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

by Jana DeLeon

  “They didn’t find the remains,” Taylor finished.

  Sophia sniffed again and shook her head. “Before the firemen could even get the fire out, it started raining—one of those downpours that southern Louisiana is famous for—and a lot of the debris washed into the bayou. They searched the wreckage and the bayou for days, but never came up with anything concrete.”

  “Except that neither man returned home.”

  “No.”

  “So what do you think I can find, all these years later, that the firemen didn’t discover during their investigation? My chance of locating something containing DNA almost thirty years later is practically nil.”

  Sophia’s eyes widened and she sat forward in her chair. “But that’s just it—I’m not sure he’s dead.”

  Taylor stared at her for a couple of seconds, trying to make the same leap, but couldn’t quite get there. “Let’s just assume he could have lived through the explosion. Why didn’t he come home? And where has he been the last thirty years?”

  Sophia nodded, beginning to look a bit excited. “I saw this special on television, about people who’d been in horrible accidents and wandered away. Everyone thought they were dead, so no missing persons reports were filed. They were all rescued by Good Samaritans and nursed back to health, but not a single one of them knew who they were.”

  “Amnesia?”

  She nodded. “A couple of them started to remember as time passed, but several never remembered a single thing about their previous life. In every case, it was a chance meeting with someone who knew them before that exposed the truth.”

  Taylor leaned forward, trying to keep up with Sophia’s leaps. “And someone who knew Sammy before saw him recently?”

  Sophia beamed. “I think so. My friend Norma was doing some work with one of the local literacy organizations, delivering donated books to children in the villages southwest of here. She said she saw a man on a shrimp boat that was the spitting image of my Sammy. Only older, of course.”

  Taylor sat back in her chair and tapped her pen on the desk, not sure how to proceed without completely dashing the woman’s hopes and not sure she had the tissues to handle it if she did.

  “I can understand why you’d want to believe that Sammy somehow managed to live through the explosion,” Taylor said, “but none of us have any way of knowing what Sammy would look like today. It’s far more likely the man your friend saw reminded her of Sammy but he was someone completely different.”

  “I’m well aware of how crazy this sounds. It’s exactly why I didn’t go straight to one of the big detective agencies. People talk, and the last thing I need is rumors circulating that I’ve lost the plot. I’m the CEO of Lambert Enterprises now. I can’t afford loose talk. The board of directors is just looking for a chance to get me out and anyone with a penis in. Sorry for the crassness of the statement.”

  Aha, Taylor thought. Sophia’s seemingly odd choice now made perfect sense. “No, that’s all right. I’ve been left behind in the penis wars a couple of times myself. I know what you’re up against.”

  She stared out the window, considering Sophia’s story. She didn’t think for a moment that Sammy was still alive, but if Sophia wanted her to make sure, what did it hurt? She could definitely use the business and if she did a good job, and Sophia wasn’t too disappointed, she might get some clients out of the deal.

  Suddenly, a thought occurred to her and she looked back at Sophia. “Did you remarry?” If the one in a million chance happened to pan out and Sammy was still alive, Taylor couldn’t help but wonder if there was a Mr. Sophia in the picture who wouldn’t be nearly as happy with the news.

  Sophia looked down at her hands and twisted a large diamond around her ring finger. “I came close a couple of times, but it wasn’t right. No one’s ever been right since my Sammy.”

  The forlorn look on Sophia’s face tugged a bit on Taylor’s heart. She always tried to keep her personal feelings out of her work, but the thought of Sophia pining for Sammy for almost three decades was the sort of thing made-for-TV movies were written about.

  “I can pay extra,” Sophia said. “Double whatever you normally charge.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ll take your case, Ms. Lambert, but only if you understand a couple of things—one, shrimpers usually cover a wide area depending on where the product is, so despite the fact that your friend saw this man on a specific dock, he could live miles away. It could take a lot of hours to locate him, if I can locate him at all.”

  “The money isn’t the issue, and I understand the vastness of the task.”

  Taylor wondered if someone like Sophia Lambert ever really accepted failure in others to provide them with what they wanted, but as long as she paid her bill, Taylor was willing to deal with some dramatics when things didn’t turn out the way Sophia wanted.

  “Two,” Taylor continued, “if I find this man, and by some miracle he turns out to be Sammy, I can’t force him to meet with you. I will provide you with a means to locate him, but I can’t make him engage.”

  “Of course you can’t.”

  Taylor pulled out a contract and jotted down her hourly rate and a deposit. “Then I think you’ve found your detective,” she said and pushed the paper across the desk. “I’ll need the deposit to get started. I’ll provide you a report every three days along with an itemized list of hours and expenses, unless I find something sooner.”

  Sophia didn’t even glance at the contract before signing and pulling out her wallet. “I hope cash is okay. I don’t want anyone to know…”

  “Cash is fine. Do you want a receipt?”

  “No. I trust you.”

  “Great. Then the only other thing I need from you is a picture of Sammy. I can have someone age it. It’s not an exact science, but it gives me a little something to go on.”

