Chapter Sixteen

 

 

Chloe and Della jumped him the moment he opened the trailer door. Going automatically for the weapon he wasn’t carrying, Brax nevertheless crouched into a defensive posture.

“She’s gone.”

“What do we do?”

“We haven’t a clue where.”

“It’s been half an hour of hell.”

“You should have left your cell phone number.”

He tried to make sense of who was saying what and what it all meant. “Maggie’s been gone to God knows where for half an hour but you didn’t have my cell number, yet you didn’t call Simone or get in your car and drive less than a mile to her house?”

“It wasn’t our fault.” Della put a hand over her mouth.

Chloe pointed. “Della panicked. I couldn’t leave.”

Della snorted. “I did not panic.”

“You threatened to stick your head in the Jacuzzi motor and turn it on if I left. I’d call that panicking.”

“You’re exaggerating, Chloe.”

“Ladies. Excuse the expression, but please shut up. Now.” In his experience, ladies didn’t usually do what you told them to, but in this case, these two did. “Only one of you answer. Did Maggie sneak past you?”

Chloe did the honors. “She pried the window screen off in the bedroom.”

“You noticed half an hour ago. But when was the last time you checked if she was there?”

“We didn’t check,” Della said, staring at the floor. “You said she was asleep, and we didn’t want to risk waking her.”

Dammit, he’d been gone an hour and a half. Shit. Shit. Shit. Giving in to his desire for Simone had been the worst mistake in a long line of stupid mistakes he’d made lately. Not the act itself—that was beautiful—but the timing sucked.

He’d told Simone not to sully what they’d done.

Maggie’s disappearance did it for them.

“Did you call the sheriff?”

The two looked at each other, then the floor, and both answered simultaneously. “No.”

“Shit.” His vocabulary suddenly seemed limited.

He pulled his cell from its holder on his hip just as an electronic excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture”—minus the canons—shrieked from somewhere deep in the family room.

With the agility of a high-dive champion, Chloe lunged for her bag on the coffee table before Brax had a chance to hit 911.

Chloe looked to Brax. “The chickens have Maggie.”

What the hell was Maggie doing at The Chicken Coop? He knew in the next split second. She was doing her own investigation, starting at the source, the witnesses who found Carl’s body. Damn those detective shows.

“They don’t know how long they can hold her off,” Chloe relayed. “It’s a terrible mess. She’s gonna kill Whitey any second now. Holy hell, I hear her screaming like a crazy person.”

“Tell them we’ll be there in two minutes.” Brax pointed at Della. “You stay in case she somehow gets away before we arrive and comes back here.”

Della groaned mournfully. “But I’m the last person she’ll want to see. I can’t handle it.”

Chloe shook her by the shoulders. “Della. You’re the mayor and the judge of this town. Start acting like it.”

Shit. Someone had to regain control. Because Brax had certainly lost it.

 

* * * * *

 

“That man was incredibly rude.” Ariana paced the short length of Simone’s living room, her brilliant blue sandals blending with the orange shag like a cheerleader’s pom-poms.

“Ah, Ariana honey, you’re miffed because Brax didn’t fall worshipping at your feet. I think the boy’s smitten with our Simone.” Kingston put his arm around Simone’s shoulder and hugged her off her feet.

“What does he do for a living in this godforsaken place? Sell used hubcaps?”

“He’s visiting.” Of course, she’d already told her mother that, along with the fact that Brax was Maggie’s brother, but Ariana never could resist a good dig. “He’s a sheriff in Cottonmouth.”

Her mother made a face. “Cottonmouth? That’s a disgusting name for a town.” She sniffed condescendingly. “Trust a gambling and prostitution state like Nevada to allow such a thing.”

“Cottonmouth’s in Northern California.”

“Hmmph. Northern California. Well, that says it all.” Anything north of Hollywood counted as the backwoods to her mother, even if it was part of the great state.

