Nearly Departed in Deadwood (19 page)

      “I gave Kelly’s backpack to Mr. Schwarzenegger.”

      “Great.” I squeezed past her into the kitchen, my arms wanting to flap on out of there, too.

      Harvey stood by the open front door, drinking a can of beer. His gaze was questioning as I approached. I shook my head slightly. Something was definitely wrong at Kelly’s house, and I couldn’t escape to my Bronco fast enough.

      The hot sunshine did little to remove the chill covering my back. “Thanks for letting me use the restroom,” I said on my way down the steps.

      Donna followed us outside. “Would you mind letting Kelly stay two nights with you?”

      I nodded. Sure, whatever, just let me get the hell away from this place. “I’ll bring her back Monday morning.”

      “Monday evening will work better for Jeff.”

      Where was Donna going to be Monday night? “Evening it is,” I agreed from my driver’s side door.

      “Nice to meet you both.” Donna waved and then turned and shut the door. In the still air, I heard the deadbolt clunk.

      Harvey looked at me over the Bronco’s hood. “What happened in there? You looked like somebody pinched your tail feathers when you came out of the bathroom.”

      I waited until we were both inside the Bronco and I’d started the engine before answering. “I found a bouquet of flowers in the trash.”

      “So.”

      “From the same florist as the ones sent to me, purple envelope and all.”

      “Oh.”

      “It creeped me out. Makes me wonder if Jeff Wymonds is sending me flowers for some reason.” The memory of Jeff’s face pressed against the screen door, staring and sneering as he said my full name, made me shudder as I backed onto the street. My tires chirped on the pavement as we sped away.

      “If flowers made you act like that,” Harvey said, “maybe you should pull over for a second.”

      I glanced at Harvey. “Why? What do you mean?”

      “I saw a poster board in Donna and Jeff’s bedroom.”

      “When did you have time to go in their bedroom?” How long was I in the bathroom?

      “They don’t call me ‘Mongoose’ at the senior center for nothing,” Harvey answered, grinning with pride. “Anyway, the poster was covered with pictures of all three missing girls.”

      I swerved into Deadwood Dan’s Spuds and Suds gravel parking lot and hit the brakes. A dust cloud swarmed around us. “Really? Are you positive?”

      “Sure am. They were the pictures from those Missing Girl flyers. Probably cut from them. There were several cutouts of each girl.”

      Goose bumps speckled my arms. “Jesus. That’s weird.”

      “Oh, that’s chicken feed, darlin’. Here’s the gut-kicker,” he paused and squeezed my shoulder. “A picture of Addy was on there, too.”

     
Chapter Thirteen

      Later that afternoon, perched on Wolfgang’s back porch steps next to Natalie as the twins and Kelly played tag in front of us, I still had flowers and Jeff Wymonds on the brain.

      The warm, waning sunlight held reign over the surrounding hills, while shadows hovered in the nooks and valleys, waiting for their turn. Sweat trickled down my cleavage and back, Wolfgang’s shin-high grass now a thing of the past thanks to Aunt Zoe’s lawnmower.

      After several calls this afternoon, I learned that even with the added time until the Historical Committee would allow work to start on the Hessler Haunt, I was still on my own when it came to yardwork and housecleaning. When I’d said on my mass-mailer postcards that I’d go the extra mile for a sale, I hadn’t realized I’d be pushing a lawnmower for part of it.

      As we stared out at the backyard, abuzz with katydids, yellow-jackets, and other insects of prey, I spilled my thoughts about Kelly’s dad to Natalie in hushed bursts. The scent of fresh-cut grass and the peals of kids’ giggles took the shivers out of my suspicions.

      “You’re kidding me, right?” Natalie whispered for my ears only, her tone matching the disbelief wrinkling her brow.

      “No. I’m totally serious.” I shooed a wasp away from Natalie’s shoulder. “How else do you explain the picture collage of the missing girls and the jacket?”

      “I don’t know. I just don’t think Jeff is smart enough to pull off one abduction, let alone three. There has to be some other explanation.”

