Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (20 page)

She didn’t hold out much hope that kidnapping
and murder would headline above the color of a actress’s panties
any time soon.

Simone had learned about blue underwear and
white pants when she was nine and Johnny Bremerton told everyone to
check out her butt. Her mother had not been pleased. Suffice it to
say, Simone never wore blue underwear again.

The color combo would undoubtedly become a
new fashion fad just as it was cool for girls to show their bra
straps. And it would still headline over murder and mayhem.

Her watering done, Simone cranked off the
faucet and curled the hose beneath it. Behind her, something
creaked. Creak, creak. The hair on her arms rose. Bent over as she
was, her bottom felt exposed in the short jean skirt. She whirled,
crouching like an action figure in a fight-to-the-death battle, and
shrieked.

Jason Lafoote sat in her rocking lawn chair.
Creak, creak. Forearms stretched along the armrest, he rocked,
watching her with hooded eyes.

“How do you always manage to sneak up on me
like that?” Her breath rate dropped back to normal. Almost.

“I didn’t sneak. You just didn’t hear me over
the conversation you were having with yourself.”

“You can leave now. I’d rather talk to
myself.”

“I came by to offer my condolences.” Jason
rose from the chair, though its rock continued for a few moments
more.

She eyed him warily. He had something up his
sleeve if the lip curl and that smug look in his sneaky eyes meant
anything. “Condolences for what?”

“Why, the loss of Carl Felman, of
course.”

God. Carl had run away. Maggie must have
found a note. Or something. How did Jason know so quickly? And why
did he see fit to bring her the news personally? “I’m sure it’s all
a mistake. He’ll be back.”

“Not unless he’s Lazarus rising from the
dead.” The man couldn’t help sounding tricky and smarmy.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard?”

Prickles of unease raced up and down her
arms. In the hot afternoon sun, a sweat broke out on her upper lip.
“Heard what?” Her voice cracked in the middle.

He rushed to her side, putting a hand on her
arm as if he thought she might faint.

She jerked away. “Don’t touch me.”

“Oh Simone, I’m so sorry, I thought you knew.
I thought everyone knew.”

She didn’t want to know. It wasn’t true.
“Know what?” she whispered.

“They found Carl’s body out in a gorge
somewhere. He fell. He’s dead.”

“No.” She bent over, clutched her stomach,
felt the hot dog she’d eaten for lunch rise up into her throat.

He stroked her back. She hated it, but she
didn’t have the strength to throw him off. No, no, no. Not Carl.
Goldstone was safe. Nobody got hurt in Goldstone. “There’s a
mistake.”

“I heard it from the sheriff.”

“There’s got to be a mistake,” she said
again, a whisper to herself, a plea to some higher power.

“I’m sorry, Simone. I didn’t think. I
shouldn’t have told you like that.”

She hated him for doing it. “I have to see
Maggie.”

“I’ll drive you over.”

She stood and backed away from him, almost
tripping off the edge of the patio. “Go away.”

“But Simone, I’ve thought it through. I’m
going to dedicate a wing of the hotel to Carl. The Felman wing.
And—”

She slashed her arms in the air, shouted at
him. “Shut up about the hotel. Nobody cares about the hotel. There
isn’t going to be any hotel.”

“But Simone, please, I want to help you.”

“Go away.” She drew in a deep breath. “Go.
Away.”

Then she shoved past him into the house,
slamming the sliding door and locking it as she ran to answer the
ringing phone.

At first, Simone couldn’t find the cordless.
Then she dived between the couch cushions from where the sound
emanated, grabbing the phone with both hands and holding it to her
ear.

“Hello?”

“Simone.”

“Oh God, Brax. It’s not true, is it? Tell me
it’s not true.”

After a long sigh, he said, “Come over.
Maggie needs me to do some things for her, but I’m not leaving her
here alone.”

Oh God, it was true. If it wasn’t, he would
have asked her what she meant. “But how? What happened? I don’t
understand.”

“I’ll tell you when you get here. And Simone,
bring Della with you. The more friends Maggie has with her now, the
better.”

