Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2)

by Skully, Jennifer

He turned to Doodle. “What’d you say that website was?”

  * * * * *

  People not in the know thought the desert was unbearably hot in the summertime. But Goldstone was high desert, and during the day, July was a comfortable ninety-five degrees in general. At night, the temperature dropped to a lovely mideighties. There was no finer place on earth. Okay, the winters could be bitingly cold, and the air so dry it hurt to breathe. Out in the icy wind, a person’s bones creaked, but inside Simone’s trailer, the pellet stove kept everything toasty warm. In the summer, you couldn’t use an air conditioner because there wasn’t a lick of moisture in the atmosphere with which to run it. But when the cacti bloomed in the spring, my oh my, the desert was heaven on earth.

  A warm summer breeze fluttered up Simone’s skirt, flirted with her hair, and caressed her face like the lightest of fingers. Earlier, she’d walked the four short blocks to Flood’s End. Nothing was too far to walk to in Goldstone. She only drove the truck when she had to shop in Bullhead thirty miles to the north. Goldstone didn’t have a grocery store, only the minimart on the highway at the edge of town.

  The walk home gave her a quiet moment to think about euphemisms for tallywhacker. She needed something scintillating, not the same old tired phrases. Her thesaurus was completely useless. Of course, pondering tallywhackers renewed the slight blush that had heated her face when Mr. Doodle brought the subject up in front of Carl and his brother-in-law, Tyler Braxton. Brax.

  Maggie Felman had been a fountain of information about her brother. He was thirty-eight, divorced for five years, no kids, no girlfriend, a good steady job and a minor mortgage. Maggie, older by four years, used to beat him up when they were kids until he got big enough to hit back. Which he never did, Maggie had added. All in all, he was a well-rounded guy, but Simone hadn’t expected him to be such a hunk. With an engaging smile, short, semi-unruly blond hair, piercing blue eyes and bulging biceps the size of sand dunes, the man set a woman’s heart aflutter. He hadn’t even gotten mad when Mr. Doodle embarrassed him with the tallywhacker question.

  Hunky Mr. Nice Guy with a sense of humor. His sister was definitely setting the matchmaking stage here. Was she hoping they’d fall madly in love during his short visit?

  Not likely. Love took much longer to grow, and even then, you couldn’t count on your partner to completely accept everything about you. Nor to stick around when the going got tough or your life imploded.

  There was no question that Simone would ever leave Goldstone. Though she’d only lived here a little over three years, this town had become her haven. She’d lived in a lot of places, but Goldstone was the first she’d ever called home—much to her mother’s complete and total horror when Simone told her about Goldstone. “Oh my heavens, you’re trailer trash,” she’d gasped with shock, followed by a weird little sound that might have been retching.

  So, what about a short, casual fling? Simone liked sex. Sometimes she was very noisy during it. Too noisy. Andrew, her ex-fiancé, had found it a little off-putting. All right, she’d embarrassed the heck out of him. Men didn’t like women who lost control of themselves. She should have listened to all her mother’s lectures about excess and exuberance. The breakup had been a bit demoralizing. Okay, it had been devastating and had badly shaken her confidence in the sex department. She’d learned that you had to know a man before you exposed that much of yourself, figuratively and literally. Short and casual was definitely out.

  Still, she could fantasize. In fact, fantasizing was what she did best. What was the old saying? “Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach.” For Simone, it was “Those who can’t, write.” She made a darn good living conjuring up fantasies in which her heroines enjoyed hot, noisy, screaming sex and weren’t ashamed of it. And their men loved it. Tyler Braxton provided excellent hero material. She could always pretend he liked that sort of woman. Hmm, maybe she’d include him in a short vignette she could post on the website as a teaser.

  A shadow shifted in the chair to her left as she stepped onto her sunporch.

  “Hey there, pretty lady.”

  Simone jumped and dropped her armload of books, the screen door banging her butt.

  “How did you get in here, Mr. Lafoote?” Darn. She should have noticed his car parked across the road in front of her neighbor’s trailer, but she’d been too preoccupied.

