Trouble In Mudbug

by Jana DeLeon

  “Well, at least take off those gloves. You look ridiculous.”

  Helena glared, then focused on her hands, a wrinkle of concentration forming across her forehead.

  Nothing.

  She relaxed for a moment, took a deep breath and focused again.

  Nothing.

  Maryse groaned. “Forget it. You can figure it out later. Let’s just get the hell out of here before the nurse comes back.”

  Helena stomped through the wall of the record’s room, then stuck her head back inside. “It’s clear. We can make a run for it.”

  Maryse nodded. “Good.” She eased open the door and stepped into the hall, locking the door behind her. She had just started down the hallway toward the employee exit when Helena yelled, “She’s coming back. Run!”

  Run? How was she supposed to do that without making any noise? She yanked off her shoes and ran as fast as possible down the hall, slipping her way across the cold, hard tile. She could hear the clacking of heels behind her and knew Helena wasn’t far behind. She rounded the corner to the employee exit and stopped for a moment to peer back around, using a medical cart that was positioned at the corner to hide her face.

  Helena was huffing down the hall as fast as her heels would allow, which wasn’t exactly setting speed records compared to the nurse about twenty feet behind her wearing those white tennis-looking shoes that they all wear. Maryse spun away from the corner and dashed toward the employee exit. Helena could fend for herself. It wasn’t like anyone could see her anyway.

  Maryse had just unlocked the exit door and was about to edge through when Helena rounded the corner and hit the medical cart, sending all of the contents flying down the hall. Maryse let the door close with a bang and ran across the parking lot, waving her sneakers like an idiot and hoping like hell Luc was paying attention.

  Apparently, he was on high alert, because the car started immediately, then raced across the parking lot, headlights off. He screeched to a stop beside her and she jumped in and yelled, “Let’s go!”

  Luc tore out of the parking lot without question, and Maryse turned around, kneeling over the front seat, her eyes fixed on the employee exit door. Sure enough, the nurse burst out of it as soon as they hit the parking lot exit. Helena came barreling behind the nurse and knocked her clear to the ground as she ran out the door.

  “What about Helena?” Luc asked, watching the fiasco in the rearview mirror.

  “We’ll wait for her at the gas station down the road. There’s no way I’m taking a chance on getting caught here. After all, no one can see her.”

  Maryse turned around and slid down into the passenger seat. “We can stop at the Texaco at the end of the street. I need a cold beer anyway.”

  Luc frowned. “You shouldn’t drink while you’re taking pain medication.”

  Maryse waved a hand in the air in dismissal. “I’m not taking those pills, and besides, there’s not a painkiller strong enough to cover what I’ve been through tonight.”

  Luc looked in the rearview mirror once more. “That bad, huh?”

  Maryse slumped in her seat, her entire body aching from all the running. “I don’t think a beer is going to cover it, either.”

  Luc smiled. “Jack Daniels with a shot of cyanide?”

  “Only if you make it a double.”

  Maryse had downed one beer and was seriously contemplating a second when Helena rounded the corner at the gas station. She was still wearing the gloves and apparently hadn’t had any success in the shoes department, either. The only switch was her top, which had reverted back to the polyester suit jacket, but it was layered on top of the neon green muscle shirt. Put together with the purple shorts, it was a nightmare of monumental proportions.

  Luc took one look at her and spit his soda on the ground, his face contorted in agony, and Maryse knew he’d taken as much soda up the nose as he’d put onto the pavement.

  “What the heck happened?” Luc finally managed.

  “Apparently, Helena is having a bit of a wardrobe malfunction,” Maryse replied. “Don’t even ask how she got that way. She can’t tell you.” Maryse turned to Helena and glared. “And why did you have to pick running out of the hospital as the time to figure out how to touch things? Are you trying to get us caught?”

  “Do you think I was trying to turn that damned cart over? If I wanted for it to happen, it never would have. Then that nurse with an ass as wide as a barn had to get in front of me on my way out the door and it happened again. But can I get these things off?” She shook the gloves again. “No, that would be far too convenient.”

  The throbbing in Maryse’s head began to amplify. “Let’s just get back to the hotel,” she told Luc. “I have some research to do on Mildred’s computer.”

  Safely back at the hotel, Luc tried to insist that Maryse go straight to bed. Maryse had worked to hide the fact that her head was killing her, but she figured it showed on her face plain as day. Luc finally convinced her to take half of a pain pill, and after fifteen minutes or so, she started to feel a bit more human.

  Normally, she would have thought that anyone taking Vicodin after drinking beer probably wasn’t in the best condition to research the chemical makeup of prescriptions drugs, but Maryse didn’t feel the least bit out of it. Maybe all the stress had worn off any chance of a buzz. It figured. The only good side effect was that the issues with her head had completely distracted her from her carnal thoughts of Luc.

  She glanced over at his perfectly formed butt, tightly clad in faded jeans.

