Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (5 page)

You could judge the mettle of a man by who he
identified with in
The Wizard of Oz
. It was a rule. “The tin
man without a heart,” she whispered. Hmm. It didn’t fit. She was
sure concern for Maggie had forced Brax to ask that silly question
about Carl. Which definitely indicated the existence of a heart. He
also phoned his mother once a week.

It was probably a good thing he hadn’t taken
her up on watching the movie together. She was starting to like
Brax a little too much.

Chapter Three

Half an hour later, Brax was still asking
himself the same question. Did he believe Simone when she said she
wasn’t having an affair with Carl?

The bulk of Brax’s job was asking questions,
probing the intimate details of people’s lives to ferret out the
truth, badgering them until they revealed what he wanted to
know.

Simone wasn’t the usual suspect. She’d
committed no crime, staged no robbery, executed no property damage.
She hadn’t even run a stop sign or driven over the speed limit. He
felt like a puppy kicker. She was a jet engine gone mad, and she’d
sucked him in completely. And that was a compliment, in every
way.

But did he believe her? Dammit, he wanted to.
He wanted to be sucked in. So to speak. Which was the problem. He’d
never let lust override intellect or suspicion. But this time, mere
lust wasn’t the only thing attracting him like the proverbial moth
to the flame.

She was different. She was dazzling. Damn, he
could imagine her in the middle of a heated argument, shaking her
finger at him and muttering at him between clenched teeth,
Don’t
make me bring out the flying monkeys.
Jesus, wasn’t that the
most frightening fantasy any self-respecting man could ever have?
She definitely made him hot—really hot—thinking of how he’d take
control of that finger pointed smack-dab at his chest, nibble it a
little, lick it, follow the finger bone connected to the hand bone
and the hand bone connected to the... Dammit.

He had to be vigilant around Simone Chandler.
The woman muddied his brain and made him think with his
tallywhacker. She made him put aside morose thoughts and actually
laugh. She made him forget that dark afternoon he’d attended his
good friend’s autopsy. The scent of Formalin and the drone of
Hyram’s voice dictating dissection details still haunted him.
Cottonmouth was by no means immune to violence, but somehow the
murder of one of the town’s most upstanding citizens had stolen a
piece of its innocence. In addition to arresting the perpetrator,
it had been Brax’s duty to protect Cottonmouth’s innocence. He’d
succeeded in the former, but failed in the latter. Not to mention
that Nick Angel and Bobbie Jones had almost lost their lives as
well.

Damn. Guilt had crept up on him again. He’d
done a good job hiding his feelings on the subject from everyone in
his hometown, but his own culpability ate a hole through his
stomach.

Screw it. Self-flagellation could turn into
self-pity if you indulged in it too much. He cut off the emotions
ruthlessly.

An idea occurred. For appropriate
interrogative purposes, maybe he was going about this investigation
all wrong. Instead of running away from Simone, closer proximity
might be required. Hot pursuit. He was good at that, very good.
They never got away when he was behind the wheel.

First, he had other fish to fry. Make that
chickens to roast, at The Chicken Coop. The black paint of his SUV
soaked up the sun, and heat waves shimmered off the hood as he
rolled to a stop in The Chicken Coop’s gravel lot. How he’d made it
there was beyond him. Thank Christ it was on the highway south of
town as Maggie had said, because his mind was
not
on road
directions.

Heavily traveled Highway 95 was the main
route between Las Vegas and Reno. Though only two lanes wide at
this point, it split Goldstone in half. Right on the edge of the
highway, The Chicken Coop—its bright neon sign advertising
Girls, Girls, Girls
—was perfectly situated to attract
truckers and lonesome travelers.

The sunbaked trailer with pale blue siding
stood on cinder blocks. A crushed shell path bordered by cacti led
to two wooden steps. Five cars flanked his in the lot, all equally
dusty with varying degrees of flaked paint and rusty fenders.
Thankfully, Carl’s relatively newer-model truck was not among
them.

Behind the double-wide, several smaller
trailers formed a semicircle, each with an identical shell path
connecting them to the main trailer. Only the cacti were different.
The effect was neat but barren.

Sparkling white blinds rattled against a
window on the right, then the front door opened. A woman stood
there, leaning on the door handle, her blouse gaping enough to
reveal the swell of very large breasts.

