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

by Skully, Jennifer

  He could not explain to Maggie why they’d have to subject Carl’s body to that indignity. Then again, Nevada laws and regulations might be different. Maybe he could get Teesdale to forgo the autopsy in this case since it was clearly an accident.

  “Holy shit.”

  Teesdale had pulled back the sheet while he’d been thinking.

  “Critters,” the sheriff said again.

  “Christ.” They’d made fast work of the left side of Carl’s face, yet the right remained completely intact. Like a Thanksgiving turkey where you’d carved the left breast and saved the right one for tomorrow night’s dinner.

  Only critters weren’t so neat about it. Nor had they picked him clean.

  Brax drew in a breath, more to ease the ache in his chest than for the air itself. Though there was evidence of skin sloughing, the body hadn’t reached putrefaction stage, and the smell was still manageable, perhaps because Carl had been out in the open instead of a hot, humid place. Desert air was dry.

  If you didn’t look at the left side of his face, you could almost think he was...

  Not in a million years did Carl look as if he was sleeping. The dead just didn’t look as if they were sleeping, no matter how many times you saw that on TV or read it in a book. Or heard it in a mortuary. They looked dead. Even without the ravaged half face. Slack jaw and drooping facial muscles robbed the body of every last ounce of humanity. They also smelled dead, even before decomposition set in. A body lost control of all muscles. A body had to be cleaned up.

  “I gotta go.”

  “Need a bucket, Braxton?” It wasn’t said unkindly, but with the knowledge that when tragedy happened to someone close, when the victim was family, it didn’t matter how many goddamn times you’d seen death. Distance changed perception.

  He still didn’t need a bucket.

  “I’ll call you about the arrangements. We need to talk about whether an autopsy’s actually necessary.”

  “Oh, it’s necessary,” Teesdale said, bristling.

  Brax realized he hadn’t phrased it correctly. Maybe he should have begged Teesdale not to put Maggie through it, though forgoing autopsy warred with his cop sensibilities. A cop always wanted to rule out foul play. Things set better with an M.E.’s rubber stamp.

  Teesdale held up his hand before Brax could reword. “And it’s my call.” He pointed to his badge. “See that? Little lettering? County Coroner?”

  As a brother, Brax knew he should fight for his sister, spare her the pain of knowing her husband’s body would be dissected like a frog in biology class. As a cop, he knew he should look more closely, ease Carl’s head to the side, peruse the wounds on both the skull and other areas of the body. He’d let himself be caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

  Brotherly duty or cop common sense?

  For the moment, neither choice mattered.

  Right now, one person consumed him. Maggie. Duty to his sister dictated he tell her that an open casket service would be a bad idea. He could almost handle that task. It was the other fact tearing his chest open.

  The last words Maggie had said to her husband would forever be Drop dead.

  Chapter Twelve

  Della’s hand wringing was beginning to wear on Simone’s nerves, mostly because she felt like wringing her hands herself. She’d picked up Simone, and they’d driven over together, both silent, both in shock. Della had started the hand gesture the moment Brax left.

  Carl was dead. Dead. Dear God, please don’t let it be true. But the hard, implacable lines of Brax’s face when he walked out the door haunted her still. Simone knew he didn’t think Sheriff Teesdale had made a mistake.

  “I shouldn’t have been so hard on you yesterday.” Della’s voice hitched.

  Maggie flapped her hand as if she didn’t have a concern in the world. “Oh, Della, don’t even worry about it. Carl and I will work everything out when he gets back.”

  Della glanced at Simone, a frown puckering her brow. Was denial normal? Was Maggie cracking up? She was actually chipper in a jittery, agitated sort of way, her fingers tap-tap-tapping, first the arm of her chair, then her knee, her cheek, and back to the chair.

  What would they all do if—when—Brax came back with solid confirmation? The very idea made Simone shake inside and out.

