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“Layne called,” I explained. “He’s found a skull.”
“Do you think it’s a dinosaur?” Layne asked as he sat up and wiped sweat from his brow, leaving a stripe of dirt behind.
Aunt Zoe peered at the skull. “Oh, no, honey. That’s just a horse. With that old cemetery up the hill, you’d be surprised what they dig up around this neighborhood.”
Aunt Zoe’s place sat about fifty yards downhill from Mount Moriah cemetery, the dirt home of Deadwood’s famous legends, like Wild Bill and Seth Bullock.
Layne’s smile drooped. “Just a horse?”
“Yes, sir.” Aunt Zoe crouched next to Layne. “But look—that’s a bullet wound. This horse may have been murdered.”
“Awesome!” Layne’s grin returned twofold and he dove back into the hole.
Aunt Zoe glanced at me over Layne’s upturned hiney. “How was your day?”
“Pretty good.” My gut clenched at the idea of telling her I was less than three weeks away from getting shit-canned if I didn’t sell a house. Aunt Zoe’s heart rivaled the size of Mount Rushmore. Not only had she called in an old favor and landed me the job at Calamity Jane Realty, but she’d also opened her house to me and my two children, rearranged her gallery hours so she could be home to babysit, and allowed my kids to dig up her yard and perform toad autopsies on her front porch.
“I’m taking a client to dinner tonight,” I added, which was kind of the truth, even if Harvey wasn’t officially a client yet. “And I have an appointment to look at a house tomorrow for another client.” I preferred to think of that one as a prediction, rather than a lie.
“Congratulations.” She squeezed my shoulder, but the slight wrinkling of her brow made me wonder if she could smell myEau-de-Rat Parfum. “Do you need a babysitter tonight?”
“No, I have it covered.”
While wooing Harvey might have been easier without the twins, I wasn’t going to ask Aunt Zoe to close her gallery this evening.
She stood and wiped her hands on her jean shirt. “Then I think I’ll go shower and head to the gallery early.”
I wanted to talk to her about the kidnappings, voice my worries aloud, search her face for signs of fear for Addy’s safety, find some validation that I wasn’t overacting. However, now was not the time, not with Layne’s ears this close.
“I have some new pieces to sell. Cross your fingers they’re big hits.” She headed for the back door.
“I’ll keep my toes crossed, too.” I called after her. Whatever it took. Aunt Zoe had refused to accept any money from me for rent or utilities. I owed her my firstborn, but since my kids came as a two-for-one deal, she’d settled for letting me buy groceries.
“Are you going to dinner with a man?” Layne asked, staring at me with a narrowed gaze.
“Yep.”
“Do you like him?”
“He’s kind of nice.” When he didn’t have a shotgun pointed at my nose.
“Does he like you?”
“I hope so.” Enough to sign on the dotted line, anyway.
“Are you going to marry him?”
I grinned. “No, of course not.”
“Good, because we don’t need a man around here.”
I couldn’t agree more, but I wanted to hear Layne out. “We don’t?”
“All you need is me. I can fix stuff and take care of you.”
“I’m sure you can, but don’t you get tired of being stuck with three girls?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes, like when you guys are all yelling at me to put the toilet seat down. But it’s no big deal.”
