Optical Delusions in Deadwood (39 page)

      I held up the itinerary—no need to pretend I was just folding Junior’s socks. “Your father was leaving your mother.”

      Her nostrils flared. “You should put that back.”

      “Did you take these pictures, Millie? Or did Junior take them?” I glanced back at the revealing photos. “Or was it your mother?”

      “Those aren’t for you to see.”

      “Did your mother kill your father, Millie? Was she trying to stop him and his mistress from running off with her money?” But why would Wanda have to go so far as to kill him? Had he threatened her that night? Found the incriminating pictures and become violent?

      Millie’s eyes grew round as half-dollars in her magnified lenses. She tiptoed closer. “She’s going to be mad that you did that.”

      So it was Wanda. “Your mother needs help.” This would explain why Wanda had been seeing her husband’s ghost since his death. There is probably some term for such post-traumatic optical delusions. “Let’s take these pictures to Detective Cooper. The police can handle it from here, get your mother the help she needs.”

      “She’s not going to like this at all.”

      “It’s for the best, Millie. You can’t keep living like this.” The poor woman. Raised with an abusive father, a cruel brother, and a crazy mother. It’s no wonder Millie dressed like she was going to a funeral every day.

      I picked up the pictures and tried to pocket them, but one of them caught on the edge of my pocket and fell out, drifting to the floor, sliding under the dresser.

      “You’re going to have to go now,” Millie whispered.

      “We both can go.” I squatted and reached under the dresser, my fingers bumping the picture further under.
Damn it.
I dropped onto my knees and peered under the dresser. There it was, a few inches further. “I’ll take you with me, get you out of here.”

      Something stung me on the back of the neck. Pain shot me upright. “Ouch!”

      I brushed at whatever it was. Only there was nothing there.

      The floor tilted under me.

      I grabbed the dresser, holding on as it tipped the other way. “That’s weird.” It must have been a touch of vertigo from sitting up so fast.

      “You shouldn’t have come here,” Millie said, her voice sounding fuzzy, out of tune, like a radio signal at the edge of reception.

      I blinked and looked toward her feet, my head too heavy to raise. My gaze crawled as high as her waist. It took a second for the thing she held in her fingers to register. By the time I figured out it was a syringe, the static had overtaken everything else.

      My cell phone! I reached for my purse, and then remembered it was down in Aunt Zoe’s truck.

      Millie bent in front of me, stuck her index finger on my forehead, and pushed me backward into a pool of blackness.

     
Chapter Twenty-Two

      Years ago, long before Addy and Layne popped into my world, I used to be wound pretty tight. I had a detailed plan for my life, down to the type of car I would drive post-nuptials—Volvo, nice and practical. Deviation was not an option. 

      One day, the owner of Hob-Knobbin’ Books, where I worked back then, took issue with my refusal to shelve Edgar Allan Poe in the store’s new Horror section complete with fluorescent green witch and ghoul deco. Classics stay with classics, I informed her. She gave me two options: watch a video on adapting to change, or leave, pink slip in hand. I needed the job.

      I nodded off twice during the video, but I learned a little mind trick that day called R.E.S.T.: Reflect, Evaluate, Search, Take action. This silly acronym helped me over the years, during times when life jammed a big pipe wrench into my plans—like when I was knocked up with twins and then abandoned by their loser father; or when I walked in on my sister with one of my boyfriends; or when my higher-than-a-kite ex-boyfriend burned my house down and most of my worldly possessions.

      Or when I was tranquilized, gagged, and blindfolded, with my ankles bound and my hands tied behind my back by a nutcase who secreted me away in a haunted house plagued by a murder-filled past.

      Again.

      At least this time there weren’t any dead bodies nearby.

     
Or were there?
The blindfold wasn’t giving up any secrets. A flashback to that macabre tea party lit a flare of panic inside of me, making me sweat until my camisole stuck like a bathing suit. Frantic, I tugged and yanked on my wrists and ankles, trying to free them, but the duct tape held strong.

      Swallowing around my heart, which cowered in my throat, I wiggled my way upright until I sat with my back against a box. The musty scent of mothballs, cardboard, and stinky shoes clung to my sinuses. Speaking of shoes, where were mine? Somebody didn’t want me kicking with heels on.

