Rattling the Heat in Deadwood

by Ann Charles

  I gaped at him. Bathing with ghosts? That was bonkers.

  Shaking off my stupor, I shut off the water and grabbed Natalie by the wrist. I pointed at Cornelius. “Wait for me here.”

  “Okay,” he said as I reached for the door. “But I’ll be honest, Violet. Unless this is a new method you plan to use to channel ghosts, I don’t think your tall medium will approve of us bathing together.”

  I didn’t bother replying and left him standing by the tub. Natalie let me drag her downstairs. I shoved her coat into her hands, glad to see she was already wearing her tennis shoes.

  “Am I going somewhere?” she asked as I hauled her toward the door.

  “Yes.” I opened the door and pulled her out into the cold. “These two officers need to take you to the station.”

  “Why?” she asked, and then greeted both of the cops with a hug, asking the non-snickering one how his wife was doing.

  The policemen gave her the same explanation they had me. Natalie went willingly, assuring me she’d return shortly after she found out what was going on at the station. I had a feeling that Cooper might be behind this, so I kept my knuckle chewing to a minimum and went back inside.

  “Who was that?” Susan asked from the living room, joining me in the foyer.

  “The grim reaper,” I answered, glaring at her. “He came to take you to the dance. Why don’t you grab your coat and head on down the road with him.”

  “As insults go, that was plain stupid,” she said.

  “Yeah, well I’m a little preoccupied with other pains in the ass right now, so you’ll have to wait your turn.”

  She followed me through the dining room. “Where did you hide your boyfriend?”

  “In the upstairs bathroom,” I answered, joining the kitchen crowd.

  My mom’s eyes were looking extra bright, a sure sign of her being well along the road to Tipsy Town. Aunt Zoe was still swearing about men and their head games, while my dad and Harvey worked on putting the rest of dinner together.

  “Who was at the door,” Harvey asked while drizzling leftover pan drippings from the roast over the puffed-up Yorkshire pudding pastries. I hadn’t seen that done before and licked my lips in anticipation.

  “Nobody important.” I handed Susan a stack of dinner plates. “Make yourself useful outside of my boyfriend’s bed for once.”

  My mother gasped. “Violet Lynn!”

  I winced. “Sorry. That slipped out.”

  “Try harder,” my dad said, giving me a stern look.

  I pinched my lips together and focused on putting the final touches on the lemonade I’d started what seemed eons ago, squeezing the lemons a little too hard and getting more pulp than usual with the juice. The poor lemons had to take the brunt of my day’s mounting frustration whether they liked it or not.

  And where in the mother-humping hell was Doc, dammit?

  Twenty minutes later, the table was set with plates and food when the doorbell rang yet again.

  “That had better be Doc,” I muttered to Harvey as he sliced the pies. “Do me a favor and tell the kids to wash their hands for dinner, please.”

  “10-4, Sparky.” He looked me over. “You doin’ okay?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “We’d better fill yer gullet before yer head pops.”

  I strode through the dining room, breathing in the delicious aroma of roasted meat and bread. Harvey was right. If this wasn’t Doc, I was giving up on life and stuffing my mouth with as much food as I could fit inside of it.

  I opened the door and sighed, closing the door with me on the freezing side again. “Cooper, please tell me you’re here to break bread with my family and not give me bad news.”

  Cooper’s face pinched up tight. “Yeah, you see, about that.” He blew out a breath. “I’m here to tell you Nyce will be a little late to dinner.”

  “No shit. He’s already a lot late. Where is he?”

  “At the police station.”

  I blinked. “What? Why?”

  Cooper sighed. “It’s all a misunderstanding that’s being worked out as we speak.”

  “Explain.”

  “Detective Hawke caught Nyce coming out of Natalie’s apartment about an hour ago.”

  I nodded. “I know. She gave him her key so he could grab some drinks she forgot.”

  “Well, Detective Hawke is a little high-strung right now, as we’ve both witnessed, and he knows Nyce is your boyfriend.”

  “And?”

