Chapter Ten

 

 

Doodle fished a bottle of Heineken from somewhere deep beneath the bar, opened it, then tilted a frost-laden mug and poured with a minimum of foam. He slapped both the mug and the bottle onto the bar.

“Doodle, you’re a god come down from Olympus to save the parched throat of a lowly sheriff,” Teesdale said as he reached for his nectar of the Gods.

“Sheriff, a good man deserves the best a poor bartender can offer.” Doodle leaned on the counter.

Sheriff Elwood Teesdale downed half the glass, sighed with his eyes closed, then poured the remainder of the bottle. He waved a hand. “Gentleman, as you were. Just put on the siren so you’d know to clear out all the illegal nose candy before I descended.”

A hush had fallen when the sheriff pulled his wailing cruiser into the lot. Now a few laughed, and all went back to watching the cricket match.

“Simone. Mayor. Don’t mind me.” Teesdale tipped his Smokey the Bear hat to the ladies, then tossed it on a nearby table. A day’s wear in Goldstone’s heat had mashed his hair in a ring around his head. He kicked a chair out with his foot and sat with his back to the wall nearest the door.

“Tough night, Sheriff?”

“The worst of my life, Doodle. Needed a nip to calm the old nerves.” He held up his hand, showing off a case of the shakes as bad as any thirty-year alkie would have.

Sheriff Teesdale was your average Joe. Average height, average weight, average number of lines etched into his face for a man somewhere close to his midforties. Brown hair a medium shade cut to a medium length, it was neither a buzz cut nor touched his collar. He bore no distinguishing characteristics, and his voice held no distinctive inflection. His looks were those of a man no one noticed in a crowd or the kind over which neighbors exclaimed, He always seemed so ordinary, when the police uncovered his wife’s body buried in his backyard.

Brax had never bought the ordinary explanation, but he had to admit, Teesdale was the personification of the term.

Doodle cupped his hand over his mouth and said to Brax, “Sheriff likes to unload after a bad one. Ask him, cop to cop. It’ll do him a world of good.”

Brax understood the need to unload, though he’d never been one to do it. As ranking officer in his department, he didn’t unload with his subordinates. Bad for morale as well as for maintaining discipline. Nor had burdening his wife with his job stress been an option. That cut his choices down to none.

Until recently, he’d never had the need.

Doodle flapped a hand in his direction. “This is Carl’s brother-in-law.”

“Heard all about you, Sheriff Braxton.” Teesdale stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles. “Sorry. I’m sure you came here to get away from shoptalk.”

“Not a problem, Sheriff. But I did stop by to see you earlier. Wondering if you’ve seen Carl lately.”

Teesdale scratched his head. “Can’t say that I have.”

“Maggie thought maybe he’d been by to visit you.”

“Nope.” Teesdale flicked a piece of lint from the brim of his hat. “Hasn’t visited for at least a week or more.”

That was it. Brax himself would need to spend the night in jail so he didn’t have to face his sister.

“So do tell, Sheriff. What was all the fuss about?” Doodle was obviously bored with the topic of Carl.

The sheriff shook his head soberly. “It was a desperate situation, Doodle. More than half a dozen times, I thought I was a goner.”

The man was a born storyteller, relating the tale with the-fish-was-really-this-big exaggeration.

Doodle pointed the remote and lowered the TV’s volume. The boys grumbled and groused. “You can see, ya don’t have to hear, too. Sheriff, sorry for their bad manners. Go on.”

“Well, Doodle, I’ll tell you. Jody was damn lucky to escape with her life. That woman’s fast on her feet, thank God, or we’d have been cataloging blood spatter on the walls from now until Christmas.”

“Jody’s the clerk over at the minimart,” Doodle muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “and that woman couldn’t move fast if her ass was on fire.”

“He made her lie down on the floor, and she had the good sense to let him take as much merchandise as he wanted,” Teesdale went on. “Nothing good comes of facing down a man with a gun over a few material things. Especially when they belong to your boss.”

Simone sipped at her drink, watching Teesdale, and Della twisted in her seat. The bar boys had even tuned out cricket. Brax figured knocking over the local minimart was the most infamous crime Goldstone’s sheriff ever saw, and the man was playing up to his audience for all he was worth.

“Then she called you?” Doodle prompted.

