Trouble In Mudbug

by Jana DeLeon

  Sabine raised one eyebrow. “You want to tell me why you’re avoiding Mildred?”

  Maryse glared. “I thought you weren’t psychic.”

  Sabine laughed. “It doesn’t take a genius to see that something’s wrong if the woman who hates cleaning more than root canals starts breaking out the Pledge on a building that’s not even hers.”

  Maryse shrugged. “I’m stressed.”

  “Bullshit. You drink when you’re stressed. You clean when you’re avoiding.”

  “Well, Mildred hasn’t figured it out, so I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  Sabine shook her head. “Mildred knows damned good and well why you’re cleaning. She also knows that you won’t breathe a word to her about whatever secret you’re keeping until there’s no other choice.”

  “Got that right,” Maryse mumbled.

  “She also knows that you’ll tell me if it’s important, and I’ll tell her.”

  Maryse stared at her so-called best friend in dismay. “Is this what the two of you do when I’m not around? Plot ways to analyze my life and then share things I’ve told you in confidence?”

  Sabine had the good sense to look guilty. “It’s not like that. It’s just that Mildred and I both worry about you, and you don’t make it easy on people by secluding yourself so much on the bayou. I’ve seen you more since Helena died than I have in the past six months.”

  Maryse sank onto the stairs. “You know you’re welcome at my place anytime, or at least you were when I had a place. And Mildred too. I know I didn’t come to town often, but it just wasn’t necessary. I had everything there that I needed.”

  Sabine sat beside her on the stairwell and gave her a sad smile. “But don’t you see, Maryse? You didn’t have everything you needed. You’re losing sight of people, how they operate, what motivates them. If you were more social, you would have seen Christopher coming a mile away.” She paused for a moment, then took a breath before continuing. “And I hope this doesn’t make you mad, but I don’t have to be psychic to see what’s going on between you and Luc. Right now, I’d bet anything that’s what drove you to dusting.”

  Maryse felt her back tense at the mention of Luc’s name. Was she really that easy to read? “Are you saying I have to become the life of the party or I’m always going to get screwed? If so, then I’m in trouble. I just don’t have what it takes to conquer the world.”

  “Raissa’s worried about you. She has the feeling that you’re overlooking something important because it’s too close to you. She’s going to do another reading tonight and call me.” Sabine placed her hand on Maryse’s and squeezed. “You don’t have to conquer the world, Maryse, but you can’t hide from it either.”

  She wasn’t hiding, Maryse wanted to yell. But somehow the words hung in her throat. She wasn’t hiding. Was she? Her laboratory work was the most important thing in her life, and it required an enormous amount of time, but surely no one was going to blame her for spending her time in the lab.

  But as soon as that thought crossed her mind, she got flashes of long Saturdays where she’d finished up everything at the lab by noon and spent the rest of the day reading medical journals or cruising the bayou looking for hybrid plants that she might not have used for testing before. If she wasn’t working on her research, then she was tearing apart her kitchen to put in shelves or some other household chore that wasn’t really necessary. She hadn’t even picked up a novel or turned on the television in longer than she could remember.

  Was her motivation to find a cure really as selfless as she’d thought? Or had the strain of watching her father waste away provided her with a convenient excuse to lock herself away from life?

  “Maryse.” Sabine gently shook her arm. “Are you all right? I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings.”

  “I know,” Maryse said. Sabine hadn’t hurt her feelings, but she’d unknowingly unlocked a floodgate that made it frighteningly clear that Maryse had been living away from the world far too long.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Before Maryse could mull over her newfound revelation and figure out what the hell it meant for her future—if there was one—Helena walked through the hotel wall and ruined the entire moment.

  “Helena’s here,” Sabine said.

  Maryse stared at Sabine.

  “It’s that look on your face…remember, like you have gas,” Sabine explained.

  Helena shot Sabine a dirty look, then asked, “Did Mildred find Harold?”

  “Yeah,” Maryse said, “he’s at that motel where you left him. Are you ready to do this?”

  Helena sighed. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be to see Harold again, or Hank, for that matter. But I guess I sorta owe you given that this whole mess is my fault.”

  A bit of an understatement.

  “Okay,” Maryse said. “I’ll check out with Mildred and tell her Sabine and I are going to the store to pick up some stuff I forgot yesterday.” She turned to Sabine. “That’s assuming, of course, that you’ll drive, since Luc sorta left in my car.”

  Sabine wrinkled her brow, obviously wanting to delve into the topic of Luc but not wanting to do it now. “Sure, as long as you’re not carrying any kind of weapon in case we run into Hank. I don’t have enough money for bail.”

  Maryse sighed. “Now you’re starting to sound like Mildred.”

  There was a bit of a scuffle in the parking lot while Sabine and Helena argued, with Maryse as the translator, over who would ride shotgun. Sabine thought Maryse should ride shotgun and Helena thought she deserved the seat as she would be doing all the legwork once they got there.

