Chaos in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Mystery/Romance Series) (18 page)

Taylor grimaced. “Don’t they have mirrors?”

Mildred laughed. “Haven’t you learned yet—mirrors lie?”

Taylor smiled. The hotel owner was unlike anyone she’d ever met before. She had a way of putting her at ease that she’d never experienced with another person, especially someone considerably older. Mostly, Taylor always felt that older women were mentally tallying all the things she was doing wrong. God knows, her mother always was. But with Mildred, she didn’t feel that judgment. It was refreshing and unexpected.

The bells on the front door of the hotel jangled and Taylor looked over to see Jadyn and Colt walk inside. They both looked exhausted.

Mildred, who’d been relaxed just seconds before, hurried around the front desk and Taylor could almost feel her anxiety spike. She knew about the missing fisherman and the search party, but Mildred had never indicated that she knew the missing man. Something else was troubling the hotel owner. Something to do with Jadyn or Colt. It would probably be obvious even to a normal person, but with her special “skills” it was more like a flashing neon sign.

“Did you find anything?” Mildred asked.

Jadyn nodded and they filled Mildred in on their discoveries in the cove. “We called everyone to the area and searched until we started losing daylight. We’ll head back out tomorrow.”

Mildred nodded, but didn’t look more or less relieved.

Jadyn looked over at Taylor. “I’m glad you’re here. We need to talk.”

“Me?” Taylor didn’t bother to hide her surprise. She had no idea what the game warden could possibly want with her.

Jadyn nodded and shot a glance at Colt before stepping over to the front desk. “I think I know who the man in the drawing is.”

Taylor’s pulse spiked. “You’re kidding me. Who is he?”

Jadyn frowned. “He’s our missing fisherman.”

Of all the things Jadyn could have said, that was one Taylor would never have seen coming. “Wow. That’s crazy.” She knew she sounded silly and unprofessional, but at that moment, they were the only words that came to mind.

Jadyn nodded. “It’s quite an odd coincidence, and I’m not all that fond of coincidences.”

“Me either. I mean, I know they exist, but not nearly as often as people think they do.”

“Agreed, but in this case, I can’t find a strand to connect the dots. And even if we assume our missing fisherman is the man in your picture, there’s still no proof that he’s your client’s husband. Colt’s office is tracking down everything they can find on Clifton Vines, the missing man. Hopefully, they can put together a profile that clearly eliminates him as an option for you.”

Jadyn frowned. “That sounded harsher than I intended it to. I’m sorry. I’m exhausted.”

“No, that’s okay,” Taylor said. “I get what you’re saying. As long as I can prove to my client that the man her friend saw can’t be her husband, then she can move on from this.”

Jadyn gave her a grateful smile. “Yes, that’s it exactly.”

“Well, I can’t be of any help with local tracking, but if someone’s willing to point me in the right direction and keep me from getting lost, I’m happy to help with the search tomorrow.”

Colt nodded. “We can use all the help we can get. I’ll pair you up with a couple of the locals. We’re meeting at the sheriff’s department tomorrow morning at eight.”

“Great. I’ll see you then. If you don’t need me for anything, I’m going to have a hot shower and a big dinner.”

“That sounds like the best plan ever,” Jadyn said. “We’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

Taylor gave them a wave and headed upstairs. Before she hit the second floor landing, she glanced back down into the lobby. Mildred had been oddly quiet during the entire exchange, but Taylor could tell she was biding her time. Whatever she needed to say to Jadyn, she was waiting to say in private. Taylor knew it was none of her business, but she couldn’t help but wonder what had unnerved the seemingly calm hotel owner.
 

If you weren’t naturally curious, you’d make an awful private investigator.

She cast one more glance at them before continuing up the stairs and down the hallway to her room. With any luck, she’d soon have answers for her client. She was 99 percent sure they weren’t going to be the answers Sophia wanted, but as long as they were the truth, Taylor would be satisfied with her work, if not necessarily the outcome.