  Sophia perked up. “Oh, I forgot to tell you.” She reached down and picked up a manila envelope that she’d brought in with her. Carefully, she pulled a sheet of paper out of the envelope and handed it to Taylor. “My friend is a somewhat famous artist. She’s even been commissioned to paint royalty. She drew the man she saw.”

  Taylor only had to glance at the drawing to know just how good the artist was. Every line, every tiny detail was so perfectly depicted that it looked almost like a black-and-white photograph. If Sophia’s friend was as accurate with the details as she was talented with her drawing, then this picture should be easily recognized by anyone who knew the man from the dock.

  “Let me make a copy,” Taylor said. “You’ll probably want to keep the original…at least for now.”

  Sophia looked relieved. “Yes, that would be great.”

  Taylor made the copy and handed the drawing back to Sophia, who rose from her chair and held out her hand. “I really appreciate you taking this case,” Sophia said. “I know it’s going to be a long, boring job that probably won’t lead to anything, but if I didn’t try…”

  Taylor shook her hand. “I understand. I’m going to get you answers. Not knowing is always worse.” A fact that Taylor understood all too well.

  “Yes, it is. I look forward to your reports.” She gathered her purse and exited the office.

  Taylor watched as she walked past the front window on the sidewalk. She’d implied that she’d taken the case in order to give Sophia closure, but that wasn’t really the case. The reality was that something about Sophia and her story set off a tingling feeling in the bottom of her belly. A feeling that she’d learned the hard way not to ignore.

  Something important was going to happen, and this case was the beginning of it.

  ###

  Jadyn was just about to climb into her Jeep when she heard Helena’s voice behind her.

  “I can’t believe you gave the popcorn back to that woman,” she complained.

  Jadyn glanced around to make sure no one was standing close enough to hear and pointed to the passenger’s seat. “Get in. I’m not going to stand around Main Street tal
king to thin air.”

  “I’m not thin air.”

  “Don’t I know it, but since no one else can see you, that’s exactly what it would look like I’m doing. In the Jeep. Now. I need to talk to you.”

  “Fine, fine. Jesus, you’re getting as bitchy as Maryse and Mildred.”

  “I wonder why.”

  Helena rolled her eyes and hefted herself into the passenger’s seat. Jadyn backed up and pulled away. As soon as they’d driven out of downtown and were on the vacant highway, Jadyn looked over at Helena.

  “I’ve seen you do some pretty bad things, and heard about even worse, but stealing food from a child is an all-time low.”

  “It was just popcorn. She could have bought him another.”

  “You heard that woman. That popcorn was probably the nicest thing she’s done for that boy in the past year.”

  Helena’s belligerent expression shifted to a slightly guilty one. “Okay, so maybe it was mean. But that’s not why I did it. I just really love popcorn, and I wanted something to eat while I watched the fight.”

  “I’m glad you brought that up. Let’s talk about the fight.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh is right. What did you do?”

  “How come you always assume I had something to do with it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you always do?”

  Helena huffed but didn’t have the grounds to argue. “Can I help it if the people in this town make me so angry I want to slap them? I suppose I could have popped both those old biddies in the mouth with a wet towel, but wouldn’t that have been a bigger problem?”

  “Even if you were alive and visible, you can’t just go around popping people in the mouth because you don’t like something they say. Otherwise, you’d spend an enormous amount of time hitting people and then even longer sitting in jail.”

  Jadyn knew everything she said was probably going in one ear and out the other, but she felt a little guilty that she’d been the one to send Helena to the beauty shop in the first place. And now, God help her, she really wanted to know what the women said that set Helena off.

  “What did they say?” she asked finally.

  Helena was staring straight out the windshield, arms across her chest, and wearing her almost permanent pout.

  “Helena?” Jadyn said.

  “What? Oh, they were talking crap. Maryse came out of the hotel and walked past the shop. Millicent said as how she didn’t know what a man as handsome as Luc saw in a tomboy like Maryse. Said it looked like she cut her hair with nail clippers.”

  The implication that Maryse wasn’t good enough for Luc definitely got Jadyn’s back up, but as she’d watched Maryse do exactly what Millicent suggested just last week, she couldn’t work up indignation over the hair comment.

  “Okay,” Jadyn said, “I agree that was rude and would have made me mad too.”

  “Oh, it didn’t stop there. The other bitch said apparently you’d gotten all the looks in the family but it didn’t do any good as you seemed content to tromp around the bayou in men’s clothes and wear your hair in a ponytail like a six-year-old.”

  “Blue jeans are men’s clothes? Since when?”

  “Since forever if you ask some of the idiots who live here. Anyway, then Millicent said as how she’d offered you a discount for a cut and style but you’d turned her down. The other idiot said bad taste must run in the family and they both laughed like hyenas.”

  “So what did you do exactly?”

  “I emptied the bottle of hair dye that Millicent normally uses and refilled it with the purple-tinted one. They both look white coming out of the bottle.”

  Jadyn struggled to remain irritated, but after what Helena had told her, it was hard. “What they said was bitchy and rude. And if I’d heard it, I would have told them off. I get that you don’t have that option, but when you do things like this, it could cause trouble for Colt. People will think he can’t control the town, especially with everything that’s happened lately. There’s an election coming up…”

  Helena’s eyes widened. “Crap. It would be just like that narrow-minded bunch of sheep to vote him out over things he couldn’t control.” She sighed. “I’ll try harder. I swear, I held off as long as I could, but bad-mouthing you and Maryse is a surefire way to put me in the red.”

