Thinking maybe Zelda had changed her mind about needing me, I fished my phone from my purse, careful to keep my eyes on the oncoming snowplow hogging the road, and held it out toward Cornelius. “Here.”
He didn’t take it. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Answer it.” I nudged his arm with the phone.
He tipped his head and looked down at the screen. “It’s not for me.”
“Of course it’s not for you. It’s my phone.”
“Then you should answer it.”
“Criminy, Cornelius, would you just answer the freaking thing and put it on speakerphone for me so I can focus on not crashing.”
“Your aggression levels appear to be spiking today.” He took the phone, which continued to ring, but wouldn’t for much longer if he didn’t hurry up and hit the button.
“Who’s calling me?” I asked as he stared down at the screen.
“Someone named Gomez.”
As in Gomez Addams from The Addams Family, my favorite Goth loverboy. “That’s Doc.”
“What’s Doc?”
“Gomez.”
“Who’s Gomez?”
“Doc.”
“You’re not making any sense, Violet. I must be extremely low on protein.”
“ ‘Gomez’ is my nickname for Doc.”
“You mean the Tall Medium?”
Which was Cornelius’s nickname for Doc. “Yes!”
“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”
“Just hit the stupid button!”
The snowplow blew past, plastering my window with dirty slush.
“Fine, but I don’t like sharing phone germs with you. There’s a rather troubling cold going arou—”
“Cornelius!” I yelled in the cab, making us both wince.
He accepted the call, holding the phone out toward me with the very tips of his fingers, as though it were a dirty diaper.
I reached out and tapped the speakerphone option, and then made a shushing motion to Cornelius. “Hi, Doc.”
I wasn’t sure how Doc would feel about me taking Abe Jr. up to meet Prudence, and at this point I really didn’t want to overthink what could happen when they met. Wasn’t there some saying about unplanned days and spontaneous nights making the best memories? Yeah, that’s what this trip would be when it was all over, a fun memory.
I ignored the tight knot of worry in my chest that hinted things might go south in a flying-human-cannonball way and focused on sounding bright and sunny. “How’s Spearfish this afternoon?”
Doc had headed over this morning to meet with a couple of new clients interested in having him work his magic with their money. With the holidays behind us and tax season on the horizon, Doc’s financial planning business had ramped up again, keeping him working late into the night at times.
“Cold and snowy, Killer. I have one more appointment and then I’m heading back to Deadwood.” Through the phone speaker, I heard the sound of his truck door slam. “I got the oddest text from Harvey a bit ago.” His voice was coming through louder now, his surroundings more muted. “He wrote something about you beating up Coop and freeing some kind of weird critter.”
I grimaced. I’d planned to explain this afternoon’s events at the Sugarloaf Building to Doc in person after he was done thinking about numbers and dollars. There was no need to distract him at work with what was probably no big deal. At least I hoped it wasn’t a big deal. It was one tiny gremlin—or an imp, or whatever that ugly creature was. How much trouble could something no bigger than a cat cause?
“Harvey has a bucket mouth,” I grumbled.
Doc’s low chuckle came through the speaker. “So, what happened?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Give me the abbreviated version.”
“Uhhhh, let’s see. I sort of walloped Cooper a couple times with my purse, and then I belted a little gremlin out an upstairs window.”
Several beats of silence followed, along with a double take from Cornelius.
“That doesn’t clear up anything for me,” Doc said.
“I told you it’s a longer story.”
“A little gremlin?”
“Teeny-tiny. It might be an imp, I don’t know.” So maybe I was exaggerating a hair. Now was not the time to delve into size specifics.
“A gremlin or an imp?”
“I’ll explain more at supper.”
“I’ll be all ears.”
Through the phone, I heard the sound of the pickup engine turning over. Doc was driving Harvey’s old green Ford, the Picklemobile, these days. He had the old beast running much smoother than when I’d motored around in it after my Bronco was torched by a crazy bitch in heat.
“Whose turn is it to cook tonight?” Doc asked.
“Reid’s, I think.”
I slowed as we wound through a shallow valley with the Sugarloaf Building overlooking us on one hillside and Homestake’s remaining buildings on the other. The stone walls of the Open Cut, a huge open pit mine left over from Homestake’s glory days, loomed ahead on the right. I could see the upper half of Zelda’s house high up on the edge. I blew out a breath, trying to prepare mentally to face off with a snooty ghost.
“Did you say Reid?” Doc asked.
“Yep. And supper is going to be an hour later than normal, because we have to wait for Reid to get off work.”
“Since when is your aunt allowing her old flame to come over and cook food in her kitchen?”
“Since she has a new glass order that’s keeping her busy out in her workshop day and night.” Aunt Zoe made all sorts of fancy glass pieces in her workshop behind the house, some for custom orders by various gallery owners throughout the West and others to sell out of her small store on Main Street. “Reid offered to take her turn at the stove in exchange for letting him join us tonight.”
“More like join her,” Doc said.
“Exactly.”
Reid had been trying to win Aunt Zoe back for months, and he was really cranking up his efforts now that Dominick had threatened to steal Aunt Zoe away. Although Dominick was cheating, using some kind of enchanted charm mumbo-jumbo that turned most folks in his path into starry-eyed fools. So far, only Harvey and I were able to resist his strange magic—me because I was genetically immune to Dominick’s kind, and Harvey because … well,
