A Wild Fright in Deadwood (Deadwood Humorous Mystery Book 7) (12 page)

Doc?

I pulled it out.

Tiffany Sugarbell’s name showed on the screen. My first reaction was to delete it and then throw my phone out the nearest window.

Instead, I tapped on the screen, reading her text:
I have a buyer interested in the Rockhurst Ranch property out on 14A.

I texted back:
That’s not my property. Mona Hollister is the listing agent.

She replied:
My mistake. Thanks.

Bullshit. I doubted Tiffany made such mistakes.

I wrote:
Welcome.

Then I waited for a few seconds, watching the screen. Nothing. I started to put my phone away and it buzzed again. I looked down.

I suppose Doc told you he loved you, too.

I stared down at those words, my heart beating a bass drum loud in my ears as I read them three more times.

Her supposition was correct. Doc had told me he loved me, but I hadn’t been sure at the time if he was acting the part of Gomez Addams or being serious, since we were decked out for Halloween and flirting in Gomez and Morticia fashion at the time.

What did she mean by that one sentence? Had Doc told Tiffany he loved her at some point in their relationship? Was that why she’d started talking about marriage to him? And then he’d left her high and dry after that?

Or was this a new kind of game she was playing with me? Trying to screw with my head since she couldn’t get through to Doc anymore due to his ignoring her texts and voicemails.

Images flashed through my mind. First came Tiffany smacking Doc right in front of me, spitting fire at him about breaking up with her without saying goodbye. Following on the heels of that memory was one from the night in the Purple Door Saloon after I’d had too much tequila in spite of Cooper’s attempts to stop me. Tiffany had shown up and started poking me with her barbed tongue.
What makes you think he won’t get bored with you, too, Violet?
she’d said, all fangs and venom, while Doc stood right there with us. Even curls and curves get boring for a guy with Doc’s appetites.

I leaned my head on Cornelius’s door, trying to stop my fears and insecurities from ganging up on me.

Doc had warned me more than once that if Tiffany came calling, I had to keep her from getting into my head and stirring things up.

She was definitely trying to stir things up with that text.

Or was Doc staying one step ahead of her because he’d played this game before and knew how to keep me on the hook in spite of his ex’s warnings?

No. Doc wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t a game player.

Right.
Right??

I sighed. I didn’t need this, not with another murderer possibly zeroing in on me. Playing the does-he-love-me game with daisy petals was for love-sick girls who weren’t being hunted down by a handful of blood thirsty killers.

Whether or not Doc was truly in love with me, he seemed to really like me at the moment. The guy was even trying to win over my kids. Who in their right mind would subject themselves to my loving little holy terrors just for kicks?

I stuffed my phone in my pocket and decided on a new policy—I would not reply to Tiffany unless it was business related.

Now, back to the matter at hand, which was setting up a filming date in The Old Prospector Hotel with the hotel’s eccentric owner, Cornelius.

Per the instructions Cornelius had given, I knocked three times hard, then lightly three times, and then three more hard. This was his version of SOS. He preferred I start my voicemail messages for him in the same style, only humming instead of knocking. I preferred beating him over the head with a rubber chicken.

The door opened and Cornelius, my Abe Lincoln look-alike pal, stood there with bloodshot eyes and even paler skin than usual. In place of his black stove-pipe hat and long wool jacket was a yellow robe that hung loosely over a stained T-shirt and striped boxers. “Violet, thank God. I thought you were someone else.”

“Someone else who knocks in Morse code?”

“No, someone who’s dead.”

Well, I was dodging the grim reaper more often these days.

I closed the door behind me and followed him into his suite. The place was a mess. Shirts and pants were strewn everywhere, covering several of his expensive computer monitors and paranormal activity equipment. Empty cups and half-crushed takeout boxes cluttered every available surface, and the window blinds hung askew.

I sniffed, wrinkling my nose at the underlying scent of spoiled food in the room along with something else I didn’t want to try to identify. I moved to the window and lifted it in spite of the freezing cold morning air that seeped inside.

“What are you doing?” he asked from where he’d collapsed onto one of his computer chairs.

