”

  “Where are you?” he whispered.

  Oh dear, we were starting with absurdi
ty right out of the gate. “I’m sitting at my desk at work with your groceries next to me. Where are you?”

  “Are you referring to my mental or physical state?”

  I didn’t want to go near his mental stomping grounds this early in the day. “Let’s start with physical.”

  “Underground.”

  “Underground where?” In the Black Hills, that could mean a multitude of places, like the science lab down in the old Homestake mine, Deadwood’s Chinese tunnels, the basement of the opera house up in Lead, or a root cellar in the backyard of a murderer’s burned-down house, to name a few.

  “Under your feet,” he whispered. “You need to join me.”

  Or not.

  I looked down at my boots, stomping my heel three times.

  Cornelius gasped. “Did you hear that?”

  As tempted as I was to mess with him and pretend it was Jane, I played it straight. “That was me, Cornelius. I didn’t know Calamity Jane’s had a basement.”

  “It’s more like an oversized crawlspace.”

  I wrinkled my nose. That elicited thoughts of spiders, centipedes, and mice, all of which gave me the heebie-jeebies times three.

  “The door is in the floor of the closet. Hurry up, Violet.”

  The line went dead, leaving me frowning at my phone.

  Jiminy Cricket! Hiking around a graveyard was one thing, but I wasn’t dressed to scamper around underground this morning. On top of that, I’d left my hair loose. I was sure to end up with a headful of spiders that confused my curls for their webs if I went crawling around down there.

  Grumbling, I stomped down the hall, hoping I gave Cornelius a little scare as a pre-payback for what I was about to do per his demand. Mona stepped out of the restroom as I approached Jerry’s closed office door.

  “Cornelius needs my help for a bit,” I told her, reaching for the doorknob.

  She nodded. “He’s been quiet this morning. I didn’t think he was in there.”

  “He was probably recharging his battery again,” I said with a wink. I waited until she was back out front and then slipped inside the dark office, closing the door behind me and flipping the lock.

  Across the room, the closet door stood ajar. Upon closer inspection, I found several oak floorboards stacked to the side, bent nails sticking out here and there. Next to them leaned a square piece of steel. Inside the narrow closet, a matching square hole took up most of the underlying wooden floor. Musty air seeped out from darkness. Rickety-looking steps led down, down, down.

  I gulped, leaning back, my palms sweaty. There were lots and lots of reasons that I shouldn’t climb down those stairs. For starters, everyone knew that dangerous things came from holes. Snakes, for one. Badgers, for another. Sometimes even dead things in my line of work.

  I lifted my phone, pulling up Cornelius’s name. After the fifth ring, the call went to voicemail.

  Damn that long-legged chimpanzee!

  Blowing out several quick breaths like a swimmer about to go underwater for a lungful of time, I placed my boot on the top step and inched into the cool, earthy-smelling blackness.

  Cornelius hit me with the beam from the flashlight as I landed on the cobblestone floor below. “Did you bring the tall medium?” he asked.

  “Sure, I have him here in my pocket.” At least I wished I did.

  One of his black eyebrows crept up. “I once carried a tree frog in my pocket for a month.”

  Slimy. Ick. “Why would you do that?”

  “Why not?” he replied.

  My thoughts sputtered. I blamed the cramped quarters, the bright light he was shining in my face, and my fear of crawly things for my sudden lack of brainpower.

  “We’ll have to make do without your tall medium for now,” he said, clearly disappointed I hadn’t thought to bring Doc along on this underground adventure. “Do you have any fig bars?”

  Squinting in the light, I jammed my hands on my hips. “Do I look like the Fig Bar Fairy to you?”

  He moved the flashlight beam down to my boots and back up. “Where do you find all of your wool?”

  “I know a few sheep.”

  “Foreign or domestic?”

  “Cornelius, did you ask me down here to talk about wool?”

  “You’re right. The debate on sheep captivity needs to be held over a fresh pint.” He turned and walked away, ducking to avoid the cobweb-laden, overhead beams.

  Or we could just drink and not think, which was my preferred method of intoxication. I should have thought to grab a flask of tequila along with my tall medium before coming down here.

  I hit the flashlight mode on my cell phone and followed him, ducking down as well even though I could stand upright. Getting cobwebs in my hair would send me running for the steps. I tiptoed from one cobblestone to another like I was crossing a stream. The walls were composed of a mixture of concrete and the same stones used for the floor. The corners were dark, the shadows seeming to move whenever my light roved near. The musty smell intensified with each step. I skirted a low-hanging pipe, joining Cornelius, who had dropped to his knees on the floor.

