Trouble In Mudbug

by Jana DeLeon

  Sabine didn’t look convinced, but there wasn’t much she could do. She gave Maryse an encouraging smile and turned to leave.

  Maryse gave her retreating figure one final glance and looked back to the front of the chapel. What in the world had happened? There was something in the back of her mind, but it was fleeting, like a movie on fast forward. Something important that she needed to remember, but it was flashing too fast for her to lock in on it.

  What could cause a young, healthy woman who spent most of her time outdoors to faint in an air-conditioned building? The answer hit her all at once and she gasped.

  Helena!

  The image of Helena Henry crawling out of her coffin and yelling at everyone in the chapel made her shudder all over again. And that look in her eyes when she’d seen Maryse watching her…

  But how was that even possible? Helena Henry was dead. There was no mistaking the bitter-looking woman in that casket for anyone else—despite the hideous pink suit and Vegas-showgirl makeup.

  The only explanation Maryse had was that she must have imagined the whole thing. All the strain of trying to find that idiot Hank and paying off his ridiculous debts to that devil-mother of his must have caused her to break. That had to be it. The dead didn’t show up to their own funerals and call people assholes.

  She paused for a moment. If they could, though, she’d have bet Helena Henry would have been the first to volunteer for the job.

  Certain her current line of thought had gone way too far, she left the chapel and made her way to her truck, anxious to get away from the overwhelming feeling of death. It was barely noon, but it was definitely time for a beer. Maybe she’d pick up something from the café on the way home—like a bag of boiled crawfish—then take a shower and a nap. Just a bit of a refresher.

  After that, she needed to contact her attorney and make sure he was prepared for a Hank appearance and was ready to serve him the divorce papers. She pulled into Mudbug, all eight buildings of it, and parked in front of the café. Turning off the truck, she stared out the windshield at her reflection in the café window. She didn’t even want to think about having to face Hank. She wasn’t even sure it was possible without trying to throttle him.

  Maybe she’d have fries, too—fries and two beers and forget she’d ever known Hank and Helena Henry.

  Maryse awakened midafternoon, surprised she’d slept so long. But napping any longer was a luxury she couldn’t afford. She’d already lost almost an entire day of work. If she hurried out to the bayou, there might be enough daylight to take some pictures and satisfy the state’s latest request for images of bayou foliage.

  Just as she was about to crawl out of bed, she felt the hair on her arms prickle as if she were being watched. Her cat, Jasper, stiffened and let out a low growl. Before she could figure out what had upset him, he leaped from the bed and shot out the cat door built into the window beside the bed.

  Shaking her head in amusement at his antics, Maryse caught a flash of bright pink out of the corner of her eye and looked up to find Helena Henry standing in the doorway of her bedroom, studying her like she would the fabric on designer sheets.

  Maryse felt her back tighten from the tip of her neck all the way to the base of her spine. This couldn’t be happening—not after only two beers.

  “Well, hell,” Helena said finally. “That solves it.” She took a few steps closer to the bed and looked Maryse straight in the eyes. “You can see me, can’t you?”

  Maryse nodded, unable to speak, unable to blink.

  “I thought for a moment at the chapel that you’d finally lost your mind, but I should have known better. You’re far too practical to let something like a funeral take you down. Especially my funeral.” She blew out a breath and plopped down on the end of the bed. “This is certainly unexpected but will probably come in handy.”

  “Handy?” Maryse managed to croak out, her mind whirling with confusion. There was a dead woman sitting on her bed. Weren’t they supposed to float or something? “But you’re…I mean, you are…”

  “Dead?” Helena finished. “Of course I’m dead. Do you think I’d wear polyester in the summer if I were alive? And don’t get me started about the color, or the low-cut top and the skirt that is way too short.” She stared down at the offensive garment. “Makes me want to puke.”

  “But how…why…” Maryse trailed off, not sure where to go with the conversation, not entirely convinced she was actually having the conversation. Finally, she pinched herself, just to make absolutely sure she was awake.

  Helena gave her a grim smile. “Oh, you’re awake, honey. And I’m really dead, and you’re really sitting in your bedroom talking to me.” She scrunched her brow in concentration. “Although, I suppose it’s not really me but the ghost of me. Hmmm.”

  “But at the funeral, you looked confused, surprised…”

  Helena nodded. “It was a bit of a shocker, I have to admit. Waking up in a coffin in the middle of my own funeral service. Took me a couple of hours to sort it all out, but once the memories came together, it all made sense.”

  “But why me? Why in the world would you be visible to me?”

  Helena shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess.”

  Lucky? Lucky! Good God Almighty! Maryse could think of plenty of words to describe being haunted by her dead Antichrist mother-in-law, but lucky sure as hell wasn’t one of them. “Please tell me you’re going to go away and haunt a house or a cemetery or something.”

