The Helena Diaries - Trouble in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Series Novellas) (3 page)

It was the perfect setup for a bitch like me.

Trouble in Mudbug—Chapter Four

Wherein Helena realizes she may have miscalculated

Harold didn’t even bother returning to Mudbug. I’d bet anything word of his lack of inheritance hit the gossip train about two minutes after my cousins left Wheeler’s office. I suppose he didn’t want to show his face in town with his tail tucked in between his legs. Like he’d been a paragon of manliness and prosperity before.
 

Instead, he drove my car straight to that rattletrap motel and went inside, demanding the largest suite. The clerk stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. Motels that rent by the hour usually don’t have suites, and the skill set for a minimum-wage job breathing asbestos and catering to prostitutes apparently didn’t include arguing with idiots. He just handed Harold a key and pointed to a hallway behind him.
 

I shook my head. As many hours as Harold had spent in this hotel with his floozies, I would have thought he’d known better, but then on rethinking it, Harold was far too cheap and too broke to spring for a suite, nor would any of the women he ran around with know the difference.

Harold mumbled something about how the room would do for tonight but he’d be relocating to New Orleans the next day. Whatever. Good riddance.

I was still smiling when I headed outside to see if anyone from Mudbug happened to be in the parking lot. The thought of the long walk back into town was enough to take the edge off my post-will-reading buzz. I lucked out when I spotted a forest-green SUV that I knew belonged to Thelma Jenkins’s husband. I smirked. Thelma was always lording over everyone in Mudbug, claiming that since she came from Boston, she was higher-class than the rest of us rednecks. Guess her husband hadn’t gotten the memo on the low-class state of getting a piece of redneck strange.

I sat on the curb and waited. I didn’t figure I’d be there long. I’d seen Bart Jenkins get winded walking down the sidewalk. No way was this activity going to take very long. Five minutes later, he walked outside, huffing like an asthmatic, and I bolted into his SUV as he leaned over to get his breath back before climbing inside. He made the drive to Mudbug in record time and parked on Main Street, where Thelma stood on the corner, frowning.

“Your husband just slept with a floozy at the Lower Bayou Motel!” I screamed directly in her face before continuing down the sidewalk, feeling quite smug that Thelma’s superiority was all in her mind.

My house wasn’t far from downtown when you were driving a car, but walking made it seem like a journey to hell and beyond. I had to take several breaks along the way, and finally huffed into my driveway an hour after leaving downtown. During Harold’s outburst at the will-reading, I’d gotten that niggling feeling that there was something about the will that was important—something I’d forgotten. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what.
 

Then there was the fact that I’d caught Harold in my bedroom. It looked like he was just riffling through some items to hock, but the entire house was full of antiques. Why start in my room? The whole thing made me nervous. What if Harold had found the papers? I needed to get in the house and make sure the papers were still intact.

Of course, that presented two huge problems: getting into my house and getting into the safe where I’d stored the papers.

As I’d followed Wheeler around the house the day before, I knew he’d been thorough with the doors and windows, except for the small window in the laundry room. The latch looked like it was locked, but it had been broken for years. Still, the massive hedge in front of it made it an unlikely target for burglars. Unfortunately, my lack of ability to touch things made it just as irrelevant to me.

I’m not even sure why I walked around to the backyard, as I already knew I couldn’t lift the window, but I’m glad I did because my luck changed for the better. Maryse was across the bayou, right behind my house, digging in the marsh grass.

Pleased that things were finally going my way, I headed down to the dock and yelled at Maryse before stepping onto the bayou.

Unfortunately, the tide was flowing away from Maryse’s boat, so it swept me downstream when I wanted to go upstream. I started walking, but the current was moving much faster than my normal stroll. I upped it to a jog, hoping Maryse would see my struggle and come pick me up, but no dice. Instead, she stared at me like the Loch Ness monster had just appeared in the middle of Mudbug Bayou.

I’d expected a bit more from the woman I’d just left my most valuable possession, but Maryse was probably still holding the last decade of insults against me. If I’d known she was this petty, I may have reconsidered my decision.

Trouble in Mudbug—Chapter Five

Wherein
Helena breaks into her own house

It took some convincing, but Maryse finally agreed to help me get into the house. She argued that it wasn’t mine any more, but I could tell she thought the argument was pretty weak. And given that I’d just bequeathed her property with an annual income that was likely more than the state paid her, she probably felt guilty saying no.

Guilty and indebted was the way I like people. Indebted to me, that is.

