Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (37 page)

“Oh, Della, you can’t tell me what to do
anymore. You can’t hold anything over my head. I’ve got you. I even
saw you wipe all the fingerprints off the steering wheel and door
handles so that no one would know you’d been there. I was on my way
to tell the good sheriff all about it just as I saw you sneaking
off again to follow Simone.”

Brax made a noise, a horrible choking sound
as he leaned over, bracing his hands on his knees. He was having a
heart attack or a stroke or something terrible. He was dying. He
was...

My God, he was laughing.

“Stop it,” Della shouted, her flashlight beam
sweeping over the cavern walls. “Stop laughing at me.”

Brax raised his head slightly, then went at
it harder.

“Stop it.” Della shrieked this time and swung
the gun at him.

Oh my God, she was going to shoot him. She
was going to shoot Brax.

He moved so fast Simone almost didn’t see it
in the wavering beam of Della’s flashlight. He tucked, rolled, and
slammed into Della’s knees. The gun flew wide and to the left,
skidding across the dirt. The flashlight flew right, smashing
against the wall, then Della screamed as her tailbone slammed
against the cavern floor.

Brax jammed his knee against her
windpipe.

“Get her gun, Simone. Now.”

“No need, Simone. I’ve already got it.”

Brax froze. Only his eyes moved, twin sparks
of light in all that gloom. “You know, Lafoote, I really didn’t
think this day could get any worse.”

“You obviously think I’m going to shoot you
with it.” Jason turned the gun back and forth in his hand, up,
down, perusing it from every angle.

Della groaned and wriggled beneath Brax’s
choke hold. He reached down, touched her neck, and she stopped
struggling, her head slumping with a thud to the ground.

Vulcan death grip? It didn’t matter as long
as Brax didn’t have to worry about Della and Jason at the same
time.

“Give me the gun, Jason.” Simone held out her
hand. He stood between them and the light of day outside the
cave.

Between life and death. Della had been
terrifying. Jason made Simone’s blood run cold in her veins.

“Your sheriff’s an idiot, Simone, don’t you
see that? An inept fool. Della would have killed you if I hadn’t
ridden up on my white charger to rescue you.”

“You’re right, Jason. You saved me. I’m
eternally grateful. I swear it.”

In her peripheral vision, Brax’s muscles
bunched and readied. They made a good team, she did all the talking
and snagged the villain’s attention, while Brax plotted the action
that would save them. All they needed was a little help from
above.

“He’s a brawny caricature off some paper
towel wrapper,” Jason said, a whine in his voice.

“He’s a scurvy dog not worthy of licking my
boots,” she agreed.

“You’re playing with me.” Jason’s arm shot
straight out, and his finger trembled on the trigger.

* * * * *

Brax felt Simone’s miscalculation in his
bones. She’d gone too far.

Lafoote went on, sniping and seething over
his losses. “You haven’t given me the time of day since I got here.
Always lifting your nose in the air and walking away like I smell
like bat guano.”

“No. Carl smelled like bat guano. You always
smelled like...” Obviously, her colorful phrases deserted her.

Dammit, he was trapped down on his knees on
top of Della.
Think, man, think
. There was a way out. There
had to be. He would
not
let anyone hurt Simone.

Brax eased one knee up until he had a boot
planted on the ground. “You can have the resort, Lafoote. Now that
Della’s out of the way, you’ve got it made, buddy.”

“I’ll back you,” Simone added. “I
promise.”

“You’re a liar, Simone. As soon as we’re out
of here, you’ll revert to type and go for Macho Man over
there.”

With the other foot and his hands on his
knees, Brax readied himself like a springboard even as Lafoote
sighted down the barrel. Their gazes met. Brax held, moving into
perfect position.

“Please, Jason. Please. I’ll do anything you
want. Just don’t—”

A shrieking, screaming flurry of body and
motion hurtled through the air and slammed into Jason Lafoote’s
right side. “Youkilledhimyoukilledhimyoukilledhim.” Jason and the
screaming creature tumbled over and over several feet across the
cavern.

Dammit, that was his sister in there.
Apparently even his mother hadn’t been able to contain her. Brax
threw himself into the middle of the pile for the freaking gun
before it went off and killed her.