“At the time, I was surveying the landscape out my office window.” Which meant he hadn’t been doing a damn thing. “The perp exited with his bootie. Couldn’t see his face in the gloom.”

“He had a jump on you, then, didn’t he, Sheriff?”

“That he did, Doodle. But I tracked him.”

“From his shoe prints?”

“No. Something much more damning.” The sheriff paused for effect. “Twinkie wrappers. Every twenty yards or so. See, I stopped long enough with Jody to find out exactly what the desperado was after. Stole the entire display of Twinkies. Ten boxes. Followed the trail right to the brigand’s front door.”

“Amazing detective work, Sheriff.”

Teesdale nodded in acceptance of the accolades. “Took years of training, and a lot of psychological know-how. See, I deduced it had to be someone who loved Twinkies. I further surmised that Mud Killian, who buys a box of Twinkies at least every other day, was the most likely suspect.”

Doodle did another aside explanation for Brax. “Mud’s Mama Killian’s youngest. He’s twenty-one, but a might tetched in the head.”

“So when Mud opened his front door, I was prepared to register every bit of evidence. The first thing I noted was the Twinkie cream on his upper lip. Gave me probable cause to search the premises. And there they were, in the middle of the kitchen counter. Nine boxes of Twinkies. He’d eaten one box, which I verified by counting the number of Twinkie wrappers I’d collected while hot on his trial. I impounded the rest.”

“Damn, Sheriff. Good work.”

“Thank you, Doodle. But are you truly aware of the implications here?”

“No, sir. Maybe you should tell us.”

Teesdale uncrossed his ankles and leaned forward with his hands on his knees. “Remember the Twinkie defense?”

“The Twinkie defense?”

“That fellow over in San Francisco who shot the mayor because he OD’d on Twinkies? Don’t tell me you don’t remember. The case was landmark.”

“Sheriff, can’t say that I—”

Teesdale whipped out a hand. “Don’t say another word, Doodle. I’m shocked and dismayed. But since you don’t remember, I’ll explain. Mud Killian could have OD’d on those Twinkies and wiped out the entire town. He had the arsenal to do it.”

Doodle slapped his hands to his cheeks. “Sheriff, you’re a saint. Thank the Lord for providing you to us.”

“Don’t mention it. It was my duty, and I couldn’t have done otherwise.”

“What’s gonna happen to Mud?”

“The heinousness of this crime deserves the stiffest of punishments. I did what I had to do. I confiscated his cache of squirt guns. Then I informed his mama.”

Doodle’s breath wheezed out. “Holy Christ, Sheriff.”

Teesdale did the sign of the cross over his chest. “I know, I know. Mama Killian’s retribution is too terrible to imagine. I figure I’ll take a ride over there tomorrow and make sure she hasn’t staked him out over an anthill for longer than twelve hours.” He drained the last of his beer, then smacked his lips. “Delicious brew, Doodle.”

“Have another, Sheriff. On the house. Can’t do enough for the man who saved the entire town.”

Teesdale rose to his feet and plopped his hat on his head. “Thanks for the generous offer. But for now, folks, I gotta turn in. The wife’ll be worrying herself sick over me, and I have a busy day tomorrow, what with all those dastardly criminals to incarcerate and Mama Killian to subdue.” He put a hand over his heart. “Better make sure I remember my nitroglycerine, just in case. The old ticker may give out in the face of Mama’s wrath.”

Teesdale tipped his hat. “Night, Doodle. Night, Simone, Mayor.” He turned, encompassing the assembly at the bar. “Gentlemen.” Then he gave a nod to Brax. “Nice to meet ya, Sheriff. Drop by for a little shoptalk anytime.”

“If you see Carl, send him home ASAP.”

“Will do. Like Little Bo Peep’s sheep.” Teesdale saluted, then left.

If the sheriff hadn’t seemed quite so tickled with himself, Brax would have felt for him. The humiliation of capturing criminals like Mud Killian was a cop’s nightmare, a job reserved for screwups who couldn’t make it in a big city department. Hell, Teesdale wouldn’t make it in Brax’s county department.

Still, tracking a Twinkie thief was a sight better than working a good friend’s murder case.

 

* * * * *

 

“Simone. Mayor.” Brax stepped up to their table and all those butterflies she’d gotten when he walked in came back for another rally in her tummy.