  “He cuffed Nyce and took him to the police station.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Unfortunately, I wasn’t at the station at the time Hawke brought him in, or I would have been able to get Nyce out of there. But since I was gone, things escalated due to some insults Detective Hawke said about you, and Nyce ended up in a jail cell.”

  “That pompous, pig-headed prick!” I stomped my cold feet.

  “Nice alliteration, Parker.”

  “Hawke needs to be put back on his leash.”

  “Calm down.”

  “You need to talk to your boss about him. This is harassment.”

  “I will talk to the chief on Monday when he’s back at work. But right now, Hawke is the ranking officer so it’s been a bit tricky.”

  “So, that’s why those two cops came and took Natalie to the station.”

  “Yes. Doc requested that someone bring her in so she could give a statement verifying that he merely was doing as she’d asked.” He shifted his feet. “She was almost done writing her report when I left to come fill you in on the whole mess.”

  “Damn it. Of all the—”

  “Violet!” Rex Conner called out from across the street.

  I cringed. No. This couldn’t be happening. Not today.

  “Go away, asshole!” I yelled, making Cooper wince.

  Rex stormed up Aunt Zoe’s sidewalk, his face an ugly mask of anger. “You’ve crossed the line, sweetheart.” He stopped at the bottom of the steps, glaring up at me and then Cooper.

  “Now is not a good time, Rex.” I moved to the top stair.

  I heard the creak of the front door behind me. Glancing back, I groaned at the sight of my dad stepping out to join us.

  “Now is as good a time as any,” Rex snapped. “And I’m glad your boyfriend is here to witness this.”

  My boyfriend? Doc wasn’t here. He was … ohhhh, he meant Cooper. I’d forgotten that Rex had seen the detective out on the porch shirtless getting the paper the other morning.

  “I want to file charges against Violet,” Rex told Cooper.

  Cooper joined me on the first stair step. “For what?”

  “These!” Rex held up a pair of pink satin panties. “Why don’t you explain to your lover why you enjoy sending me the panties that you’ve obviously been wearing while getting off?”

  I recoiled. “You’ve made a mistake.”

  “There is no mistaking this, Violet. They are stiff and they smell like sex.”

  He’d smelled a stranger’s panties? I gagged a little.

  Rex shook the underwear at me. “You purposely sent them to my boss’s address with a note to me inside. That’s grounds for harassment, bitch.”

  Harassment was turning out to be the word of the day.

  With my cheeks burning, I looked back at my father’s fury-lined face. “I swear, Dad, those are not my underwear.”

  Cooper moved another step down. “What proof do you have that those are Violet’s?”

  Rex sputtered, then his mouth melted into an ugly sneer. “Who else besides her would be trying to get me fired so I’d leave the Black Hills?”

  “Maybe you need to stop and think about this some more,” Cooper suggested. “At least, remove yourself from Zoe’s yard.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until Violet admits she’s fucking with me.”

  “I am not fucking with you, Rex. Nor do I ever plan to again. Now get off my aunt’s lawn or I’ll shoot you for trespassing.”
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br />   “You can’t shoot him for trespassing, Parker.” Cooper held out a calming hand toward Rex. “How about you head down to the station with me? You can write up a statement about what happened and we’ll keep it on file.”

  “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, loverboy? I follow you there and these disappear.” He shook the panties at Cooper. “I’m a lot smarter than the other idiots Violet has screwed. I’m the one who walked away, remember, not the other way around. You keep that in mind the next time she tells you how juiced up she is for you and wants to ride you to town.”

  “You son of a—” Something bumped into my shoulder, knocking me sideways into Cooper. I realized what had hit me the second my father tackled Rex, knocking him flat on his back in the snow.

  Cooper shoved me aside and leapt down the steps after my dad, diving into the mix.

  My dad landed two solid blows to Rex’s breadbasket in spite of Cooper’s attempt to pull him free. “Those are for both of my daughters, you piece of shit.”

  “Oh, crap.” I stumbled down the steps, not sure what to do as the three of them rolled in the snow.

