Missing in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Mystery/Romance Series) (12 page)

“Crime spree?”

“Yes, one of Old Man Humphrey’s many nonworking vehicles disappeared from his front lawn.”

“You think someone stole it? Doesn’t sound like the type of car people are clamoring to own.”

“Something big is gone from that spot in the yard. The problem is Humphrey’s ninety years old if he’s a day and likes his whiskey. For all I know, he could have sold it and forgotten or even driven the darn thing off himself.”

Jadyn smiled. “Sounds like a real mystery.”

“Yeah, but I’ll take drunken seniors with questionable missing cars over this mess with Zach and Raissa any day.”

“I bet,” Jadyn said, trying to figure out a way to tell Colt that she and Mildred had visited the diner the night before. It had been Colt’s idea to question the diner employees, and she wasn’t sure how he’d take her and Mildred beating him to the punch.
 

Finally, she decided to simply blurt it out. “I had a night adventure myself. Mildred and I went to that diner up the highway. I knew we’d be in the swamp all day today and a good part of tomorrow, and Mildred was itching to do something…”

“Makes sense that she would be,” he said, not sounding remotely irritated at their action.

“We played it off as the worried aunt and cousin, figuring the family angle would get us more.”

Colt nodded. “That’s smart. Did it work?”

“Yes and no. I mean, we got information, but nothing that helps us find Raissa.” She relayed the conversations with Dee and the biker to Colt.

He started frowning as soon as she got to what the biker said, probably running through the list of scenarios just like she had.
 

“Sounds like a crime of opportunity,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s what I think, too, but why take Raissa? I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I,” he said as he pulled up to the dock. “Hopefully, we can find something today. The longer this goes…”

Jadyn nodded as she grabbed her backpack from the backseat of the truck. He didn’t have to say it out loud. She’d already processed every horrible possibility.
 

Chapter Seven

Maryse stomped across the hotel lobby for the hundredth time that morning and flopped onto the lobby couch. “What good is a day off if you’re held hostage?”

Mildred looked over the counter, one eyebrow raised. “Don’t see any handcuffs from where I sit, but if you keep throwing yourself onto my lobby furniture, I might find a pair.”

“If you’re looking for something to do,” Helena said, “one of the cooks at the diner pulled a blackberry cobbler out of the oven about ten minutes ago. I wouldn’t mind eating a blackberry cobbler.”

“You mean a slice of cobbler?” Mildred asked.

“No, I meant the whole thing, but you and Maryse are welcome to a slice…a small one. That is if Maryse will go buy the cobbler.”

“I’m not buying you a cobbler,” Maryse said. “After what you made me do to my daddy’s urn, I’d see you starve to death first...or whatever happens when you’re already dead and starving.”

Helena threw her hands in the air. “How many times do I have to apologize for that? Hardly anyone can see me, so I didn’t think about how the outfit would look to you. And I’d forgotten that you’re not a very good shot.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. If you’d been a real person, those bullets would have hit you center mass.”

Helena stuck her lower lip out. “I
am
a real person.”
 

“A real
live
person.”

“Well, you don’t have to be rude about it.”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

Helena glared. “If that’s how you’re going to be, I’ll just head upstairs and see if that FBI agent who stayed behind is talking to anyone on the phone.” A couple seconds later, she stomped up the stairs.

Mildred shook her head. “It’s like having two five-year-olds. If you two are going to snipe at each other all day, can you at least take it to the kitchen, or even better, I’ll give you my biggest suite. You can bitch ’til the cows come home and it will be out of my earshot.”

Maryse gave Mildred an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to drive you crazy.”

“I know you’re not, but you’re managing to do a good job of it anyway.”

“I just hate sitting here. What’s so wrong with riding in a boat with Jadyn and Colt? Both of them are great shots.”

“Yes,” Mildred agreed, “but did you ever stop to think that if Luc is worried about you, then going into the bayou means you might bring trouble with you? That might put Jadyn and Colt in a position they would never be in without you along. They’re already facing the possibility of running up on the kidnappers. Do you really want to add another element of danger to that mix?”

Maryse crossed her arms across her chest and frowned. She knew Mildred was right. Had already thought of that herself, although she would have never admitted it. But that didn’t mean she had to like it, and by God, she didn’t.
 

“I offered to go by myself,” Maryse said. “Remember?”

“Yes, you did. And I’m not saying you should have done it, but if that’s
really
what you wanted, you should have just headed out in your boat and sent someone a text message that you were going. The way you did it put Jadyn and Colt in the position of getting between you and Luc. No one in their right mind is going to get in the middle of a marital fray.”

Maryse sighed. “You’re right. I know you’re right—”

“Wheeeeeeee!”

Helena squealed and Maryse looked over to see her sliding down the stair rail. She cringed as the large mass reached the bottom post, but Helena turned transparent and shot off the end. Unfortunately, her transparency didn’t last long enough to land.

She hit the floor with a bang and rolled backward into the wall, shaking it to the foundations. A picture hanging above her rattled off and crashed onto the top of her head, splintering the picture from the frame.

Mildred stood up, hands on her hips, and glared at Helena. “What if someone had been at the front desk when you pulled that stunt?”

“But no one’s here.”

“Did you check to make sure no one was here before you relived your childhood?”

Helena looked guilty.

“I didn’t think so,” Mildred said. “The last thing I need is a reputation as a haunted hotel.”

“But you
are
a haunted hotel,” Helena pointed out as she brushed glass off her jeans.

“That’s beside the point. People around here are superstitious. If word gets out I have a ghost, business would go to hell in a handbasket. Then you would have nowhere to live and I would have no money to feed you.”

