The only saving grace God had given Brax was letting Maggie fall asleep before he had to answer her plea.
Maggie could sleep, but she’d never rest. He knew he’d do whatever she asked. He had to. When the evidence showed Carl had lost his footing and fallen without any help from another’s hand, Brax would have to tell her that, too. There wasn’t enough Xanax in creation to ease the pain she’d face then.
Simone soothed with a soft, wordless murmur. He wanted to sink into her comforting touch, lose himself in her warmth.
“I think you were right, Brax,” Simone murmured in the gentlest of voices.
“About what?” Even her voice stroked his aches.
“You are like the Tin Man. All along, he had a heart as big as a mountain. He just didn’t know it.”
Brax knew he had a heart. It lay in pieces at her feet.
Putting his hand over Simone’s, he held her palm to his cheek. He couldn’t tell her in words what her touch meant. He couldn’t express how badly he wanted to take the comfort she offered. He could only let her know through his gaze and the heat of his hand over hers.
Then he let go, ending the moment before he begged for so much more. “I have to check out Carl’s office.”
“Check out his office? Why?” She covered her mouth, muffling her small exclamation. “Life insurance and stuff? Do you think he had any?”
He hoped to God Carl had some sort of insurance to help see Maggie through. A free plot in the Goldstone Cemetery wasn’t going to do it. “We’ll see.”
Looking for an insurance policy now wasn’t his intention. Maggie would ask him what he’d done to find Carl’s supposed killer the moment she woke, and the sooner he could lay her latest fear, qualm, need, desire, or whatever the hell it was to rest, the better for her. In the long run, she’d have to accept that Carl’s death was a terrible accident.
His cop skills were the most he had to offer. His consoling abilities sure left a lot to be desired.
What a woman needed at a time like this was her mother. Theirs was almost four hundred miles away in Palm Springs.
Shit. He should have phoned Mom hours ago.
“Have to make a call,” he muttered, easing past her in the hallway. Simone trailed him into the family room where he made the smartest move of the day, maybe of his life.
He called his mother.
* * * * *
Simone watched Brax talk to his mother. He raked his hand through his hair so many times, it had become a mass of tangles snagging his fingers with each new pass.
He squeezed his eyes shut as he spoke. His feet shifted, his body moved, constantly, a hand on his hip, then his neck, kneading, finally back to his hair again. As if movement were the only thing keeping him sane.
Della had fled to the kitchen, ostensibly to get them all a glass of wine. Simone needed something mind-numbing.
This was a crisis. An emotional one. Della hid from it in the kitchen. Simone wasn’t doing any better. But Chloe, she’d turned out to be a godsend for more than Our Manor of the Ladies.
Chloe patted the couch beside her. Simone wanted to touch Brax, anything to ease his tense shoulders and the harsh slash across his brow. That moment of closeness in the hallway, when he’d let her cup his cheek, had passed.
By the time he’d concluded the call, Simone had taken Chloe’s offer, accepting the woman’s comforting arm around her shoulders.
Brax turned. Anguish and anger lit his eyes. She had the feeling he could smash his fist into the wall and not even feel the physical pain. Then he cleared his throat, pointed in the general direction of Carl’s office trailer, and said, “I’ll look for those papers.”
Simone made a move to follow him. Chloe pulled her back down.
“Let him go, honey.”
“I have to do something. He’s hurting so bad, Chloe.”
“He needs to fight his demons by doing. It’s a man’s way. So let him alone to do what he has to.”
Simone pulled back, examining Chloe’s soft, powdered face. “How’d you get to be so smart about men?”
Chloe smiled. “It’s my job, sweetie pie. What you have to do for him is be strong and take care of his sister because he can’t do it right now.”
The kindly madam pricked Simone’s conscience with that directive. “I don’t know how to deal with Maggie’s grief.”
“Nobody does, sweetie. What do you think you ought to do?”
“Wait here until Maggie wakes up or her mother arrives.”
“That’s the secret. Be there for them when they need you.”