  “The door was unlocked,” Jason answered reasonably.

  No one locked their doors in Goldstone. But neither did anyone walk in uninvited. Not usually.

  Jason Lafoote fancied himself a big-time developer, but in Simone’s opinion, anyone who dreamed of turning the Goldstone Hotel into a gambling resort had to be small potatoes. Some of those baby potatoes with the yellow skins. In fact, Jason’s skin was sort of jaundiced, and he was thin as a scarecrow. The comparison maligned scarecrows everywhere. Jason might have a brain, but it was definitely slimed.

  “It’s late.” After nine o’clock. He’d killed that pleasant, sensual buzz she’d gotten thinking about Brax. “I’m ready to turn in for the night.” She didn’t mention the word bed. He might mistake it for an invitation.

  He rose from the chair and glided across the green indoor-outdoor carpeting to stop directly in front of her. Moonlight gleamed in his eyes. “I could tuck you in.”

  Yuk. He’d taken her words for an invitation anyway. Simone gave him a proper setdown. “No thanks.”

  She’d sidestepped him and put a hand on the front doorknob before she remembered her books. They lay scattered at his feet, but no way was she bending down to retrieve them, not in her short skirt.

  “Have you spoken with the judge about pushing those permits through for me?” he asked, half turning to face her.

  That’s what he really wanted from her. The awkward attempts at seduction were a disguise.

  “I told you I wouldn’t talk to Della about it.”

  “I thought perhaps you’d reconsider when you realized how much prosperity a renovated hotel could bring to this town. All it would take is a few words from you and those permits could materialize. The judge respects your opinion.”

  The judge was her friend, and Simone wouldn’t abuse a friendship, even if she’d believed in Jason’s dreams. She’d seen pictures of the old hotel in its heyday back in the early part of the century, before the gold ran out, before the flood and the fire destroyed most of Goldstone. She’d fallen in love with the stately winding staircase, the thick carpets covering the hardwood and the graceful palms in huge pots. Turning it into a resort for gamblers wouldn’t bring back those glory days. Besides, the people of Goldstone already had prosperity, of a different kind. Prosperity of the spirit.

  “No one wants a resort here, Mr. Lafoote.”

  “Not even a beautiful young woman such as yourself?” He licked his thin lips, his gaze touching on her breasts, then lowering to her bare legs.

  He had that eye-touching thing down to an art, but if he ever laid a finger on her, she’d belt him. His gaze creeped her out.

  “Nope, not even me.”

  “A lot of wealthy men would suddenly be part of Goldstone’s landscape. Powerful men who know how to take care of a lady.”

  Gross. The implication was clear. “Does that smarmy, rich playboy act work with most women?”

  He laughed. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Simone, you’re the exception to the rule.”

  “Maybe it’s because I really don’t need a man to take care of me.”

  He looked left, then right, the length of her screened-in porch, and finally his eyes rested on the metal siding of her trailer. “You could do so much better than this. I could even see to it that you had a job at the hotel. Manager perhaps.”

  With a key to the executive suite? In which Jason would reside? Not on your life. “I like my trailer just fine.”

  “You’re a jewel buried beneath Goldstone’s dust. I can help you get out of this loserville.”

  The image of this man shining up her jewels was barfy. The slur o
n her beloved town just plain got her blood boiling. “Goldstone didn’t have any losers until you came to town.”

  It was a mean thing to say, but the people of Goldstone took her in when she hit rock bottom, and she’d never forget that.

  His eyes gleamed. “I like a woman with sharp claws.”

  Ugh. More barfy rhetoric. Would nothing offend this man enough to make him go away? Obviously not. Simone took the direct approach. “I won’t talk to the judge for you. I don’t want a resort. No one wants it. Now I’d like you to leave.”

  He smiled, and the sallow flesh of his face stretched over his bones. “Someday soon, you’ll change your mind. About everything. You have my card for when you do.”

  What did that mean? It brought to mind more yukky images. She’d thrown his card out almost as soon as he’d given it to her.

