Better Off Dead in Deadwood (16 page)

I counted to five after the door shut and then skidded into the women’s bathroom. This cloak and dagger stuff required a stronger bladder. Many more of these close calls or zombie surprises and I was going to have to start wearing absorbent underwear.

I flushed and walked over to the sink, staring absently at a crack in one of the green and white tiles below the mirror.

What had Tarragon’s wife meant about Jane? Was Peter the murderer? Could it be that simple? And why had Mrs. Tarragon been in here bawling her eyes out?

Wadding up the towel, I tossed it into the trash. It landed next to a crinkled and torn piece of paper, a smudge of red and black makeup streaked one corner. I did a double take. I knew that banner. It was a Calamity Jane Realty flyer.

I flattened it out on the counter, careful to avoid any water drops.

The sight of Jane’s picture in the bottom right corner made my eyes water. I focused on the property for sale—the Sugarloaf building, one of the historic buildings on Lead’s Main Street. It was also one of the properties Jane had asked me to research for her back in July. My eyes blurred again, dang it.

There was a rip at the top, like it had been ripped from a tack or nail. Blinking away my tears, I wondered if the zombie bride had been the one looking at the flyer, and if so, why had she wadded it up and thrown it away?

How well had she known Jane? Were they old friends or just cast mates?

I dropped the paper back in the trash. Had Cooper considered Tarragon’s wife as a suspect? Could she be a missing piece that would help him solve the puzzle? I frowned at my reflection in the mirror. I had so many questions and nobody I could badger for answers.

On the way out the door, I dodged the yellow cone. The sight of Dominick Masterson standing in the doorway of the men’s bathroom where I’d hidden only moments ago made me screech and stumble backward into the wall.

I covered my chest with my palm. “You scared the bejeezus out of me.”

His smile didn’t crease his eyes. “Sorry about that. I thought you were someone else.” He pointed at the other bathroom. “Were you alone in there?”

I nodded. Was he looking for the zombie bride, too, like Tarragon? Was Dominick part of the cast? Or was something going on with him and Tarragon’s wife?

A rolling sensation surged through my stomach. The hallway we stood in suddenly seemed too tight, the urge for fresh air and a wide open sky tugged at me. I rubbed my stomach again. Damn Cooper for not letting me eat a decent breakfast. Some of us girls aren’t meant to look like stick insects with boobs.

Dominick’s gaze combed my face. “Do I know you?”

“No.”
But I know you.
“Not officially, anyway, but you might have seen me at Jane Grimes’s funeral.”

“That’s it. You were there with Willis Harvey. What’s your name?”

“Violet Parker. I work with Ja…” A wave of nausea rippled through me. My saliva glands kicked into gear, making me pause to swallow. “I mean ‘worked’ with Jane.”

I glanced down the hall at the door I’d come through what seemed like hours ago.

He held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Parker. I’m Dominick Masterson.”

His hand felt like an unripe nectarine, a soft, smooth layer of skin covering a firm core. No calluses to be felt. I pulled back.

“Did you know Jane well?” I asked, wanting an explanation for his front row seat at her funeral.

“We go way back. She represented me on several properties in the area.”

That still didn’t justify the front row seat, but my stomach was in no mood to keep prodding. I needed to get outside or I’d be rushing back into the bathroom for a whole other reason.

“I should be going. It was nice to meet you, Mr. Masterson.”

I’d made it to the elevator door when he asked, “Do you still work at Calamity Jane Realty?”

That made me stop, my Realtor radar picking up a bogey.

“Yes.” I turned. Was it crass to hit on Jane’s clients so soon after her funeral? Jerry probably wouldn’t think so, but would Mona? I could picture Ray’s purple face when he found out I’d managed to hook one of Jane’s big fishes without even trying. “Are you interested in buying or selling some property?” I felt a little icky asking, but I had kids to feed and clothe and all that jazz.

“Maybe. I just might come calling, Ms. Parker.”

“In that case,” I walked back and handed him my business card, “you can call me Violet.”

“Violet, it is.”

I could feel Dominick Masterson watching me all the way out the door.

