“Now where’s my hug?” she demanded, her arms wide.
“Right here.” He scooped her up, hugged her tight, thanked the good Lord for her safe deliverance, then set her back on her feet.
“Now how’s my Maggie?”
“Not good.” Just before turning in, she’d hit the tears again like a drunk hit the bottle after a dry spell. If you looked up the word inadequate in the dictionary, his picture would be the pictorial example. He’d finally gotten Maggie to bed. “She’s still sleeping if all that pounding didn’t wake her.”
“Tyler, you’re not too big to put over my knee for impertinence.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He kissed her flower-scented hair for good measure.
“Yoo-hoo, Rockie, we’re over here.”
How had the elderly gentleman managed to drive if he couldn’t even figure out where the front door was?
Except that this was no elderly gentleman. Hell, he couldn’t be much older than Brax, with a Palm Desert tan and a weight-room build. Two suitcases dangled from his hands.
“Don’t you say one word, Tyler. He’s my gigolo.”
Gigolo? He couldn’t get the word past his paralyzed throat muscles, let alone push the thought through his mushy brain.
“He thinks I’m a rich widow with pots and pots of money. So don’t you dare tell him any different. Or you’ll have to drive me all the way back home because he’ll dump me like Mr. Potato Head.”
“Isn’t that ‘like a hot potato?’”
“What-evver,” she said with a perfect Valley Girl twang.
Brax was sure someone had dropped him into the middle of a Twilight Zone episode. Or worse, The Outer Limits. There was always a nifty little moral at the end of The Outer Limits.
He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what this moral was going to be.
He would not ask his mother if she and Rockie...made whoopie. His dad would roll over in his grave.
Brax pointed somewhere in the vicinity of the bedroom hallway. “Maggie”—half choking out his sister’s name—“help Maggie, and Rockie can come in, no questions asked.”
Unless Rockie actually touched Brax’s mom. Then, he’d have to deck the guy. No questions asked.
His mother blew him a kiss as he stepped back to let her in.
He almost let her get away until another horrifying thought trembled on the edge of his brain. “But he is not sleeping in the same room with you.”
“You’re so old-fashioned, Tyler. You sound just like an old man.”
Women, even his mother, had aged him.
Chapter Eighteen
Breakfast usually consisted of coffee, hot, strong, and sweet.
Which made her think dreamily of Brax.
“Simone, you’ll make your double chin worse leaning on your hand that way.” Her mother tapped the firm flesh beneath her own chin.
Simone’s hand went reflexively to her throat. Double chin?
“Honey, pass me another muffin, would you?” Kingston waggled his fingers toward the plate just out of reach in the middle of the table.
She’d pulled out all the stops this morning by toasting English muffins and breaking into one of Mrs. Killian’s jars of homemade marmalade. Kingston took two from the plate Jackie offered him.
Her mother had delicately eaten half of a half.
“Darling, it’s terribly stuffy. I could barely breathe in my room last night. I barely slept a wink on that bed. There’s an awful dip in the middle that I kept falling into like the Black Hole of Calcutta. And I do believe I detected eau-de-dirty-socks. Open a window or a door, would you?”
What her mother probably smelled was the swamp cooler and nothing like dirty socks. But Simone dutifully rose to open the front door for fresh air. She could certainly use a little herself. Maybe it would help her double chin.
She patted the underside of her chin as she opened her front door. Della almost knocked right on her face.
Simone squeaked, her heart breaking into the two-step. “You scared the heebies out of my jeebies.”
Worse, she wondered what on earth could have made Della rise before her customary ten o’clock? Judge Della Montrose never let the clerks schedule court before noon.
“Is it Maggie?” she whispered, her voice trembling.
“When I left last night, she was fine. Well, as fine as fine can be under the circumstances.” Della’s voice was equally low, befitting those circumstances.
Everybody was fine. She was fine, Brax was fine, Jackie was fine. Now Maggie was fine, too. Fine was an overused, meaningless word that didn’t mean diddly.
