by Ann Charles
Cooper pointed at Cornelius. “Hit play.”
“Ask him who fired the gun,” Cooper said.
“Who’s callin’ this square-dance, boy? Me or you?”
“Just do it, Uncle Willis.”
“Who fired the gun?” Harvey spoke like a robot.
“The whippersnapper,” my voice replied. “That humbug done did run against a pill, but the rock salt made it techy as a teased snake. It ain’t like the others what been here before.”
Cooper leaned in front of Cornelius and hit the Stop button again. “Did he say anything else to you after this?”
“Let me think,” I scratched my head in thought. “Oh, this was the part when I’d asked what he meant about the others.”
Doc’s stare was intense. “What did he say?”
My cheeks warmed. “Nothing about the others.”
“What did he say, Parker?”
Seeing the determined glint in Cooper’s eyes, I sighed and pretended my hands were the most interesting thing in the room. “He said I was as pretty as a field of bluebonnets, and I had nice breeding hips, too.”
“Sex and hooch still rule that man,” Cooper sniffed, “even after pushing up daisies all these years.”
Cornelius leaned back, inspecting my hips. “They do seem adequately wide enough to birth children.”
Doc laughed. “The old man was spot on about your looks, Tish.” His focus lowered, his lips pursing in a quiet whistle. “And you know how fond I am of your hips, querida.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Cooper groaned in disgust. “Don’t you two start up with that Morticia and Gomez shit again.”
I reached out and hit the Play button this time.
“Why are them there masks stuffed in the tool shed?” Harvey asked on the recording. “Where did they come from?”
“You really need to work on your interrogation skills,” Cooper whispered to his uncle.
“Work on this, boy.”
Natalie giggled. “Now play nice, you two.”
“Well,” I said for Grandpappy, “some of them there hard cases are ugly as a mud fence. Masks make ‘em bearable. Way back, long ‘fore we got the deed ta this place, t’others started usin’ it like some sorta stage stop, droppin’ ‘em off at odd times.”
Cooper hit the Stop button. “Dropping off whom?” he asked me.
I’d asked the same thing at the time. “He told me ‘the unwanted.’ Then he talked about how the whippersnapper wasn’t supposed to be there, but milky eyes was hunting for its food again. There was something about that thing liking to play with its food before using a ‘pig-sticker’ on it. And then he said there was no hiding from milky eyes, not even in the safe.”
Cooper’s face scrunched up in thought for a moment, and then he nodded and reached for the Play button.
“Wait!” I grabbed his wrist, remembering something else. “Did I tell you guys … I mean did Grandpappy tell you the part about the whangdoodles?”
“No.” Steely eyes pierced mine. “What about them?”
I let go of him, closing my eyes again in concentration. “Grandpappy said the whippersnapper should not have left the whangdoodles. That they don’t mess around with their prey, they just kill it.” I lifted my chin, my eyes still closed, picturing that moment in my memory. There was something else, what was it? “Oh, there it is. He said the guy’s heart gave out before milky eyes cut the skin off his face.” I lifted my lashes, realizing something I’d wondered about back at the beginning of this. “That’s why there wasn’t blood all over the place. The guy was already dead.”
“Was there anything else?” Cooper asked, his jaw grinding on what I told him.
“Yeah, Grandpappy said he’d never seen anyone escape the pig stickers, which I think is what he called milky eyes’ claws.”
Without comment, Cooper hit the Play button.
“Where’d them there bottles of mead come from?”
“The mead?” I asked. “Oh, ya mean in my chicken coop? They were left by the grave digger. He got into neck trouble before he could send the message back to Slagton to come fer it.”
Cornelius hit the Stop button. “That’s the end.”
There was something about the mead business that was picking at my brain, something I was missing. The grave digger? Neck trouble?
“At this point,” Cooper told me, “you stood up and abandoned the interrogation.”
I didn’t abandon it. I had a milky eyed beast to find. I looked at Doc. “Does that mean I came back through the door you were holding open?”
“No, you were still in the other realm. You just walked away.”
I’d gone hunting was more like it. “Where did I go?”
“That’s the million dollar question,” he said.
“You walked around the back of the barn with the shotgun in hand,” Cooper said. “I followed in close pursuit, keeping back enough to give you free rein. You didn’t stop until you reached the family cemetery.”
Doc and I exchanged glances, mine questioning, his answering. “It wasn’t Harvey’s family cemetery when she got there, though,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Cornelius asked.
“Tell them, Killer.”
I shook my head. “They don’t know.”
“They will soon enough.”
I pondered that, glancing back and forth between steely gray eyes and cornflower blue. Right. It was just a matter of time now. I answered Cornelius. “Somehow, I was transferred to another cemetery, one that was much bigger.”
“What are you talking about, Parker?” Cooper crossed his arms over his chest. “I was standing there watching you the whole time. You didn’t go anywhere.”
Cornelius leaned forward, his jaw agape. “You mean to tell me you temporarily transported mentally to yet another realm within that realm and left your body behind?”
“Uh …” My eyes darted to Doc. “Is that what I did?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
“What happened next?” Cornelius pressed.
