Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (19 page)

She just hoped Carl came back to read the
email. At least that might mean he and Maggie still had a
chance.

* * * * *

“Are any of his clothes missing?” Brax asked
as gently as possible.

They sat at the kitchen table, no food
between them, just mugs of coffee that Brax had prepared. The
morning hours had ticked by like molasses running uphill. No crunch
of tires on the gravel drive, not even a phone call. Carl hadn’t
come home last night, and he hadn’t returned today. Maggie refused
breakfast. She’d skipped lunch, too. Though he forced himself to
eat, Brax sure as hell didn’t feel like it while watching his
sister’s life go into meltdown.

“No.” Maggie’s voice was emotionless, except
for that sharp edge that would have flayed flesh from bone.
Stone-cold anger glittered in her eyes.

“Did you check?”

She gave him a one-eyed glare without turning
her head. “I don’t have to check. I do all the laundry and all the
folding, but I refuse to put his crap away. There are four piles
sitting two feet high on the dresser. Just like yesterday and the
day before that. So no, he hasn’t taken any clothes.” Her lip
lifted in a snarl. “He’s probably planning to buy all new stuff
with
my
money when he gets wherever the hell he’s
going.”

“Now, Maggie, you don’t know...” Brax stopped
himself before she got the chance to cut him off. Last night’s bath
had not relaxed her. It had made her hard and cold and determined
to kick Carl out if he did come slinking back.

Brax started again. “He didn’t leave a
note.”

“My point exactly. He didn’t even leave a
goddamn note. He walked out on me without even so much as a
one-line explanation.”

“Even the police require twenty-four hours
before accepting a missing person’s report. Maybe we should hold
off judgment.”

She lifted her arm, looked pointedly at her
watch, then put her hand flat on the table. “He crawled out of my
bed at five o’clock yesterday morning. That makes it almost
thirty-six hours. He’s gone. And you know what, Tyler, I don’t
care. I really don’t care. Della’s right, I’m better off without
him. He can fall off the edge of the earth and die for all I
care.”

“Now, Maggie.”

“Don’t you dare
now Maggie
me! You’re
wearing the most pathetic hangdog face because you
know
he’s
gone as well as I do.”

He didn’t want to believe, but he couldn’t
deny. He hadn’t known Carl had it in him, but the man had proven to
be quite a liar. Carl sat solemnly on the passenger side of Brax’s
vehicle and promised he’d take his wife out to dinner. He’d poured
out his anger at Lafoote and the resort. He’d confided. Yet all the
while, he’d been planning to leave. Maybe that was how he’d show
them all he wasn’t a loser. By taking off and making a better life
somewhere else. He’d probably return ten years from now with a
beautiful young wife, two kids, and enough money to buy all of
Goldstone.

A knock on the front door carried through to
the kitchen. Brax jerked his head up.

Maggie snorted. “If it were him, he wouldn’t
bother knocking. It’s probably UPS.”

Her knees creaked as she rose. It was yet
another sign of her stress.

There came the murmur of voices, then
nothing, not even the closing door.

His heart started to pound, and his blood
rushed like a raging river in his ears. Rising, Brax knocked his
mug over. A stream of coffee dripped off the edge of the table onto
the floor. He left it behind as he followed the voices to the front
door.

Sheriff Teesdale stood on the doorstep, his
hat in his hand, the same ring of crushed hair around the top of
his head. He worked the brim back and forth, then pulled it through
his fingers, turning his hat in an endless nervous circle.

Maggie didn’t move. Sometime before Brax
stepped into the hall, she’d jammed a fist to her mouth and wrapped
an arm around her waist.

Teesdale looked at him as if he were a
lifeline. “I’m sorry. Real sorry.”

The words weren’t necessary. The sheriff’s
eyes said it all.

Brax had delivered bad news too many times.
He’d felt for the victims of the tragedies, the car crashes, the
hunting accidents, the drownings, a million ways to die. Christ. It
tore up his gut observing the myriad ways in which people
reacted.

Yet he’d never even contemplated being on the
receiving end, nor his sense of utter helplessness as he watched
Maggie. Just watched. Unable to move. Unable to touch. Incapable of
comforting. The sensation was akin to total paralysis, right down
to his vocal cords.