“Don’t mind her, honey, she’s jealous,” Kingston said loud enough for her mother to hear. Kingston never seemed to care what her mother thought. Maybe that’s why her mother took his blasphemies without throwing him out on his ear. Actually, Simone never had understood why her mother tolerated it. Another of life’s great unsolved mysteries.

“Jealous, Kingston? Oh please. Of what? She lives in a trailer, for God’s sake. And did you see this town? Why it doesn’t even have a decent spa.”

Goldstone didn’t have a spa at all, and her mother’s skin would shrivel in the dry desert air. But her daughter thrived. Maybe Jackie needed some good desert air, too. She seemed so pale.

“Simone is standing right here, Ariana. You don’t have to talk like she’s in the next room. I think her trailer is”—even Kingston had to search for a kind word—“special.”

And it had a foundation. Brax said so. Simone’s heart beat a little faster, and she couldn’t help a tiny smile.

“Any trailer is an abomination,” her mother said, as if a trailer was the next-worst thing to an outhouse. “How could you do this to me, Simone? How could you? If the press ever gets wind of this...” She threw herself on the sofa, covering her eyes with her arm.

Simone opened her mouth, but Kingston fought her battle for her. “She didn’t do it to you, Ariana. This is her home, and it doesn’t have a thing to do with you. I’d venture that she didn’t even consider you when she bought it.”

Anathema to her mother, the idea that the world didn’t revolve around her. “You’re coming home, Simone. I won’t hear another word about it. You can have your old suite at the house. But don’t even think about redecorating in orange.”

“She’s not coming home, Ariana.”

“Kingston, will you please stop talking for her. The girl’s old enough to talk for herself.”

Talk for herself? Ariana didn’t think Simone was old enough to even think for herself.

They looked at her. Expecting something. It was so much easier to tell her mother what she wanted to hear when all Simone had to do was hang up the phone afterward. She took the coward’s way out. “You can sleep in the master bedroom, MOTHER.” Of course, her whole trailer would fit in her mother’s bedroom suite, and there wasn’t a speck of marble or brass to be found anywhere. “Jackie and I can take the guest room.” Which had a queen bed, where they could giggle and tell stories all night long as they had when they were children. “The couch isn’t very long, Kingston, but it’s better than the floor.”

Kingston laughed. “Maybe your mother should take the couch. She looks so at home there, doesn’t she?”

Ariana rose, smoothing imagined wrinkles from her silk pantsuit. “Thank goodness, I brought spare sheets. I like my own with the proper thread count. Jackie, sweetheart, would you mind taking care of it? And don’t forget to get the atomizer out of my overnight case to spray the bed.”

“Yes, MOTHER.” Yes, Jackie minded, or yes, she’d do it? Simone thought she detected capital letters in her sister’s voice. Jackie had hung back in the hallway, out of sight, out of mind, out of the storm, during the entire exchange.

Simone almost laughed. The thought of Oscar-winning Jacqueline Chandler changing sheets bordered on the absurd. Just as it was easier to tell Ariana what she wanted to hear, it was always easier to do what she said. Especially if she was close enough to throw eye daggers at you. Suddenly it was getting hard to say her mother meant well.

“I’ll help, Jackie,” Simone said.

Jackie turned back along the hall. Simone followed, hoping her mother’s voice would do a fade-out.

“Kingston, I need a drink. See what she’s got.”

“Yes, Ariana. Whatever your little heart desires.” Kingston Hightower took her mother’s orders as though they were a source of great amusement. He always had. Simone had often wondered what her mother would have to say or do to breach his equanimity.

“And if there are any mice lurking in the cupboards, you are driving me to a decent hotel, even if we have to go all the way back to Vegas.”

“Of course, Ariana. You know your every wish is my command.” Laughter lurked in his voice.

“And when is she going to write darling Ambrose? If she’d just do herself up and wear a little makeup. I don’t know how to help her anymore when she won’t even...” Fade out.