Simone managed a small smile. “Chloe, you amaze me.” Simone would stay as long as Brax and Maggie needed her.
Chloe patted Simone’s shoulder to indicate all was settled, then raised her voice to call, “Della, where’s that wine?”
* * * * *
Maggie had said Carl always left his keys in the bowl when he came in. The broken bowl. One of the ladies had cleared the mess away while Brax had tucked Maggie into bed.
The keys weren’t in the bowl. Shit, he’d really lost his ability to think clearly. He should have asked Teesdale for Carl’s personal effects. His keys would have been among them. He’d be damned if he’d go charging back to ask. What would it matter to Carl if he broke the trailer door down now? After first testing to make sure it was locked, Brax retrieved a crowbar out of his SUV.
Damn, it was liberating not to have to worry about obtaining a search warrant.
The weather-stripping was degraded, the door loose. Brax popped it open with a minimum of effort or damage. After two days closed up in the summer sun, the air inside the trailer gushed out hot and fetid. Drawn shades suffused the place with an eerie gloom despite the early-evening light outside.
He put a hand on the doorjamb, a foot on the metal step, and paused. He’d search the place because he had to give Maggie some sort of peace, and because doing something pushed out the memory of her tear-streaked face. Finally, he hauled himself inside. Conducting a visual inspection of the small trailer, he felt along the left wall for the light switch and flipped it on.
Damn. Carl was exceptionally neat. Or rather he had been.
Obviously a false assumption, Brax had presumed the neatness in the house was due to Maggie. The desk, a battered Salvation Army variety, was clear of scattered papers and files, with only a closed spiral notebook off to one side. Not even a speck of dust lurked at the base of the computer. A small bottle of air squirt for cleaning keyboards sat by the monitor and next to that, a spray can of glass cleaner. A bottle of aspirin, a pencil holder, magnetic paper clip dispenser, and a Post-it pad neatly lined the edge of the calendar-blotter. The blank calendar squares stared up at him, providing no clues as to Carl’s schedule.
Beside the too-neat desk sat an equally empty trash can lined with white plastic.
If a kitchen or dining nook had ever existed in the trailer, Carl had long since torn them out. Pale blue indoor-outdoor tiles carpeted the floor. A door at one end led presumably to the bathroom. A large, slanted drafting table abutted one wall with three wooden four-drawer filing cabinets, scarred but polished to a glossy shine, lined up next to it.
The drafting table drew Brax’s gaze. Three topographical maps covered its surface, each held down with sliding clamps. Carl had written no notes in the margins, but had marked several spots with a red X. Outhouse excavation? Brax discerned that the marked spots were not within Goldstone township, but located in the vast hills and valleys. Caves? He surmised that each X registered a potential site for one of Carl’s spelunking sojourns.
The maps neither proved nor disproved murder. They simply confirmed what everyone said; Carl had taken up spelunking. Brax turned from that dead end to the filing cabinets.
The first cabinet contained past tax returns for the last seven years, as required by law, all neatly labeled with subfolders for various types of transactional backup.
Brax would return for further examination if necessary. More im
portantly, he wanted Carl’s bank statements, the siphoning off of money being the first thing Maggie had complained about. Before she’d ranted about the floozy.
His heart jumped into his throat, then beat a path to his gut. Damn it, he couldn’t afford to think of Maggie in ranting terms. He was a cop; she was a citizen with a concern regarding her husband’s death. Anything else screwed up his objectivity.
Hell, at this point, he needed to look up the definition of objectivity in the freaking dictionary.
He moved on to the next cabinet. Bingo. Hanging folders and files sorted by institution and account and filed by year. Damn, Carl had accounts with almost every major stock and investment establishment. What the hell?
Brax pulled out the first folder. He gave a long, low whistle upon opening it. A 401K account, the balance of which was more than Brax’s net worth. He drew out the latest statement for each of the accounts and laid them on the drafting table, flipping through each to peruse the contents. When he was done, a quick calculation rounded to the nearest ten thousand staggered him.
