Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (10 page)

Egads
. The trash sounded like a good
place for that meal, but Brax didn’t comment. “What happened in
between the time he came home and when he went out to the
trailer?”

Her gaze dropped once more to the middle of
his shirt, her lips flattened, then she twisted her mouth back and
forth. “Nothing.”

“Mag-gie.”

“All right already,” she snapped and
proceeded to tell him. When she finished, her mouth twisted, her
nostrils twitched, and her eyes filled with tears.

“It’s okay, honey,” Brax murmured soothingly.
“Do you want me to talk to him?”

“No.”

“Tell me what I can do to help.” Because he
felt too damn helpless watching her cry.

“You can’t do anything. I know that. I really
blew it, Tyler. I shouldn’t have gotten mad.”

“He shouldn’t have come home late.” Though,
in Carl’s defense, he hadn’t known Maggie was gonna go all out with
the liver and onions. Brax withheld a shudder.

She sighed. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Let me talk to him, maybe smooth things
over.”

Her brow creased with a militant frown, and
he knew he’d said the wrong thing. He couldn’t figure out what was
the right thing.

“I want you to skip the talking part and beat
the crap out of him like big brothers are supposed to do.”

“I’m your little brother.”

“You’re bigger than me. And you’re bigger
than Carl. So go beat him up and tell him it’s for me.”

He smiled. The corners of her mouth turned up
in reply. Not a full smile, but better than the morose expression
that had spoiled her face when he walked in.

He tapped her nose, then rose and stepped
away. “How badly do you want me to hurt him?”

“Make him real bloody.”

All right, he’d give Carl one more crack.
He’d probably get no further than he had last night, but he
couldn’t stand watching Maggie rip herself up this way. His
obsessive thoughts regarding Simone would have to wait until
later.

“By the way,” she said as he backed out of
the room to do her bidding. “I have to go to the Manor for our
monthly tea party tomorrow.”

The Manor? “A tea party?” He got a bad
feeling that she was going to make him tag along.

“Our Manor of the Ladies is the local old
folks home, and we all go once a month. I told the ladies you’d
want to meet them, and they’re really excited.”

He cocked his head and eyed her warily. “How
many ladies?”

“Well, there’s Agnes and Rowena and Myrtle
and Nonnie. But don’t call Myrtle
Myrtle
. Call her
Divine
. She hates
Myrtle
. In fact, I think she hates
her mother for giving her that name.”

Agnes, Rowena, Nonnie, and Divine-not-Myrtle.
He wondered which would be more difficult, beating the crap out of
Carl or facing four little old ladies across a tea table.

“Umm, are you sure you need me on this one,
Maggie?”

“Don’t whine. And yes I need you. They’ll be
very disappointed if you don’t attend with me.”

“I never whine.”

She dipped her head and looked at him through
her eyelashes. “Simone will be there.”

Ahh. The crux of the matter. His sister’s
matchmaking at work again, in that singsong voice she used when
attempting to manipulate.

He didn’t care that she’d slyly maneuvered
him. She’d used the magic word, or rather the magic name.
Simone
.

“Sure. I’ll go.”

Then he left to metaphorically beat the crap
out of Carl before his sister started crying again and got him to
agree to
really
do it.

* * * * *

Brax knocked on the trailer door. Carl opened
it a scant three inches, revealing nothing more than one eye.

“Yeah?”

“Gotta talk to you, Carl. Let me in.”

“About what? I’m really busy.” Carl offered
only another three inches, his face and body filling the opening so
that Brax could see nothing of the interior of the trailer.

Marital issues required subtlety. Revealing
that Maggie was inside crying wasn’t the smart course of action.
“You looking at porn on the Internet? Let me see.”

Carl’s nostrils twitched. “No, I’m not
looking at porn. Did Maggie send you out here?”

Busted. “I take it you’re not going to let me
in.” What was the man hiding in there? “Fine. Let’s go out for a
drink.” He’d loosen Carl up with a beer. It had worked last
night.

Yeah, and he’d gotten himself into a
hair-raising discussion on communication with the opposite sex. He
wasn’t looking forward to more, but he did have familial duties and
obligations.

“I’m not in a drinking mood, Brax.”