“I saw something. Some kind of beast.” One I assumed was known as the White Grizzly over the centuries. “I’d kept hearing the sound of it chewing on bones the whole time I was talking to Grandpappy. That was what drew me away from the séance.”
“Holy horse apples,” Cornelius whispered. “You were not only acting as a Clairaudient—”
“That’s someone who can hear things happening in the non-physical world,” Doc explained.
Cornelius continued, “But you were also remote-viewing between non-physical dimensions. Do you know how rare this ability is?”
“That’s not all,” Doc said. “Keep going, Killer.”
“The thing I saw, well, it saw me back.”
Cornelius’s eyes widened even more. “Then what?”
“I raised the shotgun and something shifted.” I purposely left out the part about Aunt Zoe’s trigger, not wanting to drag her into this, especially in front of Cooper.
“Shifted how?” Cornelius asked.
“Dimensionally,” Doc told him.
“I was back in Harvey’s cemetery.” I added, “and so was the beast.”
“This is beyond anything I’ve come across,” Cornelius said, absently stuffing a piece of licorice in his mouth.
“It’s fucking insane is what it is,” Cooper snapped, heading back over to the window.
“What did it do?”
“It attacked Cooper.”
Cornelius stood up so fast his chair fell over backward. “You materialized an ectoplasmic entity? I’ve heard of ectoplasmic mediums, but I never really believed they existed, that this was even possible.”
“This ectoplasmic crap and multiple dimension shit are for the birds,” Cooper said. “That thing must have been hiding behind the tombstone the whole time. I just didn’t see it until it popped up.”
“Oh, really, Mr. Black and White? Then why didn’t your bullets work on it?”
“Who say
s they didn’t?” Cooper tossed back. “How else could a woman your size take down something that big? I had to have weakened it.”
I shrugged, letting Cooper think what he wanted for now. This was a pretty big pill to swallow in one gulp. Hell, I was still choking it down.
I turned to Doc. “Well, now we have two different theories on last night’s events. What’s yours?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, a frown taking shape the longer he stared at me. “I think you come from a long line of dimension-hopping executioners with multiple psychic abilities.”
“That’s quite a title,” I said. “You think that will fit on my business card under Assistant Broker?”
“You’d have to use a smaller font,” Cornelius said.
“A dimension-hopping executioner?” Cooper shook his head. “Jesus Christ! How in the fuck do I make this fly down at the station?”
“You want to know what I think?” I asked, taking Prudence and her repeated warnings into consideration.
All three gazes turned to me.
“I think Hell’s coming to Deadwood, and all that stands between it and life as we know it is a crazy-haired, somewhat psychic, single mother who doesn’t know jack shit about how to stop it.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Meanwhile, back at headquarters …
Later that evening, I pulled into Aunt Zoe’s drive and cut the engine. For the first time in months, there was no sputter, no backfire—only silence. What a concept.
In the rearview mirror, I watched Doc pull in behind me and climb out of his Camaro.
He walked up to my door and opened it, looking in at me with raised brows. “Well, what do you think?”
“It rides smooth and feels so sleek.” I caressed the steering wheel of the used 4-wheel drive Honda Pilot he’d helped me pick out down in Rapid City. “I’m in love.”
“Smooth and sleek,” he rubbed his chin, a hint of a grin on his lips. “Reminds me of someone I know.”
I hopped out, catching his arm after he shut the door behind me. I pulled him down for a quick peck on the cheek. “Thank you for going with me.”
He tucked a curl behind my ear. “You’re welcome, Boots.” His eyes turned dark and smoldering. “It was the least I could do after that massage.”
I chuckled, low and wicked.
After we’d left Cornelius’s hotel this morning, we’d gone straight to Doc’s place, where he’d spent a couple of hours distracting me from ghosts, dead men, demons, and every other creepy creature I’d come across so far. Sex, food, sex, and more food. He reminded me how good it felt to be alive.
The massage had started as payback on my part for the deal we’d made weeks ago and ended as … well, my attempt to make him my love slave for all eternity. That wasn’t so much to ask, was it?
“So, my bribe worked?” I asked, smoldering back up at him.
“Is that what that was? A bribe?”
“Maybe.”
“Including the grand finale, cherry lip gloss and all?”
“Where’s the fun in a grand finale without cherry lip gloss?”
He groaned. “And that encore trick you did with your tongue?”
The encore trick that had really made him come undone? “All part of the package deal.” I licked my lips and winked, then ruined my seductress act by sneezing. That was my third in the last hour. Shit!
When I shook off the sneeze, he leaned in and whispered in my ear, “You’re a vixen, Violet Parker.”
His hot kiss slid across my cheek, warming me clear through my toes. My body hummed, its RPMs accelerating yet again.
A movement over his shoulder drew my gaze. “We have a problem.”
“Only one?” His hands framed my face, his eyes locked onto my mouth.
“Two actually.”
“Both can wait.” His head lowered.
A catcall rang out from the front porch. “Yee haw! This is almost as fun as one of them ol’ fashioned quarter peep shows with the burlesque girls,” Harvey said to Aunt Zoe.
Doc growled in his throat, pulling back right before making touchdown. “His timing is as bad as his nephew’s.”