“Letting the evil spirits out.” I spoke his vernacular, having been around him long enough to know that would get me further than a rational explanation. “If we’re going to film here this week, we have to make sure the air is clear of malevolent manifestations and ectoplasmic proteins.”

“What are ectoplasmic proteins?” he asked.

Something I’d made up, but it sounded good. “That’s not important. We need to get you up and moving.” And preferably showered and dressed. Those boxers appeared to have been used as a napkin a few too many times.

He took a sip from the protein drink I’d brought him. “I’m glad you’re here, Violet.”

“Why’s that?” I collected several used food containers, noticing that many were mostly full yet, and carried them over to the trash. We were going to need a lot more trash bags from housekeeping to clean up this sty.

“I need your help,” he said.

“You need a maid, not a Realtor.”

“I’m not talking about help on this plane of existence.”

Cornelius was one of the few people in town who understood some of my executioner abilities. He had terms for things I was able to do during a séance, most of which I couldn’t remember. But that didn’t mean I liked to dabble in the paranormal world with him. More times than not when the two of us worked together, I ended up hiding under my bed for the next week.

I picked up his one-horned Viking helmet that he liked to wear during séances, frowning at the broken horn tip. What in the heck? “Your helmet is broken.”

“It’s her fault.”

“Whose fault?”

“She won’t leave me alone.”

“Who won’t leave you alone?” Was Tiffany filling up his voicemail, too?

“I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t focus beyond the sound of her hate-filled whispers.” He buried his face in his hands.

He should try being on the receiving end of Tiffany’s texts.

“She’s going to be the death of me, Violet,” he said through his fingers. “Or worse.”

I lowered myself onto the chair next to him, noticing his hands were shaking. “Who are you talking about?”

“A ghost. I need your help getting rid of her.”

“I don’t know how to help you get rid of a ghost.” I killed things that were still alive, not those already dead. Doc would be a better choice. He was way more knowledgeable about this kind of thing.

He held the heels of his hands over his ears. “She keeps saying I have to kill the one I love,” he yelled, seeming to forget that I wasn’t plugging my ears, too.

Wait a second. I knew exactly which ghost he was talking about now. My breath log-jammed in my throat for a few seconds.

“It’s the little girl ghost again, isn’t it?” I asked when I could breathe again. Wilda Hessler was not leaving without a fight.

He nodded, brushing at some crumbs stuck to his terry cloth robe. “She’s making me crazy, Violet. She says all kinds of macabre things day and night. I’m afraid that if I can’t get her to leave me alone, I’ll start doing some of the grisly deeds she’s telling me to do just to make her stop.”

Chills peppered my forearms. Wilda had driven her brother mad with her constant haunting. He’d ended up killing many in his efforts to shut her up, but nothing had worked. Nothing except his death apparently, because now she’d latched onto Cornelius.

He stared down at his hands, as if suddenly realizing they were trembling. “Will you help me get rid of her?”

This was a side of Cornelius I’d not seen before. Usually he was full of confidence, strutting around with his paranormal gadgets, eager to play with the dead.

The idea of facing off with Wilda again made me want to run away screaming. The first time she’d almost won our battle of life and death.

I frowned at Cornelius, fully seeing the shadow he was becoming because of Wilda. He looked as if he’d aged years since I’d seen him last, which had been a little over a week ago. I wondered if the little bitch somehow fed off the energy of the living, like a soul-sucking parasite.

Before I agreed to anything, I wanted to confirm one suspicion. “Who is the ghost telling you to kill, Cornelius?”

He lifted his gaze, his bloodshot eyes locking onto mine. “For starters—you.”

Chapter Six

I didn’t make any promises to Cornelius about helping him shake Wilda’s ghost. I couldn’t—I was an executioner, not an exorcist. At least I didn’t think I could, which is what led me to call Calamity Jane Realty after leaving the hotel to tell Mona that I wouldn’t be back in the office until after lunch.

There was only one person who might know for sure if I could do anything to get rid of Wilda and if so, how. I just hoped that she didn’t need our family history book to figure out the answer.

“Aunt Zoe,” I called as I stepped inside the front door.

Silence.

Her pickup was out front, though. I called her name a few more times before heading out the back door and along the stone path to her glass workshop. A peek through the window found her sitting at her worktable with a pencil in hand and design pad spread out in front of her.

