Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (22 page)

Simone’s eyes filled with hot tears. Chloe’s
arm slipped around her shoulder, hugging her close. As a mother
would.

Simone wished someone, anyone, could have
done the same for Maggie. And for Brax.

* * * * *

His eyeballs throbbed from the inside out. A
headache pounded at his temples. His sister’s life had gone to
shit, and he’d failed miserably at doing anything to help her. The
only sure thing was that he would not allow Maggie to see Carl.
Christ. He’d never let her face that. In the gloomy hallway outside
his sister’s bedroom where she rested, Brax shoved his hands
through his hair and let his breath out in a sigh.

When he opened his eyes, Simone stood in the
hall. He wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around her, bury
his face in her hair, and hold her.

Until Maggie woke up.

Simone padded down the hall, stopping when
her fresh citrus tang was enough to ease the ache behind his eyes.
Earlier her scent had offered comfort he couldn’t take. He filled
himself with her, breathing deeply of her gentle fragrance.

“Is she sleeping?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He ached to touch her, even her hair,
but he kept his hands at his side. “Never thought I’d think it, but
drugs are a damn good thing.”

She put a hand to his cheek. “How are you
doing?”

He felt worse than Carl had looked, like
critters had eaten away half his heart and half his soul. “I’m
fine.”

“Liar,” she mocked gently.

“I wish I was. A liar, I mean. Then I could
have told her it wasn’t him down in...” He stopped. Simone didn’t
need to know Carl was stuck like garbage down in the jailhouse
basement.

“You did the right thing. She has to face it
eventually.”

He had the churning sense that Maggie wasn’t
close to facing anything. Her voice thick and slurred, she’d begged
him to stroke her hair while she fell asleep. Even though he was
younger, he’d felt more like her father. Watching her, he’d hurt so
bad inside he’d almost lost it and cried while he’d rubbed her
matted, messy hair.

His heart seized with the memory of Maggie’s
last whispered words before she succumbed to a drug-induced
sleep.

Maybe he didn’t accidentally fall into the
gorge.

She’d looked at him with the same frenzied
hope she’d had when she sent him down to the sheriff’s to make sure
it wasn’t Carl’s body. Then she’d verbally kicked him
senseless.

Maybe somebody pushed him, Tyler. Maybe
somebody killed him. You have to find out who did it. Carl can’t
rest until you do.

Maggie couldn’t rest until she’d assuaged her
own guilt by proving that someone else had done worse to her
husband than she had. Words, some so fucking momentous, others so
fucking useless.

The only saving grace God had given Brax was
letting Maggie fall asleep before he had to answer her plea.

Maggie could sleep, but she’d never rest. He
knew he’d do whatever she asked. He had to. When the evidence
showed Carl had lost his footing and fallen without any help from
another’s hand, Brax would have to tell her that, too. There wasn’t
enough Xanax in creation to ease the pain she’d face then.

Simone soothed with a soft, wordless murmur.
He wanted to sink into her comforting touch, lose himself in her
warmth.

“I think you were right, Brax,” Simone
murmured in the gentlest of voices.

“About what?” Even her voice stroked his
aches.

“You are like the Tin Man. All along, he had
a heart as big as a mountain. He just didn’t know it.”

Brax knew he had a heart. It lay in pieces at
her feet.

Putting his hand over Simone’s, he held her
palm to his cheek. He couldn’t tell her in words what her touch
meant. He couldn’t express how badly he wanted to take the comfort
she offered. He could only let her know through his gaze and the
heat of his hand over hers.

Then he let go, ending the moment before he
begged for so much more. “I have to check out Carl’s office.”

“Check out his office? Why?” She covered her
mouth, muffling her small exclamation. “Life insurance and stuff?
Do you think he had any?”

He hoped to God Carl had some sort of
insurance to help see Maggie through. A free plot in the Goldstone
Cemetery wasn’t going to do it. “We’ll see.”

Looking for an insurance policy now wasn’t
his intention. Maggie would ask him what he’d done to find Carl’s
supposed killer the moment she woke, and the sooner he could lay
her latest fear, qualm, need, desire, or whatever the hell it was
to rest, the better for her. In the long run, she’d have to accept
that Carl’s death was a terrible accident.