Carl had almost a million dollars spread out in bonds, stocks, real estate partnerships, gold coins. The diversification ran the gamut. He even owned railroad cars, for God’s sake.
Where had Carl gotten the money for all this? Maggie had said they were doing fine, but this was far more than fine. This was unseemly, given the fact that they lived in a trailer in a broken-down town full of losers. Why was Carl, a rich man, hiding out in the desert?
Hiding out? Running from an embezzlement scheme? Brax was developing a melodramatic streak in his old age.
Maggie wanted answers. The first answer was going to have to come from her. Where had the money come from and why hadn’t she told him the full extent? She was his sister, and this investigation was personal, and he resented the hell out of being kept in the dark.
The minor irritation washed away the residual ache and galvanized his actions. He flipped through the checking account statement. Carl had withdrawn cash at regular intervals. How could he spend three hundred bucks at a whack? Brax pressed the computer’s On button. Carl, unbelievably, had jotted down the user ID and password on the inside cover of each account folder.
Did he think that feeble lock on his trailer door would keep out anyone bent on ransacking his financials?
The computer booted up, then requested a password. Brax snorted. He was no hacker. Thank goodness all he had to do was open the spiral notebook neatly placed to one side of the desk. Sure enough, there it was, along with his email codes.
Carl, where the hell was your head when you wrote this stuff down?
Brax typed in onehotmama, trying not to think about what it meant. He accessed the Internet, requested the site, and punched in Carl’s ID and password for his checking account, then scrolled through the transactions, starting with the most recent. A few checks had cleared, an ATM withdrawal, a branch withdrawal—
Holy shit.
Carl drew out three thousand dollars the morning he died.
Chapter Thirteen
Dammit. Carl had withdrawn three thousand in cash. Three thousand. Then he’d gone for a hike? In Brax’s gut, the man’s actions didn’t make sense.
Carl and Maggie had been having marital problems. Maggie had reamed him. Carl displayed an overzealous reaction to a dart game and a proposed resort. Then he’d cashed out three thousand dollars and fallen off the side of a mountain.
Coincidence? Not in Brax’s experience. Though he believed her reasons for crying murder were due more to her own sense of guilt, Maggie might be right.
Could the money have been on him when he died? Did Teesdale take it? Brax thought the sheriff incompetent, but not a thief. More importantly, Carl’s unidentified assailant would have gotten to the money first. Before the chickens and way before Teesdale.
Dammit, dammit. Brax should have known something more was up than ten years of marriage becoming routine. Carl had bled the bank account for weeks in small but consistent amounts. Maggie had told Brax that, and the statements confirmed it.
Money and murder went hand in hand.
Brax, for his part, had wanted only to smooth things over, bring the issue to a swift resolution, and get back to his vacation. He’d fobbed his responsibilities off on a bestselling relationship book. He’d planned to give his sister short shrift.
Now Carl was lying in Teesdale’s basement. Jesus. He should have done something. Anything. Instead, he’d fucked up his duties.
Same as he had in Cottonmouth, he’d ignored signs screaming at him.
His initial thought was to wake up Maggie. Now. She had to know more than she’d told him. Her husband had a net worth of almost a million, and, by her own admission, she checked his balances on line. Did she know about all the accounts? Why was she hiding shit from him when she’d flat-out asked for his help?
One last unbearable thought pounded at him.
Had Maggie discovered the withdrawal, then followed Carl up that trail, and fought with him about it?
He was a cop, and the golden rule was look first to those closest to the victim.
He would not follow the rule with his own family, and he didn’t give a goddamn what anyone said about that. He’d make damn sure Teesdale didn’t follow it either. Brax’s gut told him Maggie’s reactions were born of guilt over her last words to Carl. If she’d had anything to do with his death, then for the last two days, she’d given the performance of an Academy Award-winning actress. No. No one could have faked her reactions along the way. Not the ballistic anger, nor the disabling pain. Maggie had denied to herself that Carl was dead, then she’d cooked up the murder scenario. To appease her own guilt. That was all. Nothing more.