Damn. Things were bad when a man didn’t want
to drown his sorrows in a frosty mug of beer.

What would entice Carl? Brax tried to
remember the last few months of his own marriage. What had
he
done to drown out his wife’s bouts of crying followed by
endless silences? “How about a game of pool?”

They’d probably have to drive into Bullhead,
but a man had to do what a man had to do. While he was there, he
could drop off
The Wizard of Oz
. Maybe pick up another movie
to watch with Simone. What else would she like? Was she a
Singing in the Rain
kind of woman? Yeah. Definitely.

Shit. Carl stood in the barely open doorway
saying nothing.

“Okay, not pool.” He drew another blank, a
testament to the fact that he didn’t really know his brother-in-law
well. He made the commitment to get to know Carl better, starting
right now.

Carl finally made the next move. “Darts.”

“Yeah. Darts.” Brax hadn’t thrown a dart
since he was in college, and even then, he hadn’t practiced enough
to get really good. Skill level, however, didn’t matter in this
instance.

“All right.” Carl glanced back over his
shoulder. “Let me...clean up in here.”

“I’ll wait out by the truck.”

Brax figured Carl had acquiesced merely to
get him out of the door of the trailer. What was he doing in there?
Brax’s immediate reaction was to flash his badge and intimidate his
way inside. Carl being his brother-in-law, however, required more
stealth.

Like plying him with beer and darts, then
driving him back home to talk with his wife.

Chapter Six

The evening was comfortably warm half an hour
later when they climbed out of Brax’s SUV in Bullhead. Monday night
was a hell of a lot more crowded at The Dartboard than at the
Flood’s End on a Sunday. Whether it was the day of the week, the
entertainment or the fact that The Dartboard offered scantily clad
waitresses, Brax couldn’t be sure. By the looks of it, the majority
of Bullhead’s male population—and probably most of Goldstone’s,
too—was in attendance. They had to take a ticket and wait for one
of the ten boards set along the far wall opposite the bar.

Brax muscled his way through the three-deep
crowd at the bar and ordered a couple of beers while Carl claimed a
miraculous recently vacated table at the edge of the dart range.
They could have waited for one of the bar girls, but there was a
good chance they might both expire of old age by then. Brax figured
he needed to loosen Carl’s tongue with some brew as quickly as
possible.

Expect for the occasional “turn left here,”
Carl had been mum on the drive. That, however, had been part of
Brax’s plan. He’d let Carl stew in silence, then he’d
interrogate—excuse me—persuade him to talk over a beer and a
friendly dart game. With the decibel level on the deafening side,
Brax didn’t have high hopes for much serious conversation, though.
At least not without the alcohol and a little more of that divine
intervention.

The patrons were on the rough side, mostly
wearing jeans and worn T-shirts in a multitude of colors. Long,
scraggly beards were a fashion statement. The smoke-infested air
they breathed would choke a chicken. Bad analogy. The chickens were
too high-class for a joint like The Dartboard.

Returning to the table, he slid one foaming
beer to Carl and squeezed into the chair opposite. The place
erupted in hoots and hollers as some skilled and talented player
did...something. Brax couldn’t see over the throng, but by the
sound of it, the accomplishment had been stupendous. Brax was
jostled from the left and stabbed in his right ear by a pointed
elbow.

The Dartboard was a bad idea for any
man-to-man gritty and to-the-point discussion. Dammit, he should
have started on Carl in the truck, but he’d been anticipating a
crowd more on par with the Flood’s End. He was also damn sure that
Carl had intended it this way. A smile creased Carl’s mouth as he
stretched his five-foot-ten frame for a gander at the dart
action.

“How long you think we’ll have to wait for a
board, Carl?”

He shouted but Carl cupped his ear and
mouthed
What?

Brax was sure the man was snickering at his
own cunning. “When will we get a game?” he enunciated distinctly so
Carl could lip-read.

“Probably by Friday night,” Carl shouted
back.

Snookered. He hadn’t credited Carl with being
so cagey. His brother-in-law was damn talented at it, too. Friends
eased between the tables, slapping him on the back, joking,
laughing. Brax didn’t strain to overhear.