His cop skills were the most he had to offer.
His consoling abilities sure left a lot to be desired.

What a woman needed at a time like this was
her mother. Theirs was almost four hundred miles away in Palm
Springs.

Shit. He should have phoned Mom hours
ago.

“Have to make a call,” he muttered, easing
past her in the hallway. Simone trailed him into the family room
where he made the smartest move of the day, maybe of his life.

He called his mother.

* * * * *

Simone watched Brax talk to his mother. He
raked his hand through his hair so many times, it had become a mass
of tangles snagging his fingers with each new pass.

He squeezed his eyes shut as he spoke. His
feet shifted, his body moved, constantly, a hand on his hip, then
his neck, kneading, finally back to his hair again. As if movement
were the only thing keeping him sane.

Della had fled to the kitchen, ostensibly to
get them all a glass of wine. Simone needed something
mind-numbing.

This was a crisis. An emotional one. Della
hid from it in the kitchen. Simone wasn’t doing any better. But
Chloe, she’d turned out to be a godsend for more than Our Manor of
the Ladies.

Chloe patted the couch beside her. Simone
wanted to touch Brax, anything to ease his tense shoulders and the
harsh slash across his brow. That moment of closeness in the
hallway, when he’d let her cup his cheek, had passed.

By the time he’d concluded the call, Simone
had taken Chloe’s offer, accepting the woman’s comforting arm
around her shoulders.

Brax turned. Anguish and anger lit his eyes.
She had the feeling he could smash his fist into the wall and not
even feel the physical pain. Then he cleared his throat, pointed in
the general direction of Carl’s office trailer, and said, “I’ll
look for those papers.”

Simone made a move to follow him. Chloe
pulled her back down.

“Let him go, honey.”

“I have to do something. He’s hurting so bad,
Chloe.”

“He needs to fight his demons by doing. It’s
a man’s way. So let him alone to do what he has to.”

Simone pulled back, examining Chloe’s soft,
powdered face. “How’d you get to be so smart about men?”

Chloe smiled. “It’s my job, sweetie pie. What
you have to do for him is be strong and take care of his sister
because he can’t do it right now.”

The kindly madam pricked Simone’s conscience
with that directive. “I don’t know how to deal with Maggie’s
grief.”

“Nobody does, sweetie. What do you think you
ought to do?”

“Wait here until Maggie wakes up or her
mother arrives.”

“That’s the secret. Be there for them when
they need you.”

Simone managed a small smile. “Chloe, you
amaze me.” Simone would stay as long as Brax and Maggie needed
her.

Chloe patted Simone’s shoulder to indicate
all was settled, then raised her voice to call, “Della, where’s
that wine?”

* * * * *

Maggie had said Carl always left his keys in
the bowl when he came in. The broken bowl. One of the ladies had
cleared the mess away while Brax had tucked Maggie into bed.

The keys weren’t in the bowl. Shit, he’d
really lost his ability to think clearly. He should have asked
Teesdale for Carl’s personal effects. His keys would have been
among them. He’d be damned if he’d go charging back to ask. What
would it matter to Carl if he broke the trailer door down now?
After first testing to make sure it was locked, Brax retrieved a
crowbar out of his SUV.

Damn, it was liberating not to have to worry
about obtaining a search warrant.

The weather-stripping was degraded, the door
loose. Brax popped it open with a minimum of effort or damage.
After two days closed up in the summer sun, the air inside the
trailer gushed out hot and fetid. Drawn shades suffused the place
with an eerie gloom despite the early-evening light outside.

He put a hand on the doorjamb, a foot on the
metal step, and paused. He’d search the place because he had to
give Maggie some sort of peace, and because doing something pushed
out the memory of her tear-streaked face. Finally, he hauled
himself inside. Conducting a visual inspection of the small
trailer, he felt along the left wall for the light switch and
flipped it on.

Damn. Carl was exceptionally neat. Or rather
he
had
been.

