Chapter Six
As Maryse stepped inside Read ’em and Reap, Sabine looked up in obvious surprise.
“Maryse, is everything all right? What in the world happened to your head?” Sabine jumped up from her chair and rushed over to inspect Maryse’s forehead.
“I wrecked my truck this morning.” She held up a hand to stop the barrage that was about to ensue. “I’ve already been to the doctor, and I’m fine. It’s just a bump and a hellacious headache. A couple of uneventful days and I should be good as new.” Of course, she had a ghost of a chance at stringing together a couple of uneventful days. Literally.
Sabine stared at her for a moment, then narrowed her eyes. “Something’s wrong.”
“Of course something’s wrong. This whole day was wrong.”
Sabine shook her head. “I know that look.”
“What look?” Maryse was already having second thoughts about telling Sabine about Helena. What if Sabine thought she was crazy? What if she was crazy?
“That ‘I don’t want to discuss it’ look that you always get when you need help and don’t want to ask.” Sabine paused for a moment. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but did Hank show up for the reading?”
Maryse sighed. “I should have known I couldn’t hide anything from you. But I don’t want to talk here. I can’t drink taking the pain medication, but I was thinking a burger and a painkiller might loosen me up enough for the subject I need to cover.”
Sabine nodded. “Let me lock up and shed the robes. I’ll meet you at Johnny’s in a few.” She grabbed a set of keys off her desk. “Get the corner table.”
“Sure.” Maryse headed out of the shop and into the hot, humid Louisiana evening. The sun was still beating down on the concrete, heat vapors rising from the street. The smell of boiled crawfish from Carolyn’s Cajun Kitchen down the block filled the air and made her remember that it had been forever since breakfast.
She hesitated for a moment as she crossed the street to Johnny’s bar, wondering again if she was making the right decision. If she told Sabine about Helena’s ghost, she was leaving herself wide open for lectures on all kinds of unexplained phenomena—Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs. She wasn’t sure she was ready for a lifetime of hassle.
She bit her lower lip and cast a nervous glance back at Read ’em and Reap. On the flip side, there was the one huge advantage of letting her friend in on it—Sabine knew darn near everything about the supernatural, and anything she didn’t know, she could find out. If anyone could make Helena go away, it would be Sabine. And getting rid of Helena was the number one priority, even if it meant going to near-death-experience meetings or looking at those blurred photos of God-knows-what that Sabine was always trying to push off on her as real.
Seeing no better alternative, she pushed open the door and entered the bar. A couple of fishermen sat at the old driftwood bar and waved a hand in acknowledgment when she walked in. Other than that, the place was empty. She made her way to the table in a dim corner, far from the bar, and took a seat. The owner and chief bartender, appropriately named Johnny, shuffled over to her a minute or so later.
“Sorry to hear about your mother-in-law,” he said, brushing aside a stray strand of thinning, silver hair from his forehead.
“Really?” Maryse stared at him.
Johnny fidgeted for a moment, then gave her a grin. “Well, hell no, actually, but ‘sorry’ sounds a lot more polite. Did Hank show up for the funeral?”
“Not a chance. I figure he won’t come around until he gets the money to pay off the local law enforcement.”
Johnny nodded. “Sounds about right. I swear to God, that has got to be the most useless human being ever produced.” He gave her an apologetic look. “Sorry, I know you married him and all.”
She waved one hand in dismissal. “You haven’t offended me. I was young and stupid. I don’t blame myself for being taken in by Hank Henry. I’m certainly not the only one who was.”
“That’s for sure. I think he owed damned near everyone in town before he skipped out.”
No shit. “Yeah, that’s what I hear.” It was all she could say about the situation without exploding.
“Well, what’re you drinkin’?” Fortunately, Johnny saved her from dwelling on all Hank’s debts.
“Could I get a club soda and a glass of white zin for Sabine? She’ll be here in a minute.”
Johnny nodded and clasped her shoulder with one hand. “You let me know if you need anything, okay? I promised your daddy I’d look after you, and I intend to keep that promise.” He gave her a grin. “Can’t have the old bastard coming back to haunt me, can I?”
Maryse gave him a weak smile. “Guess not,” she managed as Johnny shuffled back to the bar to get the drinks.
Given a choice between Helena Henry and her dad, she’d have taken the “old bastard” any day. He’d been as hard as every other commercial fisherman in Mudbug and hadn’t given an inch on anything, but at least he’d been honest and fair.
It couldn’t have been easy on him, raising a girl on his own after her mother died, but he’d done the best he could, and she didn’t think she’d turned out too bad. Except for the major slip of marrying Hank, she had a pretty good track record. And let’s face it, if her dad hadn’t come back from the dead to stop that wedding, she was pretty sure he wasn’t ever returning.
Clenching her fists in frustration, she mentally cursed Hank Henry for about the hundredth time that day. If he hadn’t got a hold of her at the absolute lowest point in her life—just after her dad had passed—would she have fallen for his act?
She liked to believe the answer was no, but the reality was that Hank Henry had charmed the pants off darn near every girl in town at some time or another. But none of them had been stupid enough to marry him. She frowned at her shortsightedness and shook her head as Sabine slid into the chair across from her, the bracelets on her arm clinking together like wind chimes.
“Did you order drinks already?” Sabine asked and brushed the bangs from her eyes.
“Yeah, I got you a glass of wine.”
Sabine gave her a grateful look. “Thanks. It’s been one of those weeks.”
Maryse smiled. Oh yeah, honey. Wait until you hear about my week. Yours has to look better after that. “I haven’t had the best week myself. In fact, that’s what I wanted to talk with you about.”
