Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (21 page)

“I gotta go.”

“Need a bucket, Braxton?” It wasn’t said
unkindly, but with the knowledge that when tragedy happened to
someone close, when the victim was family, it didn’t matter how
many goddamn times you’d seen death. Distance changed
perception.

He still didn’t need a bucket.

“I’ll call you about the arrangements. We
need to talk about whether an autopsy’s actually necessary.”

“Oh, it’s necessary,” Teesdale said,
bristling.

Brax realized he hadn’t phrased it correctly.
Maybe he should have begged Teesdale not to put Maggie through it,
though forgoing autopsy warred with his cop sensibilities. A cop
always wanted to rule out foul play. Things set better with an
M.E.’s rubber stamp.

Teesdale held up his hand before Brax could
reword. “And it’s my call.” He pointed to his badge. “See that?
Little lettering? County Coroner?”

As a brother, Brax knew he should fight for
his sister, spare her the pain of knowing her husband’s body would
be dissected like a frog in biology class. As a cop, he knew he
should look more closely, ease Carl’s head to the side, peruse the
wounds on both the skull and other areas of the body. He’d let
himself be caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Brotherly duty or cop common sense?

For the moment, neither choice mattered.

Right now, one person consumed him. Maggie.
Duty to his sister dictated he tell her that an open casket service
would be a bad idea. He could almost handle that task. It was the
other fact tearing his chest open.

The last words Maggie had said to her husband
would forever be
Drop dead
.

Chapter Twelve

Della’s hand wringing was beginning to wear
on Simone’s nerves, mostly because she felt like wringing her hands
herself. She’d picked up Simone, and they’d driven over together,
both silent, both in shock. Della had started the hand gesture the
moment Brax left.

Carl was dead. Dead.
Dear God, please
don’t let it be true
. But the hard, implacable lines of Brax’s
face when he walked out the door haunted her still. Simone knew he
didn’t think Sheriff Teesdale had made a mistake.

“I shouldn’t have been so hard on you
yesterday.” Della’s voice hitched.

Maggie flapped her hand as if she didn’t have
a concern in the world. “Oh, Della, don’t even worry about it. Carl
and I will work everything out when he gets back.”

Della glanced at Simone, a frown puckering
her brow. Was denial normal? Was Maggie cracking up? She was
actually chipper in a jittery, agitated sort of way, her fingers
tap-tap-tapping, first the arm of her chair, then her knee, her
cheek, and back to the chair.

What would they all do if—when—Brax came back
with solid confirmation? The very idea made Simone shake inside and
out.

Maggie’s brittle smile scared her spitless,
and worse, Simone didn’t know what on earth to do or say. She had
never dealt with death or grief. Her father was dead, but her
parents had divorced when she was very young. She hadn’t seen him
again, and his death had come over the TV on the six o’clock news
as if he were no more to her than a face in
People
magazine.
In fact, that’s all he was. She didn’t have grandparents or aunts
or uncles or cousins that she’d ever known. Her mother might
actually have been hatched.

Simone’s pseudo-fairy-tale life didn’t give
her any clues on how to help Maggie. She’d known Carl for three
years, and all she wanted to do was rock on the sofa and repeat
over and over,
I can’t believe he’s gone.
How much worse it
must be for his wife of ten years. Simone couldn’t even
imagine.

Carl. He was sweet and funny, and God, she
would miss him deeply. How could he be gone forever?

Her heart flipped over and twisted in, out,
and around on itself when she thought of that nasty email she’d
sent last night. She wished more than anything she could take it
back. Hit the recall icon.

Wherever he was, Carl would have already seen
it. He could see everything now. Would he forgive her for getting
so angry with him last night?

She jumped up before she actually started
wringing her hands along with Della. “Do you want me to make you
some tea, Maggie?”

Brax had been gone for an hour. She’d made
Maggie three cups of tea. Each time, she seemed to add a little
more sugar and a little more milk, as if somehow the sweetener and
cream would soften the blow when it came.

“No thanks. Brax will be back soon, and I
don’t want to be rushing off to the bathroom every five seconds. I
might miss the moment he walks in with Carl.”

Oh God.