I air kissed him.
“Spend the night with me?” he asked for my ears only.
“Twist my arm.” With my kids down at my parents, I was free to play slumber party with him. Although, I didn’t relish the thought of being under the same roof as Cooper.
“I’d rather kiss you all over.”
“Or you could just do that.”
“Supper’s ready, you two,” Aunt Zoe called. “Don’t make me get the hose.”
I grabbed Doc’s hand and led him up the walk.
“Nice wheels,” Aunt Zoe said, looking over my head.
“I’ll take you for a ride later,” I told her as I climbed the porch steps and then snapped Harvey’s suspenders. “Thank you for letting me use the Picklemobile for so long. She’s parked at Doc’s place.”
He grinned, his gold teeth showing. “The ol’ gal isn’t going to know what hit her.”
“What do you mean?” Aunt Zoe asked.
“Doc’s gonna fix ‘er up this winter.”
I looked at Doc. “I thought you were just going to drive her while you stored your Camaro.”
“The Picklemobile has good bones.” He reached for the doorknob. “With a tune up and some muscle, she’ll be running smooth and sleek, too.”
“Reid knows his way around an engine,” Aunt Zoe said, then seemed to realize whose name she’d spoken and frowned about it. “If you need any help.”
“Doc spent a few years working in a garage,” I told her one of the few things I knew about his past, “fixing up old cars like his Camaro.”
“Good to know about Reid,” Doc told her, opening the front door. “I don’t mind company while I’m under the hood.”
“If we’re done flappin’ gums,” Harvey said, “I’d like to dig into them pork chops before I turn into a toothpick.”
Aunt Zoe led the way inside, Doc closing the door behind us. We were sitting around a serving plate of pork chops, a bowl of applesauce, and casserole dish of green beans when the doorbell rang.
“Coop’s here,” Harvey said, stabbing a chop.
“I’ll get it.” Doc left the room.
I grimaced at Harvey. “Why is he here?”
“I invited him.” Aunt Zoe dished me up a chop before taking one.
Criminy! Who else did she invite? Darth Vader? The shark from Jaws?
“Don’t go looking at me like that,” she said. “Cooper called this afternoon looking for you and Doc, saying he had news about the case.”
“Which one?”
“I didn’t ask. I mentioned pork chops for supper; he agreed. End of discussion.”
Cooper strode into the kitchen, his steely eyes zeroing in on me. “Hawke’s been trying to reach you.”
Harvey kicked out one of the kitchen chairs. “Where’re yer manners, boy? Set and light a spell. We can chew the fat after we fill our bellies.”
Doc returned to the seat next to me, glancing in my direction and then Cooper’s.
I took out my frustration about the bristly detective invading my sanctuary on my poor pork chop. Not even the blend of rosemary and thyme Harvey had used could calm me, but I stuffed my mouth full anyway.
Cooper washed his hands at the sink and then joined us, settling in between his uncle and Aunt Zoe. We dug in, forks clinking on plates the only sound for a minute or so.
“Whose Pilot is that?” Cooper spoke first, pouring himself more lemonade from the pitcher on the table.
“Mine,” I told him between bites, wondering if he were just curious or making a mental note for future parking ticket opportunities. “I got it today.”
“I’ve heard good things about those vehicles, especially when it comes to snow and ice. Low mileage?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“How’s it handle on curves?”
“Easy.” I shot Doc a conf
used look. Had I somehow slipped into another dimension, one where Cooper hadn’t been built as a cyborg?
“How’s the cab? Plenty of head room?”
“Doc fits in it just fine.” I narrowed my gaze at him. “So does my hair.”
Doc cleared his throat meaningfully, sending me a raised eyebrow while sipping from his glass.
“Leather interior?” Cooper asked, not taking the bait.
I lowered my fork. “What in the hell are you doing, Cooper?”
He looked up from the piece of chop he was slicing off, his gaze bouncing around the table before returning to me. “I believe I was asking about your new vehicle.”
“What’s your motive?”
“I believe they call this ‘making small talk’ at most tables.”
I guffawed. “Since when do you and I make small talk?”
“Violet,” Aunt Zoe warned. “You’re being impolite to my guest.”
I pointed my fork at Cooper. “Your guest has a history of throwing me in jail.”
Cooper rolled his eyes. “I only did that once.”
“So far,” I tossed my fork on the table. “Can you blame me for being suspicious of his Trojan horse rolling into my headquarters?”
“Relax, Parker. I’m not here to interrogate you tonight.”
“Prove it.”
He chewed on his pork chop while squinting back at me. Sitting back, he swallowed. “How?”
“Why does Hawke want to talk to me?” Before he could answer, I added, “and don’t give me any of that ‘police business,’ bullshit.”
Cooper shrugged, slicing into the last of his pork chop. “I told him our story.”
“Our story?” Aunt Zoe turned to me. “You told him about …” she trailed off, glancing Cooper’s way with a worried brow.
“Not that story,” I assured her. Doc and I had been careful to keep Aunt Zoe and my history out of our discussion earlier at the hotel. “The detective is talking about the one that explains how he found the missing body in the mine out at Harvey’s.”