I launched into my argument with a reminder that if we solved my murder, I’d be able to ascend and be out of her hair. Maryse still looked skeptical, and now I wonder if that was because of the “out of her hair” part of the statement or the “ascension” part. I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer. It might piss me off.

I managed to seal the deal by telling her that Harold received a call from Hank while I was in the house that morning and had written a phone number on the pad in the kitchen. I had no idea what Harold had written on the pad, but I was desperate, exhausted, and out of ideas.

Maryse wasn’t thrilled to climb into the house through the laundry room window, and was even less than impressed when I told her she had to let me in the side door off the laundry room. She threw out a “why don’t you walk through a wall” insult, which I thought was totally uncalled for. Even Maryse should have better manners than picking on the disabled.

I managed to get her up to my bedroom with a minimal amount of grumbling, then had her open my safe. My worst fears were confirmed. The stack of cash I kept inside was gone, and the only person who could have taken it was Harold. I didn’t think he had the combination, but he must have figured it out somehow. That truly vexed me. I hadn’t given Harold credit for that much intelligence. Now, it looked like I had to factor a little smarts into the equation, which changed everything.

But the real downer was when Maryse told me the paperwork I was looking for—the real reason I wanted in the safe—was missing.

Crap! Crap! Crap!

That niggling feeling from earlier returned, and I couldn’t help but think that the missing paperwork was only the beginning of the bad news. If only I could remember what it was that bothered me about the inheritance. Maybe I should have read the documents again before I’d changed out my will, but then I’d only changed my will because Wheeler had nagged me about it. I hadn’t planned on actually dying.

I thought the worst discovery of the day was the missing paperwork, but I was wrong. Maryse pointed to a blinking light on the wall and I panicked. When he stole my car, Harold must have accidentally pressed the button to arm the security system.
 

Maryse bolted for the bedroom door, but hadn’t taken a step outside of it when the alarm went off, shrieking with a deafening whine. I ran after Maryse, trying to keep up, but that girl is in seriously good shape. All those hours cataloging stinkweed must do great things for your endurance, or perhaps it was sheer fear. By the time we hit the stairs, the police sirens were sounding in the distance and closing fast. I didn’t think it possible, but Maryse increased speed and was out of sight before I even made it down the stairs.

As I skidded around the corner into the kitchen, she was already out of the house and slamming the laundry room door behind her.
 

Damn it.

Locked in my own house again.

Trouble in Mudbug—Chapter Six

Wherein Helena hears the local gossip

That Wheeler is even better than I gave him credit for. He must have left a key to my house and instructions with the local police department. They rushed in and swept the place, looking for any sign of forced entry. As Maryse had closed all entry points when she bolted, they didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Chalking it up to a system failure, they headed back out. I took the opportunity to exit along with them, but managed to take a look at that pad of paper before dashing out.

Sure enough, Harold had jotted down the name and room number for a motel in one of those dive bayou towns not far from Mudbug.
 

I figured Maryse needed a break from me and my issues, and quite frankly, the girl had been a disappointment on the investigation end of things, so I decided to head to the beauty shop and get the local gossip, hoping I could use it to narrow down the suspect list.

Those biddies at the beauty shop ran me down for a good hour before shifting topics to something on the television. Funny how they’d had completely different things to say when I’d been sitting in there visible every week.
 

I tried everything to get back at them for their vile words—tried to lift a curling iron to burn them, tried to lift bleach to ruin their hair—all of it in vain.
 

Then I realized the television was tuned to a show on ghost hunting, and I took a seat on the couch and started watching. An all-day marathon was going on, so I managed several hours of information before I had to hustle out of the shop or be locked in there all night. I might have considered it if they’d left the television on.

As I walked down Main Street, all of this newfound information tumbled around in my mind. In all the shows I’d seen, the ghosts were able to make noise and move things—some of them in the most creative and elaborate ways. And none of those ghosts seemed to have a problem with locked doors. If I could learn to move things and walk through walls, this investigation would be so much easier.

I wondered if the Mudbug library had any books on the subject, and decided it was worth checking out. Plus, one of the biddies said you could find anything on the Internet, and I knew they had computers for public use at the library. I’d never really bothered with the Internet other than checking e-mail, but I’d bet anything Maryse knew how to use it. I figured she didn’t have any Internet-connecty stuff at her cabin on Deliverance Island, but the library opened at 9:00 a.m., and we could be there first thing tomorrow.

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.