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

by DeLeon, Jana

  I scanned Main Street for Maryse’s truck, just on the off chance that I could avoid that excruciating walk to her place, but the street was fairly empty. No Maryse, and it was too late for fishermen.

  Sighing, I started the long walk to Maryse’s cabin.

  It figures that after three hours of hoofing it on that gravel road and jogging across an outgoing tide, Maryse wasn’t at home and this time, her front door was shut. I managed to pull myself through an open window, but it wasn’t easy. For several scary seconds, I thought I’d be stuck halfway through the opening until Maryse returned, dangling there like a sack of potatoes. But then gravity took over and I tumbled onto the floor. It hurt far more than it should have, considering I’m dead.

  In keeping with my luck, my crash to the floor shook the cabin so hard that the window I just climbed through slammed shut. Locked inside again. It was becoming a very bad habit. How in the world could I shake a cabin so hard it closed windows, but I couldn’t turn one simple doorknob?

  I wandered around Maryse’s domain, wondering how in the world she lived in such a state of disorganization. It seemed that every item in her kitchen was piled on the counter, along with a collection of power tools. I didn’t even want to think about what she ate that required power tools. Maybe I needed to rethink our alliance if she was into some crazy shit.

  It only took seconds to walk all three rooms of the shack Maryse called home. Not a single television or radio blaring. Not a single magazine open on a table. I was officially doomed. Surely, she’d be home soon. She didn’t have a life that I was aware of, but then, it would be just my luck if she’d developed one this evening.

  And apparently, Maryse found a life after fleeing my house. She never returned.

  I spent the rest of the night reading labels on the cleaning supplies and food products piled on the counter. It was the second-most-boring night I’d ever had in my life, slipping quietly in line behind the night after my marriage to Harold.

  Trouble in Mudbug—Chapter Seven

  Wherein Helena remembers the important thing

  I can’t believe Maryse pulled an all-night bender. She stumbled into her cabin late that morning, looking even worse for the wear than usual. She even had a knot on her forehead. What the hell does she do when she drinks?

  To say she looked less than thrilled to see me would be an understatement. I got the impression that if she’d known I was there, she would have sold the cabin, complete with all her property and me in it.

  I started off by complaining about her selfishness and my godawful night reading the back of cleaning supplies, and she went for a glass of water and popped a pill. Her generation was always doing some kind of drug. They simply weren’t made of the same stock I was.

  Maryse expressed her discontent with Harold’s threats the day before, but I dismissed them as silly. I hope she bought it, because the reality was, I wasn’t convinced Harold had the intelligence to leave well enough alone. I told her about my library research idea, but she flat refused to help, claiming she had to meet with Wheeler over the will requirements and then had a ton of work to catch up on.

  I followed her to the dock, not about to let her get away after waiting all night, and realized a rental car was parked there instead of her truck. As she opened the car door, I ran past her and jumped inside. I had a bit of difficultly crawling over the center console to the passenger’s seat and thought about telling her to rent something besides the economy model, but I didn’t figure she’d be interested in my needs.

  It seemed no one was ever interested in my needs.

  I asked about the vehicle change and that bad feeling slammed into me again when I heard about her wreck the day before. Probably the knot on her head and the need for meds had nothing to do with an all-night drunk or weak constitution and everything to do with the wreck.

  Why couldn’t I remember what was bothering me about the inheritance?

  I asked if she’d read the will requirements, but she claimed she hadn’t had the time, and that was the point of meeting with Wheeler. I hoped Wheeler brought up whatever it was that I was struggling to recall. My forgetfulness had been mostly irritation before, but that irritation was changing over to worry. For someone who never worried about anything, it was an oppressive feeling.

  Maryse was halfway up the sidewalk to the café before I realized she had no intention of letting me out of the car. I starting yelling, and she gave me this aggrieved look before opening the passenger door to let me out of the car, then proceeded to nag on my ghostly flaws again until I pointed out that everyone in the café thought she was talking to a car door.

  In continuing her Bitch of the Day routine, Maryse sat at the edge of the booth opposite from Wheeler, clearly trying to prevent me from sitting down. Like that would stop me. I quite literally had all day to stand on the table if I chose to. Instead, I took the classy out and slid onto the booth beside Wheeler, who shivered and commented about a draft.

  Great. If I never learned to move things, maybe I could freeze people to death.