  “Did you find something to do with Jane down here?” I asked quietly. This place was a little too reminiscent of a tomb for my taste. I dodged a floating cobweb and shuddered.

  “Maybe.” He shifted aside to give me a clearer view of a round steel grate in the floor edged by cobblestones. “But I have to wonder if this leads to something more troublesome than your deceased boss.”

  Speaking of holes in the ground … I shined my light on the thick bars of the grate. Jeez, that thing had to weigh a ton.

  A centipede as long as my little finger crawled up through the grate opening, scuttling off toward the wall.

  I grimaced, stepping back. “Is that some kind of sewer vent? Shouldn’t it stink?”

  “It would appear so upon first glance,” Cornelius said, grabbing a couple of the bars and tugging to no avail.

  “But …”

  “Your boss implied otherwise.”

  “Jerry told you about this?”

  He dusted off his hands, rising to his feet. “Your other boss. The dead one.”

  “You talked to Jane?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Oh, right. Cornelius couldn’t talk to ghosts usually, only summon them like the Pied Piper. “She showed you something down here?”

  “Not exactly,” he repeated.

  I huffed, crossing my arms. “Explain yourself, Cornelius.”

  He started kicking at the packed dirt at the edge of the grate with his pointy-toed shoes. “I had a dream last night.”

  “About this hole?”

  “No, about a childhood neighbor.” He pulled out a paintbrush from somewhere in his coat and bent down, sweeping the loose dirt away from the edge. “A little girl who liked to bounce around on her pogo stick.” He grabbed a hammer lying next to the hole and dug out more dirt at the edge of the grate.

  “What happened to her? Did she fall down in a well and die?”

  He looked up, frowning. “Has anyone ever told you that you have very dark thoughts, Violet?”

  He didn’t know the half of it. “It comes with the job,” I answered. “What happened to the girl?”

  “She grew up and went to college to be a dentist, I believe. I have never understood the lure of touching other people’s teeth.”

  “What did the dream have to do with this hole?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  I cursed him under my breath.

  “When I woke,” he continued, brushing away more dirt, “I remembered something I’d seen on the blueprints for my hotel.”

  “Your hotel? Do you have a hole like this under the hotel?”

  “No, but according to the blueprints for the original building, there was an underground stable of sorts where horses and a small wagon or two could be housed during the snowstorms.”

  That had to smell ripe after a few days. “So neither your dream nor the blueprints gave you any r
eason to have knowledge or concerns about this hole?”

  He shook his head.

  But … “You said my boss told you it’s not a sewer vent.”

  “There was no speaking involved.”

  “Insinuated, then.”

  He cocked his head to the side. “More like hinted.”

  “Cornelius,” I warned, threatening him with my closed fist.

  “Your patience this morning appears to be on the wane, Violet.”

  “If you don’t start making sense I’m going to cram you down between the bars of that grate.”

  He returned to brushing at the dirt, reminding me of a paleontologist dusting around a fossil. “I was searching the closet in the office for my power cords that your deceased boss hid yesterday. A creaky board led me to believe she may have hid them in a compartment under the floor. I realized the false floor hid more than just cords when I found the door to this crawlspace.”

  “You mean tomb.”

  His crooked smile appeared. “Your fondness for histrionics reminds me of a renowned figure from the past.”

  “Shakespeare and his pen?”

  “Lizzie Borden and her ax.”

  “If you’re trying to keep me from hurting you, I’d suggest a different tack.”

  He returned to digging in the dirt. “I grabbed my lucky hammer and ripped up the flooring. That’s when I found the crawlspace door.”

  And now here we stood—him with his lucky hammer and me with a strong urge to flee topside. “Okay, so how does your finding the crawlspace door jibe with you saying my boss hinted that this is not a sewer grate?”

  “She slammed the metal trapdoor on my fingers the first time I tried to open it.” He held up his right hand, shining his flashlight at a blood bruise on three of his knuckles.

  I winced. “Jane did that? You’re sure the trapdoor didn’t just slip out of your grip?”

  “Violet.” His tone was droll. “You of all people should understand the difference between gravity and applied ectoplasmic force.”

  Uhhhh, sure. I learned all about that in high school right before figuring out how to tie a cherry stem with my tongue in health class and shortly after mastering how to flip my eyelids inside out during government.

  “Okay,” I said, moving on before he could continue with more paranormal mumbo-jumbo that would make my eyes glaze over. “So, you believe that Jane didn’t want you coming down here? That she was trying to protect you by smashing your fingers?”