“We’d ask you to join us, but it’s past my bedtime.” Della tipped her arm to look at her watch. “Will you look at that? It’s after eleven.” She jumped up, grabbed her purse, hugging it to her chest as if she thought Brax might suddenly stare at her breasts.

He was much too much a gentleman for that. Most of the time.

“I’ve got to be up early for a breakfast talk at the Rotary in Bullhead,” Della explained. “Those Rotarians, you know, as much fun as a barrel of monkeys. Gotta go. Bye, Simone.”

Della rounded Brax, turned, scrunched her eyes and zipped her lip in a warning that said, Do not tell this gorgeous, hunky man a thing.

The long line of gawkers at the bar fell like dominoes. Della had a killer wiggle in tight jeans, especially when she wore those lace-up suede boots with three-inch heels.

Simone cocked her head at Brax. “Do men know that women wiggle when they walk because of the high heels?”

“Something your mother says?”

“No. It’s an observation I just made.” It also guaranteed to sway his thoughts if he suddenly got the idea to ask how her talk with Della had gone. “It never occurred to me before. But that’s why we do it.”

He cast an eye after Della as she disappeared through the door. “I think some women do it because they can.”

Simone wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, especially regarding Della, but then he held out his hand to her. She forgot about caring what he meant. “Can I walk you home?”

She wanted to take his hand so badly the butterflies in her tummy jumped all the way up to her throat. She looked at his hand, then back up at him. “You can walk me partway. Just to the corner.”

“Partway? Why not all the way?”

Did he notice his own little double entendre? His eyes sparkled, and she figured he did.

“Because.” First, he might try to kiss her—and she’d let him—and second, she needed to look at Carl’s string of emails on her computer. Alone. She stood, avoiding his hand, and tried to pull the hem of her T-shirt down over her butt, but it was way too short.

“It doesn’t cover your tush,” he whispered in her ear, setting off a nice chain of tingles. “But I promise not to look.”

“You’re a very bad man,” she whispered back. With her head held high, she paraded through the empty tables. “Night, Mr. Doodle. Night, boys.”

More than a few brows rose in speculation as all noted Brax close on her heels. “Brax is going to walk me home. Partway.”

“Uh-huh, Simone.” Doodle covered his mouth.

Snickers and chortles followed them out the door.

She turned on Brax in the parking lot, out of sight of the open door. “You shouldn’t have offered to walk me home.”

“What kind of gentleman would let a lady walk home alone? Today you said I needed to be more chivalrous.”

Trust him to remember and throw it back at her. “You let Della walk home alone.”

“I said lady.”

She gasped and opened her eyes as wide as they’d go.

Brax held up his hands. “I meant, she’s the mayor, not a lady.”

She jammed her hands at her waist and leaned forward.

“What I mean is—” He stopped, eyed her. “You did that so I wouldn’t ask you what Della said.”

Darn. He caught on. She turned. “Walk me to the corner.”

“Don’t walk so fast. We’ll get there before you have a chance to tell me.”

“Tennies. They always make me walk too fast.” She hummed. “I don’t think I should tell you. You’re not going to like it.” She made sure she stayed a pace ahead of him so that she couldn’t see his eyes.

“Can’t be worse than Teesdale saying he hasn’t seen Carl.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t even given a thought to his disappointment on Maggie’s behalf. A chill crept across her shoulders. Wouldn’t it have been nice if Carl was sleeping it off in the jail? “Why didn’t you ask him to search for Carl?”

“If the sheriff is worth anything at all, he figured out he should do that when I asked him if he’d seen Carl.”

That didn’t sound as if he thought much of Sheriff Teesdale. Maybe the Twinkie story didn’t have all the drama of chasing a real murderer through dingy back alleys as Brax was probably used to, but the sheriff was still something special.

She didn’t realize she’d stopped until Brax ran into her back. “You don’t like the sheriff?”

“Seems like a stand-up kind of guy.”

“But?” she prodded.

“I didn’t add a but.”

“There was definitely a but there.”

He laughed, softly, then harder. Finally, he bent over, putting his hands on his knees as he completely lost it.

“What?”

He raised his head. The light of a street lamp sparkled in his eyes. “I have never in my life met anyone like you. I don’t think you even know how hilarious you are.”

She pouted her lower lip. “Hilarious doesn’t seem like much of a compliment.” Sexy, seductive, beautiful, smart, those were compliments. Hilarious was something you called Groucho Marx.