Obviously a false assumption, Brax had
presumed the neatness in the house was due to Maggie. The desk, a
battered Salvation Army variety, was clear of scattered papers and
files, with only a closed spiral notebook off to one side. Not even
a speck of dust lurked at the base of the computer. A small bottle
of air squirt for cleaning keyboards sat by the monitor and next to
that, a spray can of glass cleaner. A bottle of aspirin, a pencil
holder, magnetic paper clip dispenser, and a Post-it pad neatly
lined the edge of the calendar-blotter. The blank calendar squares
stared up at him, providing no clues as to Carl’s schedule.

Beside the too-neat desk sat an equally empty
trash can lined with white plastic.

If a kitchen or dining nook had ever existed
in the trailer, Carl had long since torn them out. Pale blue
indoor-outdoor tiles carpeted the floor. A door at one end led
presumably to the bathroom. A large, slanted drafting table abutted
one wall with three wooden four-drawer filing cabinets, scarred but
polished to a glossy shine, lined up next to it.

The drafting table drew Brax’s gaze. Three
topographical maps covered its surface, each held down with sliding
clamps. Carl had written no notes in the margins, but had marked
several spots with a red
X
. Outhouse excavation? Brax
discerned that the marked spots were not within Goldstone township,
but located in the vast hills and valleys. Caves? He surmised that
each
X
registered a potential site for one of Carl’s
spelunking sojourns.

The maps neither proved nor disproved murder.
They simply confirmed what everyone said; Carl had taken up
spelunking. Brax turned from that dead end to the filing
cabinets.

The first cabinet contained past tax returns
for the last seven years, as required by law, all neatly labeled
with subfolders for various types of transactional backup.

Brax would return for further examination if
necessary. More importantly, he wanted Carl’s bank statements, the
siphoning off of money being the first thing Maggie had complained
about. Before she’d ranted about the floozy.

His heart jumped into his throat, then beat a
path to his gut. Damn it, he couldn’t afford to think of Maggie in
ranting terms. He was a cop; she was a citizen with a concern
regarding her husband’s death. Anything else screwed up his
objectivity.

Hell, at this point, he needed to look up the
definition of objectivity in the freaking dictionary.

He moved on to the next cabinet. Bingo.
Hanging folders and files sorted by institution and account and
filed by year. Damn, Carl had accounts with almost every major
stock and investment establishment. What the hell?

Brax pulled out the first folder. He gave a
long, low whistle upon opening it. A 401K account, the balance of
which was more than Brax’s net worth. He drew out the latest
statement for each of the accounts and laid them on the drafting
table, flipping through each to peruse the contents. When he was
done, a quick calculation rounded to the nearest ten thousand
staggered him.

Carl had almost a million dollars spread out
in bonds, stocks, real estate partnerships, gold coins. The
diversification ran the gamut. He even owned railroad cars, for
God’s sake.

Where had Carl gotten the money for all this?
Maggie had said they were doing fine, but this was far more than
fine
. This was unseemly, given the fact that they lived in a
trailer in a broken-down town full of losers. Why was Carl, a rich
man, hiding out in the desert?

Hiding out? Running from an embezzlement
scheme? Brax was developing a melodramatic streak in his old
age.

Maggie wanted answers. The first answer was
going to have to come from her. Where had the money come from and
why hadn’t she told him the full extent? She was his sister, and
this investigation was personal, and he resented the hell out of
being kept in the dark.

The minor irritation washed away the residual
ache and galvanized his actions. He flipped through the checking
account statement. Carl had withdrawn cash at regular intervals.
How could he spend three hundred bucks at a whack? Brax pressed the
computer’s On button. Carl, unbelievably, had jotted down the user
ID and password on the inside cover of each account folder.

Did he think that feeble lock on his trailer
door would keep out anyone bent on ransacking his financials?

The computer booted up, then requested a
password. Brax snorted. He was no hacker. Thank goodness all he had
to do was open the spiral notebook neatly placed to one side of the
desk. Sure enough, there it was, along with his email codes.

Carl, where the hell was your head when you
wrote this stuff down?

Brax typed in
onehotmama
, trying not
to think about what it meant. He accessed the Internet, requested
the site, and punched in Carl’s ID and password for his checking
account, then scrolled through the transactions, starting with the
most recent. A few checks had cleared, an ATM withdrawal, a branch
withdrawal—