Helena frowned. “I guess I didn’t think that one through.”

“Shocking,” Maryse said. “Did you get anything from that stiff upstairs?”

Helena climbed up from the floor and flopped into one of the lobby chairs, breathing as if she’d just run a marathon. “Yeah. He even had the phone on speaker, so I could hear that butthead Agent Ross, too.”

“So what’s going on?”

Helena grinned. “Well, the funny part is that Agent Stiff was left behind because he’s supposed to follow Jadyn when she leaves the hotel.”

“He’s about two hours late for that one,” Mildred said.

Helena nodded. “The idiot even called her lazy because he thinks she’s still asleep.”

“Ha!” Maryse laughed. “I can’t wait to tell her that. Did he say anything else?”

“Yeah, Agent Butthead Ross said they were about to pull the car out of the pond. He’s going to have it transported to the garage here in Mudbug, and he’s going to do an inspection himself to make sure the car belongs to Raissa. If the car is Raissa’s, then he’ll call the forensics team who will process the car, looking for evidence related to Raissa and Zach’s cases.”

Maryse frowned. “I thought Ross told Colt that the FBI didn’t think their work had anything to do with this.”

Helena rolled her eyes. “And you believe the feds are telling the truth?”

“I have to agree,” Mildred said. “No offense to Luc, of course. But the FBI is not going to give up anything they consider confidential. Not even to family, much less friends, and certainly not to what they’d consider competing law enforcement.”

“That’s crap,” Maryse said. “By not telling us everything, they limit our ability to help.”

“I think that’s the point,” Mildred said.

Maryse stared at the painting of the bayou that hung over the lobby fireplace. “I wish we could find out what they’re looking for in that car.” She looked over at Helena. “I don’t suppose—”

“No way,” Helena interrupted. “That’s at least fifteen miles’ walk from here. By the time I got there, Ross would be retired.”

“Who said you had to walk?”

“I took that part for granted. Mildred won’t have any part of it because she’s too smart to go there, you’re grounded, and I can’t exactly drive there myself. Well, I could, but that might cause some concern.”

Maryse jumped off the couch. “I’m not grounded.”

Mildred shook her head. “No way. There’s only one road that leads to that pond and it’s a dead end. You have nowhere to go if the FBI catches sight of you.”

“There’s a path about a mile from the end. I can pull off on it and hide the truck with some brush in case anyone passes by.”

“Oh no,” Helena said. “I’m not walking a mile unless there’s blackberry cobbler in it for me.”

“You get me something that helps this investigation,” Maryse said, “and I’ll buy you a slice.”

“Three.”

“Two.”

“Done. Whoohoo! Blackberry cobbler.”

Mildred gave them both a look of dismay. “I don’t know which one of you is worse.”

Instantly, Maryse sobered. “You’re not going to tell Luc, are you?”

“Not unless he asks me directly. I’m not about to voluntarily unleash that can of worms.”

“Thank God,” Maryse muttered.

“But I won’t lie for you, either. So you either get in and out without incident, or you better get a speech prepared.”

“Don’t worry,” Maryse said. “We will be incident-free.”

Mildred raised her eyebrows, clearly not convinced that anything involving Helena could be incident-free.

For that matter, neither was she.

###

Colt eased the game warden boat around a sharp left turn in the bayou, scanning ahead for other boats, particularly any occupied by Ross and company. He would have preferred to take his own boat, but Jadyn had pointed out that using her equipment made the contractor thing look more legitimate. She had a pad of paper with drawings of different sections of the swamps that she’d been reworking. The cover story was that Colt was helping her remap the area since Jadyn didn’t know it well and the existing set of maps hadn’t been updated since the last hurricane, which had shifted things significantly.

The channel they traveled was about half a mile from Boudreaux’s Pond, where Colt hoped Ross would remain stationed with his team rather than wandering around the area. It made logical sense to check the camps surrounding the pond first. And technically, everything was official with the contractor job, but Colt knew they’d catch hell if Ross caught them nearby.

As he directed the boat toward the middle of the bayou, he was pleased to see a clear stretch about a mile long. The occasional fisherman was probably tucked away out of sight under the cypress trees that hung over the water, but he couldn’t think of a single reason Ross would be lurking under a canopy of tree limbs. If he was on the channels, he’d most likely be in the middle, in plain sight, which meant that so far, they were in the clear.

“Maryse said we couldn’t cover all the camps in one day,” Jadyn said as Colt directed the boat toward a dilapidated dock.

“She’s right. We’ll need another half day to cover them all. But I’m hoping we find something today and seeing the rest isn’t necessary.”

Jadyn nodded. “I hope so too. Who’s camp is this?”

Colt grimaced. “Old Man Humphrey’s. Can’t you tell by the ten nonworking refrigerators scattered in the weeds in front of it? He must have settled for appliances since he couldn’t get automobiles down here.”

Jadyn smiled. “One day, when things are right again, I’m going to drive out to Old Man Humphrey’s house just to see what all the complaining is about. And if I feel like being insulted a bit, I might even knock on the door and strike up a conversation.”

“You’ve got to really be lacking in company to seek out Humphrey.” He drew the boat up to the dock and Jadyn reached for a post.

“It’s not that,” she said as she tied off the post. “I just figure I can do my job better if I know what I’m working with. I’ve met a lot of people since I’ve been here, but some of the old-timers are almost hermits. I figure I’m going to have to go to them for any exposure.”

“Exposure is a good choice of word. God only knows what you may get spending time with the recluses I can think of. And you definitely want to announce yourself from the property line. Most of them think shooting first and asking later is their constitutional right.”