Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (29 page)

All right, he was biased. He already bore a
strong dislike for Simone’s mother before he met her, and before he
knew she was the Ariana Chandler.

Being a movie star was not a point in her
favor.

If familial duty didn’t call him back to
Maggie’s side, he would have plopped himself right down beside her
on that couch, and told her the many ways in which she could not
possibly hold a candle to her daughter.

He didn’t have time for a boxing match with
Mommie Dearest. Even more importantly, he wouldn’t leave Simone
alone with the aftermath of a verbal knockout.

“Sorry. Gotta run.”

“I suppose you’re anxious to leave this.”
With a flourish, she indicated the trailer’s early-seventies decor.
“You’ll be glad to know I’m here to help Simone get out of this
awful place.”

“She’s quite happy here and doesn’t need your
help.”

“Oh, come, Mr. Brax, nobody could
want
to live in a...trailer.” She wrinkled her nose. Extremely
unattractive. Amazing she hadn’t checked the expression in a mirror
and expunged it from her repertoire.

“You underestimate the joys of trailer life.”
He now had a great appreciation for Simone’s sofa.

“Why, it could blow away in a heavy
windstorm. I’ve been so worried about her.”

Right. She worried about her own image if it
should get out to the press that her daughter lived in a trailer
out in the middle of nowhere. Friday Night Fights or not, he
couldn’t allow the woman to disparage the life Simone had chosen
for herself. “Her home’s got a solid foundation. Believe me,
nothing is ever going to blow it or her away.”

A small sound, maybe a gasp, caught his
attention. In single file at the bedroom hallway, Simone, the
waiflike Jacqueline, and the manager, a protective hand on the
sister’s shoulder as she leaned lightly against him.

Simone stared at Brax, teeth worrying her
bottom lip.

He ignored the mother in favor of her
daughter. Closing the short distance, Brax kneaded Simone’s nape,
pulling her forward to murmur against her hair. “I wouldn’t leave
you alone for a moment with the dragon lady if I didn’t have
to.”

There, in front of her mother, her sister,
and whoever the hell the big older guy really was, Brax leaned down
for an openmouthed taste of her, savoring her sweetness for several
seconds longer than a goodnight kiss necessitated.

* * * * *

Her home’s got a solid foundation
.

Her trailer? Her life? Simone felt sure Brax
meant both. He actually understood. He knew what Goldstone meant to
her, the underlying significance. He appreciated where she’d been,
and why she’d never leave. He grasped the meaning of home.

In that moment, Simone fell hopelessly in
love with Tyler Braxton.

Chapter Sixteen

Chloe and Della jumped him the moment he
opened the trailer door. Going automatically for the weapon he
wasn’t carrying, Brax nevertheless crouched into a defensive
posture.

“She’s gone.”

“What do we do?”

“We haven’t a clue where.”

“It’s been half an hour of hell.”

“You should have left your cell phone
number.”

He tried to make sense of who was saying what
and what it all meant. “Maggie’s been gone to God knows where for
half an hour but you didn’t have my cell number, yet you didn’t
call Simone or get in your car and drive less than a mile to her
house?”

“It wasn’t our fault.” Della put a hand over
her mouth.

Chloe pointed. “Della panicked. I couldn’t
leave.”

Della snorted. “I did not panic.”

“You threatened to stick your head in the
Jacuzzi motor and turn it on if I left. I’d call that
panicking.”

“You’re exaggerating, Chloe.”

“Ladies. Excuse the expression, but please
shut up. Now.” In his experience, ladies didn’t usually do what you
told them to, but in this case, these two did. “Only one of you
answer. Did Maggie sneak past you?”

Chloe did the honors. “She pried the window
screen off in the bedroom.”

“You noticed half an hour ago. But when was
the last time you checked if she was there?”

“We didn’t check,” Della said, staring at the
floor. “You said she was asleep, and we didn’t want to risk waking
her.”

Dammit, he’d been gone an hour and a half.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Giving in to his desire for Simone had been the
worst mistake in a long line of stupid mistakes he’d made lately.
Not the act itself—that was beautiful—but the timing sucked.

He’d told Simone not to sully what they’d
done.

Maggie’s disappearance did it for them.

