Missing in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Mystery/Romance Series) (13 page)

“Maybe I need to talk to you about getting a bulletproof vest,” she said as she stepped onto the wobbly dock.

“It’s probably not the worst idea.”

“It doesn’t look like anyone has been here recently,” she said as they pushed their way through the overgrown brush toward the camp.
 

“No, at least not from this direction.”

“Is there a road running behind it?”

“Yeah, about half a mile away from this camp. The gap gets a little wider the farther down the bayou you go.”

“A half mile is definitely doable, even with a hostage.”

“Ten miles is doable with a hostage as long as you’ve got a gun on them and there’s no witnesses around.”

Jadyn sighed. “You know, normally I am the most based-in-reality person I know, but just this once, I wish I could have that ‘glass half-full’ mentality.”

Colt nodded. He understood exactly what Jadyn was saying, but he also knew it was useless to wish for things that could never happen. Some people liked to think that law enforcement work made people—from the positive person’s point of view—jaded. But he knew better. If he and Jadyn hadn’t already been grounded in reality, neither of them would have been drawn to the work in the first place. Statistics didn’t lie. There was always a chance a bad situation could turn out fine, but in law enforcement, you had to be geared to accept that it often didn’t.
 

Keeping that fact in the forefront of your mind minimized disappointment.
 

Colt walked up the steep steps leading to the camp, trying not to dwell on the disappointment he was going to feel if this case turned out badly. He already knew quite well the odds against a happily ever after, but when it was personal, you tended to push those odds back in place of hope.

He twisted the front doorknob and the door creaked open.

“It’s not locked?” Jadyn asked.

“No. A lot of locals don’t bother,” he said as he stepped inside. “There’s not much traffic this deep in the bayou. Visitors tend to fish in the ponds closer to town. Sometimes kids go into camps and have parties, but they won’t haul a truckload of beer through the swamp on foot for a half mile when other camps are closer to the roads.”

She followed him inside and glanced around. “Not much to see.”

“No. A lot of these places are one big room and a bathroom. They’re not meant for full-time living. But that makes them easier for us to search.”
 

He crossed the tiny structure and opened a door on the far wall. “Looks like no one’s been here for a while.”

“Then on to number two,” she said, clearly trying to force optimism she didn’t feel. “Do you mind giving me a rundown on the owners as we cover the cabins? If it’s not a bother?”

“It’s no bother,” he said as they left the camp and headed back to the dock. “The better you can do your job, the easier it makes mine.”

“Great.” She released the boat from the dock.

“The next camp is owned by Roscoe Bartlett. He owns the general store. It’s been a while since I’ve been inside, but if I remember correctly, his is nicer than most of the others. Has a separate bedroom and the finish out is more like a house.”

Roscoe’s camp was indeed nicer than Old Man Humphrey’s, at least on the outside. The front of the camp possessed no collection of broken appliances and didn’t show any signs of recent passage, until they got to the steps. Two sets of prints showed in the thick layer of dust and led up the steps to the door.

Colt pulled out his nine millimeter and motioned to Jadyn to do the same. “I’ll go up first,” he whispered. “Wait until I’m on the porch before following. I want to minimize creaking as much as possible.”

She gave him a silent nod, and he started up the steps, slowly shifting his weight onto each step. When he stepped onto the porch, he motioned to Jadyn, then pressed his ear to the door. At first, he heard nothing, then he heard a low moan. He checked behind him as Jadyn stepped onto the porch.
 

“I heard someone inside,” he whispers. “Sounds like they’re hurt.”

He gently turned the knob and was surprised to find it unlocked. He eased the door open and inched his head through the crack until he could see the front room.
 

It was empty.

On the back wall were two more doors. He crept toward the door on the left, which he thought was the bedroom. As he drew up right in front of the door, a woman screamed.

Immediately, he threw open the door and launched inside, pistol ready for firing. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

The scene inside stopped him so short that Jadyn bumped into him before moving to the side to see what the holdup was. She probably regretted looking.
 

The screaming woman was clad in hooker-red lingerie and was handcuffed to the posts of the bed, but she wasn’t Raissa and the cuffs were plastic. The man in front of her wore black underwear with silver studs and a black mask. He held a leather whip and whirled around to stare at Colt, then froze, the panic clear in his eyes.

Colt grimaced at the sight and shook his head, frowning at both of them. “Sorry to interrupt, Bob. We’re looking for a missing person. We’ll just get out of here and let you and Jenny get back to…to whatever the hell this is.”

He managed to hold in his grin until they left the camp. Jadyn jumped off the steps and hurried up next to him.

“Okay, spill,” she said. “Was that Roscoe in the mask? Because you called him Bob. Do you know the woman?”

“No, that definitely wasn’t Roscoe, and he’d probably have apoplexy if he knew what was going on in his camp. Despite the mask, I know exactly who the man was—Bob Brant, our illustrious mayor.”

Jadyn sucked in a breath. “You’re kidding! I’ve only met him once and he totally gave me the creeps, which makes a lot of sense now. But isn’t he married to some woman with a drawn face and entirely too big hair?”

“Yes, that woman is not his wife. She’s an eighteen-year-old high school student who babysits his ten-year-old twins.”

Jadyn stopped in her tracks. “Oh my God.”

He turned back to look at her and grinned. “That’s one way of putting it.”
 

She caught up to him and jumped into the boat. “I don’t get it. The man’s cheating on his wife with essentially a child. So you want to tell me why you’re so amused?”