Chapter Twelve

Colt watched as Taylor disappeared upstairs, then turned to Jadyn. “I’m going to take off. I think Taylor has the right idea.”

“Wait!” Mildred grabbed his arm. “I need to talk to you both, in private.”

Colt stared at the hotel owner, not bothering to hide his surprise. Mildred was hardly the sort of woman prone to dramatics, but she was so tense it was visibly apparent.
 

“What’s wrong?” Jadyn asked, her voice sharp.

“My office,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for you.” She spun around and hurried off down the hallway.

Colt looked over at Jadyn. “We?”

Jadyn shrugged. “Whatever it is has Mildred seriously stressed, and in my limited experience, that’s not easy to do.”

“No, it’s not. We better find out what’s going on.”

Colt brought up the rear as they filed into Mildred’s office. Maryse was already standing there, answering the “we” question, and just finishing up a call on her cell.

“Luc?” Mildred asked.

Maryse nodded. “He’ll be here in ten minutes.” She looked over at Jadyn and Colt. “I guess all you law enforcement types had a long day. I’m sorry I’m holding you up even longer, but this can’t wait.”

“What’s wrong?” Colt asked. He knew why Maryse had been sticking close to the hotel during working hours and hoped her situation hadn’t gotten more dire.

“I ran out of bottled water today,” Maryse said. “I only had one test tube left in my experiment so Mildred suggested I borrow a bottle from you.” She looked at Jadyn.

“Of course,” Jadyn said. “You’re welcome to anything you need. You don’t even have to tell me about it.”

Maryse waved a hand in dismissal. “That’s not what this is about.”

“Something was wrong with the water,” Mildred interjected, apparently unable to hold it in any longer.

Jadyn stared at Maryse. “What was wrong with it?”

“Well, I thought it smelled slightly fishy,” Maryse said, “but I don’t think that had anything to do with the real problem. When I added the water to the solution in my test tube it reacted in a way it shouldn’t have.”

Mildred nodded. “Then Maryse noticed something in the water and started running tests. It was cocaine. There was cocaine in your bottled water!”
 

Colt stared at Mildred, waiting for the punch line, but one look at the hotel owner’s horrified expression let him know this was no joke.

Jadyn’s eyes widened. “But how can that be? I bought that case last week at Walmart.”

Maryse nodded. “Did you put it in the refrigerator then?”

“No,” Jadyn replied. “I wasn’t quite out yet. I restocked it last night before I went to bed.”

“Did you open any of the bottles?” Maryse asked.

“No. I already had half of one left.” Jadyn looked from Maryse to Mildred. “Are you telling me that someone broke into my room and put cocaine in one of my water bottles?”

Maryse nodded. “We don’t see any other explanation.”

Colt drew in a breath and slowly let it out. It was a curveball he’d never seen coming, and he had absolutely no explanation for it. Certainly game wardens made their share of enemies, but Jadyn hadn’t been in town long enough to create such discord, except with a handful of people who were either dead or in jail.
 

Colt narrowed his gaze on Maryse. “You’re certain it’s cocaine?”

“Positive,” Maryse said.

“She’s worked with it before,” Mildred said. “The drug companies gave it to her just like that. Can you believe it?”

Jadyn nodded. “It has certain numbing components for surgical procedures, right?”

Mildred threw her hands in the air. “Am I the only one in the room who finds that insane?”

“It’s sorta insane,” Colt agreed, hoping to calm Mildred down. “So sometime between this morning and when you took the bottle, someone spiked it. What time did you take the bottle?”

“Around five thirty,” Maryse said.
 

“That leaves most of the day.” Colt tapped his finger on Mildred’s desk.

“Forget the when,” Jadyn said, “I want to know why.”

“We all do,” Colt said. “You haven’t gotten any strange phone calls, seen anyone following you, things like that?”

“No. Everything has been normal. For Mudbug, anyway.”

