Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (25 page)

Teesdale tipped his head and pushed his hat
farther back on his head. “Funny thing about that truck. Carl’s
fingerprints were missing off the door handle and the steering
wheel. At least on the spots where they should have been.”

So, Teesdale had dusted. Good.

“And funny thing about his keys.”

Brax waited out the good ole boy routine.
Being a cop, he appreciated that stringing things out garnered more
reaction.

“Can’t find those keys. Weren’t in his
pocket.” Teesdale looked down, then wriggled his hand into the
front pocket of his jeans. “Funny thing about pockets on a pair of
jeans. Things don’t slip out easily.” He glanced up. “Carl was
wearing jeans. And I checked ’em. Not tight, but tight enough, if
you catch my drift.” The set of car keys he pulled out caught on
the upper edge of his pocket, held, then pulled free.

“Was he wearing a jacket? Maybe he took it
off up on the trail.”

“Yeah,” the sheriff snorted. “A likely
scenario. He got overheated, pulled off his jacket, slipped on a
rock while he was struggling to get his arm out of the sleeve, and
fell all the way down. Of course, the jacket managed to disengage
before he actually tumbled.”

“Won’t know until we get there. Seven. I’ll
be there.”

He left the office. The sheriff’s chair
squeaked behind him.

Brax had one thing to be grateful for. The
sheriff had never mentioned talking to Maggie regarding her
whereabouts at all times during the day Carl had taken a dive off
that trail.

In the parking lot, Brax stuck his hand in
his pocket for his keys. The night had grown cooler, but not cool
enough to warrant a jacket. His car keys had gone into his front
pocket. Reaching down for them, he didn’t figure they’d have fallen
out even if someone had turned him upside down and dumped him on
his head.

So what had happened to Carl’s keys?

Brax stopped at The Chicken Coop before
heading back to Maggie’s place. As Teesdale had claimed, the
chickens added nothing new to the mix. Brax hadn’t expected
anything more, but not questioning them would have been dereliction
of duty.

Only when he was back in his car and headed
along the highway to Maggie’s did Brax allow himself to think about
Simone.

Simone, spinner of fantasies. Simone, who’d
sent Brax’s now-dead—and apparently murdered—brother-in-law a
threatening email. Not just threatening. Pissed as hell.

Which was how Brax felt as he thought once
more about that salacious fantasy.

He’d have a few choice words for the author
before the night was over. He’d get some answers even if he had to
interrogate her with a light in her face like some zealous,
forties-style cop.

Chapter Fourteen

Simone wished she was a nail biter or a hand
wringer, but her mother had drummed both bad habits out of her at
an early age. Either gesture would have helped ease some of the
tension she now felt. Brax had come home. He drove up, but hadn’t
entered the trailer, not for an interminable ten minutes.

When he did finally come in, a paper bag
crushed beneath one arm, Brax had pointed at her, told her to get
her stuff, and said he’d drive her home. Then, as if belatedly
remembering his manners, he’d asked Chloe to stay with Maggie for a
little while longer.

No one argued, not even Simone. Chloe shooed
her out with a flap of both hands.

Now the paper bag sat on the armrest between
them. She trapped the questions racing through her mind in her
aching, parched throat. Half her brain wanted to know all the
answers. Now. The other half—left or right, she couldn’t be
sure—wanted to crawl into the backseat, lie down, and sob until
neither a tear nor a single thought remained.

The silence in the 4Runner shouted out her
guilt.

She’d betrayed Maggie by writing that
fantasy. Instead of bringing Carl and Maggie together in bliss as
she’d intended, Simone had most likely driven a wedge of lies
between them.

Her tummy flip-flopped with every turn of the
wheel. It sank, then climbed back up to her throat. It wasn’t a
clichéd description, but an actual roller coaster in her stomach,
that same sudden seesawing fear that hit upon first realizing you’d
done a terrible thing or made a horrible mistake. It could be a
life-on-the-line thing like changing lanes only to suddenly hear
the shimmy of air brakes and see that semi’s grill up close and
personal in your rearview mirror. Or it could be something as
simple as suddenly remembering the Visa bill was due yesterday.

