Better Off Dead in Deadwood (41 page)

My cell phone buzzed on my desk. I looked down and saw Cornelius’s name. “Jerry, I need to take this.” I grabbed my phone and raced out the front door so I could yell at Cornelius in private.

“Where have you been?” I asked in lieu of a greeting.

“Las Vegas,” Cornelius answered.

“What? You’re in Vegas?”

“My great grandfather passed away.”

Immediately I felt like a big, fat, wart-covered toad. “I’m so sorry, Cornelius.”

“Don’t be. He was too old. We’ve been waiting for him to cross over for years. I look forward to contacting him on the other side.”

“Oh. Okay, uh … when are you coming back to town?”

“I’m not sure. I’m about to go in for the reading of his will. I’ll know more later. I wanted to let you know that the manager of my hotel is holding an envelope for you.”

“Is it the extra earnest money?”

“No. It’s my grocery list for next week.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Otherwise, I might need a restraining order put on me to protect his bony ass.

“Yes. But it’s not a check. It’s a series of clues that will tell you where to find the check.”

“Please tell me you’re kidding again.”

“Of course not. I couldn’t leave that much money lying around.”

It was a check, not a pile of cash. “You could have called me to come and get it before you left.”

“There wasn’t much time.”

Yet he had time to devise a treasure hunt. I was going to throttle him when I saw him next and jump up and down on his stupid hat.

“I have to go, Violet. They are calling us into the attorney’s office now. Good luck with your hunt.”

“Wait!” I said, but it was too late. He was gone.

“Shit,” I muttered and returned to Jerry’s fashion show. Only he was gone and so was Ben, leaving me alone with Shithead since Mona was out showing homes to new clients who’d come by while I was off playing Marilyn Monroe.

“Trouble in paradise, Blondie?” Ray said, picking his teeth with his pinkie nail.

“Nope. Everything is perfect.”

“Really? Then why isn’t that hotel deal done yet?”

“Go blow a donkey, Ray.” I was in no mood to spar with the jerkoff after the morning I’d had. I grabbed my purse and keys. Besides, I had a treasure hunt to begin.
Ahoy, mateys!

“You know that Ben will outshine you here in every way.” Ray apparently wasn’t finished with his attempt to sink my ship o’ dreams. “He already has Jerry wrapped around his little finger. It’s just a matter of time before the boss man sees what a waste of resources you are to this company and fires your pretty blonde head.”

I paused by his desk, imagining jamming that pinkie of his right in his eye. “Ah, Ray, that’s so sweet of you to call me pretty. Next thing I know, you’ll be sending me flowers and wanting to meet my parents.”

“You think you’re really something, don’t you? But I have bad news for you—you’re nothing more than a washed up piece of fool’s gold, whereas Ben is the real nugget.”

This pissing contest regarding Benjamin the Great was going to get old fast. “What’s that make you?” I asked him. “Just a flash in the pan?”

“Oh, no, baby. I’m twenty-four karats of pure sales gold.”

Twenty-four karats of pure bullshit was what he was. “No, I’d say you’re nothing more than gold-plated lead. You look all shiny from the outside, but being around you too much causes irritability, cramps, and behavioral disorders, which might just lead to death—yours, if you’re not careful.”

“Is that a threat, Blondie?”

I shrugged. “Are you scared, you poor little baby? Are you going to go running to Detective Cooper again?”

He scowled. “What are you talking about? What’s Cooper got to do with this?”

“I’m talking about you ratting to Cooper that I was picking on you about the Mudder Brothers mess.”

“I didn’t say a damned word to Detective Cooper.”

“Right.”

“You can believe whatever you want in that marshmallow brain of yours, Blondie, but I didn’t invite the law to the table. This is private—just between you and me.”

I stared at the weasel’s face, looking for a cheek twitch or shifty gaze, something showing he was lying. He glared back, all beady-eyed. Unfortunately, I loathed him too much to stomach staring at him for long.

If he hadn’t told Cooper about yesterday’s bout with Ray, who had? I’d texted Natalie about it and mentioned it to Doc, but neither of them would have gone to Cooper. Or did Cooper have some kind of sixth sense when it came to my topics of conversation? Maybe he’d planted a recording device somewhere on me—or in my purse while I was at the jail. Hell, if someone could slip an anonymous note in it, Cooper could easily bug it.