      Man, I was so thirsty. What I wouldn’t do for a big old glass of Aunt Zoe’s lemonade to wash the taste of cotton off my tongue. The thought of Aunt Zoe’s kitchen filled me with calm, helping me focus. Now to use my old trick to figure out how I could adapt to this sudden change in my life.

      Okay, reflect. I tried to open my mind, think back to how all this started.

      I was going for a latte after my fight with Ray. That led to digging for proof that Lila torched my Bronco, which turned into trying to talk Millie into going to the police about Wanda and ended with being gussied up like a Thanksgiving turkey and stuffed into what smelled like a closet.
Christ
—all before noon, too.

      My anxiety welled again inside me, amplifying my urge to thrash and scream and kick my way to freedom. One deep breath, and then another, and yet another kept me still. That, and the knowledge that between my missing lunch with Doc and Aunt Zoe waiting for me to return with her pickup, I’d be missed almost immediately.

      All right, back to my trick. Evaluation time. I tipped my head back, hitting it on something hard but hollow that sat on the box I leaned against. I head-butted it again, knocking it back an inch. The contents rattled. It sounded like a fishing tackle box. I hit it again with a nudge that sent it crashing to the floor.

      I froze, listening for footfalls—nothing, not even a vibration in the floor. Where was everyone?

      Oh, God. What if I wasn’t at the Carharts? For all I knew, Millie could have stuffed me in the trunk of her car and taken me to some shack in the hills to wither and die like a mouse stuck in a trap, the cheese just out of reach.

     
Fuck!
I struggled anew, yanking on my wrists until a cramp pinched my shoulder. I cried out and held still. Slowly, it loosened.

     
Okay, okay, calm down. Breathe.
What was the next stage? Search. Right, search for information.

      I’d already figured out I was in a closet. The boot heel jammed into my butt cheek when I woke up confirmed it. My ass still throbbed. That was going to leave a mark.

      What was in that tackle box I’d knocked over? I inch-wormed toward it, feeling for the contents on the floor. My fingers stumbled across something small and circular. I scraped my nail down it—thread. A spool? No, too thin. More like a bobbin. Did tackle boxes have bobbins? Maybe it was a sewing box. The next piece of flotsam confirmed it—a thimble.

      My pulse sped. I had yet to meet a sewing box that didn’t have a pair of scissors it. I scrambled further into the debris field and wiggled my fingers behind me along the braided rug. Something poked my finger, making me wince and pull back before I continued with more care. I came across a scattering of round-headed pins and skimmed them carefully.

      Come on, there had to be scissors somewhere, even tiny ones. My pinkie finger brushed something long and cylindrical, like a pen but shorter. I felt along it and found a ridge where the cap connected—a seam ripper. That had potential, but with duct-tape binding, scissors would work better.

      The floorboards creaked outside the closet. I palmed the seam ripper as the metal squeak of the doorknob registered. The door hinges groaned.

      I stayed still, leaning against one of the boxes, faking unconsciousness. It seemed like the smart thing to do. I’d bide my time before taking action. The scent of burning candles mixed with Lila’s spicy sweet perfume whirled in around me.

      A piercing pain exploded in my ribs.

      I curled up, hugging my throbbing side, bile bitter in the back of my mouth as waves of nausea lapped at my throat.

      Someone had kicked me, hard.

      “Wakey wakey,” Lila said, yanking off the blindfold. “Eggs and bakey.”

      “Bitch!” I yelled through a mouthful of cotton.

      Lila squatted in front of me, her sharp-toothed grin framed by her red lips. “What’s that, Miss Realtor? You’re glad to see me?”

      I squinted up at her, my fury pulsing through my fingertips and toes. “Go to hell,” I mumbled.

      “Did you just tell me to go to hell?”

      I nodded.

      Her laughter had an edge of mania to it. “You first.”

      She grabbed me by the ankles and dragged me out of the closet, grunting the whole way. It was times like this when filling my cells with all that peanut butter and fudge ice cream paid off.