  Finally, Cooper got a solid grip on my dad’s arms and was able to drag him off Rex, tugging him back several feet.

  I walked barefoot over to the pink panties, picking them up with a cottonwood twig that had been sticking out of the snow. While my dad growled and cursed, I held the panties out in front of Rex.

  “These,” I said, shaking the stick in front of Rex, “are not my panties. And he,” I pointed the underwear toward Cooper, who was still gripping my dad’s arms, “is not my lover. Get that straight in your scientist brain, you dipshit.”

  A scuffling sound on the porch made me turn. Cornelius, Susan, and Harvey were all standing on the porch, along with my mother, who was leaning on Harvey’s shoulder. Please, please, please let Aunt Zoe have seen Rex out the window and removed my children far from the scene of this unbelievable clusterfuck.

  “Rex,” I heard Susan coo with a sigh of happiness.

  “Blake,” my mother said, her voice high and giggly. “Why are you playing in the snow with those boys?”

  Oh, Mom was definitely flat-out drunk. This would go down as another tragic family dinner that would undoubtedly be blamed on me. Hell, now I might as well blow the ship to smithereens since it was already sinking with me at the helm.

  “While we’re on the subject of my sex life,” I said, pointing the panties at the porch. “Cornelius is not my boyfriend, nor is Harvey my fiancé. They are both good friends of mine and that’s it.” I flicked the panties at Rex. They landed on one of his expensive Italian loafers. “And to set the record straight for one and all, my boyfriend is Doc Nyce and he’s not here at the moment.”

  “Where is Doc?” Harvey asked, looking at his nephew.

  I answered for Cooper, “At this very moment, Doc is at the police station defending my honor.” He was also in the thick of fighting a breaking and entering charge, but they didn’t need to know that minor detail.

  I dropped the microphone … or rather in my case, the stick. There. All of my secrets were out. Well, not quite all, but the ones about my real boyfriend were flapping in the frigid breeze blowing across the snow. Damn, my toes were cold.

  Marching over to the porch steps, I gave a final bow. Actually, it was more of a clumsy curtsy. “Here’s a thought,” I said. “After Cooper gets this cocksucking bastard off Aunt Zoe’s lawn, how about we go inside and enjoy dinner like a normal family while we wait for my boyfriend to get out of jail?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Several hours later, Cooper dropped Natalie off at Aunt Zoe’s place. He didn’t stick around to enjoy any more of my family fun, relaying through Natalie that Rex was not going to press charges against my father for assault. That was smart of Rex, considering I could press a few charges of my own if he wanted to play that game.

  “Where’s Doc?” I asked before Natalie could even take off her coat.

  “He went home to take a shower and wash off the stink of jail.”

  “I know that stink all too well.”

  She chuckled, then sobered. “He told me he feels like shit for letting you down. He knows how big of a deal today was supposed to be.”

  “But he didn’t let me down. This wasn’t his fault. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “I told him that, but he thinks if he’d controlled his temper around Hawke, he wouldn’t have ended up in jail.”

  “He was defending me.” I sighed. “Hasn’t he figured out yet that being with me means control is a figment of his imagination?”

  “Man, don’t I know that from experience.” She giggled when I tugged on her hair. Looking over my shoulder, she frowned. “Dinner is over, I take it.”

  I nodded. “Aunt Zoe and my parents are in the kitchen and the kids are upstairs playing. Harvey had to leave. He said he has a hot date tonight.”

  “Damn, that old man sees way more action than I ever did before this sabbatical. What about Cornelius?”

  “He was suffering from jetlag, so I sent him to Calamity Jane’s to get some sleep.”

  “And Susan?”

  “Satan’s concubine got bored when it was just her family here. She left, claiming she had some important things to do.”

  “She probably had to go home and feed her hellhounds.”

  “Or find another innocent soul to annihilate. But there are plenty of leftovers in the fridge. Mom even made up plates for you and Doc.”