  Maryse looked at Helena and pointed to the backseat. “You can’t sit in the front, Helena. Sabine is not going to drive around town with me in the back like she’s chauffeuring. The key to investigating is to avoid attention, not attract it.”

  Maryse guessed the image of two adults and a ghost in a car flitted through Helena’s mind, because she got into the back seat and stopped grumbling. Sabine made the drive to the Lower Mudbug Motel in under twenty minutes and parked across the street in a lot for an all-night diner. Maryse scanned the seedy area with a critical eye and hoped they wouldn’t get jacked for Sabine’s 1992 Nissan Sentra while sitting there, but the only other choices were an X-rated video store or a tattoo parlor.

  Helena frowned when Maryse pointed to the motel, but she didn’t say a word as she left the car and walked through the lobby into the dilapidated old building. She returned a couple of minutes later to report that the asshole was indeed inside with one of his floozies, and not even the same one he’d left in the car at the reading of the will. Maryse’s mind flickered for a moment onto exactly what kind of woman, much less two, took up with someone like Harold Henry, but she didn’t have the time to ponder it now and probably didn’t have the requisite intelligence, or lack thereof, to understand it all.

  Their mark established, she pulled out her cell phone and gave Wheeler a call, instructing him to give her five minutes, then make the call to Harold at the motel. She closed the phone and looked at Helena. “You’re on. Maybe this time you’ll get lucky and Harold will be naked.”

  Helena glared at her, got out of the car, and stomped all the way to the motel and through the wall. Sabine shook her head and looked over at Maryse. “You know, you really shouldn’t bait her that way. It just frustrates you more.”

  “I know, but the woman is impossible. I’m fairly certain that if it turns out either Hank or Harold killed her, a Mud-bug jury would not only let them off, but probably give them a medal.”

  Sabine smiled. “I know what you’re saying, I really do, but I’m starting to think that maybe Helena isn’t all that bad. After all, she made sure the town was protected by giving you the land, and she used the money you paid her to pay down your debts.”

  “Which, now that you mention it,” Maryse interrupted, “she still hasn’t really explained.”

  “And she gave all that stuff to an orphanage,” Sabine continued, ig
noring her outburst. “I guess I’m starting to wonder if there wasn’t a purpose behind Helena being a bitch all these years.”

  Maryse stared out the windshield at the Lower Mudbug Motel. “Well, if there was, I’m not getting it.”

  It seemed to take forever for Helena to return, but it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes before Maryse saw her leap from the second floor and hit the ground with one of those military rolls. She was wearing green camouflage and looked like a rolling bush except for the black smudges glistening under her eyes, which made her resemble a linebacker given her rather dense frame. When her body finally lost all momentum, Helena lay completely still, sprawled on the weedy lawn of the cheap motel, and for a moment, Maryse wondered if it was possible to die twice.

  A few seconds later, Harold came hurrying out of the hotel entrance. Maryse and Sabine ducked down in the car, trying to peer over the dashboard. Helena burst into the backseat seconds later, still huffing and puffing from her Rambo acrobatics.

  “Where’s he going in such a hurry?” Maryse asked Helena.

  “He called Hank as soon as he got off the phone with Wheeler,” Helena replied. “He’s going to meet him now.”

  Maryse repeated the information to Sabine, who had already started the car and was inching toward the parking lot exit as Harold left the motel in a late model, rust-covered sedan. “Hang back a little,” Maryse instructed. “I don’t want him to see us.”

  “I’m trying,” Sabine said as she pressed down on the accelerator, “but he’s driving like an idiot.”

  “He is an idiot,” Helena said.

  “Hell,” Maryse said as she peered over the dashboard and watched as Harold pushed the upper limits of the rusty sedan. “We should have had Helena ride with Harold.”

  Sabine’s hands were clenched on the steering wheel as she inched her car faster down the highway. Maryse was pretty sure her friend had almost reached her limit of speed and fear when suddenly Harold’s car jerked over to the side of the road and disappeared into the brush. Sabine cut her speed and eased onto the shoulder, then slowly pulled up to the spot where they’d last seen Harold.

  A rutted trail overgrown with grass and weeds led into the bayou. Maryse cursed under her breath. “We can’t follow him down there. He’d see us coming for sure, and we have no idea what we’d be running into.”

  “We don’t have to follow him,” Helena said. “I know where he’s going.”

  Maryse yanked around in her seat to look at Helena. “Where?”

  “My family had a camp off this trail,” Helena said. “Harold told me years ago that it had fallen in such disrepair that it wasn’t habitable.”

  “And you never checked?”

  Helena looked at Maryse as if she’d lost her mind. “Tromp around in the bayou? No thanks. Not all of us have your higher aspirations, Maryse. And I damned sure don’t cotton to running into snakes or alligators or even bugs.”

  “The only snake down that trail is Harold,” Maryse shot back, “and probably Hank.”