Simone hurried into the kitchen to make the
tea anyway. She could still hear them in the family room, Maggie’s
voice high and excited, Della subdued, the roughness of tears
edging her tone.

When she returned with the tea, thicker and
creamier than before, the late-afternoon sun had moved beyond the
windows, hitting the bedroom end of the trailer. A hush fell along
with the relative darkness in the living room. Maggie’s eyes had
become smoky hollows in her face.

The front door burst open. Maggie jumped up,
raced halfway across the room, then reached out a hand, her fist
closing, clenching, as Chloe barreled into the trailer.

“Oh my God, sweetie, I would have been here
sooner.” She offered no explanation for why she hadn’t been. “I
brought you some Xanax. Drugs are a girl’s best friend at a time
like this.”

While Della shed the tears Maggie couldn’t
and Simone offered the comfort of tea, Chloe delivered
tranquilizers. Simone almost begged for one herself.

Maggie flapped her hand. “Oh, Chloe, I don’t
need any Xanax. Brax went to prove it wasn’t Carl they found. The
sheriff made a mistake.”

Chloe clamped her lips, swept first Della,
then Simone with a potent, questioning glare. They both, in that
order, dropped their gaze. “Sweetie, I talked to the chickens—”

Maggie turned, stomped to the sofa, and threw
herself down. “They made a mistake, too.”

“If it wasn’t him, Maggie, then where do you
think he is?” In the kindliest, grandmotherly tone, Chloe asked
what Simone had been terrified of asking. Concern etched lines into
Chloe’s plump face, but her foot slapped a no-nonsense beat on the
linoleum.

They waited through an excruciating
two-minute silence. Simone had never understood how truly long two
minutes could be. Maggie’s Elvis clock beat in the kitchen, each
tick and tock like a minor explosion. Chloe breathed like a dragon
waiting to shoot fire. Della sniffed. Maggie hummed.

Simone prayed for Brax to come home.

* * * * *

Pandemonium struck the moment the front door
opened.

Maggie flew across the room and into his
arms. Brax closed his eyes and clutched her to his chest.
Swallowing past the ache in his throat, he held her tightly a
moment longer.

Then he gripped her arms and gently set her
back. Her wild eyes searched his face, reflecting desperation.
Panic. Raw guilt. He’d do anything to give her the answer she
needed. Fucking anything. His choices had died in Teesdale’s
jail.

“Maggie, honey, it was him.”

“No.” She struggled in his grasp, then lifted
her chin, and stared him down. “That’s a lie.”

Her eyes. They tore him apart.

He opened his mouth, but the words took
forever to come out. “I’d never lie to you about this.” She needed
to hear the truth.

“It’s not him. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll
show you.” Head down, she battled against him, butting his chest.
“I’m going to see whoever it is, and I’ll show you you’re
wrong.”

Jesus. He wanted to bleed off her pain like a
lanced wound, but the only thing he could do was make sure she
never carried the memory of Carl’s ruined face in her mind. Or her
heart. “You can’t do that, honey, believe me, you can’t.”

With a mighty shove, Maggie pushed him back
against the door, his hip glancing the small hall table. It shook,
then tumbled. The thick glass bowl on top bounced off the linoleum,
flipped, then landed on a weak point and shattered.

“See what you’ve done,” Maggie screeched.
“Carl always puts his car keys there. Always. And he’s gonna be so
mad. He’s gonna be—” She covered her mouth.

His chest ached as if the tiny shards had
sliced straight through the flesh and bone to his heart. It
thrashed and bled behind his ribs.

Brax flattened his hands, bracing himself as
Maggie’s pain washed over him like a hard unforgiving rain. Then he
did what he had to do. “You’re not going to see him, Maggie.” He
spoke with a strong, sure voice, but the breath he dragged in shook
his soul and burned his windpipe. “I’ll take care of
everything.”

Jesus, God, look how he’d taken care of
everything. His sister had shattered in front of him as surely as
the bowl had shattered on the floor.

He closed his hand over Maggie’s shoulder.
“Sit down, honey.” He turned her to the family room. Her feet moved
like an automaton, as if her outburst had drained the fight from
her.

He started to guide her into the worn
lounger.

