Trouble in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law, #1)(74)

Maryse looked at Helena and pointed to the backseat. “You can’t sit in the front, Helena. Sabine is not going to drive around town with me in the back like she’s chauffeuring. The key to investigating is to avoid attention, not attract it.”

Maryse guessed the image of two adults and a ghost in a car flitted through Helena’s mind, because she got into the back seat and stopped grumbling. Sabine made the drive to the Lower Mudbug Motel in under twenty minutes and parked across the street in a lot for an all-night diner. Maryse scanned the seedy area with a critical eye and hoped they wouldn’t get jacked for Sabine’s 1992 Nissan Sentra while sitting there, but the only other choices were an X-rated video store or a tattoo parlor.

Helena frowned when Maryse pointed to the motel, but she didn’t say a word as she left the car and walked through the lobby into the dilapidated old building. She returned a couple of minutes later to report that the * was indeed inside with one of his floozies, and not even the same one he’d left in the car at the reading of the will. Maryse’s mind flickered for a moment onto exactly what kind of woman, much less two, took up with someone like Harold Henry, but she didn’t have the time to ponder it now and probably didn’t have the requisite intelligence, or lack thereof, to understand it all.

Their mark established, she pulled out her cell phone and gave Wheeler a call, instructing him to give her five minutes, then make the call to Harold at the motel. She closed the phone and looked at Helena. “You’re on. Maybe this time you’ll get lucky and Harold will be naked.”

Helena glared at her, got out of the car, and stomped all the way to the motel and through the wall. Sabine shook her head and looked over at Maryse. “You know, you really shouldn’t bait her that way. It just frustrates you more.”

“I know, but the woman is impossible. I’m fairly certain that if it turns out either Hank or Harold killed her, a Mud-bug jury would not only let them off, but probably give them a medal.”

Sabine smiled. “I know what you’re saying, I really do, but I’m starting to think that maybe Helena isn’t all that bad. After all, she made sure the town was protected by giving you the land, and she used the money you paid her to pay down your debts.”

“Which, now that you mention it,” Maryse interrupted, “she still hasn’t really explained.”

“And she gave all that stuff to an orphanage,” Sabine continued, ignoring her outburst. “I guess I’m starting to wonder if there wasn’t a purpose behind Helena being a bitch all these years.”

Maryse stared out the windshield at the Lower Mudbug Motel. “Well, if there was, I’m not getting it.”

It seemed to take forever for Helena to return, but it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes before Maryse saw her leap from the second floor and hit the ground with one of those military rolls. She was wearing green camouflage and looked like a rolling bush except for the black smudges glistening under her eyes, which made her resemble a linebacker given her rather dense frame. When her body finally lost all momentum, Helena lay completely still, sprawled on the weedy lawn of the cheap motel, and for a moment, Maryse wondered if it was possible to die twice.

A few seconds later, Harold came hurrying out of the hotel entrance. Maryse and Sabine ducked down in the car, trying to peer over the dashboard. Helena burst into the backseat seconds later, still huffing and puffing from her Rambo acrobatics.

“Where’s he going in such a hurry?” Maryse asked Helena.

“He called Hank as soon as he got off the phone with Wheeler,” Helena replied. “He’s going to meet him now.”

Maryse repeated the information to Sabine, who had already started the car and was inching toward the parking lot exit as Harold left the motel in a late model, rust-covered sedan. “Hang back a little,” Maryse instructed. “I don’t want him to see us.”

“I’m trying,” Sabine said as she pressed down on the accelerator, “but he’s driving like an idiot.”

“He is an idiot,” Helena said.

“Hell,” Maryse said as she peered over the dashboard and watched as Harold pushed the upper limits of the rusty sedan. “We should have had Helena ride with Harold.”

Sabine’s hands were clenched on the steering wheel as she inched her car faster down the highway. Maryse was pretty sure her friend had almost reached her limit of speed and fear when suddenly Harold’s car jerked over to the side of the road and disappeared into the brush. Sabine cut her speed and eased onto the shoulder, then slowly pulled up to the spot where they’d last seen Harold.

A rutted trail overgrown with grass and weeds led into the bayou. Maryse cursed under her breath. “We can’t follow him down there. He’d see us coming for sure, and we have no idea what we’d be running into.”

“We don’t have to follow him,” Helena said. “I know where he’s going.”

Maryse yanked around in her seat to look at Helena. “Where?”

“My family had a camp off this trail,” Helena said. “Harold told me years ago that it had fallen in such disrepair that it wasn’t habitable.”

“And you never checked?”

Helena looked at Maryse as if she’d lost her mind. “Tromp around in the bayou? No thanks. Not all of us have your higher aspirations, Maryse. And I damned sure don’t cotton to running into snakes or alligators or even bugs.”