Optical Delusions in Deadwood (21 page)

      Holy shit.

      What a fucking mess.

      Where was the tequila?

      I wanted to race to my Bronco, tear ass over to Doc’s office, and pound on his chest. But I couldn’t leave Natalie here alone, smoking her way through heartache. So I held it all in—the stabs of jealousy, the spasms of hurt, the tears of rage. One breath after another, I rode out the choppy waves of betrayal until I could speak without grinding my molars.

      “I know just the thing to cheer you up,” I said, squeezing Natalie’s shoulder. “A dead body. Let’s go look at it.”

      She stubbed out her cigarette, grabbed her crutches, and hobbled after me. What a trooper.

      In the foyer I caught a whiff of something medicinal. I sniffed again. Embalming fluid? I recoiled, then noticed two huge bouquets of lilies on pedestal stands just inside the French doors leading to the parlor. Oh, thank God, it was just stinky flowers. There was a reason I preferred daisies.

      The parlor room was two-thirds full of whispering, sniffling mourners. The other third of the room contained bouquets bursting with color, displayed in wreaths and sprays and vases. A chilled breeze of air conditioning spilled out over us, making me wish I’d remembered to grab the shawl that went with the black velvet tank dress I had on for tonight’s main event.

      “Do you see George?” I whispered to Natalie when she joined me in the parlor entrance.

      She craned her neck. “No. He’s probably in back, prepping.”

      “Prepping what? I can see Mrs. Tarkin from here.” Well, her folded hands, anyway, which was plenty.

      “I don’t know, someone else. Come on.” Before I could object, she crutched inside and plopped down in a seat in the back of the room. Déjà vu, I thought, and joined her.

      I’d just settled in when a familiar, but strangely out of place, classical piece of organ music began pulsing from the speakers in the top corners of the room.

      “That’s weird,” I said under my breath.

      “What’s weird?”

      “This song. Who plays Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor at a viewing?” My mother was a classical music groupie, so I grew up being force-fed long-dead composers.

      “That’s Bach?” Natalie asked. “It reminds me of the old black and white horror movies we used to watch in your parents’ basement during sleepovers.”

      “I know. Those spooky organ riffs along with these one-way windows and Mrs. Tarkin’s corpse are all creeping me out.” I showed her the goosebumps on my arms.

      “That’s just the damned air conditioning. If it gets much colder in here, we’ll all be stiffs.”

      I rubbed my arms. “Add some candlelight, and I could just see Mrs. Tarkin rising up from her casket and saying, ‘I vant to suck your blood.’”

      Natalie giggled. “Hey, look,” she pointed at the front of the room. “There’s George.”

      I had a feeling George was responsible for the sinister-sounding Bach tune. All these years of dressing up dead folks had to have warped his mind. I could see his tiny yellow teeth as he greeted viewers. As if he felt my stare, his gaze roved in our direction, landing on me, then Natalie.

      She waved.

      I attempted a smile.

      He excused himself from his guests.

      “Here he comes,” I said through my frozen smile. George was pausing here and there along the way to shake hands or deliver pats on the back. “Act natural.”

      “Natural? We’re at a funeral, Vi. Not a bar.”

      “Fine, then act sad for Mrs. Tarkin. But not too sad.”

      “No problem. I’ll just think about Doc.”

      I’d think about Doc, too, and the uppercut I was going to aim at that sexy cleft in his chin the next time I saw him. “Don’t think of Doc, think of Junior and that tattoo. The sooner you ask George about it, the sooner we can get the hell out of here.”

      George dropped into one of the seats in the empty row in front of us, resting his forearm across the back of the chair. “Two viewings in less than a week, Natalie. I’m shocked.”

      “Me, too,” Natalie muttered.

      I poked her in the ribs. She flinched.

      “George, you remember my friend Violet? She’s the one selling the Carhart house.”

      Nice. Natalie was building up to Junior’s tattoo, I could feel it.

      “Sure. Violet, who likes my gables.” He held out his hand.

      Criminy. I’d forgotten about my foot-in-mouth disease the last time I’d talked to him. His palm was warm and sweaty when I shook it. I counted to three and pulled away, trying to wipe the sweat on my dress without him noticing. “Nice choice of music. Is there an organist hiding behind this one-way glass?”

