Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (32 page)

Would her lover leave her if she didn’t? If
he put that kind of price on Jackie’s love, he wasn’t much of a
man.

But then Simone wasn’t much of a woman if she
couldn’t tell her mother to take that job and shove it.

Or if she couldn’t tell Brax how she felt
about him.

* * * * *

Brax poured hot water over the tea bag in the
mug. At the rate they’d all been forcing tea down her throat,
Maggie would float away. It was better than wine out of the
refrigerator box. He wanted her as clearheaded as possible for the
forthcoming discussion regarding Carl’s finances. The adrenaline
burst at The Chicken Coop seemed to have wiped away any residual
Xanax cobwebs.

He’d gotten rid of Chloe and Della with the
promise that he would call if Maggie needed them, though it had
taken fifteen minutes and extra Xanax tucked safely in the kitchen
cabinet.

Maggie had then taken an extended-stay trip
to the bathroom to freshen up while he’d grabbed two minutes to
call Simone. He’d have given his Cottonmouth house to stay with
Simone through the night, nestled against her sweetly scented body,
his nose nuzzling her hair as he whispered beautiful sentiments
like wards against her mother’s scorn. But he couldn’t be with
her.

Maggie needed him. With all the needs
weighing him down—Simone’s, his own—Maggie’s need took
precedence.

The upcoming interview was necessary if he
were to provide answers. The key to Carl’s death was the cash. Brax
had to know if she had any idea what he might have done with three
thousand dollars.

He carried the mug of tea to the family room,
shoved the coffee table back with his foot, then sat in front of
Maggie. Handing her the mug, he made sure her fingers curled
securely around the handle before letting go.

“I’m sorry, Tyler. That was wrong. Carl would
have been humiliated.”

“I wasn’t embarrassed, Maggie.”

Elvis marked the half hour with a one-Viva
chirp.

She wrapped the mug in both hands. He was
glad he’d added enough milk so that she wouldn’t burn herself.

“I didn’t kill him.”

“Maggie—”

“I know that’s what you’ve been thinking. The
police always look at the spouse first. And I haven’t been exactly
calm and unemotional.”

“Calm and unemotional can be a bad sign.”

“I know you’ve had your doubts.”

“Maggie, I haven’t—” He had. His gut twisted
with doubts from every angle. He’d misjudged how bad the marital
situation was, and he’d misjudged the people in the town. He
couldn’t figure out which bad judgment had led them to this sorry
state—Maggie’s, Carl’s, someone else’s. Or his own for minimizing
how bad things had gotten between Maggie and Carl.

Brax stopped denying. He wouldn’t convince
her, because she’d latched onto the truth. All he could do was ask
what needed to be asked. “Tell me about the money.”

“The money he was taking out?”

“The million dollars in all of his
accounts.”

“Oh that.” She wriggled her lips. “Carl was
very good at investing.”

That put it mildly. And explained nothing.
“You said you guys were doing okay financially.”

“And I was right, wasn’t I?”

“A million dollars is a helluva lot better
than okay.” And investing wasn’t
this and that
, which had
been her original explanation. Irritation flashed momentarily. Brax
squelched it.

“Why’s the money so important?”

“Maggie, when I first got here you were
pissed he was salting some of it away. I saw those withdrawals.
What he took was a drop in the bucket.” Even the last large
chunk.

“It wasn’t how much he took that
mattered.”

He held up his hands. “I know, I know, it was
the fact that he took it at all. But where did he get all of it in
the first place?” And why the hell would he live in Goldstone?

Why the hell not? It was good enough for
Teesdale, Whitey, and Simone, who just wanted a home. Good enough
for Doodle who coveted free burial plots.

“He used to be a stockbroker. He knew all
about that stuff.”

Carl? In a Wall Street three-piece suit? He
couldn’t quite grasp the image.

“He got into some stock scheme with another
broker. Nothing illegal, but he lost everything,” Maggie
continued.

“Guess he recouped,” Brax said dryly.

“Carl learned from his mistakes.”

Brax wondered if he’d ever learn from his
own.

“He started slowly, but he got back into the
market and stayed in until a few months before the last election,
when everything went into meltdown again. That man knew right when
to get out, I’ll tell you.”

