Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (11 page)

Completely shut down by Lafoote, Carl could
only sputter. His face turned red, and it wasn’t with the same
stain of embarrassment that had tortured his features last night at
the Flood’s End. This was spontaneous combustion. This was Monday
night in the boxing ring. This had the potential for collateral
damage that rivaled Goldstone’s flood and fire combined.

Brax had been a cop for coming up on sixteen
years. The best strategy an officer could apply was to head ’em off
at the pass. He put a hand on Carl’s shoulder. Don’t grab, don’t
pull. Gently bring ’em back to their senses. But Carl shrugged his
hand off and squared off against The Foot.

“Listen, you little weasel, you’d better take
your dog-and-pony show out of Goldstone before something bad
happens to you.” Carl growled and clamped his mouth. His teeth
ground as if he were breaking down gravel into sand. His fist
clenched, unclenched, clenched again, so hard his knuckles turned
white and the beer mug in his other hand trembled. His breath
headed toward a full-blown pant while his eyes bore the haze of a
bull gone mad.

If he’d had a gun, Carl more than likely
would have shot the weasel.

“Are you threatening me, Felman?” The weasel,
however, didn’t seem to know how close he was to dying. Or at least
to sustaining a broken nose and a few loose teeth.

Brax shoved his own beer into the hand of a
convenient onlooker and insinuated himself between the two
combatants. Three inches taller than Carl, Brax blocked his view of
Lafoote.

“We’re going to the Flood’s End, Carl.”

Carl’s breath puffed like a steam engine.
“Butt out, Brax. This is between me and Lafoote.”

“Sheriff Braxton, he’s threatening me.” The
glee in the weasel’s voice was about to earn him an elbow in his
belly if he didn’t shut the hell up, but Brax concentrated on
Carl.

Wider and taller, Brax gave Carl the cop
look, the one that said
I’m hauling your ass to jail, or telling
your wife on you
. “Back off, Carl.”

If Lafoote made a move or a sound, if anyone
did, Carl would go off like a powder keg. What caused the animosity
between the two men, Brax didn’t know, and right now, didn’t
care.

He met Carl’s gaze. The blaze of anger in his
eyes was downright frightening. Brax’s concern for his sister rose
a notch.

Brax met Carl stare for stare, muscles
bunched. “Let’s go outside, Carl.” He debated mentioning Maggie’s
name, then decided against it.

Moments passed. Brax could almost feel the
trapped breaths of the onlookers. Finally, Carl’s gaze dropped. The
flare of his nostrils receded. Brax clapped him on the arm, then
wrapped his hand around Carl’s biceps and turned him, steering them
through a quickly parting crowd. “It’s too fricking loud in here,
and there’s too many people for my taste, Carl. I’m getting
claustrophobic.”

Carl moved like a zombie. They reached the
end of the bar, and the door was in sight. Almost clear. Brax half
expected The Foot to throw some irritating parting shot at Carl and
start the whole damn thing over.

He reached the door, slammed it open, and
practically shoved Carl through.

He’d learned three things. First, something
overly odd was going on between the resort developer and the
outhouse excavator. Second, Carl was much closer to the edge than
even Maggie seemed to think. And third, Carl was not spending his
time at The Chicken Coop, but at The Dartboard. Which should please
Maggie.

“Let’s get the hell out of here.” Brax
climbed in his SUV. Almost meekly, Carl followed suit on the
passenger side.

Once they were on the highway headed back to
Goldstone, Brax released the tension in his neck and shoulders.
“What the hell was that all about?”

“The man’s a fucking asshole.” Carl’s voice
was a low-pitched growl.

Brax didn’t know Carl well. He could count on
one hand the number of times he’d met the guy face-to-face. So his
experience was limited. Still, he’d never heard Carl use that
particular word. Not even last night, when it was a guys-only
outing.

“Why’s he piss you off so much?”

“It’s that fucking hotel.”

O-kay
. The road wasn’t heavily
traveled and the closest headlights were far in the distance. Carl
was on the edge about the whole business. Why? People didn’t want
the hotel, but Carl’s reaction was way beyond simply not wanting
the renovation.