“That’s Carl’s chair.” Maggie’s voice
hitched, and her body jerked, her calf ramming the coffee table. He
caught her before she fell.

“Sit here.” He gently pushed her down into
the corner of the couch. Someone hovered nearby. Simone. Her scent
drifted over him, but he couldn’t let it soothe. He couldn’t let
his own pain ease a fraction while Maggie’s agony ripped her in
two.

Brax pushed aside the tea mug and a plastic
bottle of pills, then sat on the wood coffee table.

“It’s not him,” Maggie whispered.

He cupped her cheek. His eyeballs stung as if
the sweat had run off his brow. He blinked, cleared his vision,
then found his voice. “Yes, it is. I swear, honey. You have to face
it.”

She shook her head, swiping at her eyes. “He
didn’t leave me?”

“No, honey, he didn’t.” His heart broke in
two, and each breath was like a knife wound. He didn’t know what
the hell to do for her. Useless, helpless, he told her the things
he hoped she needed. “He loved you.”

Maggie started to rock. “I don’t understand,
I don’t understand,” she chanted under her breath.

“He—” His voice broke. “He fell. He was
hiking, and he fell. It was an accident.”

Maggie’s bottom lip trembled. “God’ll never
forgive me. Never.”

Brax held her face with both hands and
fruitlessly tried to dry each of her tears with his thumbs. Nothing
would stop them. “Yes, He will. He already does. I promise, I
swear.”

Maggie leaned forward and buried her head in
the crook of his neck. She shook against him with the force of her
sobs.

“I told him to drop dead and he did,” she
said finally. Loud and clear, her confession. “He dropped dead like
I told him to.”

Her words vibrated inside him, in a deep
hollowed-out place. A place that knew guilt, that lived with it,
writhed in it. If he could make it so she didn’t live that way for
the rest of her life. If he could fix it, if he could take away her
pain.

“Where he is right now, Carl knows you didn’t
mean it, honey.” He continued to murmur, meaning lost in the low
pitch. It didn’t matter what he said. It was the soothing sound of
a voice she needed, anybody’s voice. Carl’s voice. But he could
never give her that.

Stroking Maggie’s back with one hand, he bent
his chin to her shoulder, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and
forefinger as if that would somehow ease the pain for both of
them.

His fingers came away moist.

“I brought some Xanax,” someone whispered,
the sound dropping like a dead weight in the room.

Chloe held the small bottle out to him.

“Get me some water.” Behind Maggie’s back,
without loosening his hold on her, he deftly unscrewed the
protector cap and shook a pill into his hand. He didn’t even give
himself a chance to question the wisdom of accepting drugs from a
whorehouse madam. As a lifesaver, he’d have grabbed at
anything.

Chloe handed the glass she’d fetched to
Simone, and Simone handed to it Brax, their fingertips
brushing.

He took the water with a slight tremble in
his hand. He couldn’t look at her.

Brax tipped Maggie’s chin with the hand
holding the little blue pill. “Take this.”

She looked at the tiny tablet. “I don’t want
it.”

God help me, please take it. Please
.
He’d break clean in two if he couldn’t end it for her somehow. Even
for a few short hours. “It’ll help you sleep.”

Fresh tear tracks trailed down her
cheeks.

“Put out your tongue.”

She did, like a child. He dropped the pill,
then tilted the glass of water against her lips. Maggie drank with
her eyes closed, then swallowed.

“Are you sure it’s Carl?” she murmured one
more time.

Resting the glass on one knee and the bottle
on the other, Brax leaned his forehead against hers. His head
ached, his heart bled, and his insides leaked out on the floor as
if he’d been gut-shot.

He hammered her last hope into the ground.
“Yeah, honey, I’m sure.”

* * * * *

How long would the drug take to work?

Simone knew if she witnessed the tableau for
one more second, she’d die.

Watching them was agony—Maggie, a pitiful
shadow of the woman she’d been two days ago, and Brax, a good man
brought to his knees by his sister’s grief. Despair turned his eyes
a light blue and his lips a faded white. Stark grooves of pain
slashed his features.

She could do nothing for him. Nothing for
Maggie. Nothing to ease their anguish. Nothing could ever take away
what Maggie had said to Carl.

Maggie would live with those words for the
rest of her life.