Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (24 page)

“You’re not insisting on an autopsy just to
piss me off, are you.” It was not a question.

Teesdale put his feet on his desk, crossing
his ankles. The tread of his boots had almost worn through. “It’s
routine.”

“Bullshit.”

Arching a brow, Teesdale said, “What makes
you
think we need an autopsy? Not two hours ago, you seemed
mighty against it. For your sister’s sake, I think you said.”

“Carl’s the only witness to the event, and I
want to know what his body testifies to.” In the basement, he’d
been thinking with his heart instead of his head. He couldn’t bury
it in the sand anymore. The money shouted foul play. Foul play
shouted Maggie’s name. Then of course, there was Simone and the
fantasy. And that email. He’d get involved because he had to.

It never occurred to him to simply cover up
what he already knew.

“Bullshit,” Teesdale mimicked. Then he flexed
his jurisdictional muscles, though he kept his tone mild. “You
think you know something. Better tell me or I’ll have to throw you
in a cell for obstructing justice.”

Fighting words, but the sheriff’s
lackadaisical manner and attitude suggested he didn’t care one way
or the other what Brax knew or what the autopsy might reveal.

“Let’s work together on this.” Not wanting
Teesdale mucking with things at this point, he’d keep Carl’s
finances to himself until he could pigeonhole the sheriff’s
abilities. “Tell me when the autopsy’s scheduled for.”

“When the M.E. gets back from his
conference.” The sheriff leaned forward, flipped a couple of pages
on his day calendar. “Saturday, probably.”

Three fricking days. “Doesn’t he have an
assistant that can do it?”

Teesdale snorted, then outright laughed.
“Yeah, right.”

“You don’t seem too fucking concerned about
it.”

The man shrugged. “You work with what you’ve
got.”

“Where the hell is Carl now? Still down in
the basement?”

“The boys from Bullhead picked him up an hour
ago. Don’t worry, he’ll be patiently awaiting our M.E.”

Worry? He was goddamn crazy with the
scenarios racking his brain. Scenarios involving his sister. Or
Simone.

Dammit, he should have examined Carl’s body
closely. “Three days isn’t good enough, and you know it,
Teesdale.”

The sheriff put his feet on the floor and
rolled his chair closer to the desk. “Sit down, Braxton,” he said,
with more force than previously.

Brax sat, not in deference to Teesdale’s
command, but due to the weight of his own failures sitting heavy on
his shoulders. He’d fucked up royally. He hadn’t checked Carl’s
body. He hadn’t asked any questions about the crime scene. He
hadn’t even considered that there
was
a crime scene. With
the four chickens riding their dirt bikes through the gorge, and
probably a horde of lookie-loos, any evidence would now be
obliterated.

In short, he hadn’t adhered to the training
of a long career in law enforcement. He would not, however, allow
further self-recrimination to get in the way now.

“I’m going to interview the chickens and go
over the site where they found him, including the spot from which
he presumably fell.” He’d have to ask the girls about the money,
too. Even chickens might be tempted. There was Lafoote’s
involvement to be considered, as well, the hotel being the big
money game in town.

“I’ve got it handled.”

He didn’t give a damn if he was stepping on
the sheriff’s toes. “This is more serious than following a trail of
Twinkie wrappers to Mud Killian’s doorstep.”

“You don’t say?” Teesdale drawled.

Brax wasn’t in the mood for a pissing
contest. He wanted to do right by his sister. The money Carl
withdrew shouted out that Maggie was right. Carl hadn’t tripped and
fallen over the edge of the cliff. “Let me give you the benefit of
my recent experience.” His stomach cramped, his words a reminder of
why, besides Maggie’s plea, he’d wanted this hellish trip in the
first place. “The faster we move on this, the more likely we are to
bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. Every tick of the clock is
our enemy.”

For the first time, Teesdale reacted with
something more than a drawl or a negligent wave of his hand. His
jaw tightened and nostrils flexed. “I have a helluva lot more
experience in my left toe than you’ve had in a lifetime.”

“I’m sure Goldstone has been a gold mine for
you.”

Teesdale curled his lip. “L.A. Ten years.
RHD.”

Shit. LAPD, Robbery-Homicide Division. Ten
years. Had he been washed out? Probably. LAPD to tiny, forgotten
County Sheriff wasn’t just a step down, it was a fall into the
abyss.