  “I won’t change my mind.” Neither would the judge. Della would hold up those permits and licenses until Jason Lafoote expired. Or drove his shiny convertible sports car, which probably wasn’t even paid for, out of town for good.

  “We’ll see. Till we meet again. Toodle-loo.” He waggled his fingers as he stepped down onto the gravel path.

  She wasn’t sure about the man. There was something dark and reptilian in his eyes. Was he a fool or a predator?

  Though she couldn’t put her finger on what had changed, with Jason’s arrival and his hard-sell attitude, something had started to smell a little off in Goldstone.

  This time when she went in for the night, Simone locked her doors.

  Chapter Two

  An earthquake shook his shoulder, and a voice blasted his eardrums. “Wake up, Tyler.”

  Only his mother and his sister called him Tyler. Brax cracked one eyelid open. It wasn’t even light yet, and he was on vacation. “What do you want?”

  Maggie wafted a mug of coffee near his nose. “Carl left a little while ago. I need you to follow him. Get up.”

  He’d doubted his sister’s sanity from the moment she’d married Carl, a man she met on a Las Vegas weekend junket. Living in Goldstone, where everybody was running away from something, had obviously pushed her round the bend. She wanted him to follow her husband?

  “I’m making you bacon and eggs the way you like them,” she singsonged, and now he could smell the irresistible aroma of frying bacon.

  Crazy, but cunning. Like most women, she played on a man’s weaknesses. Breakfast was the only worthwhile meal of the day. It was one thing when a wife or lover played you, but being played by your sister? That was downright pathetic.

  Still, no sense in wasting a perfectly good breakfast.

  Fifteen minutes later, showered and shaved, Brax pepper-and-salted his eggs. “How do you expect me to follow him if he’s already left?”

  “You’re a cop, you know what to do. Besides, I’ve got an idea where he went.”

  He stopped, his fork halfway to his mouth. “Where?”

  “The Chicken Coop.”

  An immediate surge of relief spread through his chest. She hadn’t mentioned Simone Chandler. He finished his forkful of eggs before answering. “So now you’ve started worrying when your husband goes out to the local farmer to buy fresh eggs or poultry?”

  Maggie rolled her eyes. “It’s the brothel. Just outside of town. And he sure as hell isn’t buying eggs there.”

  “A whorehouse named The Chicken Coop? You’ve gotta be kidding.”

  She shrugged and tucked into her crispy bacon. “All the good ranch names were taken.”

  For the first time since he’d arrived, Brax really looked at his sister. He should have done it before, but sometimes even a sheriff is a coward, and he hadn’t wanted to see too much. She was older than him by four years, but today, it could have been eight. The flesh of her once-rounded face had drooped, thin lines radiating out from her eyes and her lips. Deep grooves etched her face, following the line of her nose. She’d visited Cottonmouth a little over a year ago, and those lines hadn’t been there then. Maggie’s strain was having a physical effect, and it was dereliction of brotherly duty that he hadn’t paid more attention to the altered tone of her emails over the last few months.

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, Maggie.” Brax steeled himself for another awkward conversation like the one with Carl.

  “He’s having an affair, and I’m sure he’s going to leave me. He’s been sneaking money out of the bank account and hiding the statements, and he won’t let me into his office anymore, and we’re either fighting or not talking at all, and I go crazy whenever he leaves the house because I’m sure he won’t be back and he’ll just leave me a note or worse, send me a sayonara-baby email.” Finally she took a breath and swiped at a tear that slipped down her cheek.

  Oh man.

  His ex-wife had been a crier. Brax had never felt so helpless as when she’d had one of her crying jags, mostly because he didn’t understand them and he had a gut-gripping sense that they had more to do with her own past than anything he’d done. His tactic then had been retreat and regroup. Bad choice, but he still hadn’t learned a better way. All he could do now for Maggie was pat her hand.

  Which brought on a full-fledged watering pot.

  He patted harder and decided his course of action. Maggie had invited him here for his detective skills. So he’d detect. “Buck up, kiddo. I’ll help you figure it out. How much money are we talking?”