That’s how she knew she’d done a very bad
thing to Maggie and Carl. Now Brax knew, too, signs of his
knowledge riding his tensed lips and his narrowed eyes. He bore the
implacable look of a patrolman who’d stopped her for speeding. He
didn’t even need the mirrored sunglasses to pull it off. That look
and the paper sack between them—chanting
Open, open,
open
—said it all. It wasn’t a funny commercial running through
her head.

He wheeled into the gravel drive and came to
a stop behind her truck, boxing her in should she try to
escape.

He reached across her, yanked her door
handle, his arm brushing her belly. She shrank at the contact and
his stiff command of “Inside.”

Not “Get out of the car,” or “Could we please
go inside and talk,” just that hard-edged order.

In other circumstances, she would have given
him the finger and a dirty word. Instead, she had only one thought.
I wrote a fantasy, Carl’s dead, and I sent him an email saying
he’d be buzzard bait.

Okay, that was three thoughts. If she could
have limited it to one, she might have been able to forgive
herself.

Brax stood at the passenger side door,
holding it open, waiting. So intent on her own thoughts, she hadn’t
moved, hadn’t heard him shut his own door, or seen him walk around
to her side.

She climbed out, staring at his chest then
his boots as she clutched her purse to her chest.

He graciously extended his arm for her to
proceed, but slammed the car door. She’d left her door unlocked,
stupid girl. Jason Lafoote’s obnoxious aftershave still wafted out
as she opened the screen, as if he’d been waiting once again on the
sunporch. Of course, that could have been from the other night. The
man’s essence lingered like a bad smell.

The sun having gone down behind the hills,
her trailer lay in near darkness. She flipped the light switch to
banish both the intimacy and the fear.

Of course, her fear remained. Her beloved
Goldstone had been struck by tragedy. Tragedy always came in
threes.

She hadn’t cleaned up. The sofa cushions were
askew from her mad search for the portable phone. Last night’s
wineglass sat on the coffee table, lipstick stains smudging the rim
and the evaporated remains of white zin like sludge at the bottom.
Cracker crumbs dotted the wood surface.

Brax bypassed her, dropping his paper bag
onto the table. It landed with the soft plop of lightweight
contents.

He pointed to the couch. “Sit.”

She wasn’t a dog, but she sat obediently,
legs together primly, feet curled up against the sofa bottom, and
hands clasped on her thighs.

Brax did not ease her discomfort by sitting
beside her. He remained standing, the overhead light behind his
head keeping his eyes in shadow.

“The fantasy you wrote for Carl. Tell me
about it.”

She twisted her hands in her lap. The
fantasy. The bane of her existence, the harbinger of bad things to
come. “Didn’t we already go over that the other night?” Sort
of?

“Quite frankly, I don’t remember what the
fuck we went over the other night. All I remember is kissing you.
Then finding out Carl is dead the next day.”

Bam, bam, bam
. He shot her down,
picked her back up, then blew her away, all with three devastating
sentences.

She didn’t know what to say. The ridiculous
urge to hum a toneless tune came over her, but she held it at bay.
Maybe if he hadn’t given her such an open-ended question. “Could
you ask me something that requires a
yes
or
no
answer, because I really don’t know where to start.” Her eyes
started to cloud up.

“How about this?” He bent, grabbed the
grocery bag, ripped the top open, and dumped the contents on her
coffee table.

Rolled pieces of paper scattered all over the
table and onto the carpet, some squashed, some in perfect scrolls,
others tied with pretty silver and red ribbons.

She touched one, picked it up gingerly, as if
it were a snake that might sink its fangs into her if she moved too
quickly.

“You did write that, didn’t you?” He
indicated the pile with a stab.

Unrolling a scroll, her own words jumped out
at her.

He slid his fingers into her creamy center,
taking her gasp of pleasure into his mouth, tasting his own essence
on her tongue.