  Helena shook her head. “Can’t do that just yet. I have a bit of unfinished business here. And much as you may hate it, it involves you. Plus, there’s that nagging problem of letting my killer get away, and as long as I’m hanging around, I figure I might as well do something about that, too.”

  Maryse jumped up from the bed. “Your killer? The newspaper said it was respiratory failure from your asthma.”

  “Respiratory failure, my ass. My lungs may have given out, but it was only after I drank whatever the hell was put in my brandy snifter. I collapsed right afterward.”

  Maryse absorbed this information for a moment. Certainly what Helena implied was possible, but if she was right, that still left a huge question unanswered. “Who did it?”

  “I don’t know, but they were clever. I haven’t had a drink of brandy in a long time. Could have been there for a day or a month for all I know.” Helena shrugged. “Guess I’ll just have to figure out who wanted me dead.”

  Maryse stared at her. Was she kidding? A shorter list would be people who didn’t want her dead.

  “I think that might be a bit difficult,” Maryse said finally, trying to be diplomatic. After all, she didn’t know anything about ghosts. Maybe they could do curses or something. This was Louisiana.

  “You weren’t exactly the most popular person in town,” Maryse continued and braced herself for the blow up.

  Helena surprised her by pursing her lips and considering her words. “You’re right,” she said finally. “There are probably plenty of people who weren’t sad to see me go. The question is which one was desperate enough to take action?”

  Maryse thought about this for a moment and began to see Helena’s point. When one really boiled down to the nitty-gritty of the situation, there was an enormous difference between preferring someone was dead, or even wishing them dead, and actually killing them. Still, the word “desperate” brought her missing husband to mind.

  “You’re thinking of Hank,” Helena said, and gave her a shrewd look. “Of course I thought of him, but I don’t think that’s the answer.”

  Maryse started to open her mouth in protest, but Helena held up one finger to silence her. “I’m certain he won’t be sad to hear I’m dead. But quite frankly, Hank lacks the brains to carry out something like this. If he ever tried to poison someone, he’d never think to use something the coroner wouldn’t detect. He’d probably go straight for rat poison or whatever was closest.”

  Maryse studied Helena’s face carefully, trying to discern whether
she was being sincere or sarcastic. She couldn’t find any evidence of sarcasm. Well, that hung it all. If Helena was talking trash about Hank, the woman was most certainly dead.

  Oh, how a little murder changed everything.

  “Okay,” Maryse said, chasing away the great visual of Hank Henry rotting away in a prison cell. “What about Harold?”

  “Hmm.” Helena scrunched her brow in concentration. “It usually is the spouse, especially when there’s money involved. But as far as Harold’s concerned, I was worth more alive than dead. With the bequests I left to various people and organizations, he actually comes out on the short end of the stick, and he’s probably known that for a long time.”

  Maryse threw her hands in the air. “Well, if you’ve got a logical reason for why Hank or Harold aren’t guilty, then I don’t know why you bothered to come here. I obviously don’t have the mentality to think like a killer.” She took a deep breath and rushed on before she could change her mind. “I don’t think I can help you, Helena.”

  There. It was out in the open. She bit her lower lip and looked at Helena, hoping she would politely agree and go away.

  Helena gave her a withering look and shook her head. “Sorry. You have something I need.”

  Maryse felt her breath catch in her throat. Helena already had something in mind, and Maryse knew with complete certainty she didn’t want to hear a word of it. “What in the world could I possibly have that you need?” She waved one hand around the one-bedroom cabin. “This is all I have in the world besides my truck. A camp in the middle of the bayou.”

  Helena looked at her with sad eyes that seemed to go straight to her soul. “That’s not true. You’re alive. You can touch things, move things. I can’t. And you’re the only one who can see me.”

  Maryse narrowed her eyes at Helena. “What do you mean you can’t touch or move things? You got here, and the only way to get to my place is by boat.”

  Helena’s eyes lit up. “I know. That’s been the only interesting part about death so far. I stood at the bank thinking about how to get over here. Finally, I decided to borrow one of the small aluminum boats parked at the dock, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get a grip on anything. My hands just passed right through everything like it wasn’t even there.”

  “So how exactly did you get here?”

  Helena beamed. “I walked on water. I finally figured what the hell, if Jesus did it, I would give it whirl. So I stepped off the pier onto the bayou and voilà—I could walk on water.”

  Maryse stared at her in dismay. This was the start of the Revelation…she was positive. If Helena Henry could walk on water, Maryse was absolutely sure He was on His way back to claim His own.

  Well, that sealed it. Church this Sunday was no longer an option. She had some serious praying to do.