“I have to talk to you about something else.” Della glanced over her shoulder at the long, black car nestled against the short picket fence. Goldstone dust covered the body panels, hood, and roof, clinging like barnacles Kingston would have to scrub off. “Whose car is that?”
“My mother’s. She came for a visit.”
“Simone, don’t keep your guest standing on the doorstep. It’s extremely impolite,” Ariana called.
Holding the door wide, Simone added, “I made fresh coffee.” Her mother had gulped the last of the previous pot as if it were water despite the fact she claimed caffeine was bad for her nerves and bad for the skin.
Della was perfectly decked out, in flattering navy slacks and blazer, her blond hair fastened sedately atop her head. Perfect, with the small exception of a skewed eyebrow that reached much higher than the other, giving her a lopsided appearance. Simone felt like tipping her head to bring Della’s face back in line.
She’d almost shut the door when she remembered her mother had dictated that it be open. Turning, she ran smack into Della’s solid back.
Simone sidled around her, noting the glassy eyes and dropped jaw of stargazing.
Della, not usually a stutterer, stuttered. “Y-you’re” came out before she completely lost her power of speech.
“Simone usually has better manners. I’m Ariana Chandler.” As usual, her mother held out her hand like a queen expecting a curtsy or a kiss. Brax had sorely disappointed her last night when he hadn’t acted appropriately to the gesture.
Della, agog, took Ariana’s finger in two of hers. A mortal touching a goddess.
“That’s my sister, Jackie.”
“Si-mone. Your sister’s name is Jacqueline.”
Maybe her name was Jacqueline, but she was Jackie and always would be, no matter how many awards she won.
Kingston half rose. “Kingston Hightower, hanging on to the coattails of these lovely ladies and basking in their reflected glory.”
“You’ve never hung on anybody’s coattails,” Jackie said. More than one word and without being spoken to first. Amazing.
Simone did the expected honors. “Della’s our mayor and judge”
“Oh goodness, the mayor and the judge. How utterly impressive. We can see Goldstone is good for the women’s movement.”
Della beamed at the compliment, but Simone knew that facetious tone. She put a stop to anything else that might come. “I promised Della coffee. Cream and sugar?” In her haste, she suddenly forgot how Della took hers.
Kingston pushed back his chair and, with an elegant hand flourish, offered it to Della. “You ladies sit. I’ll bring the coffee. It is my greatest pleasure to serve.”
He glanced at Jackie. Jackie glanced at him.
Very weird. Subliminal messages. Did Jackie suspect that Kingston had finally tired of being Ariana’s glorified gofer? Always affable, a big man with a big laugh and even bigger shoulders, Kingston had taken a stand against Ariana twice. Once after Wesley, when he’d forbidden Ariana to ever interfere in her daughter’s love life again. After that, she’d interfered surreptitiously, with cutting comments but no overt action—at least that anyone knew of. The second time had been over Simone herself, when her mother had a tantrum over news of Simone’s catastrophic failure in both the business and matrimonial departments. Kingston told her to shut up—yes, those very words, shut up—then h
e’d offered both his shoulders for Simone to hang onto.
Kingston brought the coffee, cream, and sugar. Della spooned and stirred, creamy liquid sloshing onto the saucer of her dainty cup as she stared at the visions seated across the table. Ariana and Jacqueline Chandler. In the flesh.
Simone saw it written all over her face. Della was starstruck.
“You said you needed to tell me something?” Simone prompted, finally capturing Della’s attention by kicking her foot.
Della stared blankly for fifteen seconds, as if she couldn’t remember what she’d come for, let alone her own name. “Oh, yes.” She toyed with her cup. “Look what I’ve done, clumsy me.” She noticed the overflow in her saucer for the first time.
Simone tapped her hand. “Don’t worry about it. You said Maggie was fine?” She let the question hang in the air.
“Yes. She is. I think. But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, Simone. I really couldn’t sleep last night.”
“Who is Maggie, dear?” Ariana could not allow herself to be left of center stage for long.
“Maggie’s our friend.”
“Her husband was murdered yesterday.” Della raised her eyebrows, the cockeyed one almost disappearing beneath her bangs.