Oh my God, it was the end of the blow job
scene. And the start of another one. She looked at Brax and almost
asked if he’d read it. Oh my God, he’d probably read the whole
story.
The whole darn story
. She blushed, heat spreading
through her entire body. She remembered writing the scene. She
remembered how she’d grown moist writing. It hadn’t involved Maggie
and Carl. There’d been only herself with her dream lover, and her
body had ached for his touch. Her heart had ached for a figment of
her imagination.

“That was a
yes
or
no
question.”

“Ye-es.” Her voice cracked.

“Did he give you instructions on what to
write? Doodle says his wife gives you instructions.”

She swallowed, but couldn’t get her voice
above a whisper. “Yes. And yes.”

“How explicit were his instructions?”

“That’s not
yes
or
no
.” God,
her voice sounded all wobbly, and hot tears burned at the backs of
her eyes. She knew her reactions didn’t make sense. But she
couldn’t think, she could only feel. Somehow, that fantasy she
wrote for Carl set off a horrible chain reaction that led to him
falling into the gorge. An untenable thought, but she couldn’t help
it.

Brax shoved the coffee table out of the way
and hunkered down beside her. She realized she had been staring at
the paper, the ink suddenly running down the page from three wet
splats.

He took her forearm in a gentle but firm
grip. “What did he tell you to write?”

She was going to start blubbering. Any
minute. And then she wouldn’t even be able to think, let alone
talk. She rushed in before the onslaught. “He wanted something out
in the open on a long walk. He described what he wanted the
characters to look like and what they should be wearing and where
he wanted them to stop, then he told me to make up the rest
myself.” She bit her lip and sniffed. “The...you know...the sex
part.”

Brax jerked to his feet, and, his back to
her, ran both hands through his hair. Then he turned to her, his
eyes stark, pained. “What was he going to do with it?”

Her lip trembled. She sucked it in and bit
down hard, hoping the ache would fight away the tears. Then
everything inside her rushed out at once. “He was supposed to read
it to Maggie. At least that’s what I thought he was going to do.
Della said Maggie was upset about stuff, and I could tell she was.
Then Carl asked me to write a story, and I thought it was for them,
so that they could make everything better.” She hiccupped and
sniffled and started blubbering like she’d been afraid she would.
“I wanted to make it all better, but neither of them would tell me
anything. And it didn’t sound like Maggie even knew about it. So I
got scared he didn’t have me write it for Maggie, but for someone
else. That he’d been having an affair, and I’d actually written a
story he read to some...some...
bitch
. Now he’s dead, and I
sent him the most awful email. I feel so terrible.”

Her nose ran, her eyes hurt, and beside her,
Brax smelled so good, like...well, it wasn’t like anything she
could describe, a little sweet, a little sharp, a clean male scent
that made her want to bury her face against his shoulder.

“So you sent him a nasty email because you
thought he’d tricked you into writing something for his lover.
That’s all you did. It wasn’t a crime.”

She sniffed and nodded and stared down at
that paper with all her erotic fantasies and dreams running down
the soggy page. There was so much of
her
in it.

She’d failed. Again. Worse than putting all
her eggs in one basket and losing her business, her career, and her
fiancé. Worse than being a screamer. She wanted to make things
better for everyone, for Maggie, for Carl. She’d failed miserably
at that.

And now Carl was dead.

* * * * *

“If I hadn’t written that fantasy, none of
this would have happened,” Simone said through her tears.

Brax stroked a finger down her wet cheek,
then murmured in her ear, “You keep telling me I’m not to blame.
Well, same goes for you. What happened to Carl wasn’t your
fault.”

The tension across Brax’s shoulders had
eased. Simone was neither a liar nor a cheat.

She looked at him, mascara smudges beneath
her eyes, her nose reddened, and tear tracks down her pink cheeks.
“It’s not?”

Money had played a role in Carl’s demise.
Brax felt the truth of that as if it were written in Carl’s own
blood. “Writing a fantasy for him doesn’t make you responsible for
his death.”

Christ, he was an ass. He’d browbeaten her
confession out of her only to find that she’d been playing the Good
Witch of the North and waving her magic wand to fix everyone’s
problems. If it were that easy, Maggie and Carl would have done it
themselves. Simone had said it herself, but she hadn’t believed her
own words.