Chaos in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Mystery/Romance Series) (16 page)

Mildred shook her head. “Probably not.”

Taylor turned to the ghost. “Then I guess you’re coming with me. But I have some rules, starting with nothing illegal. That includes stealing food. If you behave yourself, then I’ll get you corny dogs on the way back to the hotel.”

“That could take all day. I’ll starve to death.”

“Clearly, that’s not true. Rule number two—no lying, and that includes exaggeration. I understand the Southern flair for the dramatic, but I don’t like to deal with it while I’m working. My client wonders if the husband she lost thirty years ago is walking around the swamp somewhere. I need to make sure she gets an answer.”

“You client is a loon,” Helena said.

“Regardless of her mental state, she’s paying me for answers and she deserves some peace of mind.”

“I guess so,” Helena grumbled. “Even though no man is worth thinking about for thirty years.”

“George Clooney might be,” Mildred said.

“Okay,” Helena said. “I’ll give you George Clooney.”

Taylor grinned. “Then if you can manage to walk outside, mine is the beat-up navy sedan parked up front. You might want to start out now. I’m going to bum a cup of coffee from Mildred and then I’ll meet you out there.”

Helena took a wobbly step toward the door, then stumbled forward three steps and grabbed the coatrack. The rack teetered back and forth with her as she reached for the doorknob. Finally she managed to latch onto it and turn. As the door opened, she released the coatrack and pitched out onto the porch, the door slamming shut behind her.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Mildred asked.

“Not even remotely, but I’ve dealt with her type before. She’s not going to go away until she gets what she needs out of me. I may as well try to answer all her questions now, and there’s always the slim chance she might actually prove useful.”

“Sometimes she does, even despite herself.”

“Is there anything I need to know about her? I don’t expect you to predict her actions, but can you think of anything in particular you need to warn me about?”

Mildred slowly shook her head. “She’s not dangerous…not intentionally, anyway. But she manages to get into situations that can cause trouble and attract unwanted attention. Despite your rule, she
will
lift food wherever she finds it, without qualm or thought to how it looks when a roomful of people see a floating pizza.”

Taylor cringed. “I hadn’t considered that. Things don’t disappear when she’s touching them?”

“If she created it to begin with then yes, but if she picks up something from this world, it shows. Just looks like it’s hovering in midair. Except food, of course. It usually looks like it’s either flying as she exits a room or disappears as she crams it down.”

“I have a feeling this may be a very long day.”

Mildred nodded. “Coffee’s in the break room down the hall. There’s a bottle of whiskey in the cabinet above the refrigerator…for when you get back.”

“Thanks,” Taylor said and headed down the hallway. Usually a good round of meditation and a cleansing candle was enough to rid her of negative energy at the end of a long day, but the more she considered things, the more she wondered if tonight wouldn’t find her clutching that whiskey bottle.

###

He waited until the hotel owner put up her “Be Right Back” sign and walked across the street to the café before slipping down the alley and jimmying the back door. He’d already watched the woman leave with the rest of the search party. She wouldn’t be back anytime soon. From watching the hotel last night, he already knew which room the woman was in. Hurrying down the hallway, then up the stairs, he hoped no cleaning crew was in place to take notice of his passage. Other patrons of the hotel wouldn’t think twice about him walking down the hallway, but someone who worked there might realize he wasn’t a guest.

When he stepped onto the landing, he was pleased to see the hallway clear and quiet. He headed straight for the woman’s room, made quick work of the lock, then slipped inside. In the small refrigerator next to the dresser, he spotted a bottle of water and unscrewed the top. He pulled a packet from his pocket and poured it into the bottle, then shook it. The powder swirled around for a while before finally dissolving, then he put the bottle back in the front of the refrigerator.

It wasn’t enough to kill her. At least he hoped it wasn’t. Her death would only bring more heat, and that was the one thing he couldn’t afford. But he needed to buy some time. One day, two at the most, and his backup plan would be in place. He didn’t think for a moment the woman would stop poking into things. Women were always that way when they set their sights on something. But if she was too sick to work, that would buy him enough time to cover his tracks.
 

###

Jadyn rose from the boat seat and peered over the side as they neared the bank. Her cheeks stung a bit from too much sun and not enough sunscreen. Despite the decent base tan she’d managed in the past couple of weeks, seven long hours in the direct sunlight and salty winds had taken their toll.
 

And all for nothing.
 

She and Colt hadn’t spotted anything that might lead them to believe Clifton had made it out of the boat, much less that he was still alive. In fact, they hadn’t even located a single piece of debris, and neither had any of the other search volunteers. It wasn’t exactly surprising, but Jadyn couldn’t help but be disappointed, especially since she had to go back to the hotel this evening and tell Taylor the man she sought was dead. The only saving grace would be finding enough background information on Clifton to ensure that he couldn’t possibly be Sophia’s missing husband.

“How far away from the wreck location is this cove?” Jadyn asked.

“About a mile as the crow flies. Probably twice that taking the channels.”

“Do you think we’re too far out now to find anything?”

He shook his head. “It’s impossible to say without knowing where the boat sustained the bulk of damage. Until it took on too much water to float any longer, it would still have moved along with the incoming tide. Whether that was five miles or one, we may never know.”

“And Clifton could have bailed out or been tossed out anywhere along the path.” The man-in-the-swamp hunt was much, much worse than the needle-in-a-haystack.

“Yeah, and he could have floated some distance from where he entered the water. Any of the fishermen would be smart enough to shed the hip waders and float until they hit something solid to grab hold of. The last thing you do in a storm is try to swim against the tide. It will take you right under.”