  Chapter Two

  Maryse stopped at the office with the intention of making a quick in-and-out stop. The state was trying to determine if the orchid cypripedium kentuckiense, known to regular folk as the Southern Lady’s Slipper, was reproducing as a poisonous hybrid. All she needed to do was get the picture the state had sent her and head for the bayou where things were safe, sane, and normal.

  Except that the office wasn’t empty.

  A man sat at her desk, his back to the door. A man she’d never seen before. A man with a lot of nerve, since he was trying to log in to her computer.

  Apparently, the hacking effort had him totally engrossed because he didn’t seem to hear her come in. Maryse pulled the door shut with a bang and got a small satisfaction out of making him jump. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my office?” she asked.

  The man turned around in the chair, and Maryse felt her breath catch in her throat. He was gorgeous. Long black hair pulled into a ponytail, dark eyes, and skin with that deep brown coloring that implied Creole or Native American. He smiled at her, and she blinked. Even his teeth were perfect.

  He rose from the chair and extended his hand. “I’m Luc LeJeune.”

  Maryse stared at him a moment more, then shook his hand. “And you’re doing exactly what in my office, trying to break into my computer?”

  Luc glanced back at the computer, then looked back at her. “Oh, that. Well, you see, I’m a zoologist for the state. I’m going to be working here with you for a while…maybe a couple of months, and this is the only computer in the office I could find.”

  Maryse’s head whirled. “Working here? There’s barely room for me.” Technically, there were two offices, but one was her lab, and by God, she wasn’t giving it up. “There’s only one bathroom.”

  Luc smiled again. “I don’t mind sharing as long as you leave the seat up.”

  Good looking and funny too. God help her. “This is not going to work,” Maryse said. “There is one desk in here, one computer. There’s no way we will both fit.”

  Luc shrugged. “Guess we’re going to have to. I have a job to do, and this is where the state sent me. Based on the time you showed up here today, I assume you spend most working hours in the bayou. Either that or you’re really not a morning person.”

  Maryse bristled. “I’m fine in the morning, Mr. LeJeune. This morning I was attending a funeral for my mother-in-law. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  Luc glanced at her bare left hand. “You’re married? That’s a shame. This assignment was starting to look interesting.”

  “No, I’m not married. Well, technically, I’m married, but not really.”

  Luc looked at her in obvious amusement. “You’re not really technically married? I’m fascinated. What’s the story?”

  She paused for a moment, deciding on an answer. “I’m getting a divorce.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  Maryse sighed. “Look, Mr. LeJeune, I don’t really care to discuss my personal life with you, I don’t care to share my office with you, and I sure as hell don’t care to leave the seat up on the toilet. Now, if you don’t mind removing yourself from my desk, what I do care to do is use my computer so that I can manage a bit of work today before the daylight is gone.”

  Luc slid the chair to the side and grinned, aggravating her even more. “All yours.”

  Maryse pulled a metal chair up to the computer since the rude zoologist apparently had no intention of giving up her comfortable leather chair. First thing tomorrow morning, she was calling the state about this. There was no way she was going to have that man snooping around her research, using her computer, looking over her shoulder.

  Like he was doing now.

  Luc LeJeune had rolled his chair back toward her and now the arm of her leather chair was almost touching the arm of the cheap metal thing she currently sat on. In the cool, air-conditioned office, she could feel the heat from his body as he shifted toward her, his arm and shoulders not even an inch from hers.

  She lifted her arm away from his warmth and leaned forward in her chair and slightly to the side in order to block his view of the keyboard. Then she tapped in her password. The screen flickered, and she opened her mailbox and started scanning for the picture she needed. Leaning back again in her chair, she clicked to open the e-mail she’d been searching for.

  “So who was your mother-in-law?” Luc asked. She could feel his breath on her neck.

  Silently willing her hormones into submission, she frowned. “Ex-mother-in-law. And why would you want to know? You’re not from Mudbug.”

  Luc shrugged. “My grandparents used to live on the bayou in the next town. They have friends in Mudbug. I figure your mother-in-law might have been someone they knew.”

  “Ex-mother-in-law, and her name was Helena Henry.”

  Luc let out a laugh. “You’re the one who married Hank Henry? Wow, that sucks. No wonder you’re not technically married. Hank’s been gone for, what, a year now?”

  Maryse gritted her teeth and worked to control her voice. “Two years actually, but I’m sure that’s about to change.”

  Luc studied her for
a moment, then frowned. “So the wicked witch is dead. Ought to make things interesting.”

  Maryse clicked on the picture she was looking for and sent it to print. “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “She was filthy rich, right? Always interesting when someone with that much money dies.”

  Damn. His words brought her right back around to Hank’s likely reappearance and Helena’s definitive one. She grabbed the printout from the printer and was about to shut down the computer when the office phone rang. She reached for it, but Luc got there first, sliding the headset just out of her grasp.

  “Luc LeJeune,” he answered and gave her a lazy smile.