“I wouldn’t pick on her about her hair when she’s got her horns out.”
Cooper sighed and turned back to me, his eyes lined with exhaustion.
I’d better be careful. If Natalie found out I was picking on her boyfriend when he’d been up half the night fighting crime and looked ready to curl up in a corner with his favorite gun, she’d give me a colossal noogie on the noggin. “Sorry, Cooper. Continue, please.”
His gaze grew wary, but he nodded. “The thief left behind one clue that ties back to you.”
I waited, my grip tightening on my coffee cup, while Cooper reached into his coat pocket.
“In the midst of the honey paraphernalia and glass shards on the floor, I found this.” He held his hand out toward me and opened his fingers.
I leaned forward. A shiny bright blue button lay in the center of his palm. “What’s that from? One of my coats?”
Elvis the chicken was a button fiend, tearing them off my coats whenever she could get at them, but I didn’t think Cooper knew about her fetish. Besides, I hadn’t been in that store in months, back before Elvis waged war on my coat buttons.
“Not your coat. I’m ninety percent sure it’s the missing eye button from the old, one-armed Raggedy Ann doll that had been stuffed in an oven in the Sugarloaf Building until yesterday morning.”
My jaw dropped. “No way.”
“Yes, Parker.” He held up the button between his finger and thumb. “Look. There’s still some red thread wrapped around two of the holes.”
Oh, God, there was. I looked up into his steady gray gaze. “Why would the imp break into a store and steal jars of honey?”
“I didn’t say it stole anything, only that it broke in and destroyed several jars and other honey-related products.”
Doc’s chair creaked as he leaned back. “We need to figure out exactly what sort of creature we’re dealing with here. Did your aunt say anything more about it last night?”
I thought back to the few conversations I’d had with Aunt Zoe before going to bed. “No, only what she’d said at the table—that imps can cause a lot of trouble and I needed to find it and put it back in its cage.”
“There’s something else I didn’t mention before Parker arrived,” Cooper said, drawing questioning looks from both Doc and me. “The police weren’t the only ones who showed up at the scene of the crime this morning.”
“Who else?” I beat Doc to the punch.
“Masterson.”
“Why would he be concerned about this?” Doc asked the same question that was in my mind.
“I’m not sure, but I have an idea or two.”
What would make Dominick want to stick his nose in this particular crime? “Is he running for mayor again or police chief or something?”
“He owns the building,” Cooper said. “The store owner is renting from him.”
Ah. That was a legitimate tie-in, but … “Why would he be concerned enough to leave his warm bed at such an early hour?”
“Maybe the store owner is uninsured,” Doc suggested.
Cooper leaned back in the chair. “When I asked Masterson why he was there, he told me that he’d heard the call come in over his scanner. Since he was awake, he thought he’d check things out, being it’s his building.”
Okay, a believable explanation there, I guessed. But why was he awake so early? Did the devil ever sleep? “Was Rex there, too?”
“Why would your ex be there? Just because he’s living above Masterson’s garage doesn’t mean they’re joined at the hip.”
I hopped off the desk and started pacing. “I don’t know why Rex might be there, but these days I wouldn’t be surprised if you said Wild Bill Hickok’s ghost had shown up, too. I mean, why would this imp thing be there making a mess of only the honey stuff? None of this makes sense.”
“Yeah, well, if you hadn’t been so gung-ho with your damned purse yesterday, I wouldn’t be sitting here tired as hell, trying to figure out how to catch a weird creature I can’t even fucking see.”
I stopped and glared at him. “You’re the one who let it out of its prison, not me.”
“Only because you and Uncle Willis kept whining about hearing something in that stupid oven.”
“Okay, you two.” Doc played referee. “Stop growling at each other for now and let’s figure out why the imp chose that particular store, and if we can possibly use honey to catch it.”
“Like the proverbial fly.” I walked over to Doc’s front door, staring out the window at the snow-peppered street. “Do you two think it’s suspect that the imp broke into another one of Dominick’s buildings after we freed it from his Sugarloaf Building earlier in the day?”
“Maybe,” Cooper conceded. “But maybe not. Masterson owns a lot of buildings around Lead and Deadwood.”
Of course he did. He had to be one of the Black Hills’ oldest residents. When one lived multiple lifetimes, collecting buildings must be like accumulating a closet full of shoes for us regular folks.
“Did Dominick see the button?” Doc asked Cooper.
“I don’t think so, but he sniffed around the mess of honey and glass on the floor for a bit. He was pretending to check out which products were damaged along with the store’s owner, but I saw him actually sniff one of the broken jars when he thought nobody was looking.”
I turned back to Doc. “That’s like the time he cut my palm and sniffed my blood, telling me, ‘Now it’s in your hands.’ Although I’m not sure I ever figured out what ‘it’ was.”
“He must be able to smell these other freaks,” Cooper said.
“I’m not a freak,” I told him.
“I don’t know, Parker. I’ve seen you first thing in the morning, remember? The sight of that hair alone could probably turn a man to stone.”
I crossed my arms and glared at him. “Look, Doc. Cooper’s finally extracted his funny bone from his ass.”
The detective’s grin drooped at the corners like his tired eyes. “You bring out the