      Natalie cleared her throat and kicked me in the anklebone with her cast-free foot, making me jerk in pain.
Ouch!

      “Nope.” George grinned, showing us those tiny yellow teeth and big gums up close. I held in my wince—barely. “Just Eddie and his media center. He has a big repertoire of organ music.”

      “Eddie is George’s brother,” Natalie explained to me.

      I pretended that was news to me, even though I knew all about Eddie. I knew all about George, too, and his very nasty, very public divorce from one of the descendants of Deadwood’s founding fathers. What I didn’t know was what had been in that crate Ray and George had loaded in Ray’s SUV last month. But I hoped to find out shortly.

      “Is Eddie back there right now?” I asked, “watching us through the glass?” Talk about creepy.

      “No, he’s downstairs cleaning up.”

      Cleaning up what? Did they do autopsies down there?

      “Do you two split the duties around here?” I could see Natalie’s frown out of the corner of my eyes. I’d disrupted her tattoo segue. Oops.

      “Yes. Eddie’s in charge of all the technical aspects of viewings and services. I tend to deal with the public.”

      And who worked with Ray on the shady little side business they had going? Just George, or both brothers?

      George’s mention of technical stuff reminded me of something he’d said during our last viewing adventure. “George, you don’t happen to have another copy of that video of the Carhart funeral that Junior’s fiancée requested, do you?”

      George hesitated, his forehead furrowing.

      Before he could question why I of all people was asking, I threw out, “Wanda Carhart wanted me to ask.”

      “I already gave a copy of it to the fiancée.”

      Ah, ha. So he had an original somewhere. “That’s what Wanda said. But in all the post-funeral hubbub, it seems they’ve misplaced it.”

      “Oh,” his forehead cleared now that I’d smoothed everything over. “Well, sure. I could make another copy for Wanda. Do you need it tonight?”

      “Yes, please, if it’s not too much of a problem. I could deliver it tomorrow when I take some paperwork to Wanda.”

      George stood. “Okay, give me just a moment. I’ll have to go to my office and burn a copy for you.”

      I elbowed Natalie and nudged my head in George’s direction.

      She grabbed his hand before he could leave. “George, we need to talk to you about something else regarding the Carharts.”

      “You do? What?”

      “It’s kind of private.” She glanced at the other mourners. “Can we talk in your office?”

      “Sure. Just follow me.”

      “I need to use the Ladies room first,” I said, rising. “I’ll be right with you two.”

      A silver-haired, sad-faced man interrupted at that moment, nodding a hello at Natalie before asking George about some programs for his aunt’s funeral.

      I leaned over and whispered in Natalie’s ear. “Keep him busy in his office for five minutes. Don’t let him leave.”

      “Five minutes?” She said it as if that was one minute shy of an eternity.

      “You’re right. That’s too short. Make it ten.”

      “Ten? How am I supposed to keep him in his office that long when there’s a viewing going on?”

      “I don’t know. Be resourceful.” I glanced down at her black silk blouse. “Take your shirt off.”

      “What! Oh, Jesus. That’s gross. He’s practically my uncle.”

      “Fine. Leave your shirt on, then, and talk about your Aunt Beatrix. He’s got the hots for her. I could tell when he asked about her last time.”

      “Where are you going to be for these ten minutes?”

      I nodded at the wall of one-way glass.

      Natalie rolled her eyes. “You’re crazy. What do you think you’re going to find back there? A smoking gun with Ray’s name on it?”

      “Maybe. For all we know there could be two smoking guns back there.”

      “You’re gonna get caught with your hand in the cookie jar. You always do.”

      “Not always.” Just 99.9 percent of the time. “I’ll see you in a jiff.”

      I headed out the parlor doors, making sure George wasn’t watching when I made a left turn instead of a right toward the bathroom.

      Two doors down, I overshot the storage room and found a storage closet instead, lined with shelves full of old-looking, oversized leather-bound books. I was tempted to pull one down and open it, but the clock was ticking, so I tiptoed back out and quietly closed the door behind me.

