Missing in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Mystery/Romance Series) (2 page)

Maryse and Mildred both stared at her for several seconds and finally Maryse smiled. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You’re really going to contact someone about making me a bulletproof urn?”

Jadyn froze, wondering if she’d misread the situation. “Yeah, I mean…that’s what you want, right?”

Maryse nodded and sniffed. “I’m not good at girlie stuff, but that’s so nice, I don’t even know what to say.”

Jadyn looked down at the floor and shuffled her feet. If Maryse was “not good” at girlie stuff, Jadyn was practically allergic to it. “Seems like the right thing is all. You helped me get the game warden position here, and you and Mildred have really made it easier to fit in.”

“I brought you here and exposed you to Helena,” Maryse said. “If I were you, I’d kick my butt.”

Jadyn smiled. “Maybe after I’ve had more coffee.”

Maryse rose from the chair and nodded. “I think breakfast sounds like a great idea. Shall we head over to the café?”

Jadyn’s stomach rumbled and Maryse laughed.

“I guess that’s my answer,” Maryse said.

“Watching Helena eat must have made me hungry,” Jadyn said. “Hey, would it be horrible if I had pie after my eggs?”

“I hope not,” Mildred said, “because that’s what I plan on doing. Let me put up the sign.”

They followed Mildred to the front desk where she put the “Back in thirty minutes” sign on the front desk.
 

“I don’t have anyone booked for today, so no check-ins,” Mildred said and she switched the phone to voice mail. “If anyone shows up without a reservation, they can come back in thirty or sleep in their car.”

“Perfectly reasonable,” Jadyn agreed. “Let’s get some breakfast.”

They crossed the street to the café and Jadyn automatically gravitated to a vacant booth in the far corner. She’d quickly learned that Maryse and Mildred’s topics of conversation were not always the “for public consumption” type, especially with talks of Helena thrown into the mix. Sitting in the back, away from the other patrons, allowed conversation with no leaning over the table and whispering. Leaning and whispering got in the way of eating. And right now, Jadyn was starving.

Maryse and Mildred nodded approvingly at her selection as they slid into the bench across from her. A pert waitress popped over a couple of seconds later to take their order and leave a decanter of coffee. Jadyn poured a round for everyone, took a big drink, and decided she may as well get answers to the questions roaming through her mind.

“I have to ask,” Jadyn started, looking directly at Mildred, “and if you don’t want to answer, just tell me it’s none of my business, but why do you have some of Maryse’s dad’s ashes?”

“Maryse’s mother died when she was four, and afterward her daddy was understandably a mess,” Mildred explained. “But a child doesn’t stop growing or needing things while their parent gets their life together, so I stepped in and did my best to give Maryse a maternal connection.”

“You were wonderful,” Maryse said. “Still are.”

Mildred blushed a bit. “Taking care of Maryse meant I was around an awful lot and after he stopped grieving so hard, well…”

“You started a relationship,” Jadyn finished. So much about Maryse and Mildred’s relationship now made perfect sense. She’d known the women were close but hadn’t realized that Mildred had essentially stepped in to raise Maryse right after her mother’s death.

Mildred nodded. “We started as friends at first and stayed that way for a good long time. I wasn’t anxious to jump into anything. I got no problem being a self-supportive woman. And Maryse’s daddy loved her mother more than anything. It took a long time for him to decide he wasn’t being disrespectful to her if he cared for me.”

“But you never married?” Jadyn asked.

“No, and that was fine too. We were both older and stuck in our ways to the point that living separately was better for us than living together. I honestly don’t think we would have lasted if we’d been under one roof.”

Maryse nodded. “I loved him to death, but Daddy was the most difficult man on the face of the earth. Mildred and my mother should both be up for sainthood.”

The waitress stepped up to the table and slid plates in front of them. Jadyn seasoned her eggs and dug in as soon as everyone had a plate. For several seconds, the only sounds coming from the table were of satisfied customers.

