Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (14 page)

He put his hand on the door frame, but didn’t
interrupt. A good sign he was buying it.

“But she’s talked to Della. So Della’s the
logical one to do it. And I’ll make sure Della doesn’t go off
half-cocked again.”

“Following your logic, Della won’t like you
butting in and telling her what to do, so she’ll ignore everything
you say, and handle Maggie all wrong.”

“No, no, it’s okay to butt in if you’re
asking a woman to help
another
woman. It’s only bad when
you’re talking about a woman’s own problems.”

He opened his mouth, clapped it shut, looked
around, then finally said, “I’ll never understand women.”

“That’s okay. We understand men and that
makes everything work out.”

He laughed, his eyes crinkling at the
corners. She should have told him that her mother always claimed
she could talk a person in circles until his or her head exploded,
but Simone didn’t want Brax to know he’d been had.

He tugged her hand. “Come down here.”

“Why?”

“Because I want your lips within two inches
of mine when you feed me a line of crap like that.”

* * * * *

Brax hadn’t believed her. He might not
understand women on a personal level, but he for damn sure knew
when someone wasn’t telling the truth. It was all in the body
language. Most people couldn’t tell a lie while they looked you in
the eye. Simone had been no different. At least not in that
respect.

Yet it was an absurd thing to lie about. Why
not tell him the truth about why she didn’t want to talk to Maggie
about this thing going on with Carl?

His calves strained as he climbed the steep
hill to Maggie and Carl’s home. Their trailer sat on a plateau
overlooking Goldstone, and the high desert elevation worked his
lungs.

The thought of that email tore a hole in his
belly. He’d been done with that suspicion last night, convincing
himself the email meant nothing, that Simone wasn’t having an
affair with Carl, she was true-blue, and all the rest of that
rot.

So why didn’t she want to talk to Maggie?
Guilt?

No one was home when he got to the top of the
hill, though Maggie had left the back door unlocked for him. She’d
been gone most of the morning, now she’d disappeared again. Carl’s
truck was absent, too.

Brax got a bad feeling. He wished he’d told
Carl burgers were okay. Anything. As long as he and Maggie went
somewhere together and talked.

Three hours later, as Brax sat in the
darkened living room, the lock clicked on the front door.

* * * * *

Maggie unlocked the door and dropped her
purse and keys on the foyer table. Not that her
trailer
had
a real foyer like a real house should have. Another burst of anger
shot through her chest. No foyer, no real house, and no man in her
bed wanting to slip his hands beneath her nightie in the dark.

He’d even forced her to send her brother down
to The Chicken Coop to check up on him. She couldn’t ask Chloe
herself. That would have been worse than the scene at the tea
party.

Bastard. If Carl were standing right in front
of her, she’d have kicked his butt. All the way back to Vegas and
that stupid wedding in that stupid chapel with those stupid
flamingos that Carl had insisted on.

A shadow shifted in the living room. She
marched three paces forward before she realized it wasn’t him.

It was her brother. Tyler sat in the dark
family room just as her father had done when she’d been late coming
home from a date. Dad never said a word, but he was good at saying
I’m so disappointed in you I can’t even speak
with just a
look. She couldn’t see Tyler’s expression, but she didn’t think it
would be any more sympathetic.

Dammit, she had a right to her anger, her
tummy-clenching, spine-wrenching, teeth-gritting anger. Carl was
cheating. She knew it in her bones.

“Where ya been, Maggie?” Tyler said, soft as
steel.

“Where do you think I’ve been? Out looking
for that no-good, dirty rotten bastard husband of mine.” Life
wasn’t fair. She’d been a good wife...Carl had been less than a
dog.

She marched into the kitchen. The Elvis clock
ticked on the wall, his pendulum legs swinging. The only other
sound in the trailer was Tyler’s footsteps across the linoleum as
he followed.

“I would have come with you if you’d
asked.”

She didn’t turn on the kitchen overhead, but
moved to the light streaming in from the foyer. “I didn’t want you
with me.”

She opened a cupboard, slamming the door
against its neighbor, and grabbed a wineglass. The last remaining
wineglass from the dime-store set she’d bought when they were first
married. She didn’t even own a crystal wineglass. Carl would have
broken it just as he had the others in this set. Clumsy oaf. She’d
only broken one of them, and she hadn’t been tipsy either, but
doing the dishes the morning after.