Colt looked at Maryse. “Would the dosage have killed her?”

Maryse shook her head. “Not unless she’s allergic. It probably would have made her sick for a couple days.”

“So either he didn’t know the proper dosage to kill someone or he only intended to make her ill.”

“Exactly,” Maryse said, “but why would anyone want to do either?”

“That is the real question,” Colt said.
 

“I feel really bad about this,” Jadyn said. “Maryse could have drunk that water, or Mildred. Someone could have been seriously hurt because of me.”

“Don’t even go there,” Mildred said. “None of this is your fault.”

“To some degree it is,” Jadyn said. “Obviously, I’ve made an enemy somewhere.”

Colt had been mulling over the entire situation since Mildred first made her cocaine announcement, trying to make some sense of it. “Maybe it’s not an enemy,” he said. “Not in the sense we’re thinking about it, anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Jadyn asked.

“We’ve been poking around other towns looking for the missing boat captain. And although we haven’t started down that path yet, there’s still the chance that the damage to the boat was deliberate.”

Jadyn’s eyes widened. “Which means the footprint we saw in the bank could have been made by the person who sank the boat, and not Vines.”

“Assuming that train of thought is correct, then yeah, it’s more likely the saboteur went ashore than Clifton.”

“And if one of the people I questioned was the saboteur…”

“Then he might not want you taking a closer look at things,” Colt finished. He pinned his gaze on Jadyn, whose eyes widened as she locked in on the unspoken thought he had—that someone had also taken a shot at her the day before. Two attacks in as many days.

Jadyn shook her head. “I don’t like it, but it makes sense.” She blew out a breath. “If Vines never made it off that boat, the search tomorrow will be a complete waste of time.”

“Maybe,” Colt agreed, “but we don’t know for certain what happened. Until we do, we have to proceed with this as a search-and-rescue mission. In the meantime, I don’t think you should stay at the hotel. Whoever spiked that bottle knew enough about the hotel and you to enter without being seen and go straight to your room.”

“No,” Mildred protested. “There’s nowhere else to stay in town. I’m on high alert now. The hotel is safer than anywhere else.”

Colt shook his head. “It’s not safer than my house.”

“What?” Jadyn whirled around and stared at him. “No, I can’t stay with you.”

“I have a guest room, an excellent security system, and an arsenal of weapons. Anyone who attempts to get to you at my place will be on the receiving end of doom.”

“I…but…” Jadyn glanced over at Maryse and Mildred, as if expecting to them to offer some sort of argument against his plan, but both women were strangely silent. Colt took that as agreement.

“Just until we figure this out,” Colt said. “If he’s smart, he won’t make another attempt here. We could use my place to draw him out.”

“He makes a good point,” Maryse said. “Colt’s place is fairly remote. Someone would make the mistake of thinking it was easier to make a move on.”

He could tell that Jadyn understood the wisdom of what he proposed, but her uncertainty was clear. Was she worried about the potential for another attack, or was her uncertainty due to being alone with him?

Colt looked at Maryse. “I assume you still have some of the contaminated water? I’ll need my lab to run tests.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Maryse said and pulled out a sealed plastic bag with the water bottle inside. “My fingerprints and Jadyn’s will both be on there. I figure he was wearing gloves, but you never know.”

Colt took the bag. “Thanks. I have both your prints on file, so I’ll be able to eliminate them.”

Jadyn took a deep breath and blew it out. “Then I guess I better go pack a bag.” She hurried out of the room and Colt could hear her running up the stairs.

Mildred locked her gaze on him. “What is happening to this town?”

Colt knew exactly what Mildred was asking. The past year had been an odd and extreme one for the previously quiet Mudbug. “I don’t know.” He knew it wasn’t what Mildred wanted to hear, but the reality was he didn’t have a good answer.

Maryse frowned. “It’s like Helena Henry’s death was a sort of hurricane. Things that have been long buried are starting to surface.”