“Because last night Deputy Nelson was on a call about drug use behind the school.” He started the boat and headed down the bayou. “The supplier was the mayor’s seventeen-year-old son, and he would have made my life hell if I pressed charges. But now…”

“He’s not going to say a word.” Jadyn smiled. “I wonder what his son will think when daddy doesn’t bail him out again.”

“I’m sure he won’t think much of it, and as he’ll be sitting in my jail for a bit, I’m also sure I’ll get to hear all about it from him any time I’m in earshot. Even more interesting is what the mayor’s wife will think about his not saving her baby.”

“Sounds like you’re looking forward to it.”

“That kid has been running wild since junior high school. If he doesn’t straighten out soon, best case is he’ll be living at home until he’s forty. Worse case, he’ll live behind bars. Going to jail for a while might be the one thing that could knock some sense into him.”

“I’ve known kids like that, and you’re probably right.
 
What about the girl the mayor was with? Where’s she headed?”

“Probably to a pole in New Orleans. Everyone in my position has tried with that one, but she’s determined to wreck her life. If you knew her parents, you know she comes by it honest. I’ll just be glad when she graduates and moves her drama out of Mudbug.”

Jadyn shook her head. “I guess small towns are no different than big cities when it comes to the sordid happenings behind closed doors.”

“Yeah, only people in small towns work harder to hide things, because once they’re out, it doesn’t take ten minutes for every resident to know their secrets.”
 

He directed the boat to the next dock, hoping this inspection yielded a more important revelation than the last. And one that didn’t have his breakfast repeating.

###

Maryse backed her truck into a clearing off the main path and parked. She waved toward a stack of brush. “Get some of that and put it in front of the car,” she said to Helena.

Helena mumbled under her breath but grabbed a dead bush and hauled it over to cover the bumper. Maryse threw a tarp over the top and hood of the car and placed some branches on top of both. After a dozen trips for more covering, she stepped back and inspected their work.

“I don’t think anyone will notice,” she said.

Helena looked at the camouflaged car and nodded. “Unless someone is specifically looking for a car, it just looks like another clump of dead brush.”

“Great,” Maryse said and picked up her backpack from behind the bush where she’d stored it. “We can’t risk taking the road, so we’ll travel just off of it in the swamp.”

“Spider and snakes and prickly trees. I can’t wait.”

“You’re one to bitch,” Maryse said. “None of those things can hurt you.”

“None of those things are
supposed
to hurt me, but you never know. When I go solid, I sometimes feel whatever happens to me.”

“Really?” Maryse had always figured the ghost was playing drama queen but maybe she’d judged her too harshly.

“It’s only for a second or two—like a flash of memory that’s gone when you blink—but for that second, it hurts just as bad as it would if I were alive.”

“Still, a one-second recovery time is not bad.”

“I guess not. Hey, are you sure you should be coming with me?”

“Do you know where the pond is?”

“No, but what if you get caught by Agent Friendly?”

“I won’t get caught. I’ll get you close enough to give you directions, then I’ll skirt around the pond and watch from the other side with my binoculars.”

“I guess that will work.”

“It’s going to have to.” Maryse trudged down the narrow path, pushing branches to the side, wondering all the while just how many things she didn’t know about Helena. Given Helena’s propensity for keeping secrets and complete lack of communication skills, she figured a lot.

What the hell—they had a bit of a walk. She might as well try to get some of those secrets out of the ghost.

“So,” Maryse said, “do you ever plan on telling the truth about why you’re back? I mean, the story about pissing off God is funny and believable, but I have a bit more faith in the patience of your creator than that.”

She glanced back at Helena, who frowned.

“How come everyone assumes there’s a reason?” Helena asked.

“Because people don’t ascend and then appear back on earth, and no way am I buying that you’re an angel.”

“I could be an angel.”

“Angels don’t steal food.”

“Now you’re just being picky.”

“And you’re avoiding the question. Fess up, Helena. You’re back here for a reason, and it’s probably one the rest of us need to know. You don’t exactly come with a worry-free warranty.”

Helena trudged to a stop. “You really want to know?”

Maryse threw her hands in the air. “Of course I want to know. We
all
want to know.”

Helena stared down at the ground for a bit, and Maryse began to wonder if she was stalling while she made something up, but when the ghost looked back up at her, she looked incredibly sad.

“I wasn’t ready for heaven. Based on the things I helped with when I came back as a ghost, God gave me a trial run, but he finally admitted he’d taken me up too soon. I’m not ready to let go of this life, and my debt on earth isn’t paid. So rather than take a permanent demotion in status, I asked to come back and earn my place.”

Maryse stared at her. “There’s ranking in heaven?”

Helena nodded. “Not like earth, of course. All of the jobs in heaven are good jobs, but the things I want to do only go to those who helped others on earth.”

“What about your estate? You gave almost all of it to charities and other worthy causes.”

“That definitely helped, but I didn’t have to earn the money myself, and giving it to charities didn’t require anything physical of me, short of having the will drafted.”

“Ah,” Maryse said, starting to understand the angle. “You need to get your hands dirty.”

“Exactly. And my last stint in Mudbug wasn’t enough to push me over the mark. So I’m back here to earn more points.”

“Wait. So does that mean all ghosts are here earning brownie points—like some ghostly job fair?”

“Some are. Others are stuck in limbo because of the way they died. They’re not able to cross yet because their mind and heart are clinging too hard to the past.”

“Like you did last year.”

Helena nodded.

Maryse took a minute to consider everything Helena had told her. “Should I even ask what job you want?”

“You can ask, but that’s the one thing I’ll never tell you. You’ll have to die and ascend to find out.”

“Yeah, I’ll go ahead and wait on that one a while, if you don’t mind.”