Optical Delusions in Deadwood (15 page)

      “It’s air freshener,” I said, through a mouthful of cinnamon, and rolled down the windows. Warm air whipped my curls.

      “You don’t have an air freshener.”

      “The bathroom at work does.” My garlic-killing spritz wound up being a full-fledged dousing thanks to a faulty spray nozzle. Zeke and Zelda hadn’t seemed to mind my Eau de “Toilet” when we walked through a few more homes this morning, but they’d followed me on their Harley from place to place. A couple of twitches of Zelda’s nose had been her only reaction to me.

      “Let’s go. Coop’s waiting.” Harvey stuck his head out the window as I scooted down the road toward Lead. “Why are you coatin’ yourself in air freshener, anyway?” he hollered at me.

      I opted not to answer that. “Get your head back in here. I’m not that ripe.” I grabbed his arm and tugged. “I need to talk to you.”

      “I can listen from out here.”

      “It’s about sex,” I lied.

      That got him back in the cab, all ears.

      “I need you to ask Cooper something for me.”

      “You want to have sex with Coop?” His bushy brows hit the roof. “Jesus, girl! How many men do you need?”

      One repeat customer would be nice, thank you very much. “It’s about the Carhart deaths.”

      “Turn here.” Harvey pointed to a road that climbed a long, steep hill. “What about them?”

      I waited a beat or two as my Bronco dropped a gear and clambered upward. How did I say what I was about to without sounding like some nutty conspiracy theorist? I decided to just spit it out. “I don’t think Junior killed his dad.”

      Harvey snorted. “Here we go again.”

      “But I need proof.” I glanced over, catching a frown in return. “Which is where you come in.”

      “Why do you care about those two assholes?”

      That earned him a frown back. “You’re supposed to have a little respect for the dead.”

      “You didn’t know the Carhart boys. Removing them from the local population did us all a favor.”

      “Did you go to school with Junior’s dad?”

      “Nah. He was a good ten years older than me.”

      “But you knew him pretty well?”

      “We didn’t exchange Valentine’s cards ever, if that’s what ya mean, but I’d run into him around town.”

      “At the bar?”

      “No. He wasn’t much of a social drinker. Take a right up there by that old fillin’ station.”

      “So he usually drank at home?” Maybe those empty whiskey bottles were his and not Junior’s.

      “Home, his pickup, a dirt road, his girlfriend’s place, wherever he pleased, just like the rest of us.”

      “Girlfriend?”

      “Did I stutter?”

      “If he was such an asshole, how did he manage to find a wife
and
a girlfriend?”

      “He knocked Wanda up while she was still in high school. And Claudette—well, women love bastards.”

      “Not all women.” I preferred generous control freaks.

      “The clingy ones do. It’s no secret. Just read any of those women’s magazines and you’ll see.”

      “You read women’s magazines?”

      “Sure. They’re chock full of bonanza. Read a couple of those rags, and luring a dame to bed is easier than shooting fish in a barrel.”

      Did Doc read women’s magazines? How many guys were in on this secret? I glanced at Harvey a couple of times, unsure whether he was serious or not. He just grinned back, looking cocky as usual.

      “Back to Junior’s dad,” I said, wanting to scrub all thoughts about Harvey and sex from my brain and get back to less nauseating stuff—like murder. “Someone told me drinking made him mean.”

      “Mean as a pissed-off hornet,” Harvey said. He pointed out the front window. “It’s up there on the left.”

      I stopped in front of a small pale-blue 1940-ish bungalow with a detached garage whose big barn-like doors were propped open. Cooper’s unmarked patrol SUV was parked in the drive. Sitting in front of the SUV was a red motorcycle, a bucket of sudsy water on the ground next to it.

      I turned to Harvey. “I need you to find out from Cooper if Junior was definitely drunk when the murder took place.”

      “The paper already said so.”

      “Yeah, well the paper might have been wrong. Ask Cooper if they tested Junior’s blood and confirmed he was drunk.”

      Harvey sighed. “Okay. But I think this is a bad idea. You don’t want to let Coop know you’re sniffin’ around one of his cases.”

      “His case?” I’d figured Cooper would know about the murder details due to police chatter. “I thought he was a detective for Deadwood, not Lead.”