      I gulped the last of the lukewarm water from the bottle Natalie had brought me, tasting a hint of plastic, mulling over her objection. “Did you make the call I asked you to?”

      Natalie nodded. “Rumor has it Donna is leaving Jeff because of another woman.”

      I gaped at Natalie. “What? Why? The guy has the sex appeal of a snail.”

      “Well, he’s certainly no Doc Nyce.”

      Recalling the glimpses of Doc’s bare skin that I’d snuck and not-snuck earlier today, I’d second that motion.

      “Or Wolfgang.” Natalie added with a wiggle of her eyebrows.

      Or Wolfgang, I smiled. If only he wasn’t halfway across the country sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting time we could better spend exchanging flirting glances.

      “But Jeff cleans up decent and has a nice voice,” Natalie continued, “and after a couple of beers, the stupidity pouring out of his mouth doesn’t matter so much, anymore.”

      “You sound like you’re speaking from recent experience.”

      Natalie’s soft chuckle drew my gaze. “Almost, but I don’t sleep with married men, even when I’m washing away the been-dumped-again blues with a pitcher of suds.”

      “All the more reason to continue with your sabbatical for at least a month.”

      “I don’t know that I’d go that far.” She leaned back, resting her weight on her hands. “Especially now that I’ve met Doc.”

      I frowned. First Harvey, now Natalie. Doc was worming his way into my world, and I wasn’t sure I wanted him there. “You mean you’ve actually met Doc face-to-face?”

      “Not yet, but I will soon. I called and made an appointment with him for this coming Wednesday. If things go as planned, we’ll start out in his office and end up in my bed.”

      My gut twinged at the idea of Natalie and Doc leg-wrestling on her red satin sheets. Doc was on the way to becoming
my
dark, mysterious, forbidden fantasy, one I didn’t want to share with my best friend. Unfortunately, having already staked a claim on Wolfgang, I couldn’t rope off Doc, too. Natalie would call “Bullshit!” and rightfully so.

      “Do you really think Jeff’s the one sending you flowers?”

      I shrugged. “The flowers started coming after I met him.”

      “He just doesn’t seem like the flowers kind of guy.”

      “Harvey and I stopped by the florist this afternoon, but the clerk who took the order had left for the day and the flowers were paid for with cash—both times, so they had no record of the purchaser.”

      “Third time’s a charm, right? You just have to wait for the next bouquet.”

      “I guess.” Easy for her to say; she wasn’t the one at the vulnerable end of a pair of binoculars. “Jeff may just be a local yokel to you, but I think there’s something weird about him. Spooky, even.” Possibly dangerous, too.

      “You know, Violet, in some cultures, sending flowers is actually just a nice gesture.”

      “Smartass. If he’s not a loony, why does he always call me by my full name?”

      “Jeff always had an obsessive-compulsive personality. In school, he focused it on football. Now, it’s on you.”

      “Splendid. I should buy him a voodoo doll with blonde hair.” I stared at the ladybug climbing Natalie’s cast. “Do you think his OCD explains why he has a picture of Addy pasted next to the missing girls’ cutouts?”

      “Maybe. Do you have any idea where he would have gotten a picture of Addy?”

      “I’ve been thinking about that. Kelly may have had one of those disposable cameras with her at the Dinosaur Park last week. I believe I saw one when we were unloading the picnic stuff from Harvey’s truck. It was that or a box of matches.”

      “Have you asked Kelly about the pictures?”

      “I haven’t had the chance. The girls have had their heads together since I came home, and I don’t want to ask questions about Kelly’s family in front of Addy.”

      “Well, I’m holding off judgment until you get a chance to drill Kelly on all of this.”

      “You’re biased.”

      “Because he’s an ex-football player who I sat next to in Woodshop class?”

      “Because you don’t want to have slept with a psycho.”

      “Oh, I have no problems with psycho sex. It’s the normal guys who scare me.”

      “Mom,” Addy came running up to us, holding out her blood-covered finger.