“I was worried when I didn’t hear from you this afternoon,” Sabine said, “but then I didn’t really know how long the will-reading would take. Is that the problem…something to do with Helena’s will?”
“Sorta.” Maryse inclined her head toward Johnny, who was on his way across the bar with a tray of drinks, and Sabine nodded in understanding. She waited until Johnny had delivered the drinks, did his old-man flirting routine with Sabine, and shuffled back behind the bar before she got down to business.
“Hank didn’t show, but the reading was very interesting,” Maryse said and proceeded to tell Sabine all the events of the morning, from her truck wreck to the list of equipment she was going to buy with her lease money.
Sabine hung on every word, laughing at some points and gasping at others. “Good Lord!” Sabine said when Maryse finished her tale. “What a day. Makes my entire life look simple and boring.”
“And that’s not all. In fact, as screwed up as all that is, that’s not even what’s really worrying me.”
Sabine stared. “You’re kidding me. There’s more?”
Maryse took a deep breath and pushed forward. “This is going to sound ridiculous, but I have to ask you a question. And I need you to answer me in all seriousness.”
“Wow. This must be heavy. You know I’d never hedge things with you, Maryse. Ask me whatever you need to. I’ll give you an honest answer.”
Maryse studied her friend for a moment. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “I need to know why a ghost would appear to someone when other people can’t see it.”
Sabine stared at her for a moment, then slowly blinked.
“Well, based on everything I’ve ever read or heard about, unless you’re a conduit, a ghost will appear if you have something to do with them.”
“A conduit—you mean like that kid in The Sixth Sense?”
“Exactly. Conduits are able to see a lot of ghosts, even if they’ve never met them before.”
“Okay. So if someone sees a ghost and they’re not a conduit, why would the ghost appear to them?”
Sabine scrunched her brow and gave her a hard look. Maryse gave her friend points for not reaching across the table to take her temperature. This had to be the very last thing Sabine would have expected from her.
Finally, Sabine cleared her throat and continued. “The commonly accepted theory on hauntings is that unless the ghost is stuck in a certain place, like a house or something, it’s out walking about because of unfinished business or because it doesn’t know it’s dead.”
“Unfinished business—like a murder?”
Sabine’s eyes widened. “Certainly being murdered might cause someone’s essence to stick around this world. Justice is a very powerful emotion. It sometimes overrides even death.”
Maryse nodded and considered everything for a moment. “So how does the ghost pick who it will appear to?”
Sabine shook her head, a puzzled expression on her face. “I don’t think the ghost has any say. I think it’s visible to someone who’s supposed to help and that’s it. If the ghost got to pick, then it would just appear to whoever killed it and slowly drive the murderer off the deep end. It couldn’t be much fun being hounded by a ghost.”
Maryse nodded. You think?
Sabine reached across the table and placed her hand on Maryse’s. “Where is all this going, exactly? This kind of stuff is so far beyond your usual fare that you’re really starting to worry me. I mean, first you want to attend that horrible woman’s funeral, then that weird inheritance, and now this?”
Before she could change her mind, Maryse leaned forward and looked Sabine straight in the eyes. “What would you say if I told you that I’ve seen Helena Henry—walking, talking, and still very dead?”
Sabine stared at her for a moment, obviously waiting for the punch line. When one never came, she removed her hand from Maryse’s, completely drained her wineglass and sat it back on the table, her hands shaking slightly. “Helena Henry appeared to you?”
Maryse nodded and told her all about her first sighting of Helena at the funeral and her subsequent visit to her cabin, then the disastrous will reading. She left off the breaking and entering part of her day. Sabine already had enough to absorb.
“Murdered?” Sabine sat up straight as she finished her tall tale.
“That’s what she says.”
Sabine inclined her head and tapped a long, black nail on the table. “Well, if she says it’s so, it probably is. I mean, what would be the point of lying now? Besides, if she’s still hanging around, then there’s obviously a problem.”
“That’s great to know and all, and very unfortunate for Helena, but why do I have to be involved in this? Why me?”
Sabine gave her a small smile. “Hardly seems fair, right? The most horrible human being you’ve encountered in your entire life, and now she shows up after death. What are the odds?”
“I don’t even want to know. I just want to get rid of her.”
Sabine turned her palms up and shrugged. “I don’t think you can get rid of her until you figure out who killed her. It sounds like that’s the problem.”
“But I don’t care who killed her.”
Sabine shook her head and gave her a sad look. “That’s not true, and you know it. You’re the fairest person I know. Don’t tell me it doesn’t bother you that Helena was murdered. I’m not buying it.”
“Unbelievable. I barely tolerate the living and now I have to be associated with the dead?” Maryse sighed and slumped back in her chair. “Okay, so maybe the fact that she was murdered bothers me…a little. But what am I supposed to do about it? I’m not the police. I’m a botanist. Studying plants does not exactly equip one to solve a murder.”
“I don’t think you were selected because of your crime-solving skills,” Sabine said, her expression thoughtful.
“Then why would the forces of the universe select me at all?”
“I don’t know. But you must be tied into everything. Maybe it’s something to do with the game preserve.”
Maryse groaned. “Are you sure?” This just kept sounding worse.
“I don’t see any other explanation. Maybe the next time you see Helena, you ought to ask her.”
“Yeah, right, like she’s been forthcoming so far,” Maryse said. “Besides, Helena was as shocked as I was that I could see her. I’m sure of that. So if she’s visible to me for a reason, why didn’t she say so?”
Sabine narrowed her eyes. “Helena may not have expected your ability to see her, but she knows good and well what she’s gotten you into. There’s something she’s not telling you, and you can bet if it involves Helena Henry, it’s not going to be pretty.”