Teesdale leaned forward, narrowed his eyes,
his teeth gleaming through a mirthless smile that looked like
something on a death’s head. “I can see you’re dying to know what I
did to get the boot out here.”

“Yeah, sure, why don’t you tell me?” The
story obviously stood between him and what he needed Teesdale to do
on Carl’s death investigation. He’d hear the man out, then get on
with business.

“You got any gangbangers in Cottonmouth,
Sheriff Braxton?” Teesdale used the title as a slur.

Brax had faced worse than gangs. A suspect
list consisting of people he’d known for years. People he
considered friends, yet suspects in the murder of a respected man
they’d all known.

“I can see you think you’ve got your share of
shit. And maybe you do. But you ain’t seen nothing till you see
what they’re capable of.”

“I’m sure Goldstone is—” He’d been about to
say,
more your speed
, but thought better of the sarcasm.
Obviously Teesdale had seen things the ordinary citizen couldn’t
comprehend. “Preferable,” he said instead.

“Preferable, yeah.” Teesdale punctuated with
a short bark of laughter. “There are a lot of things preferable to
digging an eight-year-old girl out of the city dump where her
killers tossed her body like trash after raping her until they’d
damn near ripped her in two, then slammed a lead pipe into her head
so many times it looked like a squashed pumpkin.”

Brax had been wrong. There were worse
things.

The sheriff’s voice dropped, and his gaze
focused on something far beyond Brax’s shoulder, memories long in
the past but never forgotten. “We got them. Four. Fifteen,
fourteen, eleven, and ten. Minors.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple
sliding with difficulty past a lump in his throat. “I testified,
but I didn’t wait for the verdict, never even read about it. Got
out of there the next day.”

Brax didn’t blame him for that.

Teesdale closed his eyes, a shudder twitching
his shoulders. “My little girl was eight at the time.” Then he
stared Brax down with a dark-eyed crazy-man look that only a father
could wear. “You can bet your goddamn ass I’d rather be trailing
Twinkie wrappers to Mud Killian’s door than dreaming about my
little girl topped with nothing but a squashed pumpkin head.”

Teesdale hadn’t been drummed out. He hadn’t
run away. He’d done the only thing a man afraid for his sanity
could do, the very thing a father
would
do.

Brax was used to meeting glare for glare, did
it all the time and always came out on top in the exchange. This
was different. This was beyond his ken. Teesdale was right. Despite
being a cop, Brax’s world didn’t contain children who preyed with
such viciousness upon other children. Monsters made out of little
boy parts. Jesus H. Christ.

“Carl withdrew three thousand dollars from
his checking account yesterday morning before he went hiking,” he
said.

“Throwing me a bone, Braxton, because my
little story tugged at your heartstrings?”

“Nope.” Though it had. “Just asking for help
from the good sheriff of Emerald County.” He’d intended to slam the
sheriff with the cash thing, but Teesdale’s brief story changed
that plan. Given the choice between gangbangers or Mud, Brax would
have taken to trailing Twinkie wrappers himself. The man would know
his craft after his years of experience, and Brax’s best hope for
keeping Maggie safe was to work with him rather than against him.
“How old is your daughter now?”

Sheriff Elwood Teesdale smiled and dropped
five years’ worth of lines from his face. “Almost sixteen. She’s
the prettiest little thing I’ve ever seen. Already planning which
college she wants to go to. I’m thinking Stanford. She’s as smart
as a whip. Wants to be a doctor.”

“I’m sure she’ll be whatever she sets out to
be.”

“Yeah.” He sat back in his chair and folded
his hands across his belly, once more the contented small town
sheriff whose biggest case involved Twinkies and a perp called Mud.
“Now, about that cash. Maggie have any idea what he used it for?”
Teesdale asked.

“She’s sedated. I’ll ask her as soon as it’s
possible. But I’m not holding out that she’ll have any useful
answers.” He
knew
she wouldn’t. “Don’t suppose you found an
easy three thousand on the body or in the truck?” The question had
to be asked even if he knew the answer would be in the negative.
The whereabouts of the cash lay in the identity of Carl’s
killer.

“I’d have given it a mention if I did,”
Teesdale said dryly.