Carl hadn’t run away. He was dead.

Chapter Eleven

“Where’d you find him?” The words burned his
throat, the thought tormented his brain.

The sheriff glanced at Maggie, then answered
Brax. “The gorge.” He pointed off to his right. “The chickens found
him. They were out there dirt biking.”

“On a Wednesday?” Brax didn’t know why he
bothered to ask.

“Chloe gives ’em Tuesdays and Wednesdays
off,” Teesdale explained. “He musta fallen from one of the trails
up above. Lots of bat caves and stuff in that area.”

“He was really out splunking,” Maggie
whispered.

“Honey, why don’t you let me talk to the
sheriff for a minute?” Brax tried to steer her from the front door,
but her feet remained secured like a rock.

“How long was he there?” she asked.

Brax’s heart broke.

The sheriff twisted his hat into a misshapen
mass. “Yesterday. Morning. I think.” He looked at Brax, helpless,
silently asking for guidance.

Brax had none to give, but he briefly shook
his head. The less said in front of Maggie, the better. He had
questions, but the answers could wait. Maggie’s feelings were more
important now. “Give me your card. I’ll call you.”

Teesdale stuck his hand in his khakis’ front
pocket, then the back. Finally he found the small stack in his
shirt pocket and peeled one off.

Brax reached around Maggie and shut the door
as the sheriff walked away.

“I’m tired,” she said, staring at the floor.
“I think I’ll take a nap.”

“Yeah, yeah, good idea, sweetheart.”

He hadn’t a clue what was a good or a bad
idea, hadn’t a clue what to do for her. He’d handled grief so many
times, he’d have called himself an expert, but he’d never figured
on handling Maggie’s. When his father died, he’d grieved, they’d
all grieved together—Mom, Maggie, and him, comforted one another.
But this was in a class of its own.

Sudden, unexpected death always was.

* * * * *

He can fall off the edge of the earth and
die for all I care
.

Maggie curled into a ball beneath the covers,
making herself as tiny, as unnoticeable as possible.

Tyler had left her alone in her room. He
couldn’t stand to be near her. How could she blame him, even if he
was her brother? What kind of wife told her husband to drop dead?
She covered her ears, but the words wouldn’t go away. How many
times had she said it when she got so angry her thoughts spewed out
like Linda Blair spitting pea soup in
The Exorcist
? Oh God,
oh God. She didn’t even have the excuse that she was possessed. She
didn’t have any excuse. She was a terrible, horrible wife. Like a
woman on one of those detective shows who fed her husband
antifreeze.

Drop dead, Carl!

Her last words to him. When he’d crawled out
of bed the morning after, she’d pretended to be asleep, hadn’t even
opened her eyes. Hadn’t taken one last look or said one last thing.
Something nice. Something sweet.

Something to remedy
Drop dead,
Carl!

And he had dropped dead. Just like she told
him to.

Her belly cramped. She curled around the
pain, nursed it. She’d had nothing more than coffee since the tea
party. The caffeine ate a hole in the lining of her stomach. Good,
good. Penance. Payback. What kind of wife? Oh God, what kind of
wife?

I’m gonna kill him
.

Throw his parts down his goddamn outhouse
holes.

I’m gonna Bobbitize him
.

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
.

She pulled the pillow over her head, but she
couldn’t shut out the words. Her own words, her own horrible,
terrible, unforgivable words. Oh God.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the
lord my soul to keep. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Please forgive
me
.

The pillow snuffed out her breath for a
moment, but then she found she could drag in air through the cotton
fibers. She pressed the pillow tight over her mouth, but still she
could breathe. Mashing both fists against the cotton covering her
mouth and nose, she finally got what she wanted. She couldn’t
breathe. If felt so good in a panicky, unreal sort of way.

You’re a bad, bad woman, Maggie Felman. May
God forgive you.

She deserved to die.

Her legs started to move as if they didn’t
even belong to her. Her feet rub-rub-rubbed against each other,
then they twitched back and forth on the sheet, faster, faster, as
if trying to run away. Her head tipped down, her mouth opened, and
a tiny inhale of hot air filled her lungs. Then her hands tossed
the pillow aside, and she gasped and gasped.

