Dead Case in Deadwood (26 page)

"We’re not done yet."

"Yes, we are." I glanced around the corner of the
garage again, feeling sweatier and more paranoid with Harvey standing next to
me. The last thing I needed was to be caught creeping around in the dark behind
Mudder Brothers with Detective Cooper’s uncle.

"Did you take a look-see inside this place yet?"
He knocked on the wall of the garage.

"Shhhh." I grabbed Harvey’s hand mid-knock. "Mostly.
The only thing suspicious is a basket full of scorched surgical parts."

"I always wondered what George did with all of the
stuff that didn’t burn."

"Now you know." I tugged on his hand. "Let’s
get out of here before someone hears us and tattles to your nephew."

He didn’t budge. "Nobody is out here sneaking around
but us, and Cooper’s too busy right now to care."

Knowing Cooper’s squinty-eye glare as well as I did, I
doubted Harvey. "What do you mean he’s too busy?"

"He’s in the middle of a poker game with that lousy,
good-for-nothing sheriff."

"The one who stole the love of your life and married
her?"

"She wasn’t the love of my life."

"Then what’s with this big grudge of yours?"

I heard more than saw him scratch his whiskers. "A man
needs to have something to hang on to and growl about all of his life."

"Death and taxes aren’t enough for you?"

"You can’t pick fights with either of those things."

"But you can with the county sheriff?" I preferred
to run from the law, not throw punches at it.

"You betcha. Just the sound of his name gets me all
riled up—huffin’ and puffin’, jabbin’, dodgin’." His clothes rustled in
the shadows as he showed me his version of Mohammed Ali.

I crossed my arms over my chest, chuckling when he did a
spin move that had him stumbling into the back of the garage. "Huffing and
jabbing and dodging, huh?" I couldn’t resist and added, "Sounds similar
to what you do with Miss Geary during Jeopardy."

Harvey snickered. "Not quite. For one thing, when I’m
riled up about the sheriff, I’m wearing my skivvies, so my boys aren’t swinging
along with me, keepin’ time with each poke."

Bleck!
What had I been thinking encouraging him? "Stop
right there," I whispered.

"You started it."

"And now I’m ending it." I headed for the hills …
or rather the hill behind Mudder Brothers that led up to Mount Moriah.

"Hold up there, girl." Harvey grabbed my arm,
pulling me back. "I told you, we’re not done yet."

"We were finished with that subject last week as far as
I’m concerned."

"I mean we’re not done
here
." He tugged the
flashlight from my grip and flicked it on, directing the beam at the base of
the garage. "There is something you need to see."

"I told you I already looked inside. The place is full
of autopsy goodies and cremation leftovers." Yuck. That came out wrong. I
shouldn’t mix death and food.

"Did you look in the other window?"

"There is no other window." At least I hadn’t seen
one earlier when I was checking the place out from the trees.

"I’m not talking about the garage." Harvey tugged
me around the other side of the building, pausing at the front corner. He leaned
out. "You see anybody?"

I pulled my arm free and took a step back into the safety of
deeper shadows. "The only thing I see is an ornery old man who is going to
land my butt in jail."

"Quit being such a girl," he whispered. "You
really need to grow a pair of balls if you’re gonna to do this sneakin’ around
stuff more often."

Again with the testicle talk. "I’m not being a ‘girl,’
I’m being a responsible parent."

"You’re being a big weenie," he said in a slightly
louder voice.

"Fine. When they start selling ball sac seedlings down
at the hardware store, let me know. I’ll be the first in line."

He chuckled low and quiet. "I don’t think Doc would
have as much fun fondling those as he does your—"

"Leave Doc out of this."
And my you-know-whats.

He grunted. "Seems to me that’s what keeps gettin’ you
into trouble with the boy. You two need to work on your communication skills
and stop building these walls between you."

I stared at him in the dark for a handful of seconds. "Have
you been reading Miss Geary’s copies of
Woman’s World
again?"

"It has some really good recipes, and I need something
to look at when I’m lollygaggin’ in the john."

Shaking my head, I leaned back against the garage. "Trust
me, romance therapy is not your forte. You should stick to reading the backs of
shampoo bottles."