“So why did he think he was a loser?” After
that conversation on the way back from the Dartboard, Brax had no
doubts on Carl’s self-esteem issues.

Maggie shrugged. “I think he believed
everything he did since then was luck. That he could lose it all
again just as easily. I don’t know for sure.”

Only Carl knew.

He moved on to the next question. Carl’s
withdrawals had been a source of irritation to Maggie, not a
catastrophic event. Which left Brax with the money Carl had
withdrawn the day he’d died.

He took her hand, though he knew it would do
nothing to lessen the impact of what he had to ask. “Why would he
take out three thousand dollars yesterday morning?”

Maggie stared at him. He couldn’t tell a
thing about her emotions. Surprise, shock? Then her eyes misted,
and he knew it was pain. More pain heaped on all she’d already
suffered. “Because he was leaving me?”

“Between all of the accounts, he had fifty
thousand in cash. If he was going to leave you, he would have taken
everything.” At least Brax would have taken it if he were planning
to run off. Take the cash stake to start over with, leave the wife
with the investments. Everybody’s happy.

Brax didn’t buy the running-off scenario.
“Think, Maggie. Why would he need three thousand in cash?”

“I don’t know.”

“You said he was acting weird. Do you think
someone was blackmailing him?”

“Over what?”

He didn’t have a clue himself. “Maybe he was
going to try to buy out Jason.”

Maggie shrugged. “Buy out the hotel? With
three thousand dollars?” It sounded ridiculous, but Jason Lafoote’s
hotel angle was the only money deal going on in town.

“How did he feel about Lafoote and the
hotel?” He already knew about the animosity, but he avoided leading
phraseology. Maggie had already stated flatly that Lafoote was
Carl’s killer.

“Like everyone feels. He makes promises he
won’t keep. He’ll turn Goldstone into a strip mall. Carl hated that
idea.”

“There was more to it than that, Maggie. Carl
was angry, more than the idea of a resort and a strip mall
warranted.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know, Tyler. I
really don’t. Carl said he didn’t want that resort, and he talked a
bunch about how to stop it with Della.” She closed her eyes and
sighed. “I really didn’t pay all that much attention.”

He felt her own sense of damnation in that
statement.

“Did you ever see them together?”

Maggie cocked her head. “No. I guess not.”
Then she dipped her chin as it started to tremble. “Carl wasn’t
around much.”

“So why did you say Lafoote killed him?”

She sniffed loudly and when she spoke, tears
distorted her voice. “I don’t want it to be someone I know.”

Nobody ever did.

He stroked her hand and put a stop to the
painful interview before he did permanent damage. “I think we both
need rest.” He needed it if he was going to be any use tomorrow.
“But you have to promise me you won’t sneak out again while I’m
sleeping.”

She sniffled. He lightly shook her shoulder.
“I’m going to take care of things for you, Maggie, but I have to
know you’re here and safe, okay?”

“I’m sorry for worrying you. You sleep. I
promise I won’t go out.”

“Mom will be here tomorrow. You’ll feel
better.”

She gave him a look, her eyes swimming in
tears, her lip quivering, and he knew what she was thinking. At
this moment, she didn’t believe she’d ever feel better.

He was afraid she might be right.

Which made his mission all the more
important. For Maggie, he had to find out what happened to
Carl.

* * * * *

Brax was dreaming about firm legs, thong
panties, and ice-cream cones. Simone was melting his
banana-flavored double scoop with her lips. He’d die with
anticipation before she got down to his crispy sugar cone. His
blood rushed through his veins and pounded against his eardrums. He
reached one hand out to cup her beautiful cheek. Warm and wet. And
red.

Simone gave him the dazzle smile through a
mouth half eaten by critters.

He jerked, half sat, and dragged air into his
aching lungs. The dark room had given way to a lighter gloom. The
pounding wasn’t in his dreams, but on the trailer’s front door.

Simone’s ruined face, like Carl’s in the
jailhouse basement, haunted him still.

Jumping from the bed, he yanked on his jeans
and shirt. A squint at the clock revealed the time to be half past
five on the beginning of another hellacious day. A good day never
began with a nightmare and less than four hours sleep.

Teesdale with news was the only logical
early-morning caller he could think of.

Instead, he found his mother on the
doorstep.