      I winced. “Crap.” I hopped up and grabbed her hand, taking a closer look. “What’d you do?”

      “I fell on a piece of glass sticking out of the ground.”

      I couldn’t tell how bad it was through the blood and dirt. “Come on, let’s go inside and clean it up.” I was thankful I knew where Wolfgang hid his spare key.

      The quiet of the house felt thick and cottony in my ears after the buzz of the outside world. Shadows framed the sitting and dining rooms, the musty smell of stale varnish and dust heavy in the stillness. The house had trapped the heat of the day, the warm air rousing more sweat from my pores. I couldn’t wait to hit the shower and scrub this place off of me.

      Addy’s thongs flopped on the hardwood floor as I led her into the kitchen.

      “Cool!” She looked around at the clown paraphernalia as she sat on the counter next to the sink. “Wolfgang must really like the circus.”

      “You’ll have to ask him about it when he comes back next Wednesday.” I turned on the faucet, waiting through a low groan of the pipes before water spurted and then gushed out.

      Addy’s cut didn’t look so ugly when clean. Just a small gash that some salve and a Band-Aid would fix. Unfortunately, I had neither on me and didn’t know where to begin digging for either in the Hessler Haunt.

      I opened and shut a couple of the drawers next to the sink. The first held silverware, the second a bunch of keys—mostly the old-fashioned, skeleton type—and odd tools. A pile of dish cloths and linens filled the third one down. Even the towels had garish clowns on them. Wolfgang’s mother should have sought counseling.

      “Here.” I tossed a clown towel to Addy. “Wrap this around your hand for now. We’ll fix you up with a Band-Aid when we get back to Aunt Zoe’s.”

      After helping Addy to the floor, I grabbed another towel to wipe down the sink area.

      “Can I go back outside now?”

      “Sure. Just take it easy, Sweetie.” I dropped a kiss on her forehead and smiled at her back as she flip-flopped out the kitchen doorway into the dining room.

      I wiped down the counter and sink, stopping partway through the process to turn the clown-popping-out-of-a-barrel cookie jar so it wasn’t watching me with those big, empty blue eyes and Joker-like grin. In the quiet of the clown-covered walls, my breathing sounded laborious. I really needed to stop using ice cream therapy to solve my problems. My clothes were going to start bulging soon.

      A door slammed somewhere overhead.

      I paused. The ceiling creaked, as if someone walked across the floor in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

      “Addy?” I dropped the towel on the counter and stepped into the dining room, my ears straining. Why hadn’t she gone back outside?

      Something crashed upstairs.

      “Damn it, Addy.” Chewing my lip, I climbed the stairs two at a time. I hoped I could afford to replace whatever it was Addy had broken.

      Three of the four doors on the second floor were closed. The fourth—the bathroom—at the end of the hall stood half ajar, dark inside due to it being windowless.

      “Addy, where are you?” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, using sugar, her kryptonite, to lure her out of hiding.

      I turned the knob to the rose wallpapered bedroom. Inside, I thumped across the wood floor in my grass-stained tennis shoes. Dust particles swirled around me. The photo of young Wolfgang was where I’d left it on the night stand.

      I yanked open the closet door and found no Addy. The sight of several frilly, girl-sized dresses hung on the narrow rack, small hat boxes piled high on the overhead shelf, and multiple pairs of black, patent leather shoes lined up on the floor had me frowning. These weren’t here the last time I’d looked in this closet just days ago. Wolfgang must be storing them here for some reason. I ran my fingers down one lacy, pink sleeve, wondering what Wolfgang’s sister looked like, imagining how devastating it would be to lose a child. How would I ever go on breathing, eating, living with a chunk torn from my heart? 

      My fingertips brushed over something hard. I lifted the sleeve cuff and stared at a piece of ribbon safety-pinned to the lace, knotted around a tuft of white-blonde hair. Wilda’s hair? I dropped the cuff and backed out of the room, a wave of sadness followed by an eerie shudder spurring me.

      Closing the bedroom door behind me, I moved on to room number two—the violet-papered boudoir.