“God, I love you, Natalie.” One last giggle escaped, and then I straightened my sweater and opened the door, shutting off the lights in the bathroom and hall behind me.
Out front, Cooper stood next to my desk, frowning at the whiteboard.
“Where’s Rex?” I asked, walking over to peer out the front door. There was no sign of the rotten bastard up or down the street.
“He’s heading to the hospital to see what they can do for his allergy attack.” He sniffed. “Did you notice his eyes?”
I turned back to Cooper. “You mean the weepy redness or the puffy skin around them?” I cringed at the memory alone.
“Neither of those things. There was something else going on. His eyes seemed darker. Dilated, maybe. Makes me wonder if he’s on something.”
I had noticed that. “Like drugs?” I would be surprised if Rex was taking anything stronger than an antihistamine. He’d been pretty particular about his diet when he was younger, eating to stay fit, avoiding anything that might dull his big science brain.
“Yeah. Did he seem different from usual?”
“Not really. He was his usual egotistical prick self.” Although, he was certainly more aggressive than usual, a little rabid even, but I chalked that up to all of the snot pouring out of him. A snort of laughter leaked out before I could stop it. “Sorry,” I said, returning to my desk. “I seem to be de-stressing in ‘Cooper’ style.”
“Real funny, Parker,” he said, but a hint of a smile crossed his lips. “Did you send him those flowers?”
“Is this off the record?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“No. I had nothing to do with that.”
He sighed. “Natalie did it, didn’t she?”
I shrugged. “No comment.” I grabbed my purse from the desk drawer where I kept it. “Thanks for rescuing me from the jerk. Did you know he was here or was it just a lucky coincidence?”
“I was heading out to my SUV and saw him on the sidewalk coming your way with a full head of steam. I decided to come in through the back door just in case.”
The Deadwood police station sat sort of kitty-corner from Calamity Jane Realty. Some days that was a good thing, while other days I did all I could to keep my head low and sneak out the back.
“Is Rex pressing charges?”
“I talked him out of it.”
Well, there was a rose after a day of thorns. “Thanks.”
“No need to thank me. He has no evidence.” He pointed at the wrinkled note on my desk. “Natalie used cut-out letters to cover her tracks.”
“She’s always been a smooth criminal.” I grinned wide. “The best kind to take on a bristly law dog.”
He sighed. “She’s messing with my head.”
“Good. Our evil plan is working. We’ll bring you to the dark side yet, Detective.”
We stared at each other for a beat or two. Something else was on his mind besides Natalie, I could see it in the way his shoulders were hunched. “What is it, Cooper? Is there a new crime Hawke is trying to pin on me? Or has something even worse happened with the imp?”
“You didn’t call me after you left the Carhart house,” he said, looking at the whiteboard again.
“Oh, shit. I forgot about that.” That was the truth. I’d been so wrapped up in what I’d learned from Prudence and Mr. Black that I’d completely spaced on Cooper’s request for a phone call.
“What happened?” he asked.
I tried to come up with something flippant as an answer, but there was nothing funny or glib about this caper-sus trouble. “It’s a long, weird story.”
“Did anyone get hurt?”
“No, but your uncle got tipsy.” At his raised brows, I explained, “He chose to use a glass of whiskey for some liquid courage. He must have had an empty stomach because it hit him fast while we were there and pretty much knocked him out as we drove back to Deadwood.”
“That’s odd. Uncle Willis can usually hold his whiskey.” His gaze narrowed on me. “What about you?”
“I didn’t drink anything.”
“I meant what did you use for courage?”
I shrugged. “Your uncle.”
He crossed his arms. “Are you going to tell me what in the hell happened up there today, or make me wait until Nyce is in the room?”
“I think Doc needs to hear this. Aunt Zoe, too.”
His face lined at my answer. “So, it’s that sort of bad news, huh?”
“Let’s just say I’ve spent the last few hours trying to pull myself up by the bootstraps, but I keep falling back down time and again.”
“Fuck.” He pointed at the whiteboard. “What’s the story with that?”
I looked at Jane’s cryptic message. Cooper had the memory of an elephant. He must remember those two words from before and know Jane did it. “Why do you ask?”
He nudged his head toward the hall. “Because Jane is standing back there in the dark watching us.”
I whirled around, seeing nothing in the hallway but thick shadows and a red exit sign over the back door.
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“I don’t joke about ghosts, Parker.”
Crap. I’d just come out from back there. Had I walked through her ghost? Chills peppered my arms.
“She’s just staring at us?” I asked. At his nod, I explained, “Before Rex showed up, I was in the bathroom washing my coffee mug. When I walked back out here, I could smell markers and those words were written on the board. I was trying to figure out why she’d written them when Rex barged in.”
“So you don’t know what she means by it?”
“Nope.”
He stiffened, his gaze widening. “Any guesses why she’s decided to step into the light now and show herself to me?”
Yikes! I scurried around my desk,