He put on his best-buddy routine to ferret
out the answer. “I agree he’s a dick of the first order, but ya had
me a bit unnerved in there. I mean, I’d hate to have to tell Mom
you have homicidal tendencies.” He decided a little levity would
ease the tension while at the same time impress upon Carl that his
uncharacteristic behavior was bordering on bizarre.

Carl snorted with what Brax hoped was a
chuckle. “She’d drag Maggie off to
Divorce Court
if she
heard me use the
F
-word.”

His mother loved that judge on
Divorce
Court
. “Up to this point, she’s been quite fond of you, Carl.”
He threw that in, though it wasn’t the truth. “But you’re pushing
it, pal.”

Carl glanced at him. “Let’s keep it between
us, okay? Your mother scares the crap out of me. Last time she got
mad at me, she gave me the look. I was afraid for my life.”

Ah,
that
look. The infamous look from
Brax’s childhood emphatically stating,
If you do that one more
time, I will be forced to scream. And then I’ll tell your
father
. There’d always been hell to pay when his mother got
that look.

Enid Braxton treated nothing lightly,
especially not a
potty mouth
, as his mother called it. Brax
could still taste the soap at odd moments. “I don’t know, Carl, it
was a dual
F
-word. That’s pretty serious.”

“What do I gotta do to get you to keep it a
secret?”

“Tell me what’s going on here, and I won’t
rat you out to Mom.”

Carl was silent.

“That crap going down wasn’t like you.” At
least Maggie had never complained of a temper.

Still no answer. With a quick glance, Brax
found him staring out the windshield, a crooked smile on his lips,
the headlights of the oncoming car glinting in what Brax was
terrified might be moisture. It was the saddest damn thing he’d
ever seen. What was he supposed to do if Carl actually cried?

“She still loves you, man.” He had to say
something.

Carl didn’t remark on it. Instead, he
returned to Brax’s original question. “Lafoote knows how to push a
man’s buttons. Can’t say I’ve figured out how he does it, but he
knows what to say to set a man off.”

“What’s he got against you?”

Carl sighed, quirked his lips, and shook his
head, as if the actions explained it all. “It’s the hotel. Nobody
wants it, and he won’t take no for an answer.”

There was more to it than that, but Carl
wasn’t gonna spill without some manipulation. “So you were gonna
rip his throat out over some hotel project?”

“He’s an asshole.”

“You said that already, Carl.”

“Is
asshole
okay with your
mother?”

“
Ass
is fine if you drop the
hole
. It’s in the Bible.” Brax allowed a moment of silence
without pressing for an answer.

Finally, Carl shifted in his seat. “He thinks
I put Della up to stalling him on the permits and licenses he
needs.”

“Della?”

“Della Montrose. She’s the county judge and
the city mayor.”

“And did you put her up to it?”

“She was as against it as I was.”

“You know, Carl, I don’t really get the whole
problem. A resort would create jobs and bring income to the city
and county.” Hell, maybe they could even afford to pave some of the
roads.

Carl turned and looked at Brax fully. “Would
you want a bunch of gamblers, drunks, and whores moving into
Cottonmouth?”

“Whore is a strong word.” It seemed too crude
for the chickens. “And you’ve already got The Chicken Coop.”

“It’s the quantity and quality, Brax. We’re a
small town. We want it to stay that way. That’s why most of us are
here.”

Hard as it was to believe, people came to
Goldstone by choice.

“They’ll want to start building houses and
apartments and condos,” Carl went on, “because their employees will
need somewhere to live. Then there’ll be laundromats and gas
stations on every corner. And before you know it, they’ll want to
put in a shopping mall.” He shuddered as if that signaled the
decline of modern civilization.

“On the bright side, at least you wouldn’t
have to drive thirty miles to get your groceries and you wouldn’t
run out of gas between here and Bullhead.”

“Only tourists run out of gas.” Goldstone had
a gas station, but from what Brax had seen, they’d tacked on
another twenty cents a gallon to the price.

“Goldstone’s eventually gotta come into the
new millennium.”

“Maybe,” Carl muttered. “All right, sure. But
it’s not gonna be done by some outsider who looks like a weasel and
acts like an ass.” Carl turned away to stare out the window. “One
of these days, someone around here’s gonna surprise everyone.”

And that someone would be Carl himself? What,
was he planning on finding a treasure trove of lost diamond rings
beneath one of Whitey’s four outhouses?