  Wheeler started in on the inheritance requirements—Maryse couldn’t leave town for one week or she forfeits the inheritance, and she needed to provide Wheeler with an heir since she has no children of her own. So far, none of this sounded dire and certainly wasn’t the thing I couldn’t remember but thought I needed to. Then Wheeler said after the week passed, the land would be safe in the hands of the person she designated, if something were to happen to Maryse.

  Maryse looked confused and asked what happened if something dire occurred before that week had passed. Wheeler told her the land would then pass to the next heir—in this case the only other heir, Hank.

  That was it!

  The important thing I’d forgotten!

  Holy shit! This was way worse than I’d suspected.

  Maryse had to make sure she didn’t kick the bucket for at least a week, or the land would go straight into the hands of my useless, money-grubbing son, and it was clear by what she said to Wheeler that she’d clued in to the perilous state her existence had just taken on.

  Wheeler assured Maryse that the land’s real value was sentimental and she had no reason to suspect anyone would wish her harm for an amount as small as the annual lease payment, but she didn’t look completely convinced. Wheeler was wrong, of course, but he had no way of knowing that, as I’d never shown him the papers that were stolen from my safe. He had no idea that the real value of the land was FAR beyond sentimental.

  Suddenly, Maryse’s truck wreck took on a whole new level of importance. What if it hadn’t been an accident?

  Maryse finished the paperwork and left the café, but instead of leaving, she loitered outside on the sidewalk until after Wheeler drove away. Then she told me to spill because she knew I was hiding something. I really need to work on my poker face, even if Maryse is the only one who can see it.

  She was mad as a hornet when I told her that the missing papers from my safe detailed out exactly how much oil was located beneath the ground in the preserve. Billions of dollars’ worth, to be exact.

  She yelled at me that I’d made her a walking target for Harold and Hank, and with the stupid requirements for the will, she couldn’t even leave town to hide from them. I tried to convince her that she had a secret weapon in me because I was an invisible sentinel who could warn her if anything was amiss.

  Unconvinced, she called me The Angel of Death and tore out of the parking lot. I didn’t even try to jump in the car. I was beginning to wonder if Maryse was right about me.

  Trouble in Mudbug—Chapter Eight

  Wherein Helena goes blind at the Mudbug Hotel

  The investigation was stalled and my detective had fled, so I knew I had to take charge. First up was learning how to walk through walls and move things. It was time I started taking my ghostly role seriously.

  Recalling how the ladies at the beauty shop were running me down the day before, I figured I’d start there attempting to move bleach a
round, but they had the television on the Oxygen network and I couldn’t stomach a whole day of that—not even being dead.

  Then I thought about the Mudbug Hotel. The hotel would have plenty of objects to move, lots of walls and doors, and huge potential for televisions running that weren’t playing the Oxygen network, especially as the hotel was usually occupied by traveling salesmen and vacationing fishermen.

  I lucked out as Mildred, the hotel owner, had the front doors standing open, allowing the cool morning air to drift inside the lobby. In another hour, that same air would be thirty degrees hotter, full of humidity, and smelling of crawfish from Carolyn’s Cajun Kitchen, but at the moment, it carried the pleasant aroma of cinnamon rolls baking at the café. My mouth started to water, and I shook my head. This whole death thing made no sense at all.

  Mildred was behind the counter at the front of the hotel, but had the radio going and not the television, so I headed upstairs where I managed two hours of television by following the cleaning lady on her rounds. None of it was ghost shows, though, but at least I wasn’t bored to tears. I’d hoped the cleaning lady would slip up and leave a door open and a television going, but I was probably asking too much.

  When she packed up her bucket and headed downstairs, I looked up and down the hallway. I could hear the muffled sound of televisions playing inside several of the rooms, but all of the doors were pulled completely shut. The only way I was getting inside one of those rooms was with ghostly transport.

  No time like the present.

  I took a deep breath, focused on a room door, then launched toward it at a jog. My chest was the first part of my body to slam into the oak plank, but my head and knees shortly followed. I stumbled backward into the wall opposite the door and slid down onto the floor, giving the door the finger as I slumped.

  The door did not seem to care.

  Maybe I’d moved too fast. Maybe I had to be more deliberate about it.

  Determined not to let a piece of wood get the best of me, I rose from the floor and approached the door. This time, I thrust my hand forward, figuring if I could get a hand through, then the rest of me could follow.