“Maggie, come into the family room and sit
and talk.” Tyler touched her arm.

She flung him off. “I don’t want to talk. I
want a glass of wine.” Wine out of a box, because that’s how she
saved money. While that bastard was salting it away for his floozy.
Who was she? What was she like? Where’d he meet her? Maggie hated
her without knowing the answers.

“Tell me where you looked for him.”

She’d driven around Bullhead for hours, out
into the nice neat suburbs where the houses were real houses, with
manicured cactus gardens and decorative rock formations and
fountains and paved driveways. “Bullhead.”

“I take it you didn’t find his truck.”

“No.”

“He might be playing darts. He goes to The
Dartboard a lot.”

She whirled on him. “The only darting he was
doing was sticking his thing in some other woman’s bull’s-eye.”

He took a step back. Bastard. Men always took
a step back. She didn’t let him, stomping to within a foot to poke
her finger in the center of his chest. He flinched.

“He’s fucking some bitch in heat and you know
it and when I catch him I’m gonna Bobbitize him and I’m gonna stuff
his tiny little dick down the garbage disposal and grind it up so
they won’t be able to sew it back on.”

His eyes widened, and he opened his mouth.
Open, close, open, close, like a fish, but nothing came out.

She whirled again, headed for the
refrigerator and her precious box of cheap, stupid wine. “I hate
this house. I hate
him
. He’s gonna be sorry. He’s gonna be
really sorry.”

“Maggie, I don’t think he’s cheating on
you.”

Her cold, numb fingers wouldn’t close around
the refrigerator handle. Little spots flashed before her eyes. She
couldn’t seem to catch her breath. “You don’t think? What do you
know? You don’t live here, you don’t know anything. He gets drunk
and goes out so Elwood will arrest him and throw him in jail so he
doesn’t have to come home to me. You’re so stupid. You’re all so
stupid. I know what’s going on. I know what he’s doing. I’m gonna
kill him when I catch him and throw his parts down his goddamn
outhouse holes.”

The glass in her hand suddenly smashed
against the counter. Tiny shards pricked her face, her throat, and
her arms. She closed her eyes in time to take the sting against her
eyelids.

Her glass, her last precious stupid cheap
glass, gone, just like that. Like her marriage. Like her life.

“Maggie, honey, sweetie.”

She felt Tyler pry the stem out of her fist,
then brush the shards from her cheeks and shoulders.

“Don’t move,” he whispered. “It’s all over
the floor. I’ll clean it up.”

She couldn’t have moved if she tried. Sudden
light beat at her eyelids. The paper towel holder rattled. Water
ran in the sink. Air currents shifted as he moved, wiped the
counter, around her feet. A cupboard opened, the trash can lid
flipped up, then slapped shut.

“There, there. It’s okay.” Soothing voice,
soothing words, as if he were talking to a child.

Her lip trembled. She opened her eyes.
Tyler’s face blurred, then came back into focus. His eyes, almost
slits, searched her face. Two deep grooves bit into his cheeks from
his nose to his mouth, and his eyebrows almost touched in the
middle, his frown was so deep.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She’d upset him.
No, she’d damn near scared the bejesus out of him.

“Don’t worry.”

Tears welled up until she couldn’t see him
clearly anymore. Legs suddenly weak like the aftereffects of an
adrenaline rush, she wanted to crumple to the floor and lie there.
For a long, long time. Drained. Empty.

“Do
you
think I’d be better off
without him?”

Tyler put his hand on her shoulder and
rubbed. “No. You were happy before. You’ll be happy again. This is
just a bad patch, I swear.”

Then, almost hesitantly, he pulled her into
his arms. Rocking her, he stroked her hair, the way their mom used
to do when she was a kid. God, she missed that. Someone to stroke
her hair as she fell asleep. She used to make Carl do that
sometimes.

A fresh wave of tears rushed to the surface.
Her throat clogged, and her nose stuffed up. Tyler rocked, stroking
and murmuring while she cried and cried and cried until she didn’t
think she could have any tears left.