      “Lead contracts with Deadwood for Coop’s services to save money."

      Swell. There was no escaping Cooper’s all-seeing eye.

      Harvey was still grumbling about helping me when we climbed out of the Bronco. Cooper came from behind the garage, wiping his hands on a blotchy white cloth. His black T-shirt sported several little round holes on the right side, leaking glimpses of bare flesh.

      “Looks like a moth got in your closet,” I said.

      Cooper frowned, then glanced down when I pointed. “Oh. Bullet holes.”

      I winced. “You must leak when you drink now.”

      That earned me a hint of a smile. “I no longer trust old women toting shotguns.”

      Harvey snickered. “I still say you should have let me have a try at her. She just needed a little sweet talkin’.”

      “I took your advice once.” He pointed at a small scar line on his left cheekbone. “Remember?”

      “How was I to know she was hiding a frying pan in her skirt?”

      I could sense another Harvey anecdote brewing, so I pointed at Cooper’s house and asked, “You ready to take a walk through?”

      Harvey followed us from room to room, rambling about this, that, and the latest tail he was chasing. I kept giving him head nudges, trying to remind him of the whole purpose for me dragging his ornery ass along. He kept not asking the right questions. Any questions at all, for that matter.

      The house looked clean enough, smelled like it’d been rinsed with bleach water, and contained sparse furnishings, mostly made of black leather and oak. The only picture hung in the house was in the living room: an oil painting of several dogs sitting around a poker table, cleaning their handguns.

      “Coop ain’t much for decorations.”

      Cooper shrugged. “It’s been a while since my last dinner party.”

      “This is good. It means less cleanup work for me.” Compared to Jeff Wymonds’ place, which still required a few trips to the landfill, this puppy was just a few flower vases away from showing.

      “Let me just grab the listing agreement from my Bronco,” I said to Cooper—and whispered “Ask him!” to Harvey on my way out the door. I took an extra minute or two getting the agreement. When I stepped back inside, Harvey was talking to Cooper about a new type of barrel cleaner for Bessie, his shotgun.

      Cooper went to find a pen, which I’d purposely forgotten.

      “Well?” I asked.

      “What? I didn’t get around to it yet.”

      “Harvey!”

      “What? I need to work up to something like this.”

      Cooper walked back into the room, pen in hand. “Where do I sign?”

      “Hey, Coop,” Harvey said as I showed his nephew the pages, “Violet wants to know if Junior Carhart was really drunk the night he murdered his old man.”

      My mouth opened in a silent yell. I glared at Harvey. That was how he worked up to something?

      Meanwhile, Cooper watched me, all spaghetti-western squinty-eyed. “Why does Violet care about that?”

      “Well, that’s what I asked, too, but we got sidetracked before she answered me.”

      Wow, so much for my sidekick having my back. I cleared my throat. “I’m curious because of something a friend told me recently.”

      “Which was?” Cooper pressed.

      I swallowed some nervous ramblings that threatened to flee from my throat. “That Junior was an amiable drunk.”

      “And?” More pressing.

      “He would never hurt a fly while he was wasted, let alone do something as brutal as beat his father to death with a rolling pin.”

      We shared a silent stare-down, his eyes warning me to back off. I looked away first, relenting, but not giving up.

      “Well?” Harvey prompted. “Was Junior really drunk, or was that just speculation?”

      After another squint-filled pause, Cooper answered, “According to the lab, he had a blood alcohol level of point two one.”

      I had to wonder why Cooper remembered the exact number.

      “Woo-wee!” Harvey broke the tension. “That’s drunk all right.”

      Cooper took the listing agreement from me and laid it out on a waist-height speaker, next to where Harvey stood. “You two need to let this go.” He signed the pages under Harvey’s watchful eye and handed the agreement back to me. “It’s a closed case.” He scratched behind his left ear, then stopped when he noticed his uncle studying him. “A done deal. Understand?”

      “Sure.” I smiled through my lying teeth. “I was just curious. That’s all.”

      “Quit browbeating her, Coop.” Harvey tugged me toward the door. “She can’t help being nosy. It comes with the job.”