  “Man, I love your mom.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s still pretty drunk, so maybe you should see what she set aside for you before writing a love sonnet about her.” I peeked out the window. “Shit. It’s really starting to come down.”

  Outside, the flurries that had been wishy-washy all afternoon were getting serious. I glanced at the clock. Nightfall was coming and my parents really needed to hit the road and drive back down to Rapid. It appeared that my wish from earlier this week might be granted—the meeting between my parents and Doc would be delayed.

  I should be dancing a jig about that, but for some reason it made my chest tight. I thought of Doc sitting in that filthy jail cell all afternoon, knowing we were here waiting for him.

  I wouldn’t miss this for the world, Killer.

  “Damn it,” I grumbled, grabbing Aunt Zoe’s red puffy vest, looking for my snow boots. Where had Addy left them? She had a bad habit of walking off in my shoes and leaving them God knew where. “Screw it.” I grabbed my purple boots, sliding them on over the yoga pants I’d put on after eating too much for dinner.

  “What are you doing?” Natalie asked when I held her shoulder to steady myself while sliding on one boot and then the other.

  “Something that I may live to regret.” I zipped up the vest. “Go get my dad and tell him it’s time to hit the road.”

  Ten minutes later, I followed my parents out the door. I meant to ask Natalie if she was the one sending Rex the dirty underwear, but we hadn’t had a moment alone after she went to round up my parents. I doubted she did. That wasn’t her style, but maybe her sabbatical had shifted things in her brain.

  “If Cooper comes home,” I told Aunt Zoe as she followed us as far as the porch, “let him know where I am and that I’ll be back in a while.”

  She gave me a thumbs-up. “Good luck!”

  I hopped in the back seat, directing my dad along the snowy neighborhood streets of Deadwood’s Presidential District. My mom was still floating high on tequila currents, but after the drunken nap she’d taken after dinner, she was beginning to sink down to earth. A little.

  “Pull in behind that old green pickup,” I said, pointing at the Picklemobile sitting in Doc’s drive.

  Dad turned into the drive and parked. “Now what?”

  I’d told him we were taking a short detour on his way home, but I hadn’t mentioned where or why. “Shut off the Blazer and follow me.”

  “What about your mother?”


  “We’ll bring her along.”

  Dad helped my mother out the door. When she stumbled, he caught her.

  “Maybe she should stay back,” I said, not wanting either of them to fall and get hurt on the slick sidewalk.

  “I am not staying in the Blazer,” my mom said, only a slight slur left in her voice. “I can walk. Just give me a moment to get my feet under me.”

  True to her word, she lurched up the sidewalk alongside Dad, stumbling only once on her way up the porch steps.

  I rang the doorbell, chewing on my lower lip. My stomach fluttered as we waited at the door.

  “Who lives here?” My mother’s whisper was loud enough to be heard across the street.

  “You’ll see,” I told her, pushing the doorbell again. Come on, open the door. These thin yoga pants did little to block out the cold. I leaned over and tried to peek in the dining room window. The curtains were closed, but I could see light around the edges.

  “How’s your shoulder, Blake?” Mom asked.

  He rolled it forward and backward. “It’s a little stiff.”

  “How about I give you a hot-oil rubdown tonight?”

  He wiggled his eyebrows at her. “Hubba-hubba.”

  “For Pete’s sake, you two, knock it off.” I tried to give them a stern look, but ended up grinning. “Your child is present.”

  “How do you think we got you, Goldilocks?”

  “There are two things I try not to do each and every day,” I told him. “One is look directly into the sun; the other is think about how I was conceived.”

  Mom giggled, shivering. “You tackling Rex was so sexy.”

  I guffawed. “I’m surprised you even remember it, Mom. You were already several shots of tequila to the wind by then.”

  I hit the doorbell again. I thought about pulling out my key and letting myself in, but maybe Doc didn’t want company after the hoopla down at the station.

  A thudding sound came from inside.

  “I think I hear someone,” Dad said. He put his arm around Mom and tucked her against his side, kissing her temple.