  Helena shrugged. “Probably. Harold only started staying at the motel a couple of years ago, so he was taking his bit of snatch somewhere before that. Most likely it was the camp, but I never thought of it.”

  Just like Helena to forget something important. Maryse pointed to the trail. “Well, now’s your chance to get caught up on things happening behind your back.”

  Helena crossed her arms in front of her and shook her head. “Absolutely not. I am not wading into the marsh.”

  Maryse threw her hands in the air. “What do you think is going to happen to you? You’re already dead!”

  Helena glared. “You don’t have to keep reminding me of that, you know. It’s rude.”

  “Maybe it’s hard to take you seriously when your face looks like a linebacker for the Saints.”

  “Well, crap,” Helena grumbled and waved her hands in front of her face like a magician. If she pulled a rabbit out of her ear, Maryse swore she was going to kill her.

  “What about this?” Helena asked a couple of seconds later. “Is the black gone?”

  Maryse took one look at Helena, then closed her eyes and counted to ten. The black was gone, but she had managed to replace it with a vibrant, traffic-stopping orange. “Yeah, it’s gone, and just in case it’s deer season, you’ve got that covered too.”

  “Well, it will just have to stay that way,” Helena said as she drifted through the car door and tromped off into the marsh.

  As soon as she was gone, Maryse repeated the conversation to Sabine. “So now we just have to decide what to do next,” Maryse said.

  Sabine shook her head. “No, we don’t. You’re going to call your attorney and have Hank served. That’s it.”

  Maryse cast a wistful glance down the trail. Oh, but for the chance to throttle the life out of Hank Henry. “But don’t you think—”

  Sabine cut her off with a hand. “No, I don’t think, and you don’t either. You promised.”

  Maryse turned in her seat and looked Sabine straight in the eyes. “Just like we promised to never keep secrets from each other?”

  Sabine averted her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Maryse wanted to be angry with her friend for keeping something so important from her, but her fear was so evident that Maryse’s heart broke in two. She clasped her hand gently over Sabine’s. “I know about the tests.”

  Luc leaned over Brian and studied the monitor, then banged one fist on the desk, unable to hold in his frustration any longer. “Damn it! There’s no clear shot of his face.”

  Brian looked up at him and let out a breath. “I tried everything, Luc. I know what you were hoping for, but this guy just didn’t give us the right view. Man, I’m sorry.”

  Luc scanned the blurry image one last time and clapped Brian on the shoulder. “It’s not your fault. This guy knew what he was doing.”

  Brian nodded. “Yeah, with the collar on that jacket turned up, the sunglasses, and his cap pulled down so low, one might think he was trying not to be recognized.”

  “One might,” Luc agreed. “So what were you able to get?”

  Brian pulled a sheet of paper off the printer and handed it to Luc. “I figured you’d want a copy of the analysis, but basically, this is what we have: the guy is about six feet tall, large frame, and looks like he was built at some time but his body’s lost its tone. His body movement puts him roughly in the fifty to sixty age range, assuming no debilitating injuries on a younger man, and he’s white. That’s about all I can give you.”

  Luc sighed. “Great—an old, flabby, white male. You’ve just described half of the men in Mudbug.”

  “I know it’s not much, but this along with the info you got on the explosion at the cabin makes me think you were right on your military assumption. Whoever this is, they had rigged explosives before, and based on the switches, they’re either former military or learned from someone who was.”

  Luc nodded. “Once again, half the men in Mudbug. And what about the petroleum company info I called you about on the way here?”

  Brian nodded and pulled up another file on his computer. “I cross-referenced all the companies licensed to drill in Louisiana with current operating locations. I figured companies with a base already established near the area would be the most likely to know about the land and want to acquire it.”

  “Good thinking.” Luc leaned toward the monitor and studied the page as it opened. “Three companies, huh? You think it’s good information?”

  “I think it’s as close as we’re getting to start. But don’t ask me what you’re supposed to do with the info from here.”

  “I have an idea about that,” Luc said.

  Brian groaned. “Man, I hate it when you get ideas.”

  “Don’t worry. This one is easy and completely legal.”

  “Well, that’s a change. Lay it on me.”

  “I need to know if any residents of Mudbug own a significant amount of stock
in any of the companies. I can’t imagine a board of directors would vote to bump someone off in the hopes that they can acquire some oil-filled land. There’s plenty of it to be had in Louisiana and other people willing to lease. So it’s got to be someone outside the company but with a vested interest in the company’s success.”

  “Already ahead of you.” Brian clicked to open a spreadsheet and pointed to a list of names. “These are the eight Mudbug residents who own stock in any of the three petroleum companies. Most have small investments. Nothing worth acting crazy for sure. But this one…” Brian pointed to a name on the spreadsheet. “He has a 5 percent share and a brother on the board of directors.”

  Luc read the name. “Thomas Breaux.” He looked at Brian. “The doctor? Shit. That would explain everything.”