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“I didn’t leave it there. Addy’s kittens must have been playing with it.”
“Where did you get that, anyway? You didn’t have Aunt Zoe buy it, did you?”
“No, Mom.” He said it as if that was my tenth stupid question of the morning. “Addy found it in Wolfgang’s yard, remember? Near that trap door.”
That train had been black. He must have painted … wait! “What trap door?”
“The one by the back of the garage. Natalie told me not to open it.”
“Natalie was right.” It was probably an old root cellar, and with all of Homestake’s underground blasting over the years, the roof on it was likely one good shake away from caving in.
“I couldn’t open it, anyway. It had a blue padlock on it.”
“Good.” Smart thinking, on Wolfgang’s part. That door was just a lawsuit waiting to happen.
“Gotta go, Mom. Aunt Zoe’s looking for me. Bye.” He hung up before I could say anything else.
I flipped my phone closed just as Ray stepped through the back door, his boot heels thumping my way.
“Hey, Red,” he said to Mona as he passed her desk.
I kept my back to him, pretending to be neck deep in an Internet search to avoid any interaction with him.
“Nine days and counting, Blondie.”
No such luck. I glared at my screen, struggling not to tackle him, tie him up, and scrub his teeth with the office toilet brush.
“What’s wrong, Blondie?” Ray dropped into his chair, which whooshed and then squealed in objection. “Am I being too rough on you this morning?”
Maybe fitting him with concrete shoes and dumping his lousy ass in the middle of Lake Pactola was a better idea.
“Your delicate little feathers can’t take so much ruffling?”
Better yet, lock him up in a well-used port-a-potty and roll it down Strawberry Hill.
“Here, Ray,” Mona clonked a glass down in front of the sleezeball. “Shut up and drink your orange juice.”
“Thanks, Red.”
I could feel Ray’s eyes on me as he gulped down his drink. I smiled as I read through the new MLS listings in the area, knowing that within a half-hour, Ray would be relocating to the commode as Mona’s fiber-filled elixir worked its magic.
My desk phone rang. “Calamity Jane Realty, Violet speaking.”
“Hello, Violet Parker.” Jeff Wymonds hadn’t forgotten about our lunch date. Damn.
“Good morning, Mr. Wymonds.”
“Are you still available for lunch?”
“Sure. Where and when?”
“The Purple Door Saloon at eleven-thirty.”
It figured that Jeff would pick the one place in town famed for being the best whorehouse east of the Rockies for the first half of the twentieth century.
“Sounds good. I’ll see you there.” That gave me almost two hours to work on keeping my bladder leak-free and knees steady when I sat down across from him.
“Goodbye, Violet Parker.” The phone went dead.