A foot narrowly missed his groin. An elbow
slammed into the side of his head. He groped, twisted, squeezed,
wrenched, and finally found cold hard metal. Thrusting his arm
aloft, he held it in the air, then rolled right and out from
beneath the writhing mass of his sister and Lafoote.

Jumping to his feet, he balanced into a
crouch. The gun wasn’t going to do a damn bit of good with his
sister on top of the pile. “Maggie, I’ve got him. You can stop
kicking him now.”

Maggie screamed, a wrenching cry that tore at
him almost as much as the sight of a gun pointed at Simone.

“Youkilledhimyoukilledhim.” Maggie kept on
kicking.

Until suddenly she was hauled off her feet by
a shadow and clamped around the waist by a pair of strong arms.

“Maggie, honey,” Sheriff Teesdale said so
softly Brax almost couldn’t hear over the dull throb of his pulse
in his ear. “Let me and your brother take care of the whiny little
bastard.”

* * * * *

Simone died a little with every word of
Della’s confession. They’d been listening to the story for what
seemed like hours. She wished the sheriff hadn’t allowed her to
stay. The only interrogation room had been lost to storage boxes
years ago, and Sheriff Teesdale had no choice but to conduct the
interview in the courtroom. Della’s courtroom. As if she were
already on trial.

She was. A trial put on by people she’d
called friends. People who had loved her and trusted her. People
who believed she loved them just as much.

Simone whimpered softly. Brax touched her
hand, but she couldn’t bear it. He’d almost died because she’d
walked into the cave as if she hadn’t a care in the world. With
that gun quaking in Jason Lafoote’s hand, Brax’s life had passed
before her eyes. She couldn’t say if the horrible man intended to
kill Brax or if he’d been talking, talking, talking. God. She would
never forget those awful moments.

Shaking off Brax’s touch, she stuck her hands
between her knees.

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” Della droned on
for at least the fifteenth time. “Well, I did mean to, but I didn’t
want to. If only he hadn’t insisted on telling everyone about the
gold. I couldn’t let him do that.”

Della didn’t mean to, but she had. When Carl
stopped on the path near the phallic rock, staring at it as if his
mind were a million miles away, Della had whacked him twice with
the end of her flashlight. Simone shuddered, wanting to bury her
face in her hands. She knew it in her heart of hearts that Carl had
stopped to savor the fantasy. The one
she’d
written. Della
seized the opportunity. After making sure he was dead, she’d pushed
him over the edge, watching him tumble to the bottom. How long had
it taken? How long had Della stood there, her heart in her throat,
hoping and praying his body took the full plunge?

Afterward she’d returned to town to sit
beside Maggie at the tea party. In that awful cave, Simone hadn’t
thought about that. Now, she could think of nothing else. Della had
actually sat beside her victim’s wife and repeated over and over
how Maggie would be better off without Carl. Somehow that was
Della’s worst crime. How she’d tried to justify herself by claiming
Maggie was better off. She’d even brought Simone into the fray,
going on over strawberry daiquiris about all the reasons she
believed Carl was having an affair. All lies.
Cosmo
, for
God’s sake.

She’d betrayed Maggie. She’d betrayed them
all.

Simone simply wanted to get away before she
threw up.

* * * * *

“Well, that was the cluster fuck of the
century,” Teesdale drawled. “S’cuse the language, Simone.”

Simone nodded and gave the sheriff a
halfhearted smile. Once Della was in a cell and they were in
Teesdale’s office, she’d answered questions when she was asked,
elaborated as necessary, but she’d closed in on herself.

Brax wanted to touch her, offer what little
physical comfort he could, but she’d withdrawn from him behind
halfhearted smiles.

He couldn’t blame her. She’d gone through
more life-threatening drama in half an hour than most people saw in
a lifetime. Her trusted friend held her at gunpoint. Then
everything had gone to hell in a handbasket back at the sheriff’s
department.

Della had started blubbering the minute
Teesdale seated her at the defense table in the courtroom. Simone
had slipped further into her own thoughts, her own darkness, as
Della spilled her guts with all of them as witnesses. It wasn’t a
regulation interview, but then Goldstone wasn’t a town that lived
and breathed by the book. It was as unique as Teesdale, as
complicated as Della Montrose’s reasons for killing Carl, as soft
in the underbelly as Simone.

