“I don’t think she’s going to hurt you,” I told him, frowning out the window at the empty streets.
There were no police cars blocking off the street this morning. No barking law dogs in my ear either because of that dang imp. Where had the little sucker gone to sleep off the mead? How long of a break did I have until its next bender? How in the hell was I going to catch it?
“What you don’t know about Prudence could fill the Open Cut,” Harvey grumbled.
“Harvey’s right,” Doc said, turning off of the main drag and heading up the hill toward Zelda’s place. “Do you think Prudence’s family kept a written history like yours did?”
“I never thought to ask her. Usually when I’m there, I’m too busy being slapped around and told how lousy I am at my job to ask about her life pre-death.” She’d probably just rub my nose in how superior her line was compared to mine at documenting history if I did ask, which made me grit my teeth just thinking about it.
“I think her family is from France,” Doc said, making another right.
I looked at him. “How do you know that?”
“When I switched places with her the last time we were here, she whispered something that made me suspect it.”
“You mean when she was dying?”
He shrugged. “A little before that.”
“What did she say?” Harvey asked.
“At the time, I didn’t understand it because I don’t know French that well, but later I looked it up.” He glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Among other things, she called her attackers villainous scoundrels and gluttons.”
I smirked. Those sounded like typical Prudence insults. “Well, that’s not too foul, considering what was about to happen to her.” I might have dropped an F-bomb or three.
Harvey snorted. “Said the sailor in the back seat.”
“You have to understand the context,” Doc continued, “and take into account that Prudence is from the nineteenth century when ladies didn’t say those words usually. At least not aloud.” He turned onto the road that led to Zelda’s place.
“I get that cursing was unladylike.” That was something my mother had preached often over the years. “But what do you mean by context?”
He shot me another quick look in the mirror. “Take the word glutton. Gluttony was one of the seven deadly sins, so when this word was used, it was a much stronger verbal attack than it is today. From what I read, it can even refer to a devil in a man’s body.”
Had Prudence meant it literally the night she was murdered? I toyed with the hem of my coat. I’d seen a lot of devilry lately—way too much of it with more to come, I feared, with the lidérc now hunting me. Devil days were here in Deadwood. Only time would tell if I made it through to the other side of this clusterfuck without burning from the inside out or tearing off my own flesh. I crossed my fingers that the mirror on the seat next to me would help somehow.
Blinking away my worries, I asked Doc, “Why didn’t you tell me this about Prudence before?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t think about it much until you started teasing me in French, Tish. Then I tried to decipher what I’d heard Prudence say the night of her death—at least what I could remember her saying. In the grand scheme of all the other excitement going on in your life, the idea of Prudence being from France slipped my mind most days.”
I looked down at my gloved hands. Prudence being French made sense with the way she looked down her nose at my German ancestors. If memory served me right from my world history class in college, there were several disputes between France and Germany in the 1800s. Maybe when this lidérc mess was over, if I was still breathing, I could find a history book that would help me understand Prudence’s resentment better. Not that I had any grand hopes of becoming best buddies with her, but it would certainly be nice if we could interact regularly without someone getting hurt—namely me, since she was a ghost who didn’t bruise.
Doc slowed as we reached Zelda’s place, shooting a frown at me in the rearview mirror. “What’s Coop doing here? Did you tell Natalie to call him?”
I shook my head. “All she said was that he’d called her before she came over this morning to make sure she’d made it home okay after he’d left her to pick us up last night.”
I could tell by Natalie’s quick smile that Cooper making the effort to call had been a smart move on his part, since his job had come between them in the past. Actually, that wasn’t quite true. It was more like he’d wedged his job between them in the past in an effort to control his feelings for her. Apparently, he was working to keep that from happening again, which was good for him, because I’d hate to have to take a baseball bat to his kneecaps for making my best friend cry.
“Did you know he was coming?” Doc asked Harvey.
“Huh-uh. I didn’t call or twit him.”
“You mean ‘text’ him,” I corrected.
“I meant what I said, girlie. Don’t you know it’s rude to correct your elders?” He crossed his arms. “If Sparky is going to spend all damned day fixin’ my words, maybe you should just take me back home.”
I guffawed. “Good try, old man, but you’re stuck here with me. Unless you want to give up your job as my bodyguard? I could see if Bill the security guard at Piggly Wiggly wants a side job.”
Harvey turned and pointed at me. “You