“Fine. Just be sure to keep your mouth shut in the future.” I hitched my purse further up my shoulder and headed for the back door.

“Or what?” he called after me.

“Or I’ll tell Jerry that you are hiding a criminal record with the help of Detective Cooper.”

“Those records are sealed.”

I turned around and pushed open the back door with my butt. “Are they? Are you sure about that, Ray?”

Without giving him a chance to reply, I walked out the door and pulled it shut behind me. I slid behind the wheel of the Picklemobile and sat there for a second, decompressing.

Ray had to be lying. The weenie undoubtedly contacted Cooper, probably worried about my finding out what was in those sealed records of his. Damn, I’d love to find out what he did that made him agree to be Cooper’s bitch in such a risky operation.

I keyed the old pickup to life.

But I’d have to solve that mystery another day. Right now, it was time to go find a treasure. Maybe I should see if Addy would be willing to trade Elvis for a talking parrot.

* * *

“Treasure hunt, my ass,” I grumbled aloud as I drove up the street toward Aunt Zoe’s.

I’d just wasted my whole afternoon following breadcrumbs, searching up and down through the laundry room, the basement storage room, the haunted stairwell (which gave me goosebumps even without having a sixth sense), and an amazing number of hidden closets and storage areas in The Old Prospector Hotel. When I’d finally found the stupid envelope Cornelius had left, it’d been empty. EMPTY!!

To fuel my internal inferno, Abe Jr. wasn’t answering or returning my calls. I wasn’t just a little irritated now, I was ready to coat Cornelius in honey and chain him to a fence in that bear park south of Rapid.

I’d stopped back at the office to grab some information Mona was supposed to leave me and ran into Jerry and Ben back from playing basketball at the Rec Center, smelling like a mix of sweat and cologne. While I pretended to research listings on my computer, I eavesdropped on their back and forth about different college basketball teams stats and who they predicted would make it to the finals this year. It wasn’t fair. Ben and Jerry were formed from the same mold. How could I possibly hold my own against Ben? Short of keeping Jerry happy with all of his lame-brained, crappy marketing ideas, I had nothing to offer.

I’d stayed later than usual, wanting to look industrious, hating that I was missing homework time with my kids without knowing if my time was well spent or just a waste and I’d be out of a job soon anyway. I pounded on the steering wheel. Damn Cornelius and Jerry and Ray and Cooper and all the other obtuse, overbearing, pushy males in my life.

The sun was low in the sky by the time I slowed for Aunt Zoe’s drive. I frowned at my mother’s red Prius in the waning daylight. It hogged the driveway, so I was forced to park on the street behind Harvey’s Ford. I blinked at the fluorescent yellow bumper sticker on his tailgate that read, “Wanted: Bow-legged Women Who Like to Go Swimmin’.” I didn’t remember seeing that on there before.

Trudging up the sidewalk, I hummed the tune that inspired Harvey’s bumper sticker. Great. That was just what I needed—to spend the evening singing about swimming between the knees of bow-legged women.

I let the screen door slam behind me, the loud crack momentarily mollifying the urge to lie on the floor and thrash around while screaming my lungs out.

The sound of Aunt Zoe’s voice coming from the kitchen reminded me that my mother was visiting. I kicked off my heels and checked my face in the hallway mirror, looking for any signs of insanity. Nope, all clear—no twitches, tics, or bloodshot eyes. Well, clear except for the multiple coatings of hairspray and makeup from today’s photo shoot that I still wore under the peppering of dust from my treasure hunting adventure at the old hotel. I swore then and there that if my mother made one comment, good or bad, about my helmet of curls or the spider-leg eyelashes, I was going up to my room and not coming out until she left the premises. Good thing I’d left that bottle of tequila on my nightstand.

Time to put on a show. My mother did not have a clue about anything I’d been going through, and today was not the day to break down and get snot all over her shirt about it. I marched into the kitchen wearing a smile on my face that I hoped gave the message that my life was just peachy-keen. The sight of my sister sitting in my usual spot at the table with a glass of lemonade and a chocolate chip cookie in front of her while chatting with Aunt Zoe stopped me in my tracks. My smile crashed down like an anvil on the head of good old Wile E. Coyote.

Beep beep!