Outside, rain bounced off the sidewalk. I didn’t let that slow me down. By the time I reached the Picklemobile, I was soaked, shivering from a mixture of cold water and turmoil. My stomach seemed to have slunk back under its rock for the moment.

I locked both doors and pulled out my cell phone. A drop of water splashed on the screen as I searched for Cooper’s number. Before I could chicken out, I hit the Call button.

Four rings later, he picked up. “I’m getting tired of talking to you today, Parker.”

“Too bad. It’s your job.”

“No, my job is to chase down the bad guys, not listen to a nosey blonde who has a wild hair. Make that many wild hairs.”

“Are you making fun of my hair, Detective Cooper?”

“Maybe.”

“What’s next? Are you going to knock my school books out of my arms and snap my training bra?”

I heard static through the line. Or maybe it was more of Cooper’s molars being ground off. “What do you want, Parker?”

“Is Peter Tarragon’s wife one of your suspects for Jane’s murder?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“That’s what I thought.” I didn’t remember seeing her name on his case board. “Maybe she should be,
Mr.
Detective
.”

I couldn’t resist that jab. He shouldn’t have made fun of my hair.

“Where are you, Parker?” he asked, his voice edged with a growl.

My cell phone vibrated. Another call was coming in. I checked—Cornelius’s name showed on the screen.

“I have another call,” I told Cooper. “Gotta go.”

“Damn it—”

I cut Cooper off with the push of one little button. If only I could do that in person.

“Hello, Cornelius. Where are you?” I wrung water from my curls onto the vinyl seat bench, swiping it onto the floor. The fragrance of my peach-scented shampoo mixed with the oily smell of aged pickup. The rain still pounded my windshield, which was fogging up.

“In heaven.”

“Right.” I stuck the key in the ignition and turned it. The Picklemobile stuttered a little, acting like she wasn’t sure she wanted to start, then caught and cranked to life. “Is that located in Deadwood or Lead at the moment?”

“Lead. Did you know the opera house has a basement?”

“Yes. I was on the same tour as you, remember?” I held my shivering hand over the vent, waiting for some engine heat to kick in. “They took us down to the bottom floor by the old bowling alley that’s now a shooting range.”

“That’s not the basement. There is a level under that.”

“How do you know?”

“I found it while I was following Caly.”

I rolled my eyes. The sound of that girl’s name was getting old quick. “She went down in the basement?”

“No, but I did. Only it’s not really a basement. It’s some old locker room with showers and the bottom of the pool.”

“I thought they filled that in.”

Cornelius had stood on the smooth, concrete-covered pool next to me.

“No, they just added a ceiling to the empty pool.”

“Let me get this straight.” I checked my mascara in the rearview mirror, wincing at the black rings. “You went underneath the floor that is really only a layer of concrete the length and width of the pool?”

“I walked around down in the deep end.”

I tried to picture an empty pool capped with concrete. “Was there anything else in the pool with you?” Maybe they used it for storage.

“Just a drain,” he said.

Why would they keep the pool but not use it?

“And the ghost you’re going to channel.”

Chapter Nine

It was moments like this when I considered going home, lying down on the couch, and spewing all of my troubles to Elvis—Addy’s chicken, not the King of Rock n’ Roll. Her indifferent clucks might do wonders toward soothing my ruffled feathers.

I glared at my cell phone several seconds before putting it back up to my ear.

“You want me to channel a ghost that lives under a concrete covered pool?” I asked Cornelius, just to clarify that we were on the same page.

“He may not actually live there,” he explained.

“It’s a man’s ghost?”

“Actually, he’s just a boy.”

“What makes you so certain this boy ghost was there with you at all?”

“He talked to me.”

Cornelius called himself a ghost whisperer. But after the last two séances I was coerced into attending, I’d say he was more of a ghost hummer.

I waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, I took the bait. “Okay, what did he say?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t hear him clearly.”

“Then how do you know he talked at all?”

“He whispered in my ear.”

Even if he was full of shit, that gave me goosebumps. “Why don’t
you
go back and talk to him and we can skip the channeling.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“He didn’t like my hat.”