 

* * * * *

 

The drive took five minutes. The longest five minutes of Brax’s life.

Two flood lamps spotlighted pandemonium in The Chicken Coop’s lot as he wheeled in. His tires spewed gravel in all directions, the ping of it hitting damn near every parked car and spraying the two combatants and four referees.

Dressed in varied length shorts and crop tops and without their distinguishing lingerie, Brax couldn’t tell which chicken was which, but two held Maggie back by her arms.

Yanking his car door open, Brax caught her words. Hell, she was shouting so loudly all of Goldstone must have heard her.

“I know you killed him, Waldo Whitehead. You thought he was going to dig up those damn outhouses of yours in the middle of the night and stiff you out of a cut of whatever he found.”

Then she threw herself at Whitey, hands outstretched, fingers curled into claws.

With a mighty effort, the chickens held her back just before she’d have scratched his eyes out. The bearded man jumped, stumbled, then fell on his ass.

“Maggie, stop it.” Brax didn’t know her. She was a wild thing, her hair flying in all directions, spittle at the corners of her mouth. Psycho time. It would have been cliché if it hadn’t been his sister.

For a moment, one small part of his mind stepped back to assess the situation with an unbiased cop’s eye. At the end of a self-proclaimed knock-down, drag-out fight with her husband, Maggie Felman had threatened to cut off his family jewels. She’d disappeared for most of the next morning during which, at some point, her husband had fallen to his death. The autopsy report might very well come back determining time of death to be within the window of her opportunity. She now threw accusations of murder around like a crazy woman. Or a crazy-acting woman desperate to throw suspicion onto someone else.

Shit. Damn. Brax was closer to losing his lunch than when he’d been tasked with cleaning up after a ten-car pileup on the highway involving a semi’s lost brakes.

Please God, don’t let my sister be an out-of-control Mack truck.

Whitey garbled something, the only recognizable part being his utter terror.

Brax seized the distraction like a lifeline.

A chicken, Peppermint by the scent of her, grabbed Brax’s arm, and whispered in his ear. “It’s a game they played, that’s what he said, that he would have let Carl have the outhouses in the end.”

Brax closed in on Maggie and the two chickens with death grips on her upper arms. Their muscles flexed and rippled with effort. He didn’t know how much longer they could hold her, but he couldn’t gauge the transfer of power at this point. If he tried to take Maggie too soon, she could bolt. Either for Whitey’s throat or into the night where Brax would never find her. The desert was too damn dark and too damn easy to hide in.

“Maggie, honey, let’s calm down. Let’s talk.” He held up both hands in a peace gesture.

“He killed him, he killed him.”

With more unrecognizable rhetoric from Whitey, Peppermint murmured once again, like a UN interpreter deciphering a foreign language for Brax. “He’d never kill Carl over an outhouse. The first edition of Death Game Carl found at Goodwill, maybe, but not the outhouses.”

“Why the hell is he saying he had a reason? He’ll set her off again. Shit.” Then louder, so his sister could hear, he brought out the big guns. “Maggie, Mom’ll be here soon. You don’t want her seeing you like this. You know what she’ll do.”

Suffer heart failure, that’s what she’d do. Maybe he shouldn’t have called Mom. Seeing Maggie like this would break her heart.

“Come on, sweetie, let’s go home so Mom doesn’t worry.”

Maggie stared at him, her face a garish collage of harsh lines and hollows in the flood lights. “Mom’s going to be mad, isn’t she?”

She’d morphed from ferocious feline to whimpering child so quickly moisture sprang to Brax’s eyes. His skin prickled as if someone walked over his grave. “She’s not going to be mad, Maggie. She’s going to be sad. Let’s go home and get you cleaned up.”

“You don’t think Whitey killed him? I can’t leave if he did.”

Brax eyed the man’s white beard and scrawny chest. “Nah, Whitey didn’t kill him. It was somebody else, somebody we don’t know.”

Behind him, someone gasped. Had to be Chloe.