"Quit trying to change the subject. You know I’m right.
Doc should be the one standing here with you right now, not me."

"Doc would never have come."

"You don’t know that. You didn’t even ask him."

"Of course not. He would’ve tried to talk me out of coming."

"See, that right there is the problem with your
relationship. A lack of communication, starting with you."

"We don’t even have a relationship yet." It was
sex mixed with a few steamy phone calls.

"Are you sure?"

"Harvey, I don’t even know where the man is from."

"Have you asked him?"

"Kind of."

"How do you kind of ask someone something? You do or
you don’t."

"Doc is a closed book."

"And you’re all open arms and secret-sharing?"

He couldn’t see my eyes roll. "Are we really going to
stand here in the dark outside a crematorium and discuss my love life, Dr. Ruth?"
Or lack of it, as it was lately.

"She’s a sex therapist, not a love doctor."

"Whatever."

"Don’t ‘whatever’ me," he scolded under his breath.
"Think about it. If you’re not in a relationship, why has he hustled to save
your bacon time and again? Doesn’t that tell you anything?"

"Doc has saved my bacon once, thank you very much."
An old lady with a shotgun saved it the other time. Well, mostly.

"That’s because you won’t give him a chance to come to
your rescue, like I did tonight. Men like to play the Lone Ranger, ridin’ in
with guns drawn."

"Come to my … like you did, my ass." I jammed my
hands on my hips.

"Like I said, think about it." He turned and
walked away from me then, stealing across the drive toward the house.

"There’s nothing to think about," I murmured and
rushed to catch up with Harvey as he reached the back corner of the funeral
parlor. Thinking too much about my fears revolving around Doc meant opening
dusty old trunks in my brain that were better left shut and locked.

"You know, I was doing just fine here before you snuck
up on me."

He harrumphed me and whispered, "You call finding
nothing but a bunch of stainless steel bedpans ‘just fine’?"

"They aren’t bedpans. They are autopsy pans."

"Piss or blood—what’s the difference? Both get sticky
when they dry."

I frowned at his back as he slipped into the deep shadows along
the side of the big house.
Sticky?
I mouthed. What had he been drinking?

I caught up with him as he bent over with a grunt next to a
basement window surrounded by a half-circle of corrugated tin that kept the
earth at bay.

"Here." Harvey handed me the light, then leaned
over and spoke low in my ear. "Crawl down in there and take a look. Tell
me if you see what I think I saw earlier."

"What do you mean ‘earlier’? How long have you been
here tonight?"

"I came down right after you hung up. Just in time to
see you trying to play Cy Young with that rock. You throw like a girl, too."

"I am a girl, and I can throw just fine, big mouth."

"Not from what I saw." He nudged me forward. "Get
down there and take a gander before somebody sees us."

Now he was worried about that? I hopped down in the hole and
squatted in front of the window. When I flicked on the flashlight, my breath
whooshed out.

"Holy shit!" That came out as more of a hiss after
I’d filled my lungs again. Staring at the strange, barbaric-looking tools
nailed to the walls, lining shelves, hanging from the ceiling, I whispered, "What
is all of this stuff?"

It looked like a scene from the house in
Texas Chainsaw
Massacre
.

"Antiques," Harvey said.

"From a butcher shop?"

"No. Those are mortician’s tools. See that black box
over on the floor under those big ol’ shears? The open one?"

I nodded, pointing the flashlight at it.

"That’s an amputation kit from the Civil War era."

I leaned in closer to the glass, shining my light at other
similar-looking open boxes. Rows of long, razor-sharp looking knives lined up
like little soldiers in the gold and scarlet velvet-lined cases. I grimaced at
the scenes of filleted cadavers that popped into my head. Pointy-ended pinchers
snuggled up alongside the knives. An array of uncomfortably long dental-like
drills and scrapers were placed perpendicular to the blades. My grimace became
a series of winces as I studied each frightening tool, my imagination running
wild, screaming like a banshee. In three of the cases, I noticed some
specialized kind of handsaws secured to the lid. I’d seen too many gory movies
to spend any alone time in this room in the dark.

