“I also figured I’d be the one to tell you the good news about the flowers, which was why I brought tequila with me, but I was held up down in Rapid this afternoon.” She sent a worried look my way.
“Don’t give me that face,” I told her. “I loved that you sent him flowers. Ask Cooper. He had to send me to the bathroom because I was laughing so hard at Rex’s itching and snarling.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t like Rex harassing you. I think I’m going to have to pay that dipshidiot a visit again.”
“That’s a bad idea,” Cooper said.
I pointed at the detective. “What he said.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No buts, no coconuts.” I leaned back on my hands, watching Doc, who’d returned to the closet to peer down the trapdoor opening. It was time to change the subject before Cooper went into full-on cop mode and started lecturing us about the downfalls of spending life behind bars. “Besides, I needed a good laugh after my rendezvous with Prudence and Mr. Black up at Zelda’s.”
“What?” That got Doc’s attention. “You went back again today?”
“Not by choice. I was basically summoned.”
Doc came closer. “Let’s hear it, Killer.”
I started with the phone call from Zelda and Prudence while I was at Bighorn Billy’s, told him about my brush with the imp behind the Opera House and the piece of honey-flavored candy it threw at my windshield, and wrapped up with the news about this caper-sus dilemma.
Cooper started cursing midway through my story, and Doc was grimacing at the floor while squeezing his forehead by the time I’d finished.
Natalie was the first to speak. “So you mean to tell me that there was a female undertaker in the old days who was also an Executioner?”
I nodded.
“What was this undertaker’s name?” Cornelius asked from the dark hallway. He was out there again with his fancy meter.
“They didn’t say. Mr. Black had to leave lickety-split for some reason and Prudence refused to say any more after he was gone.”
“Why?” Natalie asked. “Was she pissed at you?”
I shrugged. Prudence was always pissed at me, it was simply a matter of degrees of pissed-offed-ness each visit. “She up and left Zelda’s body without any further insults and disappeared into thin air, as she’s prone to do. Harvey and I left shortly after that.” I looked at Cornelius, who’d returned to the room with the salt shaker that usually sat on the small counter next to the napkins and coffee maker. “As you were saying earlier, some spirits can choose when they want to be seen or not.”
What was he doing with the salt?
“I need to head back down to the library in Rapid City.” Doc frowned toward the Hellhole. “There was a section on cults that might have something more on this caper-sus insignia’s history.”
“I’d ask Mr. Black to give us more details on the past, but I need to brush up on my summoning skills. Do you think sacrificing a chicken would work in lieu of ringing his doorbell?” I joked, trying to make light of my bad news.
Doc turned back to me, his smile returning. “Nice try, Tish.”
I blinked at him several times and purred, “Merci, mon amour,” in a flirty Morticia voice.
“How are you going to get into Sanford Lab?” Cooper butted in before Doc could take the bait, returning the focus to Mr. Black’s instructions.
“I know a way,” Natalie said.
“Legally,” he added.
She tilted her head. “How is this ever going to work between us, Coop, if you’re going to insist on me and Violet doing everything on the up-and-up all of the time?”
He shrugged. “I’ll keep you handcuffed to me and lock Parker in her aunt’s basement.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Cornelius said, stroking his goatee as if he were seriously pondering it.
Natalie laughed.
“Uh, yes it is,” I said.
“I don’t mean literally,” he said, pulling out a handful of stones from his other robe pocket and setting them in the middle of the floor. “Telepathically, I mean.” He unscrewed the top of the salt shaker, saying to Doc, “Violet and I need to be tethered before we start.”
“Start what?” I was afraid I already knew the answer.
“The séance.”
Damn, I hated being right. “I thought we weren’t doing that tonight.”
“We’re still doing a séance.” He poured salt in a circle around the stones on the floor. “We’re just not going to seek out Wilda.” He pointed at the open closet door. “Tonight we’re going to ask your dead boss why she cleared a path to the Hellhole.”
Maybe I didn’t want to know that answer. Ignorance was bliss, and I was a big fan of obliviousness. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” Natalie asked.
“Because I’m hungry and I read that you should never channel while hungry.”
Cornelius looked up at me from arranging the stones into an eye formation. “What is your source on that?”
“Thin air,” I mumbled.
“If you’re only going to ask Jane why she opened the closet and the trapdoor,” Doc said to Cornelius, “why do you think you should be tethered to Violet?”
“Because our channeler tends to wander in the middle of our séances, and I’m not sure we want her going near that Hellhole until we know her dead boss’s reasoning.”
“I do not wander.”
Doc gave me a look.
“Okay, I don’t wander on purpose, anyway.” I returned to Cornelius. “Can’t this wait until some other night when I’ve had more time to mentally prepare to talk to Jane?”
It was one thing to channel someone whom I’d never met. But I’d shared meals with Jane, talked about my career hopes, listened to her struggles with her ex-husbands, and celebrated my first sale with her. I wasn’t sure how making a connection with her ghost was going to hit me, but I would hazard a guess that a wrecking ball might be less damaging if I wasn’t ready for her.
“We can’t leave now,” Cornelius said. “She could close the door on us at any moment. And we have five of us