“Do not tell me you drove through the night
from Palm Springs, Mom.” He’d have to beat her if she had, after he
hugged the living daylights out of her.

“Don’t be a Silly Putty.” Enid Braxton
flapped her hand at him. “Of course, I didn’t. Rockie was good
enough to drive. He’s such a dear boy.”

“Rockie?” He glanced over the top of her
head, which didn’t quite reach the center of his chest.

“He’s parking the car on the other side and
getting the bags.”

His mother had a gentleman friend. Would
wonders never cease? On her seventieth birthday, last year, she’d
decided that her steel-gray hair, which was lightly tinged with
blue, looked like a Brillo pad—or was it S.O.S? He could never
remember which was pink and which was blue. She’d rinsed out the
tint, bleached out the gray, then added a hint of red. Something
had gone terribly wrong, but Brax loved her too much to tell her
the blue scouring pad beat the pink floor mop hands down.

“Now where’s my hug?” she demanded, her arms
wide.

“Right here.” He scooped her up, hugged her
tight, thanked the good Lord for her safe deliverance, then set her
back on her feet.

“Now how’s my Maggie?”

“Not good.” Just before turning in, she’d hit
the tears again like a drunk hit the bottle after a dry spell. If
you looked up the word
inadequate
in the dictionary, his
picture would be the pictorial example. He’d finally gotten Maggie
to bed. “She’s still sleeping if all that pounding didn’t wake
her.”

“Tyler, you’re not too big to put over my
knee for impertinence.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He kissed her flower-scented
hair for good measure.

“Yoo-hoo, Rockie, we’re over here.”

How had the elderly gentleman managed to
drive if he couldn’t even figure out where the front door was?

Except that this was no elderly gentleman.
Hell, he couldn’t be much older than Brax, with a Palm Desert tan
and a weight-room build. Two suitcases dangled from his hands.

“Don’t you say one word, Tyler. He’s my
gigolo.”

Gigolo?
He couldn’t get the word past
his paralyzed throat muscles, let alone push the thought through
his mushy brain.

“He thinks I’m a rich widow with pots and
pots of money. So don’t you dare tell him any different. Or you’ll
have to drive me all the way back home because he’ll dump me like
Mr. Potato Head.”

“Isn’t that ‘like a hot potato?’”

“What-evver,” she said with a perfect Valley
Girl twang.

Brax was sure someone had dropped him into
the middle of a
Twilight Zone
episode. Or worse,
The
Outer Limits
. There was always a nifty little moral at the end
of
The Outer Limits
.

He couldn’t for the life of him figure out
what this moral was going to be.

He would
not
ask his mother if she and
Rockie...made whoopie. His dad would roll over in his grave.

Brax pointed somewhere in the vicinity of the
bedroom hallway. “Maggie”—half choking out his sister’s name—“help
Maggie, and Rockie can come in, no questions asked.”

Unless Rockie actually touched Brax’s mom.
Then, he’d have to deck the guy. No questions asked.

His mother blew him a kiss as he stepped back
to let her in.

He almost let her get away until another
horrifying thought trembled on the edge of his brain. “But he is
not
sleeping in the same room with you.”

“You’re so old-fashioned, Tyler. You sound
just like an old man.”

Women, even his mother, had aged him.

Chapter Eighteen

Breakfast usually consisted of coffee, hot,
strong, and sweet.

Which made her think dreamily of Brax.

“Simone, you’ll make your double chin worse
leaning on your hand that way.” Her mother tapped the firm flesh
beneath her own chin.

Simone’s hand went reflexively to her throat.
Double chin?

“Honey, pass me another muffin, would you?”
Kingston waggled his fingers toward the plate just out of reach in
the middle of the table.

She’d pulled out all the stops this morning
by toasting English muffins and breaking into one of Mrs. Killian’s
jars of homemade marmalade. Kingston took two from the plate Jackie
offered him.

Her mother had delicately eaten half of a
half.

“Darling, it’s terribly stuffy. I could
barely breathe in my room last night. I barely slept a wink on that
bed. There’s an awful dip in the middle that I kept falling into
like the Black Hole of Calcutta. And I do believe I detected
eau-de-dirty-socks. Open a window or a door, would you?”