So where the hell was the money?
The cash or a paper trail leading to it had to be somewhere in Carl’s office. When Brax found it, he’d tackle Maggie. In the morning, when she’d made it through this first hellish night and the temporary oblivion provided by Xanax.
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, draining his anger as he exhaled. Emotion—whether it was anger, self-pity, or guilt—interfered with a job to be done. It always fucked up an investigation, and he damn well couldn’t afford the luxury of self-recrimination. He needed a clear head.
Brax flipped through the notebook. Carl had written down, presumably, every credit card he possessed, and his insurance policies, with contact name and number, from home owners to car, including a life policy. The pen used appeared to be the same, black, with the same degree of legibility, as if Carl had cited all the pertinent information in one fell swoop.
Why? Nobody was this methodical. Even Brax, who considered himself relatively organized, would have to scour his wallet to obtain each and every credit card number. Thank God the billfold had never been stolen. Had Carl truly been about to leave Maggie and written out the data in order to help her pick up the pieces once he was gone?
Brax found the remaining pages of the notebook empty. He opened each desk drawer on the right side to uncover only the usual assortment of office supplies. Almost the usual. A calligraphy set lay in the bottom left drawer. Calligraphy didn’t seem Carl’s style. Nor did the fact that he owned an extensive quantity of colored pens.
He started on the left-hand drawers, only to find more of the same innocuous reserve of office supplies, and a well-read science-fiction book by a guy named Waldo Whitehead. Brax recognized the author and the name of the book, Death Game, from the bestsellers lists. Damn, the title was strangely prophetic. Carl hadn’t struck him as a reader, and a desk drawer was an odd place for it. He flipped through, hoping for a secret cache of notes that would explain everything. Yeah. He could hope, but he was a cop, and he knew things were never that easy. The book contained nothing of interest. He left it on the desktop.
Shoving the rolling chair back from the desk, Brax returned once more to the filing cabinets. If Carl had been idiotic enough to write down all his passwords and methodical enough to detail all his credit fac
ts, he might also have written down, in detail, what he’d used the money for. Hopefully including the three thousand he’d withdrawn yesterday morning.
The answer had to be somewhere in this goddamn trailer.
He yanked open the first drawer on the third filing cabinet. It contained documentation on major purchases, the cars, a new stove, the Jacuzzi on the sunporch. He’d kept every warranty booklet and instruction manual for everything he owned, right down to the four-slice toaster he’d bought over three years ago. In alphabetical order by type of purchase, the booklets filled the entire cabinet, though Carl hadn’t crammed the drawers, leaving plenty of space in between for new additions.
He had not, however, documented any new purchases beyond those expenditures he’d made for his spelunking equipment. As Maggie had testified, he’d used his credit card for those items, and the last major purchase had been made over four months ago.
No three thousand anywhere and no accounting for where the money had gone. Nor anything indicating what he’d done with smaller amounts he’d taken out over the last few months. Shit.
The fourth cabinet turned out to be empty, as if Carl had planned for future expansion. At least, Brax presumed it to be empty until he got to the bottom drawer.
A paper grocery sack had been shoved in but not squashed down. Two spools of ribbon, one red, one silver, their unsecured ends curling, lay on top.
Paper sack. Something about a paper bag...and...and...ah, he had it. Carl came in with a grocery bag the night of the Big Fight. Maggie had accused him of buying porno magazines to entertain himself. Carl had not revealed what was in that bag.
Brax batted aside the spools of ribbon and lifted out the bag, taking it over to the drafting table. Too light to hold even one magazine, he unfolded the evenly turned down opening.
Heavy-weight antiqued scrolls, each tied in a bow with a red or silver ribbon, filled the bag to capacity. He pulled out one, marked with a calligraphic number six. The bag, in total, gave up twenty rolls, each with a number painstakingly written in a different color on the right end.
Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) Page 17