“Maybe it was the book. I forgot all about it.” Maggie suddenly wore the most beatific look of hope.

Brax hated to crush it. “Nobody kills anybody over a book.”

“It’s a first edition.” The chicken with nothing to do but watch uttered that. Cotton Candy? She’d need a good lecture about the art of talking a jumper off a window ledge.

Maggie started pointing and jabbering. “See, see. It could be.”

“Listen to me, Maggie. The book isn’t important.”

Another interpretive whisper in Brax’s ear: “Carl could have sold it on eBay for a thousand dollars.” Which explained why Carl had Death Game in his desk drawer. It had to be the same book Maggie referred to.

The sound of crunching rocks once more issued forth from Whitey’s mouth.

The chicken clucking in his ear was starting to fray Brax’s nerves, but he needed the info. “He says he’s still got author copies left, and he doesn’t need the thousand dollars because he got six figures on his last advance.”

Brax whipped his head around to stare at her. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Whitey. Waldo Whitehead.”

The old geezer sitting on his butt in the gravel was bestselling science-fiction writer Waldo Whitehead? Jesus. That was the name Maggie used when Brax first climbed out of his car.

What the hell did it matter now except to bring Maggie back to the real world? “Honey, listen to him. He’s got more money than Carl ever dreamed of, and he’s got a whole box of Death Game in his house. He didn’t need the one Carl had.”

Whitey, a.k.a. Waldo Whitehead, nodded his head vigorously in agreement.

“So let the nice chickens go, and we’ll go home, okay?” Brax pleaded.

“But what about Carl?” she moaned. “Somebody pushed him off the trail. I can’t let them get away with it.”

Everyone stared, four pairs of chicken eyes, a mother hen, a rooster who’d lost his cockscomb while sitting on his ass in the gravel. And Maggie. Brax’s broken down sister.

To lie or not to lie, that is the question.

“Sheriff Teesdale and I are going up the trail tomorrow morning. We’ll look for evidence. I swear to you, Maggie, I will not sweep this under the rug. I’ll do right by you and Carl. I promise.”

After interminable moments, she let the chickens lead her to him. His damn hands shook as he put his arm around her shoulders and tucked her close. The passenger side door stood open, and he helped her climb inside, strapped her in carefully, then shut the door. Chloe hoisted herself into the backseat.

“Somebody murdered him?” Caramel?

Brax gave them all a nod. “Most likely.”

“We’ll boil the asshole in oil.” Maybe Cotton Candy.

“We’ll draw and quarter the bastard.”

“We’ll cut his balls off.” He was sure that was Chocolate.

He’d never known chickens could be such a bloodthirsty lot. Brax held up his hands in supplication. “Enough or I’ll have to haul you all in for vigilantism.”

Beyond them, Waldo Whitehead still sat in the gravel as if he’d lost the use of his legs. Brax strode to him. Waldo “Whitey” Whitehead, supplier of skull license plate frames and author of New York Times bestselling science-fiction novels. Brax stuck out his hand and hauled the man to his feet.

“How much were you going to charge Carl for the outhouses?”

“It was the percentage we were haggling over. I wanted fifty-five and he wanted fifty-five.”

Amazingly, Brax understood every word, as if there were a phantom chicken at his ear interpreting. Or Whitey merely affected the garble for incomprehensible reasons. “Why didn’t you settle for fifty-fifty?”

Whitey dusted off the seat of his worn trousers. “What’s the fun in that?”

The scrawny man might have gotten the jump on the much beefier Carl if he’d charged him from the rear. But what would have been the fun in that? Outhouse haggling would be over with the snap of a finger.

“What about the first edition?”

“I only wanted to sign it. Can’t stand one of them being out there unsigned, though I know there’s a million anyway.”

“How badly did you want that signature on it?”

Whitey stroked his beard, then opened his musty brown eyes wide. “How badly do you think, son?”