  My fingers slammed into hardwood, immediately jamming all the joints. I jumped around in the hallway, trying to pull my fingers back out into their normal state. My jumping rattled the floor so much that the guy staying in the room with the attack door came out to see what the racket was about.

  Of course, to him the hall appeared empty, so he grumbled something about big trucks and headed back into his room. But this time, he forgot to pull the door completely shut. In the tradition of old construction, the door slowly opened wider until it stood about halfway open. Without hesitating, I slipped inside. I’d no sooner gotten inside than he realized the door wasn’t closed and pushed it shut, then headed into the bathroom.

  Maybe I had miscalculated.

  I hadn’t planned on being locked inside a room with a middle-aged, balding salesman and wasn’t happy that I had to deal with it now. I had to get more logical and less impulsive, and for someone who’d had the luxury of spending most of her life doing whatever I wanted when I wanted, that was going to be difficult.

  The television was on the local news, which meant stories about the new landscaping in front of the town hall and the new record for largemouth bass. I was a bit miffed that my death had garnered so little news attention. You’d think leaving the town a shitload of real estate would have gotten me a statue or at minimum, a public thanks.

  Ingrates.

  The shower came on in the bathroom and a second later, the salesman came out—completely naked.

  “My eyes!” I screamed. I clenched them shut and covered them with my hands, but nothing could erase the sight of his old, sagging white body—ALL of his old, sagging white body.

  I didn’t hear any movement, so I peeked between my fingers. He had the television remote and was flipping through the channels. What the hell did it matter what was playing while he showered? Then he pressed the buttons to purchase a movie and I felt a wave of nausea roll over me.

  My worst fear was confirmed when a bleached-blonde with an enormous chest bounced naked on to the screen. Good God. No way was I sticking around to see what happened with a naked man who thought he was alone with porn. I already had a good idea what was about to go down, and I was fighting to keep the visual from cementing in my mind.

  Panicked, I tried running through the door again, but I bounced right off and fell to the floor. I jumped up, and scanned the room for a hiding place when I noticed the open window.

  What the hell—it wasn’t like I could die or anything.

  I probably should have just run for the window and dived out headfirst, but removing fear of death didn’t seem to remove the fear of plummeting to the ground. Instead, I inched backward out the window until the toes of those hideous shoes were perched on top of a tiny jut of brick. Then I made the mistake of looking back inside the room.

  I screamed bloody murder and let go. A second round of death had to be better than what I’d seen. I crashed into a dumpster, sending three alley cats scattering over the edge and down the alley, further convincing me that whole cats-can-see-ghosts thing was true.

  It took three jumps before I managed to grasp the top edge of the dumpster and scramble over the edge. I fell to the ground with a thud and just lay there, too exhausted to move. The smell of stale garbage filled my nose, but I assumed it was all in the Dumpster as my hideous suit was still pristine, despite having landed in a pile of old food, complete with ketchup.

  That did it—regardless of how far it was, I was walking to that motel that Harold had jotted down. I could use the many, many miles of fresh air to clear my mind.

  Wherein Helena goes on a date for the first time in forty years

  I can’t believe Maryse blew me off to go on a date with that doctor. That cad has been making time with every woman in Mudbug under the age of forty, and rumor has it, a couple that weren’t. The girl appears to be hell-bent on attaching her hitch to losers. First my son—who was long gone from the motel Harold wrote down, BTW—and now this one. I suppose one might argue that at least the doctor has a job, but I’d argue that at least Hank never cheated on Maryse. The doctor was guaranteed to do so.

  The evening did contain two big positives—first off, I learned how to walk through walls. Just like Maryse’s nutty friend suspected, when I tried it with full faith that I could do it, it worked. I strolled right through that restaurant door and completely disrupted Maryse’s date with that cad doctor. That was positive number two.

  Unfortunately, Maryse was not as excited about my accomplishments, especially number two. I followed her to the car, but she was so irate that I decided to hitchhike home. Besides, I couldn’t look at that smug doctor’s face one more moment.

  And what in the world is the deal with people not wearing underwear? It seems you have to die to find out what’s really going on in this world.

  By the time I got to Maryse’s cabin, she was already past drunk and headed for comatose. Unfortunately, the irate was still in place. I did feel bad, though, that she accused me of ruining her night because I didn’t like her. I don’t pretend to understand Maryse at all most of the time, but I’ve never disliked her. In fact, I could probably like her if she weren’t always insulting me.

  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.