  Well, almost completely.

  She tore her gaze away from the Adonis of asses and plopped down into Mildred’s office chair. Then she pointed at the door. “I can’t work with you two underfoot.”

  Luc frowned but didn’t say a word. After checking every window in the office and securing the latches—again—he perched outside the door and sent Helena outside to patrol the perimeter of the hotel. She didn’t look particularly pleased with her assignment, especially as she was still wearing the pumps, but couldn’t exactly argue since Luc strolling around the hotel at two A.M. would have looked a bit suspicious.

  When her self-imposed bodyguards left the room, Maryse logged onto the Internet and began her research. She started with the chemical makeup of the medications Helena was taking and did a quick map of the areas of the body affected by them. Then she did a search of agents that would cause a respiratory collapse in spite of the medications taken, but without causing so much of an attack that it brought on suspicion. Last was the really fun part—figuring out how someone could have gotten their hands on one of those agents. It took a little over two hours to complete her work, and she had narrowed it down to a liquid contained in nuclear reactors and two different plants, one of which grew across almost every square inch of the preserve.

  Which narrowed her suspects down to everyone in Mudbug. Again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Morning came far too soon for Maryse, and she groaned as she pressed the buzzer on the alarm. She forced herself to a sitting position and looked at Jasper, who was curled up at the foot of the bed, giving her a hard stare. She reached over to rub his head. “I know you don’t like being cooped up here, Jasper, but I swear it’s only temporary and it’s for your own good.” She sighed and rose from the bed, hoping a shower would help her clear her mind and focus on the day ahead.

  The shower refreshed her far more than she’d thought possible, and Maryse decided that staying alive for another day probably had a great effect on her mood. She dumped one of her Wal-Mart bags out on the bed and pulled a pair of gray yoga pants and a pink T-shirt out of the pile. The pink and white sports bra would do nicely, so she pulled that on first. She was just putting her first leg in the yoga pants when she saw the pink panties peeking out of the pocket of her sweats.

  Damn. She’d forgotten about those undies. She bit her lower lip and stared at the tiny bit of string and lace. It’s not Sunday. She tore her gaze away from the sexy panties and stu
ck her other foot in the yoga pants. But they match. She looked at the undies again. You have no business dividing your attention right now. She closed her eyes, trying to block the pink lace from her mind. What if someone kills you and you’re not wearing underwear? They’ll talk about you forever.

  That did it.

  Before she could change her mind, she stepped out of the yoga pants and grabbed the panties. The barely-there scrap of fabric clung to her curves, revealing more than they covered. The shade of pink was perfect against both the tanned and non-tanned parts of her body, and since a lot of both was showing, that was a good thing. Maryse turned to face the mirror and was surprised at the woman that looked back at her. She was almost…well…sexy.

  She lifted one hand to her hair and fluffed her bangs a little. Okay, so she needed a cut, and a few highlights wouldn’t hurt, and the combination of too much stress and not enough sleep had left bags under her eyes that her tinted sunscreen wouldn’t put a dent in, but the rest of her wasn’t all that bad. Which surprised her. How long had it been since she’d taken a real interest in her looks—months, years? She couldn’t even remember.

  And now Luc LeJuene had her longing for highlights and a better brand of makeup. Like she didn’t have more important things to worry about. But even the thought of sudden death didn’t stop her from pulling out the sunscreen, teasing her bangs just a bit to get that fluff she wanted, and positioning her breasts in the sports bra for the best display possible. By God, if she was going to croak, at least she was going to look good in the coffin.

  With all her vacillating over underwear and makeup and eye bags, she was twenty minutes late for the morning meeting and still racking her brains trying to come up with assignments. Her goal was to make everyone feel useful while cleverly keeping them from harm’s way without them figuring out what she was doing. A bit of a challenge to say the least.

  “Good morning, everyone,” Maryse said, and tried to sound cheery as she entered Mildred’s office. She poured a cup of coffee and glanced around at the sober group. Luc still looked as frustrated as he had the night before when she’d delivered the bad news about the plant used to kill Helena. Sabine and Mildred both wore grim expressions, and she figured Luc had spent the last twenty minutes filling them in on the hospital escapades and subsequent lack of information they’d gained.

  “Try and look a little more festive, people,” Maryse said. “As far as I’m concerned, every day I can stay alive is cause for celebration.”

  They looked a bit guilty, and Maryse could feel some of the tension lift.

  “Sorry, Maryse,” Sabine said. “You’re right. We should approach this with a positive attitude.”

  Like you approached your testing? Maryse wanted so badly to ask her friend that question, but now was definitely not the time. She looked closely at Sabine but couldn’t find a single item different than it had been for years. Her skin looked fine, her hair was as thick and lustrous as ever, and although she seemed a bit less perky than usual, it was not quite seven-thirty in the morning and a good two hours before she usually awoke.

