Mischief in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law, #2)(12)

“Yeah,” Maryse agreed, “but not exactly what I was shooting for. Don’t worry about the mess. I’ll pick it up later.”

Sabine started to move, but then something within the scattered hats and ancient purses caught her eye. She leaned over a bit, straining to focus in the dim light.

“What is it?” Maryse asked.

“There’s something in the bottom of the trunk.” Sabine knelt and reached inside the trunk for the object. It felt like paper wedged into the bottom of the trunk. Sabine gently worked the paper from side to side, careful not to tear it. Finally, it came loose and she pulled it out.

Maryse leaned over to see. “It’s a diary page. See the date at the top? She’s talking about the crop prices dropping.”

“A diary? My aunt didn’t keep a diary.”

“That you know of,” Helena pointed out. “It’s a generational thing. Lots of women kept diaries during the Vietnam conflict. All the men going off and us left here to manage. Some took comfort in writing it all down.”

“Did you keep a diary?” Sabine asked.

“Hell, no,” Helena said. “Put all your feelings down on paper just so someone can get a hold of it later and pass judgment? I don’t think so. I was damned happy when Harold went off to serve…not so happy that he came back. How would that look to people if I’d written all that down?”

“If they knew Harold, it would look really smart,” Sabine pointed out.

Maryse leaned over and peered into the trunk. “Is there more? I mean there can’t be only one sheet. And how did it get wedged in the bottom? I thought it was solid.”

“Good question,” Sabine said. She stuck her hand into the trunk and slid one long fingernail into a gap between the bottom and the side. “There’s a false bottom. It must have come loose when I fell. Let me see if I can work it out.” She stuck another fingernail in the gap and gently pulled on the bottom. It held firm for a moment, then broke loose from the sides of the trunk. A stack of journals fell out on top of it.

“Holy crap!” Maryse said.

Sabine stared at the books. “I can’t believe it. All those years and I never knew she kept a diary. But why would she hide them like this? Why not tell me before she died?”

Maryse shook her head. “I don’t know. But I think we ought to take them all downstairs and find out.” She picked up one of the journals and flipped through the hundreds of pages of handwritten text. “It may be, Sabine, that your aunt knew more about your family than she admitted.”

Sabine nodded and started to gather up the journals. She’d already had the same thought. It was the next thought that worried her. If her aunt knew something about Sabine’s family, why had she hidden it from her all these years?


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Late that night, Sabine grabbed a bottled water and two more aspirin from the kitchen, then crawled into bed with the book she’d been trying to finish for two weeks. It had been a long and exhausting day, what with the break-in, the absolutely useless time spent with the local police, and then the trip to the hospital that Maryse had insisted on to check out her head. She’d tried to nap that afternoon with limited success and had instead spent a good portion of the time scanning through some of her aunt’s journals. Unfortunately, she hadn’t found anything of relevance, but the logical, systematic way her aunt had documented such a volatile time in history made Sabine think that had her aunt been born in a different era, she would have made a great scientist, or maybe even a detective.

She propped herself up with a stack of fluffy pillows and snuggled into the pale pink sheets and comforter, figuring she had twenty minutes tops before sleep caught up with her. She opened the book and started at the marked spot. The hero had just saved the heroine from a killer and his arms were still wrapped around her. A fleeting image of Beau Villeneuve clutching Sabine and moving in for a kiss flashed through her mind. Where the hell had that come from? She lifted her water and took a sip. Like she needed a roadmap to answer that question. Beau Villeneuve was quite frankly the best-looking man she’d come into contact with in…well…forever.

And she couldn’t have met him at a worse time.

Sabine was pretty sure he didn’t buy into the psychic connection, but she might have still made a run at him had her situation been less complicated. She set her book on the nightstand and sighed. Who are you kidding? You’ve never made a slow stroll at a man, much less a run. Twenty-eight years in Mudbug, Louisiana, and she’d spent most of her time trying to talk to dead people instead of the living. And then when she finally got the opportunity to talk to the dead, she was saddled with Helena Henry. Not exactly what she’d had in mind.

Beau Villeneuve was just another piece to the puzzle that wasn’t going to ever form a clear picture. Sitting across from him in the café, she’d felt a tug that she’d never felt before…a desire to know this man, inside and out. But with her life hanging in the balance, the last thing Sabine was going to do was complicate an already impossible situation by developing feelings for a man she might not be around to see grow old. It wasn’t fair…not to her and especially not to him. She turned off the lamp and lay down, hoping she dreamed about anything besides death, ghosts, family, and the good-looking man who would never know she was interested.

It felt like she’d barely fallen asleep when Sabine bolted upright in her bed, her pulse racing. There was noise downstairs in her shop. She glanced at the alarm clock and saw it was just after midnight. Much, much too late for anyone to need anything legitimate. And with the attempted break-in that morning, she wasn’t about to take any chances. She eased out of bed and pulled open her nightstand drawer. Within easy reach and already loaded rested the nine millimeter she’d purchased years before.