  Maggie’s brittle smile scared her spitless, and worse, Simone didn’t know what on earth to do or say. She had never dealt with death or grief. Her father was dead, but her parents had divorced when she was very young. She hadn’t seen him again, and his death had come over the TV on the six o’clock news as if he were no more to her than a face in People magazine. In fact, that’s all he was. She didn’t have grandparents or aunts or uncles or cousins that she’d ever known. Her mother might actually have been hatched.

  Simone’s pseudo-fairy-tale life didn’t give her any clues on how to help Maggie. She’d known Carl for three years, and all she wanted to do was rock on the sofa and repeat over and over, I can’t believe he’s gone. How much worse it must be for his wife of ten years. Simone couldn’t even imagine.

  Carl. He was sweet and funny, and God, she would miss him deeply. How could he be gone forever?

  Her heart flipped over and twisted in, out, and around on itself when she thought of that nasty email she’d sent last night. She wished more than anything she could take it back. Hit the recall icon.

  Wherever he was, Carl would have already seen it. He could see everything now. Would he forgive her for getting so angry with him last night?

  She jumped up before she actually started wringing her hands along with Della. “Do you want me to make you some tea, Maggie?”

  Brax had been gone for an hour. She’d made Maggie three cups of tea. Each time, she seemed to add a little more sugar and a little more milk, as if somehow the sweetener and cream would soften the blow when it came.

  “No thanks. Brax will be back soon, and I don’t want to be rushing off to the bathroom every five seconds. I might miss the moment he walks in with Carl.”

  Oh God.

  Simone hurried into the kitchen to make the tea anyway. She could still hear them in the family room, Maggie’s voice high and excited, Della subdued, the roughness of tears edging her tone.

  When she returned with the tea, thicker and creamier than before, the late-afternoon sun had moved beyond the windows, hitting the bedroom end of the trailer. A hush fell along with the relative darkness in the living room. Maggie’s eyes had become smoky hollows in her face.

  The front door burst open. Maggie jumped up, raced halfway across the room, then reached out a hand, her fist closing, clenching, as Chloe barreled into the trailer.

  “Oh my God, sweetie, I would have been here sooner.” She offered no explanation for why she hadn’t been. “I brought you some Xanax. Drugs are a girl’s best friend at a time like this.”

  While Della shed the tears Maggie couldn’t and Simone offered the comfort of tea, Chloe delivered tranquilizers. Simone almost begged for one herself.

  Maggie flapped her hand. “Oh, Chloe, I don’t need any Xanax. Brax went to prove it wasn’t Carl they found. The sheriff made a mistake.”

  Chloe clamped her lips, swept first Della, then Simone with a potent, questioning glare. They both, in that order, dropped their gaze. “Sweetie, I talked to the chickens—”

  Maggie turned, stomped to the sofa, and threw herself down. “They made a mistake, too.”

  “If it wasn’t him, Maggie, then where do you think he is?” In the kindliest, grandmotherly tone, Chloe asked what Simone had been terrified of asking. Concern etched lines into Chloe’s plump face, but her foot slapped a no-nonsense beat on the linoleum.

  They waited through an excruciating two-minute silence. Simone had never understood how truly long two minutes could be. Maggie’s Elvis clock beat in the kitchen, each tick and tock like a minor explosion. Chloe breathed like a dragon waiting to shoot fire. Della sniffed. Maggie hummed.

  Simone prayed for Brax to com
e home.

  * * * * *

  Pandemonium struck the moment the front door opened.

  Maggie flew across the room and into his arms. Brax closed his eyes and clutched her to his chest. Swallowing past the ache in his throat, he held her tightly a moment longer.

  Then he gripped her arms and gently set her back. Her wild eyes searched his face, reflecting desperation. Panic. Raw guilt. He’d do anything to give her the answer she needed. Fucking anything. His choices had died in Teesdale’s jail.

  “Maggie, honey, it was him.”

  “No.” She struggled in his grasp, then lifted her chin, and stared him down. “That’s a lie.”

  Her eyes. They tore him apart.

  He opened his mouth, but the words took forever to come out. “I’d never lie to you about this.” She needed to hear the truth.