  Maryse was just about to start in with her plans for the day when Helena entered the room through an exterior wall. Maryse did a double take. The gloves were gone, thank God, and so was the boxing/pink suit outfit. It was replaced, however, with blue jeans, the Nikes, and a T-shirt that read “I See Dead People.”

  Maryse tried to contain herself over the T-shirt but made the mistake of looking over at Luc, who had his face buried in his coffee mug, obviously straining not to laugh. She shot Helena a frown and cleared her throat to begin the meeting. “I suppose Luc filled you in on last night’s hospital raid?”

  Sabine and Mildred nodded, not saying a word, but Maryse noticed that Mildred’s lips were pursed. Oh, boy. Maryse knew that as soon as Mildred got her alone, she was in for it. And since Mildred didn’t know about Helena’s rising from the dead, it was going to be hard to convince the hotel owner that last night was a necessary risk.

  Maryse held in a sigh. It seemed that at almost every turn, she was pissing people off. Except Helena, who spent all of her time pissing Maryse off. “Okay,” Maryse said finally, “so you know that we’re back at square one with trying to figure out who might be trying to kill me. I have assignments for everyone so that we can cover more ground.”

  Maryse looked around the group, waiting for dissenters, but no one said a word. “Mildred, I need you to check in with your friends at the beauty parlor and find out where Harold’s living and what he’s been up to. I need to give Wheeler a way to reach him, and his cell phone’s been disconnected.”

  Mildred nodded. “I think I know some people to get in touch with about that.”

  “Good. Luc, I need you to contact your uncle with the state and see if he can get a line on any of the oil companies who’ve shown serious interest in the Mudbug preserve. I know a corporation is a lot of ground to cover, but if we know who’s interested, we might be able to find out who’s been talking to them about the land.”

  Luc looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “I’ll call him as soon as the office opens this morning. He should have some ideas.”

  “Good. Were you able to find out anything about Harold’s military service yesterday?”

  Luc glanced at Helena again and frowned. “My sources seem to think we’re on the wrong track there. Regardless of what Harold bragged about in Johnny’s, they don’t think there’s any way the man had the skills for anything beyond cleaning toilets—and that’s a direct quote.”

  “Got that shit right,” Helena said. “Not that he actually ever cleaned a toilet.”

  Maryse shook her head and sighed, careful not to even glance in Helena’s direction. “I’m inclined to agree with your source. So we’ll leave that one alone for now unless more information comes to surface.”

  “What can I do?” Sabine asked.

  Maryse glanced around at the group, not knowing at all how her next statement would go over with them. Finally, she looked back at Sabine. “I need you to make a trip to New Orleans and talk to Raissa.”

  Sabine gasped and her mouth formed a small o. But the reaction was only temporary. Apparently, her memory of Helena following Maryse around kicked in and the request no longer sounded strange.

  Mildred cleared her throat and gave Maryse the ole lifted eyebrows look, and Maryse knew she wasn’t buying one word of it. Given that Mildred didn’t know about Helena, Maryse figured the hotel owner thought she was assigning Sabine something trivial to get her out of town and to safety, and she wasn’t entirely wrong. But there was also the flipside. Now that Maryse had been forced into believing in the “spirit world,” she figured she’d tap all sources. Raissa had made some interesting revelations in the past—all of which turned out to be true. Maybe she could do it again.

  At this point, Maryse would take any edge she could get.

  “What are you going to do?” Sabine asked.

  “First, I’m going to check with the police and see if they have any information on my cabin exploding, and then I’ve got a couple of things to check at the office,” Maryse replied. “Luc can drive me, so you don’t have to worry about that.” She looked over at Luc for confirmation. “That okay by you?”

  Luc nodded, casting a sideways glance at Helena. “Fine by me.”

  “Okay, then, it’s settled, and everyone knows the plan.”

  Mildred started to speak when the bells at the hotel entrance jangled. She jumped up from her desk and hustled out front to deal with her customers. Sabine waited until Mildred had closed the office door behind her before giving Maryse a shrewd look. “Helena’s here, isn’t she?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sitting right next to you on the couch, as a matter of fact. How did you know?”

  Sabine looked at the space on the couch next her, then back at Maryse. “You got that look on your face.”

  “What look?”

  “Well, for lack of a nicer description, a look like you had really bad
gas. Then Luc almost spit up his coffee, and I knew he could see her, too.” She turned to look at Luc. “You can see her, can’t you?”

  “Every bit of her,” Luc agreed, “which is sometimes very unfortunate.” He gave Maryse a grin.

  “I don’t have to take this grief,” Helena said.

  “Yes, you do,” Maryse said, and translated the conversation for Sabine.

  Sabine shook her head in dismay. “This is so unfair. Why do you two get to see her and I can’t? All those séances and midnight cemetery ceremonies trying to call my parents, and nothing. I’ve spent my entire life studying the paranormal to get the answers I need about my family, and I’m the only one in the room who can’t see a ghost.”