He hung up. She clutched the phone to her ear
another minute, an eternity. She wanted to cry, she had from the
moment that awful man had thrown out his Lazarus allusion. She’d
had five minutes to get used to the idea.

She never would. Carl couldn’t be dead. The
image was so frighteningly...forever. Like marriage was supposed to
be.
Till death do us part
.

God, she had to get to Maggie right away.

* * * * *

Brax had called Teesdale, forcing Maggie to
listen on the extension as the sheriff said he’d done the ID of
Carl’s body himself, and no, there was no doubt in his mind that
the chickens had found Carl and none other.

Maggie wouldn’t believe. Guilt drove her
insistence.

She’d said some shitty things about Carl,
today and last night. She’d also said some shitty things
to
Carl. She hadn’t cried as she’d told Brax, in fact, she’d sat
backbone straight, as if the confession were penance.

Now she wanted to prove it wasn’t Carl they’d
found.

Brax couldn’t allow her to ID Carl. He’d
promised to go himself, to do it for her. She’d agreed. But he’d
needed someone to make sure Maggie stayed put. The heart-stopping
thought that she’d follow him forced his phone call to Simone. He
wanted Della for added pressure. Simone might prove to be a softie,
but Della would stand steadfast.

“Do not let her leave the house” was his last
command before he headed out to Goldstone’s county buildings. The
stricken look on Simone’s face was too much to bear.

Teesdale met him in the front office, a
four-by-four, white-walled square with an opening behind which the
dispatcher took 911 emergencies, service calls, and otherwise acted
as the sheriff’s administrative aide.

“This isn’t necessary.”

Brax put up his hand. “It is.”

“It’s a bitch when the next of kin doesn’t
want to accept what’s happened. Usually guilt or hoping for a
miracle.”

“It’s neither.” It was both, but he didn’t
like Teesdale’s notion that he could talk to Brax as if he were
just another cop. Goddammit, at this point,
he
was next of
kin. “Let’s review the case.” First. He didn’t relish getting down
to the details after he’d seen Carl.

Teesdale turned, led the way to his office,
took a seat behind a desk cluttered with a mess of files and
disorganized piles of paper, and indicated the spare chair for
Brax. The letters had long since worn off his grimed keyboard, and
greasy fingerprints on the computer monitor obscured anything that
might have been visible from Brax’s vantage point on the other side
of the desk.

“You know most of it,” Teesdale began. “Hard
to say until the medical examiner takes a look, but I’d venture
he’d been there along the lines of twenty-four hours.”

Despite having no training as a doctor, there
were signs a cop picked up from experience. Brax didn’t ask for
clarification. He’d see for himself soon enough. “Your most likely
scenario?”

“Lost his balance and fell. Even from the
bottom where we found him, you could see skid marks down the side.
It’s not a straight fall, but it’s steep and rocky as hell.”

“Speculation on cause of death?”

“Don’t like to speculate.”

Brax understood, as much as it sounded like a
cover-your-ass comment. “Fair enough. You want to tell me about the
truck?”

Teesdale shrugged noncommittally. “I was
getting to that.”

“Luckily everyone in town knows about your
finding Carl’s truck or I might not have heard that detail.” He
doubted Teesdale would have bothered to tell him about it
otherwise. A guy with a vaguely familiar face had given Brax the
tidbit when he’d paused at the stop sign on the other side of the
highway.

“You’d have asked.”

Teesdale was right about that. But Brax
didn’t like the impression that the man wasn’t forthcoming. “Where
exactly did you find it?”

“Bottom of the trailhead just south of town.
Lots of hiking trails up into those hills. You’d be amazed how
pretty it is in the spring. First time we ever lost a hiker,
though.”

Brax realized he hadn’t driven out far enough
last night. He’d been looking for Carl’s truck parked in a floozy’s
driveway, as Maggie had suggested.

“Think he was dead before he hit the bottom?”
Could he have saved him if he hadn’t assumed Carl was plundering a
neighbor’s wife instead of sniffing wildflowers.

Christ, he could not, absolutely would not go
back to tell Maggie that Carl had taken hours to die, all alone, at
the bottom of some godforsaken gorge.

“Can’t speculate,” Teesdale said again.