“The day before actually, but they didn’t find him until yesterday.” Simone felt a little tremor thinking about Carl alone in the gorge all night long. Had he suffered?
“Oh my.”
“Who killed him?” Trust a man, Kingston, to go right to the heart of the matter.
“Brax doesn’t know.”
“That rude man who was here last night?” Her mother couldn’t resist a little dig.
“Brax is a sheriff.”
“I thought he was sheriff of some tiny burg in California.”
“He’s a county sheriff, but since he’s Maggie’s brother, he’s helping Sheriff Teesdale.”
“Elwood Teesdale is our sheriff,” Della explained. She turned to Simone. “What else did Brax say? About why Elwood thinks Carl was murdered. I still don’t understand. I tried to find Elwood this morning, but they said he was...tracking.”
“They went up the trail where Carl fell.”
“But why do they think he was murdered? No one would tell me anything last night.” Della turned her cup in her saucer.
There hadn’t been a murder in Goldstone since Della took the city reins. There hadn’t been a murder since...well, maybe not since Wyatt Earp shot some gunslinger right in Flood’s End before it was called Flood’s End. Mr. Doodle renewed the bloodstains once a year with red lacquer. When Brax and Sheriff Teesdale brought in the villain, Della would preside over the trial. Her first murder trail, at least in Goldstone.
“Maybe it’s better you don’t know anything,” Simone said. “Isn’t there something about bias?”
“That’s for the jury,” Della scoffed. “Not the judge.”
“This is all so confusing. I feel a migraine coming on.” Ariana put a hand to her forehead. “The thought of you living in a town where a murder has occurred. It doesn’t bear thinking about. We have to get you home.” Grabbing Kingston’s hand, Ariana hung on, giving an effective performance. “You must convince her, Kingston. She can’t stay in this awful, crime-ridden place.”
“Brax will take care of everything.” Brax the hero, Brax the savior. Every pair of eyes settled on her as if she’d said the two glowing phrases aloud. She hadn’t. Had she?
“I’m going back to bed. Wake me up when this nightmare is over. Or you find a Ritz nearby.” Ariana exited with a hand to her brow, Kingston guiding her by the elbow.
“Your poor mother.”
Yes, her poor mother. She’d take to her bed before she’d willingly gave up center stage to a murder investigation. Her mother always got the last word, even when she wasn’t in the room.
Jackie picked up the empty plate. “I’ll toast more muffins.”
“Jacqueline Chandler toasts her own muffins?” Della’s husky, awed whisper fell into a hush with Jackie at the far end of the kitchen ripping apart muffins.
“Yeah.” Her sister might actually be capable of wiping her own butt, too. Why did people insist on thinking Jackie was incompetent? Or maybe Della meant that movie stars were supposed to have scads of servants to see to their every desire.
Simone suddenly wanted to drop the subject of movie stars and Academy Awards. “So, you wanted to know what Brax told me? Well, he didn’t tell me anything except that he and the sheriff were going up there.” She pointed to the western hills. “I don’t know why they think it was murder, they just do. I believe him.”
Della sat there for a long moment, the fingers of her left hand covering her mouth, her gaze fixed on the blue-flecked tiles around the base of the pellet stove. Then her eyes misted over. “I’ve made a decision. I’ve thought about this all night.”
“What?”
“Jason Lafoote wants to name a wing of the hotel after Carl. I’m going to grant his permits with the proviso that he does it.”
Simone gasped. “You can’t do that, Della.”
“It’s the only thing this town has to give Carl. I won’t stand in the way of his memory being kept alive.”
“That’s ridiculous. Carl hated the hotel. It’s a resort. For gambling. No one’s even going to know the name of some wing.”
“Jason’s going to commission a statue and put it right in the front lobby.”
Simone spread her hands, pleading. “This is a ruse he’s cooked up. He said something about it yesterday. He’s playing on your sympathies.”
“I’m doing it for Maggie.”
“Maggie’s not going to care about a statue.”
