Page 200 of Love Bites

Treading after Doc as he moved across the hall, my shoulders tightened as he stepped into the last bedroom.

According to Mona, Lilly Devine had been strangled by her “John” in this north-facing bedroom. Vertical skinny stripes of red, white, and blue covered the ceiling and ran down the walls to the fire-engine red carpet. A wave of vertigo had me leaning against the open door for support. If the wallpaper had been the same back then, I had an idea what drove the murderer to do it.

“Whoa,” Doc backed out of the room, covering his eyes. “That hurts.”

I flicked off the light and followed him back to the shag-filled living room. “Sorry. This place looked pretty good in the black-and-white pictures.”

“It has potential.”

Sure, as a nightmare. “You want to check out the basement?”

“Lead the way.”

I did. A light switch at the top of the stairs flooded the room with florescent light. I’d reached the bottom step before realizing Doc wasn’t following me. I turned around and found him still standing at the top of the stairs. His face looked pale. Maybe it was the lighting. “Aren’t you coming down?”

“No.” His nostrils flared and he stepped back away from the top step until I could only see his head.

I sniffed. No gardenias, just the usual musty basement smell. What could possibly be wrong with that? “Why not?”

“I changed my mind. Come back up here.”

I glanced around at the remodeled room, white-washed cement walls, dark blue carpet. “You should check this out, Doc. It’s the nicest room in the house.”

“Get up here now, Violet.” His tone was edged with alarm.

Suddenly, I had a big hankering for fresh air. “Okay, okay. I’m coming.” This sniffing business was for the birds—or the dogs.

Back in the lava-lamp living room, I asked the obligatory, “Are you interested in placing an offer on it?” A waste of breath, certainly, but part of the routine.

“Not at the moment, but I might want to come back here again.”

Really? To this shithole? Why?“We’ll leave it as a ‘maybe’ then.”

“Good. What else do you have?”

Not much, unless a miracle occurred in Deadwood—or a mass exodus. I had one or two more up my sleeve, and then we’d have to discuss whether he’d consider commuting from a Lead or Central City zip code. “Let’s go see.”

Outside, I welcomed the warm blast of pine-scented air. My lungs felt like I’d spent a couple of hours leaning on the craps table in Vegas. We climbed into the Bronco.

After initially leaving the office, we had covered all of the small-talk subjects I could think of on short notice. Now the bouts of silence were heavy and made me want to drum my thumbs on the steering wheel.

Emboldened by his earlier smiles, I turned over the engine and asked, “How long have you been in Deadwood?”

“A while now.”

Vague, but a start. “Are you renting a house or apartment?”

“Neither.”

An RV? A pup-tent? A cave? What? Maybe I was going about this wrong. “What brought you to Deadwood?”

“A rumor.”

I let that one sit for a breath to see if more was to come. Nope, nothing. I moved on. “Where are you from?”

“Back east.”

“Like the East Coast?”

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