      “Millie!” She yelled over her shoulder. “Come help me.”

      Millie hustled into the bedroom, the same one she’d caught me in earlier.

      Crap.

      I kicked and screamed most of the way down the stairs, making them work up a sweat, until Lila stomped on my fingers and shut me up. They carried me into the sitting room, where they tied me to a chair parked in the middle of a pentagram chalked onto the floor.

      Fire Captain Reid would get an itchy hose finger if he saw all the candles burning in the room. My throbbing fingers were itching, that was for sure—itching to poke Lila in the fucking eye for the rib tickler back in the closet and the finger smash on the stairs.

      The smell of burning wax and wicks was making my gut roll, reminding me of another candle party I’d been dragged into. I didn’t need this particular déjà vu in my life. With any luck, I’d burn
this
damned house to the ground, too.

      While I assessed my up-shit-creek situation, Lila and Millie stood off to the side, whispering, taking turns frowning in my direction. Millie won with six frowns to Lila’s four, but I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, since I was no longer so sure about who’d killed Millie’s father.

      They apparently came to some agreement and clomped upstairs together, leaving me to brood and fret on my own ... well, unless Doc was right about Prudence the ghost, in which case I wasn’t alone—not the most comforting thought.

      I gripped the seam ripper I’d stolen from the closet and began to tear my way to freedom one duct-tape thread at a time. Sweat ran down from my temple, the gag soaking it up. Adrenaline and fear spurred me past my sore wrist and aching fingers.

      Glancing around the room, I tried to ignore the serving tray full of knives on the sideboard. Maybe someone had just been cleaning them, oiling the wood handles. Yeah, right. 

      Where was Wanda? What had they done with her? The clock on the mantle showed midnight coming to a haunted house near me, and I hadn’t seen one glimpse of her gingham hide.

      My gaze fell back on the few stair steps I could see from my vantage point. What in the hell was going on, and who was running the show? If they came downstairs carrying chainsaws and hockey masks, I was going to piss my pants, there was no doubt about it.

      Had Doc or Aunt Zoe come looking for me yet? Surely Doc would have thought to check the Carhart place. Then again, maybe he had. Millie could have erased all signs of my presence.

      The curtains were drawn, so I couldn’t see the driveway, but I had no doubt they’d hidden Aunt Zoe’s truck in the garage or somewhere more clever. It would take a bloodhound to sniff out my slumbering ass in that closet. Since Doc’s sniffer only worked on dead folks, his radar wouldn’t have picked up my scent—at least not yet. Given the pentagram in the middle of which I sat, that might change soon.

      I just needed to figure out how to buy more ...

      The front door’s deadbolt clicked.

      My ears straining, I listened as the door hinges creaked. Shoe soles clapped on the wood floor. The
thump
of the door shutting followed, then the sound of keys jingling.

      I waited, straining forward as far as my bindings would allow, praying that my get-out-of-jail free card had just turned up and I could head straight to GO, as in right out the door.

      The footfalls came closer. I held my breath, my eyes glued to the sitting room entryway. Gingham was the first thing to register, then Wanda’s bosomy form, head down, making her way to the stairs.

      I called her name through my nose, as much as that was possible.

      Wanda squeaked and whirled my way. Her hand flew to her chest, then to her mouth as her gaze sized me up. Her focus moved behind me, her eyes widening like some horror flick scream queen’s.

      I cocked my head to the side at her overreaction. Sure, I’d been stuffed in a closet for hours. My hair could use a brush; my mascara probably lined my lips, but come on. Did I really look that bad?

      I called her name again, and nudged my head for her to come help me.

      She waddled into the room, hesitating at the edge of the pentagram.

      “Hurry up!” I mumbled.

      Wanda lifted her skirt and tiptoed through the chalk lines as if she were playing hopscotch, minus the hop.

      “Are you okay, Miss Parker?” she asked, her voice shaking as much as her hands as she reached for my gag and pulled it down around my neck.

      Did I freaking look okay? “I’m fine,” I said, my tongue all thick and cottony.

      “I told you not to come here.”

      “You could have been more clear on
why
. Now, help me get free before they come back.”