Brax had read in some magazine, probably while waiting in the dentist’s office, that Waldo Whitehead’s last book contract had topped the million mark. Murder was about money, desire, love, greed, fear, pain, envy, or a host of other strong emotions. Except on the part of the occasional serial killer, it wasn’t about fun.

Waldo hadn’t needed money. More than likely, he’d needed to wage the war with Carl for his own amusement. Innate logic dictated that Waldo wouldn’t do away with his entertainment source. “Badly enough to hold out on those outhouses, I’d wager.”

The old man smiled, the barest of crinkles at his eyes and a forehead smooth enough to make Brax wonder at his age. “Gonna miss that boy something fierce. Think I’ll name my next hero after him. Carlsonicus Felmanicus. Whatd’ya think?”

“Nice ring. I think Carl would like that.”

Like Teesdale, Whitehead had chosen a different path, where Twinkie wrappers and outhouses symbolized a better life. Life out of the fast lane. Minus the pressure.

Brax envied them.

He might be making another monumental mistake, but in his judgment, Whitey didn’t fit the killer profile.

Brax slapped his hand on the hood as he rounded the front of his SUV, then turned back. “If any of you think of something important, the slightest detail, call Sheriff Teesdale.”

The word would be all over town before the sun came up. By tomorrow morning, everyone in Goldstone would know Carl hadn’t merely fallen to his death. He’d been murdered.

 

* * * * *

 

Maggie spent the five-minute drive with her head against the window. She snuffled, sniffled, wiped at her nose and her eyes, then started all over again.

Brax didn’t know how to help her.

Chloe did more for her than he could by leaning forward from her backseat position and slowing rubbing Maggie’s arm. Up and down, up and down. It mesmerized his peripheral vision.

A convertible sat in his spot at the top of the drive. Brax pulled in next to it and cut the engine. He unbuckled Maggie’s seat belt as Chloe climbed out and opened the door where Maggie rested her head.

“Come on, sweetie,” Chloe crooned like the mother hen she so obviously was.

Brax took Maggie’s other arm, and together they led her to the front door. It opened before they reached it.

Light spilled out, silhouetting a tall, gangly figure.

Jason Lafoote, hotelier. The object of Carl’s animosity the night before he died. What the hell was he doing here?

Maggie turned her head to murmur in Brax’s ear. No chicken whisper, the sound chilled his bones. “That man did it. He pushed Carl. I know it. I feel it. It’s all because of him.”

She was calm. She was sure. Her voice was damn scary. The level of menace in her tone churned in his belly.

Lafoote stepped forward with the most abject look of sorrow and sympathy that had ever graced a Hollywood screen. Ariana Chandler couldn’t have done better.

“Maggie, my poor, dear woman.” He clasped her hand in both of his. “I had to rush over and offer my condolences. This is the most terrible of terrible things.”

Maggie let him touch her without recoiling, but Brax felt the instinctive flexing in her arm.

His own instinct told him to drag her away from the sallow, scarecrowlike man.

The observer in him held back. And watched. He didn’t like himself, was in fact starting to hate the part of him that could so callously analyze his sister’s reactions.

He’d never know what she’d been about to do because Chloe pulled her away and shot Lafoote a look. “This isn’t the time, Jason. Go away.”

“But—”

“I said go.”

When Madame Chloe meant business, few men disobeyed, Brax was sure, and Lafoote wasn’t one of the brave few who might. He scuttled to his car.

“Take Maggie inside,” Brax told Chloe, then went after the weasel. He had questions he wanted answers to.

“Hold on, partner.” He stopped Lafoote before he could throw himself into the front seat and escape.

Lafoote matched him in height, but Brax was almost twice as wide. The man protected himself in the vee of the car, holding the door in front of him like a shield. “I’m very sorry to have disturbed you.”

“I apologize for my sister. She’s not thinking clearly.” The best tactic was non-confrontational—until Brax was ready for the slam.