“So he could have floated miles away.”

Colt nodded. “Assuming he was conscious when he went in.”

“Yeah, assuming.” She held in a sigh. Assuming was something she tried to avoid, especially if the question was life or death.

“The bank looks pretty solid over there,” she said and pointed to a flat stretch of hard dirt about twenty yards away, and sat back down to brace for landing.

He guided the boat toward the area she indicated, gunning the engine right before they hit the bank in order to drive the front of the boat up onto it. They exited the boat and without speaking automatically walked in opposite directions, searching the bank for any sign of life or debris.

Jadyn scanned the dirt and weeds as she trudged. Her boots were packed with mud, making each step twice the exertion it would have been with a clean pair of shoes, and she found her mind wandering to thoughts of a hot shower, then sticking her feet in a bucket of cold water. She’d thought herself in decent shape when she arrived in Mudbug, but an entire day combing the swamp, much of it on foot, had changed her mind. As soon as she got her own place, she would invest in some free weights and a treadmill.
 

She’d almost reached the far side of the cove when she saw a piece of wood sticking out of the water. It was about a foot from the bank and she gauged the ground surrounding it. Only one small section looked as though it had the potential to be firm, so she took a step onto it. She held in the curse when her boot sank up to her ankle in the slimy mud. No good options available, she dragged her other leg over and plopped it down in the sticky goo, then went to work on the board.

Her expectations were nil. Already today, she’d pulled at least fifty boards similar to this one out of the water. But as she gave it an initial tug, she looked closer and realized this board wasn’t as weathered as the others she’d seen. It hadn’t been in the water for nearly as long. She tugged again and it gave a couple of inches. One last good tug and the board came free, setting her off-balance.
 

Her arms flew involuntarily up, trying to balance her before she pitched backward, but with her feet stuck firmly in the mud, she had no way of shifting her stance to keep herself from falling. She braced herself for the plunge into the stinky mud and stiffened when arms circled around her, breaking her fall.

“Just in time,” Colt said as he gave her a tug to free her feet from the mud.

Her boots stuck like glue, the mud creating suction from the bottom that seemed to have an agenda of not letting her go. When they finally broke loose, a popping sound echoed and she scrambled to get her legs underneath her, but Colt’s tug was too strong. Both of them went sprawling backward onto the bank.

Mortified that she was quite literally sprawled on top of Colt, Jadyn immediately tried to push herself up from the ground, but Colt’s arms were still clenched around her and unless he wanted to release her, no way was she going to budge. After a second of uncomfortable silence, she felt him start to shake underneath her and finally realized he was laughing. Sound followed a couple of seconds later.

Jadyn jabbed him with her elbow, but he still held tight. “You have a warped sense of humor,” she said.

He chuckled again and finally released her. She rolled off of him—not the most ladylike action but the most expedient—and rose to glare. He pushed himself to a sitting position and grinned up at her before finally standing.
 

“I’m so glad my lack of balance could amuse you,” Jadyn said, fighting off her embarrassment.

“Oh, it’s not that. It’s just that the times I’ve pictured you on top of me, that wasn’t one of the images I came up with.”

Jadyn’s stiffened. Her pulse shot up, and a spike of heat burned from her center and out through her limbs. She felt the flush creep up her neck and onto her face.
 

He took one step closer to her and locked his gaze on hers. Then he leaned in and whispered, “Most of the positions I imaged were more, um…comfortable…and with a lot less clothes.”

Jadyn’s voice caught in her throat, but that was probably a good thing. Her brain raced trying to think of something to say but the only thing that came to mind was “Please yes,” and that was the last thing she needed to say. They hadn’t even officially dated, unless she counted dinner last night at the diner. Surely she wasn’t ready to move right past dating and into Biblical knowledge like a teenager in heat.

That wasn’t appropriate, right?
 

Her mind made a feeble argument that a man should at least have a meal with her that wasn’t work-related before she lay on him in fewer clothes, but damned if her body could come up with a reason to agree.
 

He reached one hand up and pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “One of these days it’s going to be the right place and time. If you’re interested, that is.”

Jadyn opened her mouth and silently willed something intelligent to come out of it. “I…uh…”
 

Damn it.

He smiled. “I’ll take that as a maybe.” He glanced around the ground. “So what got you stuck in the mud in the first place?”

Back to work.
 

Relief washed through Jadyn. Work was something she was prepared to handle. “It was a board. I think I flung it behind us when we fell. There.” She pointed to the plank directly behind Colt.

“Probably nothing,” he said as he reached down to grab it, but as he rose, he stiffened.

“What is it?”
 

He turned the piece of wood around.
 

Houdini
.

The lettering was faded and chipped, but there was no mistaking the word. The plank had been torn off the back of Clifton Vines’s boat.

Jadyn’s pulse ticked up a notch. “That means the boat was damaged prior to the split to this channel, right?”

Colt nodded. “Yeah, the stronger current carried the boat forward on the larger channel, but pieces could have drifted with the weaker current to this cove.”

“And Clifton?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“I didn’t see any footprints. If he was floating this direction until he hit something solid, where do you think he would have made contact?”

Colt scanned the mouth of the channel, watching the water flow past the bank and swirl around the cypress roots. “Probably there.” He pointed to a small jut of land about twenty yards up from them and right at the entry of the channel.
 

They headed up the channel toward the point Colt had indicated. The ground was thick with reeds and marsh grass, so progress was slow as they scanned the bank for any indication that Clifton had emerged from the bayou. Just as Jadyn was about to decide there was nothing to find, she spotted an indentation in a bare patch between tufts of marsh grass. She squatted and pushed the grass to the side.