Damn. That was harsh. Carl wasn’t a bad guy.
He’d given his wife quite a nice roof over her head, even if it was
a trailer, and up until a few months ago, Maggie had actually
seemed happy most of the time.

Could the two events be more than
coincidence? When had the Lafoote hotel business started? Did that
coincide with Carl’s behavioral changes Maggie had described? Were
the two connected, and how?

He was thinking like a cop and treating
Carl’s outburst like a crime. Hell, he was far better at solving
felonies than mediating marital squabbles. At least usually. The
now-familiar stab of guilt reminded him why he’d left
Cottonmouth.

Brax turned back to the original cause for
alarm. “So Lafoote thinks you sabotaged him and he’s pissed.”

Carl snorted. “Yeah. I don’t know why I let
it get to me back there.”

Brax knew. Lafoote had implied that Carl was
a loser in front of an overcrowded room full of men Carl probably
played with regularly. Any man would be pissed. The near rage in
his eyes, though, had been unsettling.

That hadn’t been because of the hotel.
Something deeper was brewing. Brax was willing to bet Carl himself
didn’t consciously know the reason. He’d fought with Maggie, then
he’d gone ballistic when Lafoote had intimated he was a loser. The
implication was clear. Carl thought of himself as a loser, Maggie
exacerbated the situation, and Lafoote tapped into it either as a
lucky hit or because he was adept at exploiting weaknesses.

Sometimes a man would do just about anything
to prove he wasn’t a failure.

That was the frightening part.

“Carl, things are getting out of hand. You
and Maggie need to sit down and talk over your problems.”

“I’ve tried.”

“No, you haven’t. You leave early, you’re
gone all day, and when you’re home, you closet yourself in your
trailer.” Christ. He sounded like a woman nattering at her
husband.

“I’ve got important things to do.”

“Nothing’s more important than your marriage
and your wife.” He should have listened to that advice before his
own marriage had gone belly-up. “I’m not trying to butt in.”

“Yes, you are.”

“All right, I’m butting in because I care
about Maggie’s happiness.”

“Brax, it’s not—”

Brax cocked his head and skewered Carl with a
sideways look. “I’ll tell Mom you said the
F
-word.”

Carl turned. Brax heard a snort. Then a real
chuckle. Finally, Carl’s voice rose to a falsetto note. “Oh,
please, please, Brax, don’t do that.”

“Then ask my sister out on a date tomorrow
night. Talk everything through.”

Carl threw up his hands. “All right, fine.
You win.”

“And don’t take her to a burger joint.”

“What kind of loser do you think I am?” Carl
laughed, then stopped as if he heard his own words. In a subdued
tone, he added, “I’ll take her some place real nice. For steak. We
haven’t had a good steak in years.” Carl turned in his seat once
more. “Hate to leave you all alone, buddy.”

Brax smiled. “Don’t worry. Just do your duty
by my sister.”

Besides, Brax didn’t intend to spend the
evening alone.

Chapter Seven

As she entered the Manor’s small dining room
on Tuesday afternoon, Simone smoothed her navy polka dot skirt. She
always dressed up for the monthly tea party. The ladies appreciated
it.

Our Manor of the Ladies was clear on the
other side of town from The Chicken Coop. Though no fancy resort
for rich oldsters, it was at least a real building, with
sand-blasted siding, neat walkways, and a magnificent view of the
desert wonderland. Currently, the most magnificent view was in the
dining room itself.

A familiar hunky blond sheriff sat next to
Agnes. Not that she had a thing for sheriffs.

She had a thing for Brax.

Looking at the back of Brax’s head, Simone’s
heart beat a little faster and a nice shot of warmth started in her
chest, then spread to her extremities. Silly to get so worked up
over the back of a man’s head. Or his broad shoulders. Not to
mention his muscled arms.

The chair next to Brax was empty. They—all
the ladies plus Maggie, Chloe, and Della—had made sure of that,
Simone knew. She checked her watch. Two-thirty. She wasn’t late,
they were all early. Two round tables that usually seated four had
been pushed together at the back of the room by the open windows. A
flowered paper tablecloth was set with teaspoons, a variety of
paper napkins, plates of fragrant baked goods, two teapots, and
mismatched china cups the ladies foraged from various Bullhead
thrift stores and garage sales. The colorful array was rather
enchanting.