Read Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) for Free Online Page A

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