“You know,” Jadyn said, “Mudbug may just have the best food I’ve ever eaten.”

Mildred nodded. “I definitely think the catfish are the best here than anywhere else, but there’s a woman in Sinful, a bayou town a little over an hour from here, who makes banana pudding that is so fantastic there are actually city ordinances about it.”

“No lie?” Jadyn tried to imagine what sort of laws could be cultivated around dessert.

“No lie,” Mildred said. “I was visiting a friend one weekend and managed to get a bowl. It was downright heavenly. I tried to coax the recipe out of the café owner, but she said she’s taking it to the grave.”

The bells over the top of the café door jangled and they all looked over to see Colt stroll inside. As he walked toward the counter, he looked their direction and smiled. Jadyn immediately felt heat rush up her face, but as he turned around and she looked across the table at Maryse, she realized the grin may not have been for her benefit. Her cousin looked simply mortified.

“What’s up with you and Colt?” Jadyn asked.

Maryse gave them a guilty look. “I may not have told you guys everything that happened this morning.”

“Why the heck not?” Mildred asked.

“Because the rest was embarrassing,” Maryse said.

“Well now you have to tell us,” Jadyn said.

Maryse sighed and told them about running down the street in her robe, waving a gun.

“Of course,” Maryse continued, “I’m not even thinking about any of that until I see Colt walk out of Big Freddie Pinchot’s house.”

Mildred shook her head. “Big Freddie must be making those UFO sighting calls again. He really should lay off the bottle.”

Jadyn had to laugh. “I wish I’d seen that. What did he do?”

“He stopped short and stared for a couple of seconds,” Maryse said, “then he just hopped in his truck and drove away, cool as a cucumber.”

Mildred gave an approving nod. “Smart, if you ask me.”

“I thought the same thing,” Maryse said.

Jadyn grinned at her cousin, the visual of a gun-toting, robe-wearing Maryse so vivid that she almost felt like she’d seen it herself. “That may be one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.”

Mildred laughed. “Yeah, but if it’s all the same, I hope the good sheriff doesn’t look the other way every time a resident is strolling around in a robe and waving a handgun.”

Jadyn stared. “Is that really a problem?”

“Happens more than you’d think,” Maryse answered.

Jadyn shook her head. Mudbug had to be one of the strangest places she’d ever been. She wasn’t sure what it said about her that it was also the first place she’d felt like she belonged. “Maybe I should buy a new bathrobe…just in case.”

Jadyn knew she shouldn’t have looked, but she couldn’t keep herself from glancing over at the counter. At that exact moment, Colt turned around and their eyes locked. He gave her a wave with his free hand and headed out of the café.

Maryse glanced at Colt as he left and then narrowed her eyes at Jadyn. “I thought you were going to have a run at the sheriff, but so far, you’ve disappointed me.”

“Is that part of the job description?” Jadyn asked “Because if hooking up with the first single man I meet is a requirement, I need to ask for more money.”

Maryse looked over at Mildred and they both grinned.

“Told you,” Maryse said.

Mildred shook her head. “You didn’t tell me nothing I hadn’t already seen. Like you’re some big romantic. Luc practically threw himself across her to get her attention. Man had to save her life to get a date.”

Maryse rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Anyway, technically Colt has already saved Jadyn’s life, or she saved his, or both. That’s all beside the point. The fact of the matter is, they’ve faced death together so now they should take things to the next level.”

Jadyn smiled. “Jumping into bed with someone comes after a near-death experience? Seems a little rushed since I ran into trouble my first day on the job.”

“So you’re an early bloomer,” Maryse said. “Anyway, you’ve already learned how life can be taken away in an instant, so I think you need to get on with things.”

Jadyn picked up her fork and stabbed at her apple pie. She knew her cousin was half joking with her, at least about the requirement for sex after almost dying, but the truth was, Jadyn had done a lot of reflecting after everything that went down in the graveyard with Colt. For every ounce of flamboyance that her mother had, Jadyn had matched it with a conservative one. To the point that for a couple of years now, she’d been almost going through the motions rather than existing in the moment.
 

