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

by Skully, Jennifer

  “Why don’t you see what a background check on Lafoote comes up with?” Brax phrased it as a question rather than an order. It was still Teesdale’s case.

  “It couldn’t hurt,” the sheriff agreed.

  Brax came to his next question. He hated to do it to Maggie, but it had to be asked. “Any gossip around town about Carl and another woman?”

  Teesdale chuckled, though Brax couldn’t find the humor in it. “Not a whiff of that kind of thing. I guarantee you, if Carl was stepping out, we’d all know about it.”

  “The judge doesn’t seem to think it’s out of the realm of possibility.”

  “Della?” Teesdale rolled his eyes. “Men aren’t high on her list. She even thought I was having an affair two years ago when my wife went to L.A. to visit her mother. Told me I oughta stop my cheating ways and beg forgiveness.”

  “You got any other bright ideas?”

  “If I did, I wouldn’t be sitting here on my ass.”

  Shit. He’d been hoping Teesdale’s Goldstone knowledge would provide some leads. “I’ll still give Lafoote a try. Tomorrow.” Tonight, he had other priorities. Maggie and Simone. “First thing tomorrow, I want to go up to the trail above the site.” Doing it now, in the dark, might destroy any evidence.

  “I was planning on heading out about seven. Think you can be up that early?”

  The sheriff should have already made the trek up there, but it was too damn late to make recriminations. “I’ll be there. At the trailhead where you found his truck.” Early was good, he’d make it back in time to be at the bank close to opening.

  Brax rose, then stuck out his hand, neither apology nor guilt, simply acceptance.

  Teesdale stood, took the offering, shaking hard and fast.

  “Find anything interesting in the truck or his personal effects?” If the depression in Carl’s head didn’t come from the fall, then everything he’d had on his person constituted potential evidence.

  Teesdale tipped his head and pushed his hat farther back on his head. “Funny thing about that truck. Carl’s fingerprints were missing off the door handle and the steering wheel. At least on the spots where they should have been.”

  So, Teesdale had dusted. Good.

  “And funny thing about his keys.”

  Brax waited out the good ole boy routine. Being a cop, he appreciated that stringing things out garnered more reaction.

  “Can’t find those keys. Weren’t in his pocket.” Teesdale looked down, then wriggled his hand into the front pocket of his jeans. “Funny thing about pockets on a pair of jeans. Things don’t slip out easily.” He glanced up. “Carl was wearing jeans. And I checked ’em. Not tight, but tight enough, if you catch my drift.” The set of car keys he pulled out caught on the upper edge of his pocket, held, then pulled free.

  “Was he wearing a jacket? Maybe he took it off up on the trail.”

  “Yeah,” the sheriff snorted. “A likely scenario. He got overheated, pulled off his jacket, slipped on a rock while he was struggling to get his arm out of the sleeve, and fell all the way down. Of course, the jacket managed to disengage before he actually tumbled.”

  “Won’t know until we get there. Seven. I’ll be there.”

  He left the office. The sheriff’s chair squeaked behind him.

  Brax had one thing to be grateful for. The sheriff had never mentioned talking to Maggie regarding her whereabouts at all times during the day Carl had taken a dive off that trail.

  In the parking lot, Brax stuck his hand in his pocket for his keys. The night had grown cooler, but not cool enough to warrant a jacket. His car keys had gone into his front pocket. Reaching down for them, he didn’t figure they’d have fallen out even if someone had turned him upside down and dumped him on his head.

  So what had happened to Carl’s keys?

  Brax stopped at The Chicken Coop before heading back to Maggie’s place. As Teesdale had claimed, the chickens added nothing new to the mix. Brax hadn’t expected anything more, but not questioning them would have been dereliction of duty.

  Only when he was back in his car and headed along the highway to Maggie’s did Brax allow himself to think about Simone.

  Simone, spinner of fantasies. Simone, who’d sent Brax’s now-dead—and apparently murdered—brother-in-law a threatening email. Not just threatening. Pissed as hell.

  Which was how Brax felt as he thought once more about that salacious fantasy.

