The Helena Diaries - Trouble in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Series Novellas) (5 page)

As she was in no state to discuss business, especially business that concerned me, I got her to turn the television to a channel featuring an entire night of shows on ghosts. Now that I’d gotten that wall-walking thing down, I was anxious to learn some more. How to change clothes was next on the list.

Trouble in Mudbug—Chapters Nine & Ten

Wherein Helena prevents a disaster but still takes the blame

Maryse got a phone call first thing that morning. I had to yell at her to get her to answer, but then I regretted doing it at all. The guy from the bank had a loud voice, and I could hear part of the conversation—enough to know that Maryse would figure out that I’d been sending the payments she gave me to the bank to be applied to her house and truck.

I only insisted she repay the money I lent her to test her character. I never thought Hank’s screwups were her responsibility, but I needed to make sure I wasn’t making a mistake when I left her the land. Since I didn’t think she was in a position to appreciate my completely logical approach to choosing an heir, I hightailed it to my house to make sure Harold hadn’t returned. Plus, if I could figure out how to touch things, I planned on changing clothes.
 

Although I managed to stroll right through the wall and into the house, I was woefully unsuccessful at the clothes part. I spent the better part of thirty minutes grasping at air before giving up.
 

The more I thought about Maryse’s wreck and her remote living conditions, the more I worried. I decided to head back to her cabin to assess the physical threat level—I’d heard that on a military movie once but never had a good reason to use it. I was glad I’d finally found one. It sounded cool.

I lucked out hitching rides to and from Maryse’s dock, and since I could walk through doors now, it meant I got to ride up front in the cab instead of sitting on fishing equipment in the truck bed. Maryse’s rental car was still at the dock, but her boat wasn’t docked at the island, so I assumed she’d used water transport this morning.
 

As I stepped off the dock to cross the bayou, I saw the door to her cabin open. I froze and stared as a man carrying a duffel bag stepped out, then slipped around the side and into the brush. He was wearing sunglasses and a hat, so I couldn’t make out his face from this far away. The tide swept me downstream, so I started jogging across and upstream. I needed to get a closer look at the man, whom I was certain had no business in Maryse’s cabin.

I’d already pushed the boundaries of my jogging ability just getting to the island, but I sucked it up and went into overdrive, following the man into the trees. I saw movement through the brush and burst out of the trail that led to a cove on the back of the island, just in time to see him jump into a flat-bottom boat. He took off so fast that he sent a huge wave over the dock.
 

I strained to make out the license plate on the boat, or any other discerning characteristic, but it looked like every fishing boat in Mudbug. I stopped jogging and leaned over to catch my breath. Chasing him was no use. He had the motor at top speed and at the moment, I couldn’t have caught a tortoise.

As soon as I could breathe normally, I hoofed it back up the trail to Maryse’s cabin and walked through the front door. Everything looked the same as it had that morning, but without the ability to open cabinet drawers, I couldn’t be certain that nothing was missing or even worse, that nothing new had been introduced. Someone had managed to poison me in my own brandy snifter—and despite Harold being the obvious choice, I still didn’t think it was him.

Which led to a rather interesting and disturbing line of thought. If it wasn’t Harold, that meant either someone had found a way around my security system to deliver the poison cocktail, or it was someone who had been invited into my house. Neither option gave me the warm fuzzies.

I stepped into Maryse’s bedroom, and that ragtag cat of hers sprang up from the bed and bounded out the window as if on fire, further cementing my belief that cats could see me. I scanned the tiny bedroom and bath, but again, didn’t see anything out of place.

But I knew something was wrong.

You know how people say they have a bad feeling about things? Well, this one wasn’t just bad—it was overwhelming. I went back outside to sit and wait on Maryse to return. I had to find a way to convince her to stay out of the cabin.

I had barely taken a seat at the dock when Maryse pulled up. She wasn’t pleased to see me and was even less impressed with my edict that she shouldn’t enter her cabin. It took some convincing, but finally, she looked a bit worried, then went straight to upset thinking that infernal cat of hers was still inside. I assured her that he’d bailed out the window when I appeared. I can’t believe that raggedy cat is her biggest concern.

Maryse finally got into work mode and pointed out that if someone had rigged the cabin, opening the front door would probably be the thing that set it off. She came up with a bizarre but impressive idea to open the front door with a rubber bullet, while we were safely hidden on the other side of the embankment.
 

Holy crap—the damn thing blew up!

I knew it couldn’t hurt me, but I dropped to the bottom of the boat and covered my head with my hands as glass and wood flew everywhere. When the last piece plopped into the bayou, I peered over the embankment and almost passed out. The entire cabin was leveled, not a single piece of a wall still standing. Even the cast-iron tub had disappeared.
 

Maryse stared at the disaster first in horror, then shock, then she got mad. She beat the embankment and screamed. She’d so clearly lost her mind that I stepped away from her, tripped over the edge of the boat, and plopped down on top of the bayou, where I bobbed up and down in a sea of wood shards.

Then Maryse yelled at me that it was all my fault for leaving her the land. That insurance couldn’t replace the few mementos she had of her mother.
 

I couldn’t say anything.
 

She was right.

Trouble in Mudbug—Chapter Eleven

Wherein Helena gains another warm body

What an unbelievable day!

I figured after the explosion that someone would make Maryse go to the hospital, so I headed that way. I managed to hitch a ride to a gas station near the hospital but the driver was headed for New Orleans, and I needed to go right, so I started walking again. After all the walking, running, and falling I’d done in the last couple of days, my feet were killing me. I found myself dreaming of Dearfoam slippers, and I never thought I’d say something like this, but I’d kill for a pair of running shoes.

And just like that, a brand-new pair of Nikes appeared on my feet! Wow!