It was something, she decided, that needed to change, but not by hopping into bed with Colt Bertrand. Although she had to admit, there were worse ways to step outside the box. Still, a relationship wasn’t something Jadyn was ready to navigate. She was already working through a new job, a new town, and new friends and family. A man—even a man as hot as Colt—would only complicate things. They always did.

She was wondering whether to formulate a reply or change the subject when she noticed something moving at the end of the table. Before she could manage anything but pointing, the hand that extended from the wall grabbed Mildred’s pie and pulled it clean through the wall.

“Damn it!” Maryse popped up from the table and everyone in the café stopped eating and stared.

“It’s not stealing if I know you.” Helena’s voice sounded from the outside wall. “It’s borrowing.”

Maryse clenched her fists and for a minute, Jadyn thought she was going to open one of the back windows and vault out after Helena, but Mildred leaned over and grabbed her arm.

“Sit down,” Mildred hissed.

Maryse looked back at the gawking patrons. “Sorry, folks. I just realized I forgot my vitamins.”
 

She sank back into the booth and glared at the wall. “She’s getting worse.”

Jadyn shook her head. “How can taking Mildred’s pie be ‘borrowing’ when she has no ability to pay you back?”

“Oh, she could pay me back,” Mildred said. “She could pay us
all
back by taking a long vacation in another state. But the likelihood of Helena going anywhere that she doesn’t have a captive audience is slim to none.”

“How can she do that, anyway?” Jadyn asked. “I mean, Helena’s not real, per se, but the apple pie was. So how did she pull it through the wall?”

“We don’t really know,” Maryse said. “It’s not like Helena came with a manual. She’s figuring out new things all the time. The problem is, they’re never consistent.”

Mildred nodded. “At the Johnson wedding, she tried to make out of the reception hall with an entire tray of hors d’oeuvres. She made it through the wall just fine, but the tray smacked right into it and dropped to the floor.”

“Made a helluva mess,” Maryse added, “and got a couple of men who saw the whole thing banned from the open bar the rest of the night.”

“I wish I couldn’t see her at all,” Jadyn said. “It’s already a fine balance, knowing what she does and trying to look the other way, but making up plausible explanations for the things she does is likely to get us all branded as crazy.”

“Or arrested for running down the street waving a gun and wearing a bathrobe,” Mildred said.

“There is that,” Maryse agreed. “Let me flag down the waitress and get you another slice of pie.”

“Don’t bother,” Mildred said. “I need to get back to the hotel anyway. I’ll grab a slice to go at the counter on my way out.”

“I need to get going too,” Jadyn said. “I’m trying to map ten new miles of bayou each day until I feel like I know where everything is.”

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Maryse said as she rose from the booth. “One hurricane and it could all change. That’s why the set of maps you have now is worthless.”

Crap. Jadyn hadn’t even thought about the hurricane factor. The weather variances between north and south Louisiana made her job so different.

As Maryse tossed some bills on the table, her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and frowned.

“It’s Luc,” she said.

Mildred climbed out of the booth and watched Maryse closely, a worried look on her face. Jadyn got the impression that a midmorning call from Maryse’s husband was anything but normal.
 

“What happened?” Maryse asked, her voice rushed and an octave higher than usual. “What about Raissa?”

Jadyn glanced over at Mildred, but as soon as Maryse had mentioned Raissa’s name, she’d frozen in place, not even blinking.

Agonizing seconds crept by and the blood drained from Maryse’s face before she disconnected the call. “Luc’s at the hospital. Zach was rushed in an hour ago.”

Mildred sucked in a breath. “What about Raissa?”

Maryse shook her head. “He wouldn’t say. He just said to get down to the hospital.” Maryse pulled her keys from her pocket and dropped them on the floor. She stared at Mildred, her eyes stark with fear. “What if Raissa is dead?”