“Yeah, I’m sure you would have.” He met the
sheriff’s gaze head-on, and those few seconds belied the near
accusation in his question. Teesdale would have demanded where the
hell it came from. Not salted it away.

“I plan on dropping by the bank tomorrow to
see if anyone remembers seeing Carl,” Brax said.

The sheriff didn’t pull the old
stay-out-of-my-case thing. “Good idea.”

Brax couldn’t say he’d been having a whole
hell of a lot of good ideas lately. “Now tell me why you want the
autopsy.”

Clasping his hands over his belly and
drumming his fingers, Teesdale didn’t answer directly. “I take it
you think the money is talking murder instead of a simple
fall.”

“I take it you’d agree with me on that.” Brax
stared him down and waited.

Teesdale rolled his lips, wriggled his mouth,
let out a long sigh, then gave Brax what he’d both been afraid of
and needed to know. “Carl had an odd depression on the side of his
head.”

Brax didn’t have to ask if it was on the side
the critters had been at. He’d have noticed anything on Carl’s good
side.

“I’m no medical examiner, but I’ve seen
crushed skulls before, and this wasn’t caused by any rock he hit on
the way down. Too uniform, in my opinion. Like he’d been struck
with
something rather than landing
on
something.”

“The sooner we get that autopsy then, the
better. We’ll need time of death.” Maggie had been out during the
morning and part of the afternoon, returning in time to dress, then
drag Brax off to the tea party.

She didn’t have an alibi if Carl had died
before two o’clock.

“I’ve got a call in that might help speed
things up.”

Brax almost laughed. The sheriff
had
been giving him a hard time. He didn’t bother to ask what that call
might do. This was Teesdale’s jurisdiction, and with LAPD RH under
his belt, the man had a right to it. Hell, he’d know all the back
doors in his own county.

Brax broached another topic on his mind.
“What do you think of Jason Lafoote?”

“As our man?” At Brax’s nod, Teesdale
snorted. “No motive.”

It was a long shot, but the only one Brax
had. “Carl told me he got the judge to hold up those permits.” In
as many words. “Could be Lafoote held it against him.”

Teesdale stroked his chin. “Doesn’t make
sense. What would be the point? Della would still stand in the way.
If it was Della at the bottom of the gorge, now that’d make some
sense.”

“With Carl out of the way, Lafoote could have
been hoping Della would change her mind.”

“Too much risk that she wouldn’t. If the
permitting, or lack thereof, was the motive, doesn’t make sense
he’d hit Carl first.”

Nothing made sense at the moment. A sense of
the situation only came after hours and sometimes days of
investigation of the small, seemingly meaningless details.

“Why don’t you see what a background check on
Lafoote comes up with?” Brax phrased it as a question rather than
an order. It was still Teesdale’s case.

“It couldn’t hurt,” the sheriff agreed.

Brax came to his next question. He hated to
do it to Maggie, but it had to be asked. “Any gossip around town
about Carl and another woman?”

Teesdale chuckled, though Brax couldn’t find
the humor in it. “Not a whiff of that kind of thing. I guarantee
you, if Carl was stepping out, we’d all know about it.”

“The judge doesn’t seem to think it’s out of
the realm of possibility.”

“Della?” Teesdale rolled his eyes. “Men
aren’t high on her list. She even thought I was having an affair
two years ago when my wife went to L.A. to visit her mother. Told
me I oughta stop my cheating ways and beg forgiveness.”

“You got any other bright ideas?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be sitting here on my
ass.”

Shit. He’d been hoping Teesdale’s Goldstone
knowledge would provide some leads. “I’ll still give Lafoote a try.
Tomorrow.” Tonight, he had other priorities. Maggie and Simone.
“First thing tomorrow, I want to go up to the trail above the
site.” Doing it now, in the dark, might destroy any evidence.

“I was planning on heading out about seven.
Think you can be up that early?”

The sheriff should have already made the trek
up there, but it was too damn late to make recriminations. “I’ll be
there. At the trailhead where you found his truck.” Early was good,
he’d make it back in time to be at the bank close to opening.

Brax rose, then stuck out his hand, neither
apology nor guilt, simply acceptance.

Teesdale stood, took the offering, shaking
hard and fast.

“Find anything interesting in the truck or
his personal effects?” If the depression in Carl’s head didn’t come
from the fall, then everything he’d had on his person constituted
potential evidence.