      Cooper followed us outside, still warning me with his eyes.

      “I’ll contact you in the next day or so.” I tried to shake off Harvey’s hand, but his grip was strong as he practically dragged me toward the Bronco. “We need to make your place a little more showy, add a few female touches.”

      Harvey howled. Literally. “Coop likes female touches, don’t you, boy?”

      The hint of a smile returned to the detective’s lips. “That depends on the female.”

      I barely had time to wave good-bye before Harvey stuffed me behind the wheel.

      “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered.

      What in the hell bit Harvey on the ass? I did as told and waited for him to climb in before shifting the Bronco into gear. “Where’s the fire? You late for a date with another old flame?”

      He didn’t answer until I’d started down the big hill back toward downtown Lead. “Coop’s lying.”

      “What?”

      “You’re on to something.”

      “How do you know? Does he have a ‘tell’ like my nose twitch? Was it him scratching behind his ear?”

      “No. Coop’s a pro. He doesn’t have any tells.”

      “Then how do you know he’s lying?”

      “You had him flustered.”

      “Ha! Right. Did you see his face?” There hadn’t even been a single twitch or jaw tick. “The four guys up on Mount Rushmore show more emotion.”

      “Coop’s a master at controlling his expression.” Harvey pointed at the listing agreement sitting on the console between us. “But he spelled his name wrong there on your paper.”

      * * *

      I dropped Harvey off at his Chevy pickup on the way back to the office. He planned to drive over and pay a visit to an old girlfriend—Junior’s dad’s, that was. Claudette Perkins was her name and, according to Harvey, sleeping with old married men was her game. That made a single man like him unattractive, which he worried might work against him in his attempt to seduce some answers out of her. But he’d been willing to try to take one for the team. Apparently, even at age sixty-one, Claudette was still quite the long-legged pin-up girl.

      Back at the office, Jane had a bunch of girl-Friday tasks for me, including a trip to Rapid City. I didn’t roll into Aunt Zoe’s drive until dinnertime. I still hadn’t heard a peep from Doc or Natalie, which made my stomach churn a bit if I thought about it too much, so I tried not to and failed miserably—story of my life.

      The heavenly scent of braised meat greeted me at the door. After sharing a pot roast with Aunt Zoe, the twins, and Kelly Wymonds, who was staying with us for the night, I bribed the kids into going to the library with me for the evening. The payoff was an ice cream cone at the Candy Corral afterward. After a day like today, I was thinking two scoops of peanut butter fudge might be required to take the edge off, with maybe a sample spoonful of mint chocolate chip.

      The library parking lot was empty.

      Addy and Kelly raced up the steps, leaving Layne and me trailing behind.

      “This place is a ghost town,” Layne said when we reached the double doors.

      I chuckled. He had no idea.

      The two of us made ourselves at home in the South Dakota room, leaving the door slightly ajar for when the girls came looking for us. Layne dropped his pack on the table and tugged out a notepad and his current read, a book on the history of ghost towns here in the Hills, which explained his comment on the way up the steps. His fascination with the area’s past had cranked up ever since he started digging in Aunt Zoe’s back yard. Finding that foot hanging in the tree last month had only amplified his obsessive bender.

      I scooted in front of the microfilm machine, my newfound friend in my newfound life. I hooked up a microfilm spool holding the past six months’ worth of articles from the
Black Hills Trailblazer
newspaper and wound my way back in time.

      The first thing I found in the archives was the obituary for both Junior and his dad. The paper had grouped them together. Nothing stood out, except a noted lack of Lila’s name anywhere. Were fiancées normally mentioned in an obit?

      The listing was short and sweet, with Mudder Brothers Funeral Parlor getting a call-out, but no mention of Claudette Perkins, of course. I wondered if she’d shown her face at the funeral. Had Wanda known about her husband’s infidelities? Had she cared? Maybe it was a relief to have him seeking his loving, touching, and squeezing elsewhere. Had he been verbally abusive to Claudette, too? Physically? Did any of this even matter?

      “Mom?” Layne’s voice broke into my inner monologue.

      “Yes, Sweetheart?” I continued scrolling further into the past, scanning.

      “What’s the name of that ghost town out by where Harvey lives?”