I banged my head on the steering wheel a few times. “How do you know that if you couldn’t hear what he was saying?”

“He knocked it clean off my head.”

“Maybe it just fell off.” Blame gravity not a persnickety ghost, I thought, rubbing my forehead where I’d banged a little too hard.

“After I picked up my hat, the boy knocked it out of my hand. It landed at the pool’s six foot mark.”

Six feet and under … the pool. A coincidence?

“That’s when the whispering stopped,” Cornelius said.

I frowned out the rain-blurred windshield. This all sounded like some kind of parlor trick, but why would Cornelius try to put one over on me? I’d already joined him for two separate séances.

“We need to figure out how to sneak in the building later tonight,” he continued. “Maybe I could convince Caly to join us.”

Absolutely not! That was one bad idea stacked precariously on top of another.

“I’m busy tonight,” I said, evading.

“What could be more important than talking to the dead?”

Never in my life would I have guessed I’d be asked that question, yet here I was, and Cornelius meant it with all seriousness. “Homework,” I answered. “It’s a school night.”

“Skip class tonight.”

“Not for me, for my kids.”

“You have children?” he asked, sounding awed by the fact, as if they were mystical beings I controlled with my fingertips. “What are their blood types?”

I didn’t even hesitate with my equally absurd answer. “Red.”

“Ah, human then,” was his comeback.

Some days I wasn’t so sure.

“Violet, you need to be there to open the lines of communication for me.”

“Do you always need someone to channel for you?”

“Yes, unless we’re in the southern hemisphere.”

I let that one fly right past me. “Isn’t there someone you could call?” A fellow ghost buster? The short lady with Coke-bottle glasses from
Poltergeist
?

“My sister is in Australia trying to connect with the ghost of Ned Kelly and my cousin is unavailable.”

“Unavailable for how long?” I could delay him for a week, maybe two.

“Forever. She’s dead.”

I grimaced. “I’m sorry, Cornelius.”

“Me, too, but she died doing what she loved best.”

“Channeling ghosts?”

“No, participating in an exorcism.”

That was what the girl had loved best? Somebody should have gotten her a puppy. “What happened to her?”

“A couple of weeks prior to the exorcism, she opened too wide while channeling. One of the spirits took control.”

Channeling widths varied? “What do you mean, ‘took control’?”

“It possessed her.”

Was that what happened to Doc when he was overcome by a ghost? Was his channel stuck wide open?

“We had to perform an exorcism to free her. But there were complications.”

“What kind of complications?”

“The kind that stop your heart.”

I covered my mouth mid-gasp. Last month, Cornelius had been hauled into the Deadwood police station and questioned about the death of a girl during an exorcism that took place down in New Orleans. Cooper had let him go, but Cornelius was still a person of interest. The girl must have been his cousin.

“We’ll return Friday night at eleven-forty-seven.” Cornelius stated, moving past the subject of his cousin. “We’ll sneak into the under-the-floor pool area and try to connect with the boy ghost.”

“No.” I said without missing a beat.

“Why not?”

First of all, I had enough trouble with Cooper. I didn’t need to get busted for breaking and entering. Second, I was too chicken shit to go in there at night, especially after the zombies I’d seen roaming around the place today.

But I didn’t bother Cornelius with either of those reasons. “I refuse to channel anything other than my television until the sale of the hotel goes through.”

I wasn’t going to damage my professional reputation any further until I had a huge sale to stand behind.

“I told you that my funds are tied up.”

“So are my channeling paths or hallways or doors—whatever you call them.” I ground into gear and after checking the mirrors, pulled out into the street. “See if you can get those funds untied, Cornelius. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”

“Violet—”

I hung up on him, using that little red button on my phone again. That was really starting to come in handy.

After stopping at home to change clothes, wolf down a peanut butter and honey sandwich, and morph from a wet ragamuffin into a curly-haired mess, I drove back to work.

Doc’s car wasn’t in the parking lot. His business really seemed to be taking off with all of the word-of-mouth help lately. Yet another reason we needed to be even more careful about keeping his sixth sense our little secret.