“Howdy, stranger,” she said, like a line out
of an old Western. He wanted to answer
Howdy, Miss Kitty
,
but didn’t. Her voice, low enough to be sexy, raised goose bumps on
his arms. Damn, with her upswept cap of gray hair, she resembled
someone’s mother.
His
mother.

“You must be here for the early-bird
special,” she purred.

Brax glanced at his watch. A little after
noon.

“Well, don’t stand there speechless. Come in
and check out the menu, Big Boy.”

As he climbed the stairs, for a moment he
feared she’d remain in the doorway so that he would be forced to
brush past her. The idea didn’t sit right. She even smelled like
his mother, the scent of talcum powder drifting off her like haze
off asphalt.

He’d have considered moseying out of the
place lickety-split if Maggie hadn’t seemed desperately in need of
his investigative skills concerning The Chicken Coop.

He assumed the interior was your typical
Nevada whorehouse, several settees placed haphazardly about the
darkened room, lace doilies in shades of pink and blue covering the
lampshades.

The woman patted his back. “I’m Chloe, and
these are my little chickens.” She waved a hand at four women
seated in a circle on the floor at the far end of the trailer. “Day
shift,” she whispered close to his ear. “Take your pick. What’s
your pleasure?”

He was no prude, and he’d certainly
encountered his share of prostitutes, not as a customer, but on the
other end of the law. But Chloe’s breast pressed to his arm gave
him the heebie-jeebies. He’d complete his business and be out of
there pronto.

He raised his nose, sniffing for the sweetly
floral aroma Maggie had described. Instead he encountered only the
mixture of heavily abused cheap cologne. The chickens must have
dabbed themselves with the same scent.

“Go ahead, Big Boy, don’t be nervous. You can
get to know them a little first, if you like.” Chloe pushed him
toward the circle of women on the floor. “Cotton Candy, Chocolate,
Peppermint, and Caramel.” Which did not refer to the color of their
skin, but the hue of their frilly look-alike lingerie.

At least she hadn’t given them chicken names.
Maybe it was a brother’s loyalty, but he couldn’t imagine Carl
choosing a chicken over Maggie.

An open box and a conglomeration of pieces
and parts lay strewn about the middle of the girls’ circle.

“What ya got there?” he asked.

“It’s Chocolate’s little nephew’s birthday,
and we bought him a robot,” said Peppermint. Presumably she was
Peppermint, based on the red and white swirls of her lacy teddy.
She might have been pretty if not for the hard glint in her
turquoise eyes, which were most likely contact-lens enhanced. And
yes, he noticed her breasts. How could one
not
notice,
though to his taste, they were overdone. Simone’s were less
ostentatious, but far more appealing. He wondered if breast
enlargement would be considered a tax-deductible expense for a
topless dancer or a Nevada prostitute.

“But we can’t figure out how to put it
together,” Chocolate added. She leaned over the box. “
Some
assembly required. Who are these jokers kidding? This is rocket
science here.”

“Maybe I can help.”

The circle parted like the Red Sea to include
him. He hadn’t sat cross-legged since he was ten years old and
Maggie’d bounced a ball off his privates. She’d always claimed it
was an accident.

“Here’s the instructions,” Candy said,
wearing a pink teddy to identify the Cotton Candy of her name. She
handed him a ten-page legalese document with a smattering of
drawings.

“Well, let’s get some light on the subject.”
He waved at the blinds on a nearby window, and Caramel rose to open
them, her backside wiggling beneath caramel-colored lace and
ribbons.

Brax studied the diagrams.

“All right, let’s get started.” He held out a
hand, palm up. “Screws.” Someone tittered, but slapped the plastic
bag full of nuts, bolts and screws into his outstretched hand.

“What’s your name?”

“Big Boy.”

This time they all laughed. “No, really. We
have to tell Timmy who put together the robot.”

“Brax.”

“That’s a funny name. You’re not from around
here.” It didn’t matter who said what; Brax’s attention was on the
instructions, or so the chickens would have thought.

“Visiting.” His opportunity presented itself
that easily. Not that he wouldn’t have found another way. He was a
cop, after all. Interrogation was his middle name. “I’m Carl
Felman’s brother-in-law.”

“Ah, the brother-in-law. You’re a sheriff.
Wanna arrest me?”

