Page 196 of Love Bites

“Haunted? That’s old news.” He slammed another glassful. “That Dame Hessler was sure one batty bitch. Her husband died when the kids were still young-uns. The doctor said his heart gave out; too much hard work down in Homestake’s shafts for his scrawny body.”

Once the largest and deepest gold mine in North America, Homestake Mine shut down operations at the beginning of the new millennium. Most of the old-timers in Deadwood, Lead, and the northern half of the Black Hills that I’d run into either had labored in Homestake’s mines or had family who did.

Harvey rested his forearms on the counter, his voice lowering, secretive. “But we knew the truth.”

“What truth?” I took Harvey’s bait. There was nothing wrong with learning more about the man I’d agreed to have dinner with, I reasoned with my guilty conscience. Besides, it’s not like he had any skeletons in his closets—I’d have seen them on Tuesday when I peeked in each of them.

“She poisoned him,” Harvey whispered.

That sounded like some good old, bar stool gossip. “Why would she do that?”

“Her daddy didn’t like him, and her daddy ruled her world. Hell, she never even took her husband’s last name. Nope, kept her maiden name and gave it to the kids.”

“Was her dad the same guy who started Hessler’s Jewelry Designs in Deadwood?”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s him, Mr. Hessler. Quite a dictator. Scared the bejesus out of us kids, threatening us with a broomstick beating when we’d roll a smoke out front of his store.”

With that reputation, I could see why Wolfgang didn’t want to be called “Mr. Hessler.”

Pouring himself a third drink, this time mostly milk, Harvey continued. “Anyway, Dame Hessler became downright cuckoo after her daughter died. Holed up in that house day and night. Sent her son out for everything, and no amount of prying by the townsfolk would loosen his tongue about her.”

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week in that house with all of those creepy clowns? That couldn’t have helped bring her back from the edge. I swallowed the last of my drink. My heart twanged for Wolfgang—to be so young and all alone with a crazy mother. At least my kids had each other.

“How long ago did Wolfgang’s mom die?” I asked, covering my glass when Harvey offered a refill.

“Nobody knows for sure.”

“Why not?”

“Because nobody knows how long she’d been dead in the house before they found her. Rumor was the rats had been there and left long before.”

Groaning, I smacked my forehead. That was just fucking great. I’d signed on to sell a haunted house belonging to a witch whose body decayed for God knows how long within those walls before someone carted her out. I threw down the remaining half of the cookie I’d been munching on, my appetite out the door and down the road, a cloud of dust in its wake.

Harvey gulped his milky drink, then set his glass by the sink. “No one had seen hide-nor-hair of her son after high school, not until he showed up for the funeral years later and took over the jewelry store.”

I frowned at Harvey. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that Wolfgang is as loony as his mother.”

“Not as far as I can tell. That boy got his grandfather’s looks and build, but his pop’s personality. Seems as normal as you and me.”

Which wasn’t saying much knowing Harvey.

“Quite a handsome kid, too, after he filled out.”

Harvey could say that again. Ever since I went against my No-Dating-Clients credo and agreed to have dinner with Wolfgang tomorrow, I’d been wringing my hands. Two years was a long intermission between dates. Last night, I’d stood in front of the mirror for twenty minutes, agonizing over lipstick colors—siren red or romantic pink, applying and reapplying until my lips looked like two inner tubes.

“He’s loaded too,” Harvey added, “by the looks of the gems in his store window.”

Which meant wearing any jewelry from my bubble-gum machine collection was out of the question.

Harvey grabbed the remaining half of my cookie and chomped on it. “It’s just too bad for all you womenfolk that he turned out to be as gay as a handbag full of rainbows.”

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