The town would never be the same after the
blow Della dealt it. Simone herself might never recover. And what
of his sister? After the fray in the cave, he’d returned Maggie
once again to his mom’s care. He still had to tell Maggie the
villain in her husband’s case was her best friend, not a skanky
hotel mogul. Hell, after the number of meetings Carl had with Della
over the gold, it was probably her perfume Maggie had smelled on
him. The floozy turned out to be a murderer.

Maggie’s world had gone to shit. And looking
at Simone, so had hers.

“I’ll take you home.” Brax reached for her.
She didn’t so much withdraw as simply let her own hand lie unmoving
in his.

“I can walk,” she said.

“It’s not...” He stopped. He’d been about to
say it wasn’t safe. Della had stolen that. Simone’s bleak gaze
spoke eloquently of the loss of her haven.

He could have lost her in the cave. Now he’d
surely lost her to the havoc Della had wreaked. He didn’t have
words to comfort her. He didn’t have arms big enough to ease her
ache. He’d prayed for the wisdom to help. He didn’t suddenly find
enlightenment now, any more than he’d found it for Maggie. He
didn’t know how to make everything better.

“You’re tired. I’ll drive you.” There was
still Jason to think of. She wasn’t safe, even with the man behind
bars for now.

“No. I’ll walk.” She didn’t look at him as
she rose from Teesdale’s office chair.

He was about to insist. Teesdale interrupted.
“We’re done here for now, Simone. You can go. Walking in the fresh
air, alone, will do you good. And you’ll be perfectly safe.” He
looked pointedly at Brax as he spoke.

Alone
. Brax feared that if he let her
go, he’d never find her again in the emotional wasteland that lay
between them. But he would never learn the right words. He would
never know the right thing to do.

So he let her go. Her dazzle smile would
forever live in his memory. As would his abject failure to provide
whatever the hell it was she really needed.

“Sit.” Teesdale pointed.

Brax eased back into the chair.

“Let’s review.”

Review his life, his failures, his errors in
judgment.

“You’re laying it on a bit thick.”

“What?” Brax hadn’t said those things
aloud.

“Give her time. Women need time. Then they
come to their own conclusion even if it’s the same one you told
them over and over. Women are like that. They gotta think it’s
their own or it doesn’t work.”

Brax remembered saying virtually the same
thing to Carl just a few short days ago.

“Thanks for the advice. Now let’s talk about
Della.” Though Brax had already heard as much as he could
stomach.

“The funny thing is, Della didn’t need to be
a lawyer to be the judge,” Teesdale said.

Della had confessed to killing Carl over the
gold strike for the same reason she’d fought the resort. Whether
they came to town for the gold or the resort, more people meant
more scrutiny. She was afraid her lies would come to light. But
Teesdale’s comment was still a mystery. “Come again?”

“In this county, the so-called judge is a
justice of the peace and doesn’t need to be a lawyer,” the sheriff
explained.

“Nobody would have cared that she’d been a
showgirl and never graduated with a law degree from Harvard?” While
most of Goldstone’s residents appeared to be less than they were,
Della was the only one who claimed to be more.

“Nope. And being mayor is only about
residency.”

“She killed Carl for nothing?” Brax suddenly
felt tired and old.

“Yeah. Ironic, isn’t it? She was afraid the
media circus over a gold strike would eventually reveal she’d lied
about her background. But she didn’t have to lie in the first
place. Last judge was some guy drove in on a Harley, the way I
heard it. Before my time.”

Jesus Christ. It almost didn’t bear thinking
about. “How are you going to charge Lafoote?”

“Well, now, that’s a sticky issue. The
blackmail thing doesn’t work.”

According to Della, Lafoote had blackmailed
her into signing his licenses and permits after he saw her drive
Carl’s truck to the trailhead, then wipe it clean and throw away
the keys. Together, they’d come up with the story that she’d
reverse her opinion in order to provide a memorial statue for Carl.
Lafoote, of course, denied the blackmail.

“It’s he said, she said. And after confessing
to killing Carl, her credibility sucks.” Teesdale shook his head.
“Why the hell she didn’t make Carl drive up to the trailhead
himself to meet her there, I haven’t figured out yet. She might
have gotten away with it, if she had.”