God, she hadn’t even been able to hold
herself down for five seconds. She couldn’t even stick it out until
her lungs hurt and she saw spots before her eyes. Isn’t that what
happened?

Had Carl been in pain? She didn’t want to
think about it, but she couldn’t squeeze her brain shut any more
than she could hold a pillow over her face until she suffocated.
Hear no evil and see no evil were easy. All you had to do was shut
your eyes and cover your ears. Thinking no evil was harder. And
speak no evil? She should have learned to shut her mouth a long
time ago.

But Carl knew she was a drama queen. A
forty-two-year-old drama queen. He knew she screamed and shouted
and said all sorts of things she didn’t mean. Why, once, when her
dad was dying of cancer and she’d gotten mad at him
about...something, she’d told him to drop dead. Her cheeks had
caught on fire and that surrealistic
I-can’t-believe-I-just-said-that feeling almost made her heart
seize up. She couldn’t picture the look on his face or in his eyes
anymore. She’d blocked it out.

“I didn’t mean it, Daddy. I didn’t mean it.”
She couldn’t remember why she’d gotten mad. Everyone knew you
weren’t supposed to get mad at people who were dying. What could
have made her so angry that she’d forgotten his disease for that
split second?

The episode should have cured her. Normal
people would have taken their medicine, and never done the like
again. But she’d never been normal, and she hadn’t been cured.
Diarrhea mouth, Carl called her. But Carl knew that, and he knew
she didn’t mean all that stuff.

He loved her anyway. He wasn’t leaving her.
He was out looking for caves when it happened. It. The
unthinkable.

Was there such a thing as karma? Like maybe
because she’d said it so many times—because she’d said it to her
father who was dying—the cosmos or God or whoever was out there
decided she needed to learn a lesson, so they tipped Carl into the
gorge.

She grabbed the pillow she’d tossed aside and
clasped it to her chest. Fingernails biting into her palms, she
hugged that pillow as tight as tight could be.

Why did she do these things? Why did she say
them? Why did she get so angry?

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m so
sorry. I didn’t mean it.” She chanted under her breath, over and
over, as if that could make the impossible possible. Like maybe if
she said it enough, the cosmos and karma and God would bring Carl
back. And she’d never ever tell him to drop dead again. She’d never
say it to anyone, not another living soul. Not even a dead one.

Her thoughts stopped whirling around and
around. She looked at the ceiling.

“I promise I’ll never say it again.”

The house was very quiet, as if it were
listening, waiting. She held her breath. In the afternoon, the wind
sometimes picked up. The old antenna on the roof—the one Carl kept
saying he would take down since they got satellite—usually creaked.
Back and forth, back and forth. Today it was eerily silent.

“I promise, I promise.” She crossed her
heart.

There were always noises in the desert, yet
today, there was nothing. As silent as a tomb.

She sat up, leaning back on her hands. Her
wrists hurt, the angle awkward.

“Please, God.”

The clock had stopped ticking. Carl found it
at an old junk shop, and he liked it better because it lacked a
snooze button. She remembered him winding it yesterday morning as
he sat on the edge of the bed. Her eyes closed, she could almost
hear the whir of the springs as he cranked. It should have been
good for a week. But the clock had stopped.

She scrambled to the edge of the bed, reached
down, grabbed her slippers, and yanked them on.

The clock had stopped ticking. It was a
sign.

“Tyler,” she called, yanking open the bedroom
door.

It was a sign. God had listened.

The man they found in the gorge wasn’t
Carl.

* * * * *

Simone watered her cacti. They said you
weren’t supposed to water cacti, but sometimes guilt overwhelmed
her and she gave them a little drink. Especially on hot, dusty
afternoons like this.

She’d tried writing, but her erotic fantasies
seemed to have dried up. She’d been reminded of the story she’d
sent Carl. She’d surfed the Internet for a while, but found nothing
more entertaining than the enticing detail that Lindsay Lohan had
worn blue panties under white slacks and the thong showed right
through. That was the headliner on her service provider’s home
page, which was above “Coed’s kidnapping caught on tape” and “Son
decapitates mother with sword.” Jeez.