I joined her inside, closing the door behind me. Her workshop hadn’t changed since I had been a kid. Block and metal tools hung from a pegboard on the wall over her workbench. Next to the currently unlit furnace sat a basketful of heat resistant sleeves and mitts. Glass pieces of different shapes and designs were strewn everywhere on flat surfaces throughout the room.

The place smelled like cinnamon thanks to the air fresheners Aunt Zoe used to offset the odors that came with her line of work. Willie Nelson’s voice played through her stereo speakers, singing about being a highwayman. If I closed my eyes, I could be ten years old again, visiting for the summer.

“Violet,” Aunt Zoe’s surprised voice interrupted my trip to the past. She checked the clock over her workbench. “It’s a bit early for lunch, isn’t it?”

“I’m not here to eat.” I hopped up on her worktable next to the sketch she was drawing. “Is that a new vase?”

“Yes.” She crossed her arms. Her chair creaked as she leaned back. “Why are you here?”

“What are those?” I pointed at some designs on the side of her vase drawing.

“Ribs.”

“Vases have ribs?”

“Violet Lynn, answer my question.”

I looked up from the drawing and held her blue gaze. “Wilda Hessler wants Cornelius to kill me.”

A storm of emotions crossed her face, from eye-widening shock to dipped brows of confusion to lip-tightening worry. At the end, vertical wrinkles of anger were left in the storm’s wake. “Boy, as if that little brat hadn’t wreaked enough havoc when she was alive. Who’d have figured she’d be worse after death?”

“She’s trying to drive Cornelius crazy with her constant malicious whispering. He said that he’s afraid he’ll start following her commands soon just to shut her up.” I rubbed my arms, feeling a chill where there wasn’t one. “Wolfgang said something along those lines that last night we were together.”

Only he’d already done several grisly deeds per her bidding and those hadn’t satisfied her vindictive lust.

“Cornelius is serious? He’s not just playing this up for drama’s sake?”

I understood why she’d ask that. Cornelius was known around town and down at the cop shop for his eccentric garb and odd actions. “No, he was more of a scared and honest Abe this morning than an eccentric Ghost Whisperer.” I told her about his messy suite, stained robe and boxers, and bloodshot eyes.

“Did he out-and-out say that Wilda wanted him to kill you?”

“Yep, me for starters was how he put it. I’m on her A-list.”

Aunt Zoe sighed. “You can’t catch a break, can you, child?”

I shook my head. Not with Wilda, nor with Tiffany. I was turning into a well-hated woman around town.

“So, what do you think? Can I do anything to help Cornelius?”

Aunt Zoe chewed on her lower lip. “Executioners usually deal with the living.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“But not always.”

I kicked my feet. “You mean like demons?”

“No, demons infect a living body and take it over, which allows you the opportunity to kill it—although it’s not as simple as stopping the heart.”

“It’s not?”

“No, but that’s a discussion for another time.” She gave me the stink-eye. “When we have the book back.”

“I told you it’s around here somewhere, I’m sure of it.”

“You’d better be right about that.”

“I’ll find it, I promise.”

Aunt Zoe nodded once.

“If not demons, what were you referring to when you said we don’t always deal with living things?”

“Take Prudence, for example.” Aunt Zoe picked up her pencil and started doodling on her sketchpad. “She’s a ghost, clearly not living, and yet you are interacting with her.”

“More like she’s forcing herself upon me.”

“And then there’s Willis’s great grandfather.”

“You mean Grandpappy?”

She nodded. “You were able to talk to him and he’s long dead.”

“Yes, but that was only with Doc’s help.”

“So you say, but the point is, you—an executioner—talked to him—a ghost.”

And I talked
for
him as well as evidenced by the audio recording Cornelius had taken of that séance. While Harvey and Cooper had been asking their long lost relative questions, I had been answering away unbeknownst to me while I was lost in the past. Actually, I wasn’t answering for Grandpappy, merely repeating what his ghost said to me as I stood there next to him in the dark on their family’s ranch. It all still made my head spin, but Doc and Cornelius had long, strange paranormal terms to describe what had happened, so apparently it made sense to them.