  “Maryse and I can take care of ourselves.”

  “Maybe so, but I don’t have many people left on this earth that I can talk to. If anyone is going to hurl insults about the two of you, then by God, it’s going to be me.”

  Jadyn sighed. Just when she thought she was making progress, the ghost brought her back down to reality.

  “Now that we got that settled,” Helena said, “where are we going?”

  “We’re going to visit some shrimp houses in nearby villages and see if we can get an identity for our boat captain.”

  Helena immediately perked up, convincing Jadyn even more that she’d been correct when she made that boredom call. “Cool!” Helena said. “I love a good mystery. What do I get to do?”

  “You are going to be my eyes and ears after the fact,” Jadyn said, the idea just occurring to her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When law enforcement asks people questions, they don’t tell the truth a lot of times. Sometimes it’s because they are covering for somebody, sometimes it’s because they don’t want me to accidentally discover something else they’re involved in, and sometimes it’s simply because they don’t want to be involved with the law no matter the cause.”

  “But where do I come in?”

  “When I finish questioning people, you stay behind and see what happens. Maybe they talk to someone else in the room. Maybe they make a phone call. Then you report back to me and I try to decide if it has something to do with my case or not.”

  “That’s a smart idea. I used to always talk about people once they’d left the room.”

  Jadyn looked over at the ghost. “You don’t say?”

  Helena waved a hand in dismissal. “Whatever. Come talk to me when you’ve lived here a year and tell me you don’t talk about people behind their back. I’ll wait.”

  Jadyn didn’t even want to think about dealing with Helena for another year, at least not as she was doing now. If the ghost wouldn’t or couldn’t leave earth for her otherworldly home, then things were going to have to change. Already Luc had offered Maryse a transfer to anywhere in the country. After her kidnapping, Raissa had resigned from her position with the FBI and was dead set on going back to college for interior design, claiming she’d never heard of draperies killing someone. Zach had also resigned and had opened a business specializing in security systems in New Orleans. They were already looking for a townhome in the Garden District.

  Granted, Jadyn would be shocked if Maryse ever agreed to leave Mudbug. Mildred was here, as was her work. And Sabine was perfectly happy with her cabin in the swamp and her business on Main Street and more than happy with her husband, Beau, who seemed as content as his wife. But the strain of covering Helena’s shenanigans was starting to show on all of them, especially Maryse and Mildred.

  “What’s with the boots?” Jadyn asked, forcing her mind to shift from a depressing subject to something that didn’t matter.

  “I tried switching to tennis shoes to steal the popcorn but something went wrong. Now I can’t get my slippers back.”

  “Probably just as well, since we’re going to shrimp houses. The boots will have better grip. I don’t suppose you’d consider changing the outfit to something more appropriate for the boots?”

  “No way. Pajamas are my new uniform. I can’t believe I never knew how comfortable they are.”

  The question of what Helena wore before to sleep in hovered on the tip of Jadyn’s tongue, but her fear of the answer kept her from voicing it. She turned the Jeep into a parking lot and pulled up in front of the first shrimp house on her list.

  “Here’s hoping this is quick and easy,” she said.r />
  “That would be a first,” Helena said.

  Unfortunately, Helena’s prediction turned out to be true. They covered three shrimp houses without so much as a nibble—before or after Jadyn left. No one had heard rumor of a missing fisherman and no one changed their story after Jadyn left the building. Some mused over what might have happened to the boat captain, but according to Helena, no one seemed interested beyond basic curiosity.

  “How many more are on the list?” Helena asked.

  “I have six and Colt has five. He took the ones farther out, so it evened out better to give him one less.”

  Helena nodded. “That boat didn’t materialize from thin air. Someone’s got to know who it belonged to.”

  Jadyn turned onto the road leading to the fourth shrimp house on her list. “Colt said this shrimp house is one of the biggest in the area. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  She pulled up in front of the building and parked, then headed inside. The front doors opened to a warehouse area with boat slips leading inside and unloading areas on each side of them. Two of the slips were occupied by fishermen, unloading ice chests full of fish onto the dock. The fishermen and the dock workers gave her curious looks as she walked toward the office in the corner of the building, but at least they managed to hold off the catcalls that she’d received at the last three stops.

  Inside the office, two beefy men in their midfifties stood behind a desk, both their faces flushed slightly red. Their heads jerked around when Jadyn tapped on the door and poked her head inside.

  “We’re busy right now,” one of the men said, shooting her a dirty look. “Come back later.”

  She pulled out her identification and flashed it at them. “I’m busy too. Jadyn St. James,” she said and extended her hand.

  The surly guy’s eyes widened as he shook her hand. “Game warden? I’m Peter Vincent.” He pointed to the other man. “This is my brother Bobby.”

  “Everything about our place is up to code,” Bobby said as he shook her hand. “Take a look around if you don’t believe me.”