I spent the rest of the walk silently willing myself into a pair of yoga pants and T-shirt, but the stubborn pink suit remained firmly attached to my body.

I arrived at the hospital just in time to see Maryse catch that cad doctor in a storage closet with the underage daughter of Mudbug’s meanest loan shark. The whole thing was so funny, I laughed until my sides hurt. Maryse didn’t find it near as entertaining as I did, but then, she’d basically had her bad taste in men flung in her face in a way that she could no longer deny. Maybe this would be a wake-up call for her to take a closer look at the men she attempted to pair up with.

I followed her back into the lobby, where she demanded another doctor, then proceeded to explain the situation to that really cute scientist working in her office. He seemed as amused as me and asked why she’d dated him. When Maryse asked how he knew about the date, he said quite calmly that he’d heard me say so.

Holy crap!

Aside from waking up dead, I don’t think I’ve ever been so surprised. I still had no idea why Maryse could see me, but at least we had a connection through Hank. I have never met this guy before and don’t know a thing about him. My mind immediately launched into ways I could utilize him, but then he insulted my suit—like I’d had a choice in the matter—and I lost interest in being around him.

Since it was obvious that Maryse had a bodyguard—and one more capable of handling bad guys than me—I decided to head to the beauty shop and see what the gossip was about the will-reading.
 

Tongues wagged some about my gifts to the orphanage and the town of Mudbug, but the big topic of discussion was my cutting Hank and Harold out of everything. It made me happy that all of the women agreed with my decision, although some of the comments about my selection of husbands and child-rearing abilities were rather insulting. Unfortunately, they weren’t untrue, so I really had no room to complain.
 

But the one thing no one ever mentioned was the possibility that I’d been murdered, and that surprised me just a little. Usually when someone with money died, everyone was a suspect, but in my case, everyone seemed quite willing to believe the coroner and go on with life. Which made me wonder whether they had that much respect for the coroner or whether they didn’t care all that much that I was gone.
 

I suspected the latter. Bitches.

The biddies launched into a discussion of grandkids and I made my exit, not even remotely interested in teething rings and diaper coupons. I’d been gone from the hospital for a while and figured Luc would take Maryse to Mildred’s hotel. I didn’t think anyone would be foolish enough to take another swipe at her with so many people milling around, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

Maryse was right about one thing—all of this was my fault.

Wherein Helena sits guard

It took a lot of looking through walls—sometimes at things I had zero interest in seeing—before I found Maryse. She was in bed and already asleep, either from drugs or sheer exhaustion. That raggedy cat of hers shot under the bed as soon as I walked into the room, so I headed back into the hallway, not wanting to set the cat off and awaken Maryse.

I slumped down on the floor across from her room and leaned against the wall. It was going to be a long evening and an even longer night, but I wasn’t moving from this spot. If anyone tried to come after Maryse, I would sound the alarm.

I stared at that wall all night—all two thousand hours of it. Several times, it crossed my mind to get up and work on ghostly things, but I couldn’t summon up the energy. Instead, I sat, stared, and thought, but I was no closer to figuring out this mess by morning than I had been the night before.

When I heard Maryse stirring that morning, I hid in the empty room next door until she headed downstairs. I hated to admit it, but I wasn’t ready to face her. For the first time in my life, I felt weighed down by guilt. The worst part was, I wasn’t trying to do any harm when I’d left Maryse the land. I’d actually thought I was doing something that both of us could appreciate.

But it was my fault that I hadn’t read the estate agreement since I was a teen. It was my fault that I didn’t ask Wheeler to dig deeper into the “what ifs.”

Bottom line—if anything happened to Maryse, it was on me.

When I heard her head downstairs, I tiptoed down and peeked into Mildred’s office and saw the psychic nut, the hottie scientist, and Mildred all looking sheepish. Ha! they’d obviously been busted trying to plan Maryse’s life. My money was on my daughter-in-law making them all feel guilty before it was over.

She was an expert at handing out the guilt.

Since Maryse had more than enough guards and none of them were likely to leave her alone, I left the hotel. I hadn’t gotten a good look at the man who blew up Maryse’s house, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t find him. I was fairly observant—well, except for the slight faux pas that I’d apparently allowed someone entry into my house to kill me. I figured I’d head to a couple of the boat docks and see if anything rang a bell on the boats. If I saw the man walking, something might click in relation to height, size, and gait.
 

It was worth a shot, anyway. And at the moment, it was the only thing I could think of to do.

Trouble in Mudbug—Chapter Twelve

Wherein Maryse finally comes up with a plan

None of the overweight, half-limping, potbellied men I saw at the boat dock remotely resembled the man I’d seen leaving Maryse’s cabin. Over half the boat slips were empty, though, so I decided I’d probably arrived too late for the serious fishermen, and was instead left with all the rejects—hence the abundance of potbellies and complete lack of urgency to get on the water.

The tide was coming in, so I hopped on it and coasted downstream, taking an occasional pit stop to inspect fishermen tucked away in inlets.
 

Do you have any idea what those men do when they’re supposed to be fishing?

No wonder the half-ass restaurants in Mudbug stay so busy—no one’s bringing fresh fish home. Most of them were sleeping. Several were reading car or hunting magazines. A couple were reading—or looking at—the kind of magazines you don’t leave out on your coffee table, so I hurried on by. I’d seen enough of that in the hotel. A couple of them were listening to the radio, and only two were actually fishing.

But the best one was the husband of the beauty shop owner, who was making his own X-rated movie with the woman who used to babysit their daughter. If his wife hadn’t said such mean-spirited things about me, I might have been outraged, but I had bigger things to worry about than the poor choices of Mudbug husbands.