Divine revelation wasn’t going to come from a
bit of backslapping with the good old boys.

Maybe he could clear the bar by arresting
them all for overcrowding. A sign over the door indicated the
maximum occupancy at fifty, but this herd exceeded that by a
multiple of at least three.

His throat scratched, and his head ached from
cigarette and cigar fumes. He found it hard to even fantasize about
Simone and her lovely smile. Someone had stepped on his right foot
and broken his toes, or at least it felt like it. The cool sizzle
of beer down his throat helped.

“Carl, you got three choices,” he yelled.

Carl lifted an eyebrow.

“You can tell me how you’re going to do right
by my sister.”

The one eyebrow dropped, and Carl raised the
other.

“Or we can go outside, and I’ll beat the crap
out of you for making her cry.”

Carl held up three fingers indicating he
wanted to hear Brax’s third option.

“We can muscle in on a game of darts.”

A wry smile curved Carl’s lips, then he
pointed through the sea of spectators to the dart floor.

Brax almost sighed. In truth, he preferred
the third choice himself. Talking about so-called issues or
fighting about them were equal pains-in-the-butt. He ignored the
small inner voice whispering,
Wimp, wimp
. Why did women
think it was so easy to bare your soul? Or to listen to someone
else baring theirs?

Brax rose, taking his beer in hand, then they
shoved through the throng, guarding their mugs with their arms.

“All right, who’s the most likely candidate
to be intimidated into letting us in?”

Carl strained forward, looking left, then
right, and back again. A smile split his face. It was damn near the
evil mien of a maniacal serial killer. Not that Brax had ever dealt
with one. Not a real one, at any rate. Nick Angel didn’t count.
That crap about him being a serial killer had all been gossip.

His brother-in-law was a goofy-grin kind of
guy, making you wonder if there was much up there in Carl’s brain.
But the smile that spread across his face now, well, it was pure
shit-eating malevolence.

Brax leaned out to glance down the line of
shooters, but he couldn’t pick out Carl’s mark.

Still smiling, Carl dipped back into the
crowd and made a beeline for what looked like the last board. Brax
followed. Carl called out before they’d even reached their
destination. “Hey, Lafoote, how about letting us join your
game?”

A hush fell, like the moment the minister
steps up to the pulpit or a cop walks into a friend’s dope party.
Where moments before Brax’s ears had pounded with the din, they now
rang with the sudden silence.

Lafoote. Alias The Foot. The man the chickens
had called a variety of demeaning names. What had the girls said
about him, besides the fact that Lafoote wasn’t man enough to
handle one of them, let alone all four? Oh yeah, Lafoote was
planning to renovate the old hotel—though from what Brax had seen,
he’d be better off razing it to the ground and starting over—and he
was plotting the venture with Chloe.

The two men faced off. The bar’s atmosphere
darkened, the air heavy and charged, like the hours before a
hurricane hit land.

“Let’s play a game, Lafoote.” Carl seemed to
stand a little taller and a lot straighter. To him, this was no
game.

Lafoote’s opponent—a dark, wiry guy who would
have looked dangerous even without the dart clutched in his fist
like a weapon—retreated three steps. A two-foot half circle opened
up around Lafoote and Carl, like kids on a playground when the
class bully finds a victim.

Falling back into a gunfighter position like
something out at the OK Corral, Lafoote widened his stance and put
his hand on his hips as if preparing to do a quick draw. “Well now,
Carl, since we’re almost done here, that doesn’t seem like the
politic thing to do at the moment.” He pointed to his companion.
“My friend here is beating the pants off me, and I’m sure he’s
enjoying the fact that I’m no challenge. You, on the other hand,
Carl, I’m sure you excel at the finer points of the game,
considering the number of hours you practice each day. And that on
top of managing to excavate at least four outhouses a week and
discovering untold buried treasures. Why, Carl, that is what I call
total dedication to a worthwhile pursuit.”

Carl’s confident smile vanished.

Lafoote was smooth all right. With Muhammad
Ali’s “
float like a butterfly, sting like a bee
” finesse,
he’d called Carl a dart-playing, outhouse-excavating loser.
Lafoote’s lanky opponent was still trying to figure out if he’d
been insulted, too.