  He’d have a few choice words for the author before the night was over. He’d get some answers even if he had to interrogate her with a light in her face like some zealous, forties-style cop.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Simone wished she was a nail biter or a hand wringer, but her mother had drummed both bad habits out of her at an early age. Either gesture would have helped ease some of the tension she now felt. Brax had come home. He drove up, but hadn’t entered the trailer, not for an interminable ten minutes.

  When he did finally come in, a paper bag crushed beneath one arm, Brax had pointed at her, told her to get her stuff, and said he’d drive her home. Then, as if belatedly remembering his manners, he’d asked Chloe to stay with Maggie for a little while longer.

  No one argued, not even Simone. Chloe shooed her out with a flap of both hands.

  Now the paper bag sat on the armrest between them. She trapped the questions racing through her mind in her aching, parched throat. Half her brain wanted to know all the answers. Now. The other half—left or right, she couldn’t be sure—wanted to crawl into the backseat, lie down, and sob until neither a tear nor a single thought remained.

  The silence in the 4Runner shouted out her guilt.

  She’d betrayed Maggie by writing that fantasy. Instead of bringing Carl and Maggie together in bliss as she’d intended, Simone had most likely driven a wedge of lies between them.

  Her tummy flip-flopped with every turn of the wheel. It sank, then climbed back up to her throat. It wasn’t a clichéd description, but an actual roller coaster in her stomach, that same sudden seesawing fear that hit upon first realizing you’d done a terrible thing or made a horrible mistake. It could be a life-on-the-line thing like changing lanes only to suddenly hear the shimmy of air brakes and see that semi’s grill up close and personal in your rearview mirror. Or it could be something as simple as suddenly remembering the Visa bill was due yesterday.

  That’s how she knew she’d done a very bad thing to Maggie and Carl. Now Brax knew, too, signs of his knowledge riding his tensed lips and his narrowed eyes. He bore the implacable look of a patrolman who’d stopped her for speeding. He didn’t even need the mirrored sunglasses to pull it off. That look and the paper sack between them—chanting Open, open, open—said it all. It wasn’t a funny commercial running through her head.

  He wheeled into the gravel drive and came to a stop behind her truck, boxing her in should she try to escape.

  He reached across her, yanked her door handle, his arm brushing her belly. She shrank at the contact and his stiff command of “Inside.”

  Not “Get out of the car,” or “Could we please go inside and talk,” just that hard-edged order.

  In other circumstances, she would have given him the finger and a dirty word. Instead, she had only one thought. I wrote a fantasy, Carl’s dead, and I sent him an email saying he’d be buzzard bait.

  Okay, that was three thoughts. If she could have limited it to one, she might have been able to forgive herself.

  Brax stood at the passenger side door, holding it open, waiting. So intent on her own thoughts, she hadn’t moved, hadn’t heard him shut his own door, or seen him walk around to her side.

  She climbed out, staring at his chest then his boots as she clutched her purse to her chest.

  He graciously extended his arm for her to proceed, but slammed the car door. She’d left her door unlocked, stupid girl. Jason Lafoote’s obnoxious aftershave still wafted out as she opened the screen, as if he’d been waiting once again on the sunporch. Of course, that
could have been from the other night. The man’s essence lingered like a bad smell.

  The sun having gone down behind the hills, her trailer lay in near darkness. She flipped the light switch to banish both the intimacy and the fear.

  Of course, her fear remained. Her beloved Goldstone had been struck by tragedy. Tragedy always came in threes.

  She hadn’t cleaned up. The sofa cushions were askew from her mad search for the portable phone. Last night’s wineglass sat on the coffee table, lipstick stains smudging the rim and the evaporated remains of white zin like sludge at the bottom. Cracker crumbs dotted the wood surface.

  Brax bypassed her, dropping his paper bag onto the table. It landed with the soft plop of lightweight contents.

  He pointed to the couch. “Sit.”

  She wasn’t a dog, but she sat obediently, legs together primly, feet curled up against the sofa bottom, and hands clasped on her thighs.