  “It’s not him. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll show you.” Head down, she battled against him, butting his chest. “I’m going to see whoever it is, and I’ll show you you’re wrong.”

  Jesus. He wanted to bleed off her pain like a lanced wound, but the only thing he could do was make sure she never carried the memory of Carl’s ruined face in her mind. Or her heart. “You can’t do that, honey, believe me, you can’t.”

  With a mighty shove, Maggie pushed him back against the door, his hip glancing the small hall table. It shook, then tumbled. The thick glass bowl on top bounced off the linoleum, flipped, then landed on a weak point and shattered.

  “See what you’ve done,” Maggie screeched. “Carl always puts his car keys there. Always. And he’s gonna be so mad. He’s gonna be—” She covered her mouth.

  His chest ached as if the tiny shards had sliced straight through the flesh and bone to his heart. It thrashed and bled behind his ribs.

  Brax flattened his hands, bracing himself as Maggie’s pain washed over him like a hard unforgiving rain. Then he did what he had to do. “You’re not going to see him, Maggie.” He spoke with a strong, sure voice, but the breath he dragged in shook his soul and burned his windpipe. “I’ll take care of everything.”

  Jesus, God, look how he’d taken care of everything. His sister had shattered in front of him as surely as the bowl had shattered on the floor.

  He closed his hand over Maggie’s shoulder. “Sit down, honey.” He turned her to the family room. Her feet moved like an automaton, as if her outburst had drained the fight from her.

  He started to guide her into the worn lounger.

  “That’s Carl’s chair.” Maggie’s voice hitched, and her body jerked, her calf ramming the coffee table. He caught her before she fell.

  “Sit here.” He gently pushed her down into the corner of the couch. Someone hovered nearby. Simone. Her scent drifted over him, but he couldn’t let it soothe. He couldn’t let his own pain ease a fraction while Maggie’s agony ripped her in two.

  Brax pushed aside the tea mug and a plastic bottle of pills, then sat on the wood coffee table.

  “It’s not him,” Maggie whispered.

  He cupped her cheek. His eyeballs stung as if the sweat had run off his brow. He blinked, cleared his vision, then found his voice. “Yes, it is. I swear, honey. You have to face it.”

  She shook her head, swiping at her eyes. “He didn’t leave me?”

  “No, honey, he didn’t.” His heart broke in two, and each breath was like a knife wound. He didn’t know what the hell to do for her. Useless, helpless, he told her the things he hoped she needed. “He loved you.”

  Maggie started to rock. “I don’t understand, I don’t understand,” she chanted under her breath.

  “He—” His voice broke. “He fell. He was hiking, and he fell. It was an accident.”

  Maggie’s bottom lip trembled. “God’ll never forgive me. Never.”

  Brax held her face with both hands and fruitlessly tried to dry each of her tears with his thumbs. Nothing would stop them. “Yes, He will. He already does. I promise, I swear.”

  Maggie leaned forward and buried her head in the crook of his neck. She shook against him with the force of her sobs.

  “I told him to drop dead and he did,” she said finally. Loud and clear, her confession. “He dropped dead like I told him to.”

  Her words vibrated inside him, in a deep hollowed-out place. A place that knew guilt, that lived with it, writhed in it. If he could make it so she didn’t live that way for the rest of her life. If he could fix it, if he could take away her pain.

  “Where he is right now, Carl knows you didn’t mean it, honey.” He continued to murmur, meaning lost in the low pitch. It didn’t matter what he said. It was the soothing sound of a voice she needed, anybody’s voice. Carl’s voice. But he could never give her that.

  Stroking Maggie’s back with one hand, he bent his chin to her shoulder, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger as if that would somehow ease the pain for both of them.

  His fingers came away moist.

  “I brought some Xanax,” someone whispered, the sound dropping like a dead weight in the room.

  Chloe held the small bottle out to him.

  “Get me some water.” Behind Maggie’s back, without loosening his hold on her, he deftly unscrewed the protector cap and shook a pill into his hand. He didn’t even give himself a chance to question the wisdom of accepting drugs from a whorehouse madam. As a lifesaver, he’d have grabbed at anything.