Susan, who I’d not-so-lovingly nicknamed “The Bride of Satan” years ago before she’d really pissed me off, stared back at me with her cold, black heart glittering in her big, doe-like eyes. Where was that mean hunter who’d shot Bambi’s mom when I needed him?

“Hello,
big
sis,” Susan said, emphasizing the adjective with a smug grin. Built like a gazelle, she loved to remind me how short and stocky I was in comparison. She nibbled on one of Aunt Zoe’s chocolate chip cookies, truly in character with the rat she was.

Get out!
I wanted to bellow at her. Instead, I asked through gritted teeth, “What are
you
doing here?”

She’d apparently forgotten that I’d drawn a line in the sand and she wasn’t allowed on my side of it anymore.

Aunt Zoe frowned from me to Susan and back but said nothing. She pushed to her feet. “I need to go check on some pieces in my workshop.”

Smart woman, escaping to take shelter before I’d hit the mushroom-cloud stage. She gave my arm a squeeze of support or warning, I wasn’t sure which, and then she smiled at the evil concubine. “It was nice to visit with you, Susan. I hope that new job works out for you.”

New job? Yeah, right. Susan went through jobs like they were rolls of toilet paper.

Aunt Zoe closed the back door behind her, leaving me alone with
her
. With no mother, father, or neighborhood police officers around to hold me back, I considered sitting on her skinny ass and squishing wads of Addy’s chewing gum in her long, straight, black hair.

Loathing was too nice a word for how I felt about my younger sister. Since we’d been children, she’d operated with the mindset of what’s hers was hers, and what’s mine was hers to destroy. Her list of crimes against me was so long that she’d topped Santa’s naughty list every year since she was four years old. As far as I was concerned, coal was far too good for her.

My mother, on the other hand, still held a soft spot for her baby girl. She refused to see Susan’s behavior as devious or malicious, labeling her instead as confused and prescribing “more love than normal” as a fix. I’d prefer to show Susan that love from the distance between Earth and Mars.

Having Susan here in my favorite kitchen, my sanctuary, on a day as shitty as today made me wonder if Aunt Zoe had ever found those shotgun shells she’d been planning to use to shoo Reid out the door.

Without even trying to hide my irritation, I pointed at the car keys on the table next to her cookie. “You should go back down to Mom and Dad’s now.”

Susan sniffed at me, her expression smooth and serene in the snarling face of my wholehearted hostility. “I’ll have you know that Aunt Zoe is my aunt, too, even if we don’t share the same DNA.”

Susan was my mother’s child with another man. When I was three, my parents had been having serious problems with their marriage. So much so that they had separated and my father had moved into an apartment, leaving me and my older brother, Quint, with my mom. Over the next year, my mother dated a few men, some I remembered, some I wished I didn’t. One from the latter category ended up fathering a child, only he hadn’t wanted to be a dad and had left my mom pregnant and alone.

When my father had found out, he had brought Mom flowers and suggested they work out their differences. They had, and he had stepped in to take the daddy role. Years later Quint had filled me in on all the details since I’d been too young at the time to understand what was happening. Per Mom’s order, we all had kept Susan’s dad’s true identity a secret—until the day my sister pushed me too far. Ever since then, when I wasn’t throwing knives at her pictures, I was stabbing myself with guilt for blowing Dad’s cover.

Since Aunt Zoe was my father’s sister, Susan had distanced herself from Zoe after she had learned the truth about her parentage. I’d be the first to admit that I couldn’t have been happier about that. Aunt Zoe was
my
favorite aunt, and this chasm between her and Susan gave me a haven free of Susan’s malicious ploys.

“Fine,” I conceded, “Aunt Zoe is your aunt, too. What are you doing up here?”

“I wanted to see my niece and nephew.”

The mother bear in me stood up on her hind legs. “Why?”

“I miss them.”

Liar.
Susan only cared about Susan. Usually, any time spent around my kids was solely for the purpose of benefitting her in some way—like that time she shoplifted two pairs of expensive panties by stuffing them in Addy’s winter coat pockets and sweet talking the security guard while Addy skipped right by.

“What’s your angle?” I prodded.

“Honestly, big sis, you are so unattractive when you sneer like that. And you really should see someone about straightening that bird’s nest on your head. I have a girl down in Rapid who could probably help you.”