"How do you know it’s from the Civil War era?"

"Don’t you ever watch the History Channel?"

"I’m a little busy raising kids and working my ass off."

"Yet you have time to sit on the couch eating peanut
butter fudge ice cream and watching old Bogart whenever you feel like it."

"Leave Humphrey out of this," I said with a low
growl.

"Or those Elvis—"

"Zip it with the blasphemy." I directed the
flashlight’s beam up the wall, stopping on a pair of glistening blades. "What
are those?"

"I already told you—big ol’ shears."

"They’re very shiny."

"I’m betting they’re nice and sharp, too. Good for
amputating."

"Are those from the Civil War, too?"

"Nope, not with that tooling. Those babies look
pre-Civil War to me."

I glanced up at Harvey. "I don’t think I’ve ever seen
shears that big. How do you know they aren’t just old-fashioned garden loppers?"

"Because they’re hanging in a room with a collection of
death tools."

"Maybe that’s because the garage is full of autopsy
equipment," I said, rising to my feet.

"I don’t think those belong in the garden shed. I think
they’re used to cut off something big."

"What do you mean? Like a leg?" I asked.

"Or a head."

"Or a head." I shivered as the words sank in.

Funny thing, there was a headless corpse with a very cleanly
sliced neck chilling somewhere on this very property. I stared up at Harvey. "Are
you thinking what I’m thinking?"

He shrugged, looking toward the front of the funeral parlor.
"That depends."

"On what?"

"On whether you can see that police cruiser inching by
out front with the really bright spotlight heading our way."

"What?!"

"You better duck, girl," he said and jogged off
toward the back of the building, leaving me there alone in the hole.

Shit!
I scrambled out onto the grass, pushing to my
feet, and chased after him, slipping around the back of the building as the
spotlight swept past.

"That was close," I said, huffing as much from
fear as the sprint. I socked Harvey in the arm. "I can’t believe you just left
me back there. Some bodyguard you are."

"What?" He rubbed where my punch had landed. "I
warned you, didn’t I?"

I glanced around the corner, the cruiser was gone. "What
are we going to do about those shears?"

"Nothing."

With a frown, I turned on him. "Well, that seems a bit
anti-climactic after dragging me to that window and filling my head with
stories of amputation and decapitation."

"Haven’t you learned anything about jumping to
conclusions yet, girl? You can’t just go running around playing town crier
without hard evidence to support your crazy notions."

"So, what do we do? Wait until someone else loses their
head and shows up on your ranch clutching another one of my business cards?"

"No." He caught my wrist and dragged me toward the
trees. "But I have an idea that just might work."

* * *

Tuesday, August 21st (just
after midnight)

Once again Mr. Sand Man was refusing to pay me a visit.
After lying in bed for an hour, listening to Natalie call out Bingo ball
numbers in her sleep, I gave up and escaped to Aunt Zoe’s kitchen.

Alone in the darkness, I dropped into a chair and stared at
the bottle of sleeping pills on the table in front of me.

Speculating.

Worrying.

Twitching.

Scratching—but that had more to do with the mosquitoes that
had been sneaking around Mudder Brothers along with me.

All of the "what ifs" from my snooping field trip
had my brain churning, keeping the sandman away like a nocturnal restraining
order. I’d played Bo-Peep counting my stupid dang sheep for an hour, but the
images of all of those horrible antique tools the Mudder brothers had collected
kept distracting me.

And what in the hell were they transporting in those crates?

I wanted to talk to someone about it all, someone more
rational than a trigger-happy old man who was just looking for a reason to drag
his favorite shotgun, Bessie, down to Deadwood for a night on the town.

The mantel clock in the living room rang out two short
chimes, announcing it was half past the witching hour.

I picked up the pill bottle and turned it upside-down. The
pills rattled against the inside of the cap.

Harvey’s idea wasn’t going to work.

For one thing, it involved Bessie. For another, it required
the two of us taking risks that could land both of our asses in jail. While
Cooper would undoubtedly take great pleasure in locking me up, when he found
out I’d gotten his uncle involved, I had no doubt the detective would throw the
key down the nearest mine shaft.