“Did you call the sheriff?”

The two looked at each other, then the floor,
and both answered simultaneously. “No.”

“Shit.” His vocabulary suddenly seemed
limited.

He pulled his cell from its holder on his hip
just as an electronic excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s “1812
Overture”—minus the canons—shrieked from somewhere deep in the
family room.

With the agility of a high-dive champion,
Chloe lunged for her bag on the coffee table before Brax had a
chance to hit 911.

Chloe looked to Brax. “The chickens have
Maggie.”

What the hell was Maggie doing at The Chicken
Coop? He knew in the next split second. She was doing her own
investigation, starting at the source, the witnesses who found
Carl’s body. Damn those detective shows.

“They don’t know how long they can hold her
off,” Chloe relayed. “It’s a terrible mess. She’s gonna kill Whitey
any second now. Holy hell, I hear her screaming like a crazy
person.”

“Tell them we’ll be there in two minutes.”
Brax pointed at Della. “You stay in case she somehow gets away
before we arrive and comes back here.”

Della groaned mournfully. “But I’m the last
person she’ll want to see. I can’t handle it.”

Chloe shook her by the shoulders. “Della.
You’re the mayor and the judge of this town. Start acting like
it.”

Shit. Someone had to regain control. Because
Brax had certainly lost it.

* * * * *

“That man was incredibly rude.” Ariana paced
the short length of Simone’s living room, her brilliant blue
sandals blending with the orange shag like a cheerleader’s
pom-poms.

“Ah, Ariana honey, you’re miffed because Brax
didn’t fall worshipping at your feet. I think the boy’s smitten
with our Simone.” Kingston put his arm around Simone’s shoulder and
hugged her off her feet.

“What does he do for a living in this
godforsaken place? Sell used hubcaps?”

“He’s visiting.” Of course, she’d already
told her mother that, along with the fact that Brax was Maggie’s
brother, but Ariana never could resist a good dig. “He’s a sheriff
in Cottonmouth.”

Her mother made a face. “Cottonmouth? That’s
a disgusting name for a town.” She sniffed condescendingly. “Trust
a gambling and prostitution state like Nevada to allow such a
thing.”

“Cottonmouth’s in Northern California.”

“Hmmph.
Northern
California. Well,
that says it all.” Anything north of Hollywood counted as the
backwoods to her mother, even if it was part of the great
state.

“Don’t mind her, honey, she’s jealous,”
Kingston said loud enough for her mother to hear. Kingston never
seemed to care what her mother thought. Maybe that’s why her mother
took his blasphemies without throwing him out on his ear. Actually,
Simone never had understood why her mother tolerated it. Another of
life’s great unsolved mysteries.

“Jealous, Kingston? Oh please. Of what? She
lives in a trailer, for God’s sake. And did you see this town? Why
it doesn’t even have a decent spa.”

Goldstone didn’t have a spa at all, and her
mother’s skin would shrivel in the dry desert air. But her daughter
thrived. Maybe Jackie needed some good desert air, too. She seemed
so pale.

“Simone is standing right here, Ariana. You
don’t have to talk like she’s in the next room. I think her trailer
is”—even Kingston had to search for a kind word—“special.”

And it had a foundation. Brax said so.
Simone’s heart beat a little faster, and she couldn’t help a tiny
smile.

“Any trailer is an abomination,” her mother
said, as if a trailer was the next-worst thing to an outhouse. “How
could you do this to me, Simone? How
could
you? If the press
ever gets wind of this...” She threw herself on the sofa, covering
her eyes with her arm.

Simone opened her mouth, but Kingston fought
her battle for her. “She didn’t do it
to
you, Ariana. This
is
her
home, and it doesn’t have a thing to do with you. I’d
venture that she didn’t even consider you when she bought it.”

Anathema to her mother, the idea that the
world didn’t revolve around her. “You’re coming home, Simone. I
won’t hear another word about it. You can have your old suite at
the house. But don’t even think about redecorating in orange.”

“She’s not coming home, Ariana.”

“Kingston, will you please stop talking
for
her. The girl’s old enough to talk for herself.”

Talk for herself? Ariana didn’t think Simone
was old enough to even think for herself.