He walked his hands up his thighs until he was straight and towering over her, then he put his hand on her cheek. “You have no idea how much of a compliment it is.”

“That makes me feel better.” Yeah, right.

He stroked her cheek with his thumb, and all the laughter drained from his gaze. “It doesn’t matter what Della said or if she talks Maggie into feeling better. It’s too late.”

The chill she’d felt earlier skittered from her nape to the bottom of her spine. “You think he’s going to leave her.”

He smiled gently, but his eyelids drooped with sudden fatigue. “I arrived too late to do anything about it.”

“It takes two to fix something, Brax. And you were never one of the two that could do the fixing.” So why had she thought her little fantasy would help? A question without a good answer.

“You said that before. Still feels like sh—crap.”

“It’s all right. You can say shit. I’m a big girl, and I can take it. It’ll work out, Brax. I’m sure it will.”

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and prayed. Please, God, let Maggie be the one Carl’s talking about in his emails.

“What are you doing?”

Her eyes popped open. “Praying.”

“Hope it does some good.”

It had to. Brax stared at her. She stared at him. Finally she had to ask, “Wanna kiss me goodnight?”

Taking her elbows in his hands, he pulled her close until her nipples touched his chest. His lips brushed the tip of her nose, then her lips themselves. “Yes. I wanna kiss you. But I’m not going to.”

Ooh. That was too bad. “Why not?”

“Because I’d rather dream about it tonight. In my dreams, I don’t have to stop with kissing. I get to unbutton your shirt—”

“I’m not wearing a shirt with buttons.”

“Shh. I’m seducing you with my words here.”

“Sorry.”

“As I was saying, I unbutton your shirt, use my tongue to push aside the lacy bra, and take your nipple in my mouth.”

She wanted to press her nipples hard against his chest. “What about the part where you bury yourself to the hilt? The hero always does that in romance novels.”

He rubbed his lips on hers. “Burying to the hilt comes at the end. Before that, I’m going to make you come nine ways to Sunday with my fingers, my lips, and my tongue.”

“Oh.” Oh my goodness. She was turning to mush. Excessive, exuberant, dangerous mush. She moved so her lips grazed his jaw. “All in your dreams?”

“For now.”

 

* * * * *

 

Brax put both hands on the doorjamb of the Flood’s End. “Wanted to let you boys know that Simone is home safe and sound. Figured you’d be worried about that.”

They looked at him as if he had a screw loose, not caring one whit if he did or didn’t climb into Simone’s bed. The geezers loved her. She could do no wrong.

He backed up one step on the porch. “I’m getting into my truck now. Going back to Maggie’s.”

They still didn’t care. But he wouldn’t tarnish Simone’s reputation. Not for anything.

In those moments when he’d held her by the elbows and fantasized about tasting her with his tongue anywhere and everywhere, he’d decided—for the third or fourth time—that whatever was in that email between Carl and her, he, Brax, didn’t give a damn. It wasn’t something that would hurt Carl’s marriage to Maggie.

Simone was sweet, she was funny, and she wasn’t a liar. But Brax was going home in a week or so, and his relationship track record sucked the big one. As much as he wanted to taste her again and again, it was better to leave Simone in his fantasies. Dream girls were satisfied with very little.

Five minutes later, his SUV chugged up the steep drive. The trailer was dark, Maggie’s car was exactly where it should be, and Carl’s parking spot was still empty.

How was he going to tell Maggie he’d failed?

Worse, how was he going to tell her he believed Carl was about to leave her and break her heart?

 

* * * * *

 

Simone stared at the computer screen until her eyes started to cross. It was impossible to tell if the heroine was Maggie. She’d exchanged three emails with Carl, asking for further clarification on certain details.

He’d replied with specific answers.

But was the woman in the fantasy supposed to be Maggie? She was blondish, like Maggie, but Carl’s description was of a seemingly younger woman with much fuller breasts. For that matter, the hero of the story was younger, taller, and thinner.

Maybe Carl had imagined them both young, perfect, and agile.

Simone couldn’t make a determination.

Darn it, why hadn’t he given her names to use? Instead, she’d written the whole thing with pronouns. Which was easy when the story involved only the hero and heroine.

With a sudden burst of frustration, she pounded the side of her monitor, then, for each of his stupid, damning emails, she hit the delete key so hard she almost broke a nail. “Darn you, Carl.”