“Why didn’t he come home tonight?” she
muttered against his T-shirt.

He answered, though she was surprised he even
understood her mumble. “I don’t know. But when he does come home,
we’re all gonna sit down and talk. You, me, and him.” He pulled
back, then tipped her chin up. “Look at me.”

She did. He was a blur.

“He’s not having an affair, Maggie. I don’t
know what’s going on with him, sweetheart, but it’s not that.”

“Are you sure?” She wanted to believe him;
she really, really did because she hated,
hated
feeling this
way. Helpless and lost and broken down.

He nodded gravely. “Yeah, I’m positive.
Together, we’ll find out what it is, honest. When he gets
home.”

* * * * *

Returning from her evening walk, Simone
opened her sunporch screen door. She was almost to the front door
when she cocked her head and turned. Darn it. She’d locked that
door. She stared at it a moment. Actually she remembered locking it
when she went to bed last night. She didn’t have a clear memory of
locking it when she left for her walk. She wracked her brain, but
she couldn’t come up with the image of turning the lock.

Sighing, she opened the front door instead.
At least she’d remembered to secure that one.

What was up with this weird need to lock her
doors? She was jumping at coyote shadows in the night. This was
Goldstone. Nobody locked up. Besides, she didn’t have anything
worth stealing. Oh, her computer. There
was
that. At least
she backed everything up on an Internet storage site. Hmm, what
about the fantasies she’d created for her clients? Could they be
used for blackmail purposes? Nah. She was sure there were far
juicier secrets lurking in Goldstone than anything she’d ever
written about.

On to more important things. Earlier, with
her feet eating up the gravel streets, Simone had come up with a
plan.

The smartest thing she could do was talk to
Carl himself and get him to fork over the answer to her question.
And force a commitment as to when he was going to put that darn
fantasy to the test. Yes. Perfect plan.

Except that Carl wasn’t online. She’d emailed
him five times. Then she’d called his office number—she couldn’t
call the house itself. He hadn’t answered. She’d left her number
and a terse message, but there was no blinking light on her
machine. Simone tapped in her password and checked her emails. Carl
hadn’t replied to those messages, either. He was ignoring her, darn
it.

She understood Maggie’s feelings when Carl
disappeared for hours on end.

Only one option remained. She’d have to go
over there and pound on his door. Well, not pound, because Maggie
might hear. Or Brax. Simone had to keep this private. At least
until she’d talked to Carl. After that, well, it might be best to
come clean and tell Maggie all. First, she’d warn Carl of her
intentions.

She felt better now that she’d established a
good solid plan.

Simone opened her closet door and perused the
row of clothing. She needed black to blend in with the dark.
Wouldn’t do for Maggie to spot her crossing the driveway. In the
end, she chose a black T-shirt and black leggings.

The phone rang. Carl! She jumped on the
receiver.

“Darling!”

She was getting terribly lax with checking
caller ID. For the second time in two days, she’d let her mother
take her by surprise. Why, she hadn’t even practiced her deep
breathing before picking up.

“Hello, MOTHER.” Come to think of it, why was
Ariana calling again so soon? Unusual. Simone’s antennae went
up.

“Jackie tells me you’ve got a new man in your
life. Why didn’t you tell me yesterday when I called?”

That was her mother, no beating around the
bush. She’d probably plucked the information out of Jackie with a
tweezerlike torture device. “He’s not exactly my new man.”

“What? He’s your new dog?”

“I mean he’s not my man. He’s just
a
man. And he’s not
in
my life. He’s visiting.”

“He’s visiting your life? Spoken like a
transient. I knew that godforsaken town was going to be bad for
you.”

She should have made Jackie swear she
wouldn’t tell. Then again, her mother probably recorded all
Jackie’s phone conversations just to nip anything unsavory right in
the bud.

Simone tried again. “He’s visiting his
sister. Remember Maggie? I’ve mentioned her to you before.”

“Holy Mary Mother of God,” Ariana shrieked,
though she was as WASP as the Archbishop of Canterbury. “She’s the
latrine cleaner’s wife. And you’ve fallen for that woman’s
brother
?” Simone heard a violent rustle, and her mother
panted over the phone lines.