  Chloe handed the glass she’d fetched to Simone, and Simone handed to it Brax, their fingertips brushing.

  He took the water with a slight tremble in his hand. He couldn’t look at her.

  Brax tipped Maggie’s chin with the hand holding the little blue pill. “Take this.”

  She looked at the tiny tablet. “I don’t want it.”

  God help me, please take it. Please. He’d break clean in two if he couldn’t end it for her somehow. Even for a few short hours. “It’ll help you sleep.”

  Fresh tear tracks trailed down her cheeks.

  “Put out your tongue.”

  She did, like a child. He dropped the pill, then tilted the glass of water against her lips. Maggie drank with her eyes closed, then swallowed.

  “Are you sure it’s Carl?” she murmured one more time.

  Resting the glass on one knee and the bottle on the other, Brax leaned his forehead against hers. His head ached, his heart bled, and his insides leaked out on the floor as if he’d been gut-shot.

  He hammered her last hope into the ground. “Yeah, honey, I’m sure.”

  * * * * *

  How long would the drug take to work?

  Simone knew if she witnessed the tableau for one more second, she’d die.

  Watching them was agony—Maggie, a pitiful shadow of the woman she’d been two days ago, and Brax, a good man brought to his knees by his sister’s grief. Despair turned his eyes a light blue and his lips a faded white. Stark grooves of pain slashed his features.

  She could do nothing for him. Nothing for Maggie. Nothing to ease their anguish. Nothing could ever take away what Maggie had said to Carl.

  Maggie would live with those words for the rest of her life.

  Simone’s eyes filled with hot tears. Chloe’s arm slipped around her shoulder, hugging her close. As a mother would.

  Simone wished someone, anyone, could have done the same for Maggie. And for Brax.

  * * * * *

  His eyeballs throbbed from the inside out. A headache pounded at his temples. His sister’s life had gone to shit, and he’d failed miserably at doing anything to help her. The only sure thing was that he would not allow Maggie to see Carl. Christ. He’d never let her face that. In the gloomy hallway outside his sister’s bedroom where she rested, Brax shoved his hands through his hair and let his breath out in a sigh.

  When he opened his eyes, Simone stood in the hall. He wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around her, bury his face in her hair, and hold her.

  Until Maggie woke up.

  Simone padded down the hall, stopping when
her fresh citrus tang was enough to ease the ache behind his eyes. Earlier her scent had offered comfort he couldn’t take. He filled himself with her, breathing deeply of her gentle fragrance.

  “Is she sleeping?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” He ached to touch her, even her hair, but he kept his hands at his side. “Never thought I’d think it, but drugs are a damn good thing.”

  She put a hand to his cheek. “How are you doing?”

  He felt worse than Carl had looked, like critters had eaten away half his heart and half his soul. “I’m fine.”

  “Liar,” she mocked gently.

  “I wish I was. A liar, I mean. Then I could have told her it wasn’t him down in...” He stopped. Simone didn’t need to know Carl was stuck like garbage down in the jailhouse basement.

  “You did the right thing. She has to face it eventually.”

  He had the churning sense that Maggie wasn’t close to facing anything. Her voice thick and slurred, she’d begged him to stroke her hair while she fell asleep. Even though he was younger, he’d felt more like her father. Watching her, he’d hurt so bad inside he’d almost lost it and cried while he’d rubbed her matted, messy hair.

  His heart seized with the memory of Maggie’s last whispered words before she succumbed to a drug-induced sleep.

  Maybe he didn’t accidentally fall into the gorge.

  She’d looked at him with the same frenzied hope she’d had when she sent him down to the sheriff’s to make sure it wasn’t Carl’s body. Then she’d verbally kicked him senseless.

  Maybe somebody pushed him, Tyler. Maybe somebody killed him. You have to find out who did it. Carl can’t rest until you do.

  Maggie couldn’t rest until she’d assuaged her own guilt by proving that someone else had done worse to her husband than she had. Words, some so fucking momentous, others so fucking useless.