She dashed off a new email.

“If you’re planning what I think you’re planning, you are dead meat. And I do mean dead meat. Rotten, maggot-infested, buzzard bait.”

She felt only marginally better.

She just hoped Carl came back to read the email. At least that might mean he and Maggie still had a chance.

 

* * * * *

 

“Are any of his clothes missing?” Brax asked as gently as possible.

They sat at the kitchen table, no food between them, just mugs of coffee that Brax had prepared. The morning hours had ticked by like molasses running uphill. No crunch of tires on the gravel drive, not even a phone call. Carl hadn’t come home last night, and he hadn’t returned today. Maggie refused breakfast. She’d skipped lunch, too. Though he forced himself to eat, Brax sure as hell didn’t feel like it while watching his sister’s life go into meltdown.

“No.” Maggie’s voice was emotionless, except for that sharp edge that would have flayed flesh from bone. Stone-cold anger glittered in her eyes.

“Did you check?”

She gave him a one-eyed glare without turning her head. “I don’t have to check. I do all the laundry and all the folding, but I refuse to put his crap away. There are four piles sitting two feet high on the dresser. Just like yesterday and the day before that. So no, he hasn’t taken any clothes.” Her lip lifted in a snarl. “He’s probably planning to buy all new stuff with my money when he gets wherever the hell he’s going.”

“Now, Maggie, you don’t know...” Brax stopped himself before she got the chance to cut him off. Last night’s bath had not relaxed her. It had made her hard and cold and determined to kick Carl out if he did come slinking back.

Brax started again. “He didn’t leave a note.”

“My point exactly. He didn’t even leave a goddamn note. He walked out on me without even so much as a one-line explanation.”

“Even the police require twenty-four hours before accepting a missing person’s report. Maybe we should hold off judgment.”

She lifted her arm, looked pointedly at her watch, then put her hand flat on the table. “He crawled out of my bed at five o’clock yesterday morning. That makes it almost thirty-six hours. He’s gone. And you know what, Tyler, I don’t care. I really don’t care. Della’s right, I’m better off without him. He can fall off the edge of the earth and die for all I care.”

“Now, Maggie.”

“Don’t you dare now Maggie me! You’re wearing the most pathetic hangdog face because you know he’s gone as well as I do.”

He didn’t want to believe, but he couldn’t deny. He hadn’t known Carl had it in him, but the man had proven to be quite a liar. Carl sat solemnly on the passenger side of Brax’s vehicle and promised he’d take his wife out to dinner. He’d poured out his anger at Lafoote and the resort. He’d confided. Yet all the while, he’d been planning to leave. Maybe that was how he’d show them all he wasn’t a loser. By taking off and making a better life somewhere else. He’d probably return ten years from now with a beautiful young wife, two kids, and enough money to buy all of Goldstone.

A knock on the front door carried through to the kitchen. Brax jerked his head up.

Maggie snorted. “If it were him, he wouldn’t bother knocking. It’s probably UPS.”

Her knees creaked as she rose. It was yet another sign of her stress.

There came the murmur of voices, then nothing, not even the closing door.

His heart started to pound, and his blood rushed like a raging river in his ears. Rising, Brax knocked his mug over. A stream of coffee dripped off the edge of the table onto the floor. He left it behind as he followed the voices to the front door.

Sheriff Teesdale stood on the doorstep, his hat in his hand, the same ring of crushed hair around the top of his head. He worked the brim back and forth, then pulled it through his fingers, turning his hat in an endless nervous circle.

Maggie didn’t move. Sometime before Brax stepped into the hall, she’d jammed a fist to her mouth and wrapped an arm around her waist.

Teesdale looked at him as if he were a lifeline. “I’m sorry. Real sorry.”

The words weren’t necessary. The sheriff’s eyes said it all.

Brax had delivered bad news too many times. He’d felt for the victims of the tragedies, the car crashes, the hunting accidents, the drownings, a million ways to die. Christ. It tore up his gut observing the myriad ways in which people reacted.

Yet he’d never even contemplated being on the receiving end, nor his sense of utter helplessness as he watched Maggie. Just watched. Unable to move. Unable to touch. Incapable of comforting. The sensation was akin to total paralysis, right down to his vocal cords.

Carl hadn’t run away. He was dead.