  Brax did not ease her discomfort by sitting beside her. He remained standing, the overhead light behind his head keeping his eyes in shadow.

  “The fantasy you wrote for Carl. Tell me about it.”

  She twisted her hands in her lap. The fantasy. The bane of her existence, the harbinger of bad things to come. “Didn’t we already go over that the other night?” Sort of?

  “Quite frankly, I don’t remember what the fuck we went over the other night. All I remember is kissing you. Then finding out Carl is dead the next day.”

  Bam, bam, bam. He shot her down, picked her back up, then blew her away, all with three devastating sentences.

  She didn’t know what to say. The ridiculous urge to hum a toneless tune came over her, but she held it at bay. Maybe if he hadn’t given her such an open-ended question. “Could you ask me something that requires a yes or no answer, because I really don’t know where to start.” Her eyes started to cloud up.

  “How about this?” He bent, grabbed the grocery bag, ripped the top open, and dumped the contents on her coffee table.

  Rolled pieces of paper scattered all over the table and onto the carpet, some squashed, some in perfect scrolls, others tied with pretty silver and red ribbons.

  She touched one, picked it up gingerly, as if it were a snake that might sink its fangs into her if she moved too quickly.

  “You did write that, didn’t you?” He indicated the pile with a stab.

  Unrolling a scroll, her own words jumped out at her.

  He slid his fingers into her creamy center, taking her gasp of pleasure into his mouth, tasting his own essence on her tongue.

  Oh my God, it was the end of the blow job scene. And the start of another one. She looked at Brax and almost asked if he’d read it. Oh my God, he’d probably read the whole story. The whole darn story. She blushed, heat spreading through her entire body. She remembered writing the scene. She remembered how she’d grown moist writing. It hadn’t involved Maggie and Carl. There’d been only herself with her dream lover, and her body had ached for his touch. Her heart had ached for a figment of her imagination.

  “That was a yes or no question.”

  “Ye-es.” Her voice cracked.

  “Did he give you instructions on what to write? Doodle says his wife gives you instructions.”

  She swallowed, but couldn’t get her voice above a whisper. “Yes. And yes.”

  “How explicit were his instructions?”

  “That’s not yes or no.” God, her voice sounded all wobbly, and hot tears burned at the backs of her eyes. She knew her reactions didn’t make sense. But she couldn’t think, she could only feel. Somehow, that fantasy she wrote for Carl set off a horrible chain reaction that led to him falling into the gorge. An untenable thought, but she couldn’t help it.

  Brax shoved the coffee table out of the way and hunkered down beside her. She realized she had been staring at the paper, the ink suddenly running down the page from three wet splats.

  He took her forearm in a gentle but firm grip. “What did he tell you to write?”

  She was going to start blubbering. Any minute. And then she wouldn’t even be able to think, let alone talk. She rushed in before the onslaught. “He wanted something out in the open on a long walk. He described what he wanted the characters to look like and what they should be wearing and where he wanted them to stop, then he told me to make up the rest myself.” She bit her lip and sniffed. “The...you know...the sex part.”

  Brax jerked to his feet, and, his back to her, ran both hands through his hair. Then he turned to her, his eyes stark, pained. “What was he going to do with it?”

  Her lip trembled. She sucked it in and bit down hard, hoping the ache would fight away the tears. Then everything inside her rushed out at once. “He was supposed to read it to Maggie. At least that’s what I thought he was going to do. Della said Maggie was upset about stuff, and I could tell she was. Then Carl asked me to write a story, and I thought it was for them, so that they could make everything better.” She hiccupped and sniffled and started blubbering like she’d been afraid she would. “I wanted to make it all better, but neither of them would tell me anything. And it didn’t sound like Maggie even knew about it. So I got scared he didn’t have me write it for Maggie, but for someone else. That he’d been having an affair, and I’d actually written a story he read to some...some...bitch. Now he’s dead, and I sent him the most awful email. I feel so terrible.”

  Her nose ran, her eyes hurt, and beside her, Brax smelled so good, like...well, it wasn’t like anything she could describe, a little sweet, a little sharp, a clean male scent that made her want to bury her face against his shoulder.