They looked at her. Expecting something. It
was so much easier to tell her mother what she wanted to hear when
all Simone had to do was hang up the phone afterward. She took the
coward’s way out. “You can sleep in the master bedroom, MOTHER.” Of
course, her whole trailer would fit in her mother’s bedroom suite,
and there wasn’t a speck of marble or brass to be found anywhere.
“Jackie and I can take the guest room.” Which had a queen bed,
where they could giggle and tell stories all night long as they had
when they were children. “The couch isn’t very long, Kingston, but
it’s better than the floor.”

Kingston laughed. “Maybe your mother should
take the couch. She looks so at home there, doesn’t she?”

Ariana rose, smoothing imagined wrinkles from
her silk pantsuit. “Thank goodness, I brought spare sheets. I like
my own with the proper thread count. Jackie, sweetheart, would you
mind taking care of it? And don’t forget to get the atomizer out of
my overnight case to spray the bed.”

“Yes, MOTHER.” Yes, Jackie minded, or yes,
she’d do it? Simone thought she detected capital letters in her
sister’s voice. Jackie had hung back in the hallway, out of sight,
out of mind, out of the storm, during the entire exchange.

Simone almost laughed. The thought of
Oscar-winning Jacqueline Chandler changing sheets bordered on the
absurd. Just as it was easier to tell Ariana what she wanted to
hear, it was always easier to do what she said. Especially if she
was close enough to throw eye daggers at you. Suddenly it was
getting hard to say her mother meant well.

“I’ll help, Jackie,” Simone said.

Jackie turned back along the hall. Simone
followed, hoping her mother’s voice would do a fade-out.

“Kingston, I need a drink. See what she’s
got.”

“Yes, Ariana. Whatever your little heart
desires.” Kingston Hightower took her mother’s orders as though
they were a source of great amusement. He always had. Simone had
often wondered what her mother would have to say or do to breach
his equanimity.

“And if there are any mice lurking in the
cupboards, you are driving me to a decent hotel, even if we have to
go all the way back to Vegas.”

“Of course, Ariana. You know your every wish
is my command.” Laughter lurked in his voice.

“And when is she going to write darling
Ambrose? If she’d just do herself up and wear a little makeup. I
don’t know how to help her anymore when she won’t even...” Fade
out.

* * * * *

The drive took five minutes. The longest five
minutes of Brax’s life.

Two flood lamps spotlighted pandemonium in
The Chicken Coop’s lot as he wheeled in. His tires spewed gravel in
all directions, the ping of it hitting damn near every parked car
and spraying the two combatants and four referees.

Dressed in varied length shorts and crop tops
and without their distinguishing lingerie, Brax couldn’t tell which
chicken was which, but two held Maggie back by her arms.

Yanking his car door open, Brax caught her
words. Hell, she was shouting so loudly all of Goldstone must have
heard her.

“I know you killed him, Waldo Whitehead. You
thought he was going to dig up those damn outhouses of yours in the
middle of the night and stiff you out of a cut of whatever he
found.”

Then she threw herself at Whitey, hands
outstretched, fingers curled into claws.

With a mighty effort, the chickens held her
back just before she’d have scratched his eyes out. The bearded man
jumped, stumbled, then fell on his ass.

“Maggie, stop it.” Brax didn’t know her. She
was a wild thing, her hair flying in all directions, spittle at the
corners of her mouth. Psycho time. It would have been cliché if it
hadn’t been his sister.

For a moment, one small part of his mind
stepped back to assess the situation with an unbiased cop’s eye. At
the end of a self-proclaimed knock-down, drag-out fight with her
husband, Maggie Felman had threatened to cut off his family jewels.
She’d disappeared for most of the next morning during which, at
some point, her husband had fallen to his death. The autopsy report
might very well come back determining time of death to be within
the window of her opportunity. She now threw accusations of murder
around like a crazy woman. Or a crazy-
acting
woman desperate
to throw suspicion onto someone else.

Shit. Damn. Brax was closer to losing his
lunch than when he’d been tasked with cleaning up after a ten-car
pileup on the highway involving a semi’s lost brakes.

Please God, don’t let my sister be an
out-of-control Mack truck
.