      I backtracked one door, found it unlocked, and slipped inside. This time, I hit the mark.

      Shrouded in semi-gloom with the only light coming from the parlor through the one-way glass, the room was divided in half. One side held four rows of chairs, all facing the parlor windows—a private viewing area for family and close friends. The other side held true to the
storage
part of the room’s name: shelves full of Kleenex boxes, racks of vases of all sorts and colors, stacks of folded wreath-supporting tripods, and more. Everything a girl could need to throw a first-rate viewing.

      The organ music was muted slightly, but still audible. I sniffed, a trick I learned from Doc. My gut twinged just thinking about him, so I shoved that whole mess to the back of my mind. The room smelled musty with a hint of cardboard, like most storage rooms. No dead body smells here.

      I tiptoed across the carpet, then remembered that the glass was one-way. I could break-dance for all the folks on the other side cared. Against the far wall, next to a fancy-looking rack of stereo equipment, sat the two big wooden crates that matched the one Ray and George loaded into Ray’s SUV last month. They were stacked end-to-end. I could see that both lids were loose.

      I shoved aside the first lid and found nothing but an empty crate. I replaced the lid and moved to the second. This crate contained a small cooler like what Aunt Zoe used to keep the worms chilled and subdued when she took the kids fishing. Only this Mudder Brothers cooler had a big red biohazard sticker on it. Being that I was standing inside a funeral home, my imagination came up with lots of body pieces that could fit in that cooler.

      As much as I didn’t want to open the cooler, I had to. The red lid popped off easily, the inside empty, not a speck of blood that I could see in the dim light. I blew out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. 

      I put the cooler back the way I’d found it and started to close the lid on the second crate when I heard a voice on the other side of the door. Through the one-way glass, I saw a man who looked very much like George Mudder, only taller and thinner with extra-prominent cheekbones—a lot like Lurch from the Addams Family. That had to be brother Eddie.

      Yikes!

      In a panic, I did what any rational single mother in her mid-thirties would do when on the verge of being caught snooping in a funeral home’s storage room. I threw my little velvet purse in the crate and scrambled in after it—hearing something rip in the process—then closed the lid over my head.

      The crate was pretty solid; no cracks to peek through. I listened, crouched on my knees, taking shallow breaths. I could barely hear the dull thud of footfalls just outside the crate over the staccato of my heart in my ears. Several seconds passed with nothing more, then footfalls again in front of the crate.

      He was leaving! Relief spread through me with a tingly chaser.

      A rhythmic buzzing next to my thigh almost made me scream.

     
My phone!
It was in my purse, on vibrate mode. I grabbed my purse, flipped it open, and hit the Off button.

      The footfalls were coming back, getting stronger, louder.

      Oh, this was bad. This was going to be hard to talk my way out of. Maybe when he pulled back the lid, I could jump up and yell “Surprise!” Pretend I was a ditzy stripper who’d confused the crate with a cake.

      No. That wasn’t going to work. I needed to come up with a Plan B.

      The footfalls stopped outside the crate. My heart stopped, too. So did my lungs. Oh, man. I was going to puke, or pee my pants, or both.

      “Eddie,” George’s muffled voice interrupted. “I need your help burning a DVD copy.”

      The footfalls faded.

      I counted to thirty before lifting the lid just enough to peek out. All was clear in the storage room. I scrambled out of the crate and grabbed my purse.

      Out in the parlor, I saw George Mudder shaking hands with someone. That meant Natalie was on her own in the office, at least until Eddie joined her. I scurried over to the parlor exit.

      The foyer was empty. I stopped by the Ladies room long enough to make sure I had no smudges and to figure out what had ripped—just an inch worth of seam midway between my armpit and hip, nothing visible if I didn’t lift my arm.

      Natalie was standing in the foyer when I exited the john. She rushed over to me. “That was longer than ten minutes, damn it.”

      “Sorry. Eddie came in. I had to hide. Then my phone vibrated and he almost caught me.” Which reminded me...I dug out my phone and hit the On button.

      “I told you you’d get caught.”

      “I didn’t get caught, just came close.” I looked down at my phone’s LCD screen, waiting for it to register. “Did you ask George about Junior having a tattoo?”