Luc watched as Maryse headed up the bayou in her boat, wondering what in the world was going on with that woman. He’d stepped right in the middle of something strange and for the life of him couldn’t figure out what.
He’d followed after she left the office, the GPS he’d installed on her boat made finding her among the hundreds of bayous an easy task. But when he’d initially arrived at the location the equipment had specified, he wondered if there had been a malfunction. Her boat was nowhere in sight, even though the tiny gray monitor clearly showed a blinking red light not fifty yards in front of him.
Then the alarm sirens had gone off, and seconds later, he’d spotted Maryse running along a group of dense hedges, away from the house with the sounding alarm. He glanced down at the bank and saw a tiny tip of her boat peeking out from the cattails, suddenly realizing why she’d shown on the equipment but not to the bare eye.
She’d made a leap into her boat from the bank that Indiana Jones would have been proud of, and it probably explained the injury to her knee, but it didn’t explain why a seemingly rational woman would break into a house in broad daylight. Before she could catch him spying, he’d hustled around the corner and anchored directly in her flight path.
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and pressed in a number. His buddy and fellow agent answered almost immediately.
“LeJeune here. Brian, I need you to check on something for me.”
“Go ahead,” Brian said.
“There’s a house in downtown Mudbug along the bayou where an alarm just went off. The police responded, so I know the alarm system is linked to an outside provider. I need to know who owns that house.”
Luc heard tapping and knew Brian was working his magic on the computer. It took less than a minute to get the answer.
“The house belongs to a Helena Henry,” Brian said. “You want me to pursue anything further?”
“No,” Luc said. “That’s it for now. Thanks.” He flipped the phone shut and shoved it in his pocket.
Maryse had just broken into her dead mother-in-law’s house. He was certain. And even though it probably had nothing to do with his case, he couldn’t help wondering what the woman had gotten into. The information on Maryse from the DEQ research department didn’t allude to anything remotely dangerous or illegal. Truth be told, on paper she was probably the most boring human being he’d ever read about. In person, well, in person obviously things were a bit different.
Luc smiled. He couldn’t wait to find out why.
Fifteen minutes after she’d risked a criminal record, Maryse docked her boat and left the office before Luc could show up and start in with any more embarrassing questions. It was fast approaching supper time, and since she’d completely forgotten lunch, Maryse was on the verge of starving. She had thirty minutes to snag a clean pair of jeans and make the drive into Mudbug. Sabine would just be closing up shop for the day, so the two of them could grab some burgers, and Maryse could fill Sabine in on her ridiculous day.
She made the drive in twenty minutes flat, which was fast even for her. But then, being haunted tended to create a sense of urgency. As she parked her rental in front of one of the restored historical buildings along Main Street, she spotted Sabine through the plate-glass window of her shop, Read ’em and Reap. She was dressed to the hilt in her psychic getup—a floor-length, midnight-blue robe with stars and moons on it and a matching head wrap with a huge fake sapphire in the center. Her long earrings and dozens of bracelets glinted in the sunlight. With her jet black hair—dyed, of course—and black nails and lipstick, the picture was complete. And completely frightening.
Maryse smiled for a moment, unable to help herself. From the outside, two more different people had never been made than she and Sabine, and she was certain that more than a few Mudbug residents wondered how in the world they had ever become such close friends. But then people in Mudbug could sometimes be a little obtuse.
Those two poor little girls with no mothers. Maryse could still remember overhearing her first-grade teacher saying that to the principal their first day of school. They were different from the other kids and knew it. And Sabine didn’t even have a father, just an aging aunt who had taken her in but couldn’t tell her much if anything about her parents.
Now they were both short two parents. Sabine’s parents from a car accident when Sabine was still a baby, and Maryse’s parents lost to cancer.
Maryse frowned and tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. She hated being pitied and had felt the difference in the attitudes of the teachers and other kids even then. As much as Maryse missed her parents, and Sabine wanted to know something about her own, neither of them wanted the pity of people who would never understand. Pity was for those who couldn’t do anything about it. She and Sabine had spent their lives trying to fill those gaps, and damn it, one day the holes their parents left were going to be filled.
Sabine’s tarot cards were fanned out before a distraught, middle-aged, overweight woman with more jewelry than Sabine and hair that was entirely too big. There was a shiny-new, white Cadillac Deville parked in front of Sabine’s building, so Maryse figured she better wait a minute until Sabine delivered the happy news to whatever rich idiot was currently seeking her “professional” advice.
Immediately, Maryse chastised herself for judging others and their beliefs. She’d always been the typical scientist, not believing in anything she couldn’t put her hands on, and now she had a ghost stalking her. It had taken her years to buy into the unnatural ability of Raissa, Sabine’s mentor, but the other psychic had been right about so many things that even Maryse had to admit Raissa had talents that couldn’t be explained. God had been the only exception to her self-imposed rule of proof, and she still wondered whether if she hadn’t been raised in the church she would have questioned His existence as well.
And despite all that, here she was—smack in the middle of a paranormal nightmare. She was about to tell her best friend, who believed in the existence of damned near anything, that Helena Henry was haunting her. For Sabine, who’d been trying to convince her of the supernatural since the first grade, this moment would be beyond value—just like one of those stupid commercials.
One lost tarot reading for closing the shop early—$15.
Three glasses of wine and a burger at Johnny’s—$20.
Hearing your best friend, aka The Disbeliever, say she’s
being haunted by a ghost—Priceless.
She shook her head and sighed, feeling so far out of her element it wasn’t even funny. About that time, Cadillac Woman broke into smiles, and Maryse figured Sabine had wrapped up the good news. She hopped out of her rental and started across the street before she could change her mind.