Dead Case in Deadwood Read Free Page A

sternum.
    "Great dress." He stared as if I were lying naked
on a bear skin rug. "You didn’t answer my question last night."
    Lowering my hand, I frowned at him. "I did—you asked if
I was wearing any underwear."
    "Not that question. The one about when I could see you
next."
    Oh, that one. That was part of my bigger problem, the one
that had brought me here. I tried to ease into my answer. "You’re seeing
me now."
    "I want to see more of you." The heat sizzling in
his gaze when it crawled back up to mine made my upper lip sweat. "Preferably
in my bed, but I’ll settle for wherever I can get you alone."
    I had to change the subject before I hurdled his desk,
tackled him, and tore off his navy blue dress shirt with my teeth. "Detective
Cooper told me this morning that I’m a person of interest in the headless
corpse murder case."
    To Doc’s credit, he adjusted to this conversation shift with
merely a tightening of his lips. "You were at the police station already
today? That must be a record for you."
    "No, Cooper had me meet him at Mudder Brothers."
    His forehead furrowed. "Why there?"
    "To try to identify the victim."
    "You were looking at a decapitated body this morning?"
    I nodded. And dead guy’s family jewels, minus one precious
stone, according to Harvey.
    Doc’s jaw grew rigid. "Why in the hell did Cooper make
you do that?"
    "Because the victim had my business card in his hand."
    "I know. I was there when you got the call, remember?"
    I grinned. Of course I remembered. We’d been half- naked at
the time.
    Doc continued, "I’m referring to your current mental
state."
    "There is nothing wrong with my current mental state."
    "Still having those nightmares every night?"
    Yes, in spite of Natalie playing slumber party with me ever
since the Carhart mess almost a week ago when my client and her Bronco-burning girlfriend
tried to subject me to demon copulation. When that plan failed, they’d settled
with trying to gut me like a pumpkin. Such experiences tended to have a lasting
effect on one’s nerves.
    I opened my mouth to deny the nightmares, but Doc cut me
off. "The truth, Violet. You promised me."
    Oh, fahrvergnügen! That was right. While we hadn’t locked
pinkies over it, if I wanted Doc to come clean with me about everything under the
sun on a regular basis, I needed to do the same.
    "Okay, so I’m having a few not-so-good dreams at night."
When I actually slept, anyway.
    "Admitting that was like pulling teeth for you, wasn’t
it?"
    Speaking of choppers, "Cooper also took the teeth."
    "You mean that box you found in the Carhart attic?"
    At my request for some ancient history on the house for a ghost-loving
potential buyer, I’d been allowed to take a box from the Carhart’s supposedly
haunted attic that contained several historical artifacts, including a box of 187
human canine teeth. Who would have collected all of those teeth and why they
stockpiled them was still a mystery, but now it was Cooper’s problem to solve,
not mine.
    "Yeah, that one. Cooper heard about it from Wanda,"
I said, referring to the Carhart widow and only member of the family not dead
or locked up in prison for murder.
    "How did Wanda know about them?" Doc asked.
    "Prudence told her."
    "Prudence, the Carhart ghost?"
    I nodded.
    "But I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts."
    Until lately, that had been true, unlike Doc, who claimed to
have some sixth sense that allowed him to sniff out Casper from across a room. I’d
played skeptic when Doc first fessed up to this after an encounter that knocked
him on his ass, but after witnessing multiple confrontations and similar
reactions from a feet-firmly-on-the-ground type of guy, the jury was now locked
away in deliberations.
    "I don’t know what to believe anymore, Doc. But I did
believe Cooper when he threatened to lock me up if I didn’t hand those teeth
over."
    "He’s not cutting you any slack is he?"
    "Cutting slack is against his religion." I crossed
one of my legs over the