A Wild Fright in Deadwood (Deadwood Humorous Mystery Book 7) by Ann Charles Read Free Book Online Page A

interrupted my pity party. “Wanda’s death is not your fault.”
    I blinked out of my daze and looked across the kitchen table into her all-seeing dark blue gaze. Aunt Zoe always had been able to read me like an eye doctor chart. Since childhood, I’d distracted most who looked my way with my big, bold E’s and F’s on the surface. Only she had known to squint and peer lower, zeroing in on my tiny, troubled O’s and C’s.
    My focus dropped to the last couple of toast bites smothered with chipped beef in white sauce that were now cold. I shoved them around the plate with my fork.
    “Prudence would disagree with you,” I told her.
    Aunt Zoe leaned forward, her long silver-lined hair pulled back in a loose ponytail tonight. Her red glass earrings, a product of her own crafting, looked pretty fancy compared to her faded plaid work shirt and jeans.
    “Violet, you may share a vocation with Prudence, but your stripes are different. Remember that the next time you compare yourself to her.”
    “What do you mean?” Doc asked from where he stood by the sink, drying the big saucepan Aunt Zoe had used to make Layne’s favorite dish.
    The kid had plowed through three helpings of what my dad always called shit-on-a-shingle , snarfing down bite after bite before asking to be excused to go watch El Dorado in the living room. One would think the nearly ten-year-old was fresh in from driving cattle up the Chisholm Trail or something, sheesh.
    “Just as your talents and abilities as a medium vary from another’s,” she told Doc, “Violet’s skills might include elements that Prudence’s didn’t or vice-versa.”
    He put the pan on the counter and pulled the ladle from the drain rack. He still wore the same jeans and black shirt from earlier and sported the same finger plowed hair, too. However, in the soft yellow surroundings of my aunt’s kitchen with snowflakes falling outside the window, he sort of hypnotized me with his pulse-palpitating good looks.
    It took several slow blinks and a head-clearing shake to realize that maybe it was just the sight of a man doing housework that had my motor revving. If Doc grabbed the broom and started sweeping, I might have to ask Aunt Zoe to leave so I could have my wicked way with him on her clean wooden floor.
    “Zoe, have any other executioners in your family’s lineage had the ability to see ghosts?” Doc asked, unaware that I had moved on to a fantasy involving him folding socks and towels.
    Aunt Zoe turned to me, staring pointedly.
    I left Fantasyland Doc in the midst of ironing my shirts and frowned back at present-moment Aunt Zoe. Why was I getting that look from her? After my kids had been excused from the table, I’d filled her in about my episode this morning with Prudence. Had I forgotten something important?
    “What?” I asked, sticking a bite of cold toast in my mouth.
    “Have you finished the book?”
    As much as I’d have liked to pretend I didn’t know what book she was talking about, I knew she’d yank on my ear if I played dumb.
    “Almost.”
    “Violet, that’s your key to unlocking the possibilities of what you can and can’t do.”
    “I know, but reading long, handwritten tomes isn’t exactly my strong suit.” Unlike my son, who carted around college-sized history books on the ancient Maya in case he had a spare moment to fit some reading into his day. At her narrowed gaze, I held up my hands. “Besides, it’s not my fault. I can’t find the book.”
    “What do you mean you can’t find it? I thought I told you to keep it safe up in your room.”
    “You did, and it’s somewhere around here. I’m sure of that because I didn’t take it anywhere else.”
    “How could you lose that book?”
    “I was reading it when I was in bed sick and fell asleep. When I woke up, it was gone.” At her growl of unhappiness, I stuck another bite in my mouth, mumbling, “I’ll find it, I swear.”
    “Did you look under your bed?”
    “Of course I did, and