  Everything always started and ended with money, and damn Carl for taking even a micron of the little savings Brax assumed they had. Carl hadn’t worked in the entire time Brax had known him, and whenever the subject came up, Maggie always claimed he did this and that, which sure as hell didn’t sound like much of a profession. But then, in Goldstone, the prevailing occupation was none.

  Over the years, he’d gleaned enough through his sister’s emails and phone calls, not to mention his mother’s frantic late-night calls after her twice yearly visits to the small town, to form a less than totally favorable opinion of either Goldstone or Carl. Still, he’d reserved judgment due to the fact that he was hearing a one-sided version.

  Maggie pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. Her lips twisted. “He’s not taking much. But when I asked him about why he was taking money out at all, he hid the bank statements in his trailer and took away my key.”

  His sympathy for Carl was dying a quick and painless death. “So you don’t really know for sure?”

  She gave him a speaking glare. “Of course I know. I looked up the accounts online.”

  Of course. “So. Is he putting you in the poor house?” Hell, they were already there. They lived in a trailer. True, it had three bedrooms, a pushed-out kitchen nook, a Jacuzzi tub on the screened-in porch out back, and damn near rivaled the size of Brax’s house in Cottonmouth. But it was still a trailer. Most of Goldstone’s residents lived in trailers. Which smacked of impermanence and made the whole town a trailer park.

  Maggie drew a pattern on the tablecloth with her fork. “We’re still okay.”

  “What the hell does that mean, Maggie?”

  “It means we’re okay. He’s been doing fairly well”—she shrugged—“so there’s a little extra, you know.”

  “Fairly well at what?” He needed a spotlight in her eyes to get answers out of her.

  “Well, he sort of like...uh...well...”

  “Spit it out.”

  “He started doing really well with this outhouse excavation thing, and now he’s sort of like doing it full-time.”

  He jiggled his ear because he was sure he couldn’t have heard correctly. “Outhouse excavation?”

  “Yeah. You’d be surprised what they used to throw down the hole. You know the old saying. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

  He realized his eggs had congealed and the bacon was cold. “We’re not talking trash, here, Maggie, we’re talking shit.”

  She flapped her hand at him. “That’s all decomposed by now.”

  It would be a really nice thing
if he were the kind of guy who could lay his head on the table and cry. She must have seen something of that in his face, because she rushed on. “And sometimes they’d lose stuff. Once he found this big fat diamond ring someone must have dropped in accidentally.”

  Guess the owner hadn’t wanted to go fishing around for it. Brax drummed his fingers on the table. “You haven’t told Mom about this, have you?”

  “No. And you better not either.”

  Mom had broken out in hives when she’d learned Maggie was marrying a guy she’d known less than three days. Who the hell knew what would happen to her if she found out Carl was a professional outhouse excavator?

  “So, how many outhouses can there be?” Not enough for a full-time...job.

  “Limitless,” Maggie confided. “In its day, Goldstone had quite a thriving population. And you know, they couldn’t keep using the same spot in the backyard for the outhouse. Had to move it around. But half the town was lost in the great flood of 1923, and they’d hardly started rebuilding by the time the great fire hit in 1929. It sort of broke the town’s back. They never did rebuild.”

  Brax had seen the evidence of that. The only buildings remaining were the crumbling old schoolhouse, the hotel, the Flood’s End, and the county courthouse and jail facility, which looked to be the only structure that received regular maintenance. Hell, no one had even cleared away the rubble. Broken foundations tripped you up if you shortcut across an empty lot, and holes that had once been basements still yawned wide in the town’s landscape. One trip—no pun intended— to the Flood’s End had shown him all that. Carl had guided him through as though it were a minefield.

  Brax pulled them back on track. “So he’s not taking everything, but he’s salting away something. Or is he spending it?”

  “Well, he’s gotten into that splunking stuff, but he put the equipment on his credit card.”

  Carl had a credit card? “How do you know?”

  “I looked that up online, too.”

  Boy, Maggie would have made a top-notch investigator. “What the hell is splunking?”