Della grabbed her hand, squeezed. “Simone, you didn’t see her late last night. You wouldn’t recognize her. She needs something badly. I have to do this for her.”
“Brax and the sheriff finding Carl’s killer is what she needs.”
“What if they never do? What if it was some transient who followed Carl up there thinking he had a few bucks in his pocket?”
That’s what they were all hoping for, wasn’t it? That it was someone none of them knew.
Simone wrote a fantasy, sent a nasty email, and now guilt gnawed at her belly. Della told Maggie she was better off without Carl. She’d even called him worthless and useless and other names Simone couldn’t quite remember. Maybe the statue was more about Della asking for Carl’s forgiveness than anything to do with Maggie.
Her fingers started to hurt in Della’s hard grip.
“Say you’ll back me on this, Simone. Chloe will, I know, then everyone else will fall in line.”
She chewed on the inside of her lip. “I’m still not sure it’ll be good for Maggie.”
“It will. She’ll see how we all honored Carl. It won’t bring him back, but it will show her that we all loved him.”
It would also go a long way to helping Della forget the things she’d said at the afternoon tea party. Guilt was a terrible thing. It burrowed deep and changed the course of lives. It gave Jason a foothold in their town.
A lump in her throat, Simone nodded. “All right. For Maggie.”
Della closed her eyes and fervently whispered, “Thank you.”
* * * * *
“So you want me to squeeze Lafoote.” Teesdale was ahead on the trail.
“Yeah. I got him primed with all that crap,” Brax said.
“All right. I’ll give it a shot.”
With Maggie finally in his Mom’s tender care, Brax was free to follow Carl’s trail. He’d arrived at Teesdale’s door a little after six, and, as he’d presumed, the sheriff was already on the phone and making plans. He’d been more than happy to make an earlier trek into the hills.
At the edge of the path, Teesdale suddenly leaned over, bracing his hands on both knees. “Will ya lookee here.”
Metal glinted in the sun. Keys.
“Hmm,” Teesdale mused. “Same make as Carl’s.” A rubber protector with the truck’s emblem c
overed one key. “How do you suppose they got here?”
Identically braced on his knees, Brax suggested, “Fell out of his pocket?”
Teesdale turned his head. “You tried, didn’t ya? Last night. Saw you down there in the parking lot. Don’t come out so easy, do they?”
“Maybe he looped them through his belt and they came loose.” Brax played devil’s advocate.
“We found the truck there.” The sheriff pointed to the dirt lot a hundred yards back down the path. “And we find the keys here. Awful quick for them to work themselves loose.”
“Nothing says it couldn’t have happened that way.”
“Nope. Nothing says that some lazy ass wipe who didn’t want to walk too far didn’t throw ’em down here after wiping his prints off Carl’s truck.”
Brax nodded. “Nothing says it didn’t happen like that.”
Teesdale whipped a paper bag from his back pocket, snapped it open, put his hand inside, and plucked up the keys with the bottom of the sack, then turned it inside out. “We’ll take them with us.” He dropped a swatch of the paper bag and grounded it to the spot with a rock.
It took them less than half an hour of power hiking to reach the small plateau above Carl’s resting place, a mere dust speck in the gorge below, where the chickens had come close to running him over. Yellow tape, fluttering in the morning air, marked the precise location.
Teesdale stood at the edge of the drop and pushed back the brim of his hat. Sweat trickled from beneath the band.
They’d pulled up twenty yards short of X-marks-the-spot, saving the pathway for further analysis as they worked their way up to the plateau. It would have been a likely rest stop for Carl to take a slug from his water bottle in the miniscule shade of a tall, rounded rock sticking out of the side of the hill. Brax took a slug of his water. The morning hadn’t reached the high temps yet, but the hills had already begun to bake, shimmering waves of heat rising off the rocks.
If it had been his scene, Brax would have brought an ID tech, or at the very least, a processing kit. The extent of Goldstone Sheriff’s department’s evidence kit was a box of rubber gloves the dispatcher’s wife had swiped from the hospital in Bullhead, paper lunch sacks from the minimart, and a disposable camera.
Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) Page 25