Lafoote bobbed his head. “Carl’s death is terrible, just terrible. I don’t hold her anger against her.”

“Yeah. And with Sheriff Teesdale calling it murder, Maggie’s beside herself.”

“The sheriff thinks Carl was murdered?”

Brax could have wished for better lighting, but as it was, Lafoote showed appropriate surprise. He could almost see the man’s mind digesting that. “Yep. Pretty damn sure foul play was involved. Course, I had to tell the sheriff about that disagreement I witnessed the other night.”

Lafoote cocked his head. “What disagreement?”

Again, the reaction seemed fitting. Either the man was one hell of an actor, or he didn’t remember. “At The Dartboard. Thought you and Carl might knock each other’s blocks off.”

It registered. Lafoote blinked. “Well, that was just a friendly game. I’m surprised you’d call it a disagreement.”

“Carl seemed to think you were pissed as hell at him for not backing you on getting that resort open. Pissed. As. Hell.” He wanted Lafoote off-kilter. “Had to tell the sheriff it seemed like more than a mere disagreement.”

“Well, well—” Lafoote sputtered.

Brax waved him off. “Didn’t seem too friendly to me, but I’m sure Sheriff Teesdale will ask you all about it tomorrow.” He scratched his neck. “What’s got him really curious is why you and Carl were at the bank together yesterday. Right before Carl got himself killed.” It was a long shot, but there was nothing that said a cop couldn’t make up a few stories to rattle a suspect’s cage.

Lafoote took a long time answering. Another telltale sign. Sometimes, a suspect had to really think about his answer. Innocent, confused people usually blurted out, Huh?

“I really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

An inconclusive answer. “You weren’t with Carl yesterday?”

Lafoote blinked over extraordinarily black eyes. “No.”

“Where were you then?”

Another pause. Too long. Maybe he couldn’t remember a day ago. Then: “I was in my office mostly. I had a lot of calls to make.”

“Hmm,” Brax muttered, then stared the other man down for several seconds. “I’m sure the sheriff will talk to you about that tomorrow, too. So you might want to get hold of some phone records to prove it.”

Lafoote jangled his keys. “Of course, I’d be more than happy to talk to the sheriff. And answer any questions he has which might help find the dastardly culprit. If Carl really was murdered. I’ll let you get back to Maggie.”

That was a funny thing. Most people would have asked why the sheriff was interested in what they’d been doing when Carl died. Lafoote just wanted out. Interesting.

Watching Lafoote’s car disappear at the bottom of the hill, Brax’s instinct was to follow, see what he got up to. But Brax had deserted Maggie one too many times tonight, with disastrous results. Tomorrow, Mom would be here and Maggie could be in no better hands.

Besides, he’d set the stage for Teesdale to do a little probing tomorrow. If Lafoote had anything to do with Carl’s death, he’d be a stark raving lunatic by the morning wondering what the sheriff had on him.

He found Della, Chloe and his sister in the living room.

Della tipped Maggie’s chin. “Drink your tea, sweetie.” The woman had found her backbone once more.

“What did Lafoote really want?” Brax needed to know.

Della patted Maggie’s back as she spoke over her head. “What he said. Condolences. Even Jason Lafoote will at least wait until tomorrow to try to turn this to his advantage.”

Brax had a gut feeling Lafoote wanted something far more. Maybe to hide his own complicity by visiting his victim’s widow?

“Someone murdered Carl, Della.” Maggie hiccupped.

“Nonsense, honey. Carl fell.”

“Elwood doesn’t think so.”

Della jerked her head to look at Chloe. “Why not?”

Chloe pointedly flashed her gaze to Maggie’s tearstained, ravaged face. “Let’s talk about it later.”

The Elvis clock hit the midnight mark, bursting into a shortened, tinny rendition of “Viva Las Vegas.” Brax was suddenly so damn tired. He’d never been so glad to have two women hovering around his sister as he was when the worst day of Maggie’s life finally gave up the ghost.