  “So you sent him a nasty email because you thought he’d tricked you into writing something for his lover. That’s all you did. It wasn’t a crime.”

  She sniffed and nodded and stared down at that paper with all her erotic fantasies and dreams running down the soggy page. There was so much of her in it.

  She’d failed. Again. Worse than putting all her eggs in one basket and losing her business, her career, and her fiancé. Worse than being a screamer. She wanted to make things better for everyone, for Maggie, for Carl. She’d failed miserably at that.

  And now Carl was dead.

  * * * * *

  “If I hadn’t written that fantasy, none of this would have happened,” Simone said through her tears.

  Brax stroked a finger down her wet cheek, then murmured in her ear, “You keep telling me I’m not to blame. Well, same goes for you. What happened to Carl wasn’t your fault.”

  The tension across Brax’s shoulders had eased. Simone was neither a liar nor a cheat.

  She looked at him, mascara smudges beneath her eyes, her nose reddened, and tear tracks down her pink cheeks. “It’s not?”

  Money had played a role in Carl’s demise. Brax felt the truth of that as if it were written in Carl’s own blood. “Writing a fantasy for him doesn’t make you responsible for his death.”

  Christ, he was an ass. He’d browbeaten her confession out of her only to find that she’d been playing the Good Witch of the North and waving her magic wand to fix everyone’s problems. If it were that easy, Maggie and Carl would have done it themselves. Simone had said it herself, but she hadn’t believed her own words.

  He smoothed her cheek dry even as another teardrop fell. “If he didn’t use it the way you intended, that was his fault, not yours.” He tapped the paper on her lap. “The fantasy is beautiful.”

  She gasped. “Oh my God, you read it.”

  “Yeah, I read it.”

  “All of it?”

  “Every single word.”

  She dropped her head, burying her face in her hands. “This is awful. This is so awful.”

  “I’m an idiot. I saw your last email, and I wanted someone to blame for Maggie’s pain.” He touched her hair. “I was wrong.”

  She sniffled, then raised her head slightly to look at him, a hand still covering her mouth. “Did Carl kill himself?”

  He had no idea how much to
tell her, but he couldn’t let her go on thinking that. “No.” He pushed her hair away from her face. “Carl left behind a lot of unanswered questions, but that isn’t one of them. Not in my mind.”

  “What about Sheriff Teesdale’s mind?”

  “No one thinks that. Whatever happened to Carl, he didn’t do it to himself.”

  She shuddered and closed her eyes. “Did somebody kill him?”

  “I...” Maggie would say it tomorrow, even if he didn’t say it tonight. “It is my considered opinion that someone murdered him.”

  Tears spilled over her lower lids once more. “Oh my God, oh my God. No one in Goldstone would hurt him. Nobody.”

  He steeled himself to handle her emotion. Simone would never do things half-measure. When she smiled, she did so from the inside out, and when she cried, she sobbed. Brax did the only logical thing he could. He gathered her into his arms. Pulling her onto his lap, he rode out the pain with her, whispering all the while. “Don’t cry. It’s okay. There’s no need to cry. Don’t cry.”

  But she didn’t stop. Helplessly, he ran his hands up and down her back, through her hair, along her arms, but he couldn’t stop the flow. She’d run from the big, bad city to the safety of Goldstone, and suddenly found that the secure place she’d built for herself had fallen apart. Carl’s death had rocked her trailer off its foundation.

  His T-shirt moistened beneath the onslaught. Her body shook, and she pulled her legs onto the sofa, curling into him, into herself. Powerless to do more for her, he murmured soft nothings against her hair, pressing his lips to the silky strands.

  When her sobs faded to snuffles against his chest, he raised her chin with his finger and kissed the tip of her nose.

  “I’m a mess,” she whispered, wiping her eyes.

  “Yeah. Your nose looks as red as Rudolph’s.”

  She laughed, then hiccupped. “I’m sorry for going off like that.”

  Her gentle laugh loosened the knot in his abdomen. “Don’t be sorry.” He pulled a tissue from the box on the side table. “Here. Blow.”