No more of an answer than Brax expected, but
a piss-poor one anyway. He put his hand on his knees and shoved to
his feet. “Let’s do it. Where’s your morgue?”

Teesdale quirked his mouth. “We don’t have a
morgue here. Hell, Goldstone doesn’t have a hospital, not even a
clinic, let alone a morgue. We have to take him up to
Bullhead.”

“You should have told me. I would have met
you there.”

Teesdale spread his hands. “He’s not there
yet.”

“If he’s not in the morgue in Bullhead, then
where the hell is he?”

The sheriff shrugged. “The basement.”

Brax pointed down without saying a word.

“Yeah. ’Bout the coldest place we have around
here.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“Hey, we aren’t some big city department with
all the frills, bells and whistles like some sheriffs are used
to.”

“I haven’t got a morgue in my facility, but I
still wouldn’t store bodies in my basement.” Christ, it was almost
laughable, would have been for sure if it wasn’t Carl lying down
there.

“They’re coming tonight.”

“So why did you move him out of the gorge?”
For that matter, what the hell had they transported him in? Surely
not the back of a department cruiser. Worse, what evidence had they
destroyed in the process?

Whoa. This was no murder investigation.

“Critters,” Teesdale said as he led Brax
through the jail proper. Six cells, all empty except for the
pungent aroma of a heavy disinfectant which failed to expunge the
underlying scent of urine. Brax hated to admit it, but though his
department and budget were most likely multiple times the size of
Teesdale’s, he couldn’t rid his own facility of the smell despite
the king’s ransom in county funds he’d authorized for disinfectants
and cleaning crews.

And he was dwelling on the prevalent
fragrance to avoid dwelling on the critter comment.

Brax could only pray that Maggie was right
and Carl wasn’t in Teesdale’s basement. How the hell was he
supposed to bring up the subject of critters with her?

The sheriff started down a rickety set of
curving metal stairs that shook under his feet. Brax followed, the
winding effect and the subtle shake enough to make a drunk queasy.
The only light that followed them down came from the
eight-foot-high windows from the floor above.

“You sure you want to do this?”

“She’s my sister.”

“Yeah.” Teesdale pulled on a string hanging
above his head.

The body lay on a metal workbench against the
back wall. A blue sheet draped the man-size shape, hanging down the
side of the bench.

“Okay, stand out of the light. I’m only gonna
uncover one side.”

“I can’t tell from a look at one side,
Teesdale.”

“I’m telling you, the other side isn’t going
to help you identify him.”

Brax had seen his share of horrific sights.
Carl could be no worse. “Pull it back all the way. My sister is
counting on a decent identification.”

Sometimes those horrific things happened to
people he knew. He remembered the last time, his friend, the sound
of that autopsy buzz saw, or whatever Hyram had called it. He
should remember, he’d heard the name more than once, but he
didn’t.

He could not explain to Maggie why they’d
have to subject Carl’s body to that indignity. Then again, Nevada
laws and regulations might be different. Maybe he could get
Teesdale to forgo the autopsy in this case since it was clearly an
accident.

“Holy shit.”

Teesdale had pulled back the sheet while he’d
been thinking.

“Critters,” the sheriff said again.

“Christ.” They’d made fast work of the left
side of Carl’s face, yet the right remained completely intact. Like
a Thanksgiving turkey where you’d carved the left breast and saved
the right one for tomorrow night’s dinner.

Only critters weren’t so neat about it. Nor
had they picked him clean.

Brax drew in a breath, more to ease the ache
in his chest than for the air itself. Though there was evidence of
skin sloughing, the body hadn’t reached putrefaction stage, and the
smell was still manageable, perhaps because Carl had been out in
the open instead of a hot, humid place. Desert air was dry.

If you didn’t look at the left side of his
face, you could almost think he was...

Not in a million years did Carl look as if he
was sleeping. The dead just didn’t look as if they were sleeping,
no matter how many times you saw that on TV or read it in a book.
Or heard it in a mortuary. They looked
dead
. Even without
the ravaged half face. Slack jaw and drooping facial muscles robbed
the body of every last ounce of humanity. They also smelled dead,
even before decomposition set in. A body lost control of all
muscles. A body had to be cleaned up.