As in Cottonmouth, word traveled fast and
everyone knew everything. Even the chickens. “Wouldn’t dream of
arresting such lovely ladies.” Brax sifted through the pieces on
the floor for the one he wanted. “So you know him?”

“Everyone knows Carl. Him and Whitey are
fighting over Whitey’s outhouses.”

Whitey, purveyor of skull license plate
frames like the one on Simone’s truck. Brax held out his hand
again, like a surgeon asking for his scalpel. “Phillips
screwdriver.” Thankfully, the kit had come with the proper tools.
“They’re fighting over outhouses?”

“Yeah. Whitey wants to charge Carl bucks up
the ying-yang to excavate his four outhouses.”

Brax raised one brow, then pointed to what he
believed was the mechanical calf of the robot. Chocolate tossed it
to him.

“Bucks up the ying-yang?” he repeated to keep
the girls going.

“Whitey wants seventy-five percent of
whatever Carl finds.”

“Hmm. That’s a bit steep. Allen wrench.”

“What’s that?” Caramel leaned forward to
shift through the tools and parts, her filmy negligee falling
open.

Brax ignored the sight. A man needed all his
concentration when assembling a child’s toy. He indicated the
hexagonal key near Peppermint’s bare knee. With a few twists and
turns, he gripped a completed robot leg in his fist.

Peppermint whistled. “Wow, you’re good.”

He smiled. “Yeah. That’s what they all
say.”

The girls all giggled at once. Brax pointed
to the torso. “So, Carl come by often?”

Candy snorted. “Carl? Here? You gotta be
kidding. He stinks like an outhouse.”

“Worse, he smells like bat shit.” Peppermint
grimaced.

Caramel threw a nod to her boss. “Chloe
wouldn’t let him in the door.”

“And Maggie would shoot him right between the
eyes. Then she’d come gunning for
us
.” Chocolate punctuated
with an eye roll.

Brax cranked and screwed. Yep, just like in
Cottonmouth, everyone knew everyone else’s business. It was obvious
Carl wasn’t getting any at The Chicken Coop.

The front door rattled beneath a pounding
fist, and light filled the trailer’s other half as Chloe opened up.
“Come on in, Big Boy.”

Hey! Brax had been Big Boy. Maybe the name
wasn’t so special. The man that walked in was rail thin and
beanpole tall, his grin reminiscent of one of the witch’s flying
monkeys.

“Oh God, it’s the foot,” Peppermint groused
under her breath.

“The foot?” Brax asked as Caramel handed him
the robot head.

“Jason Lafoote.”

Across the room, Chloe waggled her fingers at
the chickens. “I’ll be right back, girls. Keep our boy there
entertained.” Then she led The Foot through a stream of beaded
curtains.

“Yuk,” Candy murmured. “I can’t imagine them
doing it.”

Peppermint slapped her knee. “She doesn’t do
him. She doesn’t have to do anyone. She owns the place.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Brax asked.

“He’s a pain in the ass. He doesn’t know blow
from suck and in from out.”

Nice analogy, that, which Brax took to mean
that Lafoote was lacking in the sexual-expertise department. He
attached the head to the torso, then the torso to the legs, and had
a brief flashback to that little fantasy about Simone, the flying
monkeys, her finger, and him nibbling on it. Damn, he had it bad
for the woman.

“And he doesn’t tip,” Caramel added.

Who? Oh yeah, The Foot. He was losing
concentration here.

“Jason’s pumping money into us so he can get
to Chloe.”

Brax figured it wasn’t only money Lafoote was
pumping at The Chicken Coop. “What’s he want from Chloe?”

“He wants to renovate that old broken-down
hotel in the middle of town. And he thinks she’ll talk to the judge
for him.”

“About what?” With the robot body, head, and
legs put together, all he needed were the arms. He held out his
hand to Candy, who had possession of both.

“The judge won’t give him the permits he
needs. But Chloe’s a good businesswoman, and she sees the boom a
gambling resort could be for the town,” Peppermint explained.

“He’s riling everyone up over the whole
thing.” Candy glared at the beaded doorway through which Chloe and
Lafoote had disappeared. “People are getting pissed. Chloe should
stay out of it, because if they get pissed enough, we could find
ourselves out on our tail feathers.”