Her one foolish dream.
“Something wrong with you?” Mildred asked as she entered the hotel office, completely cutting into her thoughts of a royal romp.
Maryse frowned. A shorter list would probably be what wasn’t wrong. “Nothing more than the usual.” And a videotaped orgasm with a lying DEQ agent.
Mildred stared, not looking in the least bit convinced. Time for a distraction.
“Any luck locating Harold?” Maryse asked.
“Yep. Sara Belle down at the salon says she’s almost positive she saw Harold unloading a suitcase at that fleabag motel on the outskirts of town.”
Maryse groaned and slapped her forehead. “Helena left him that motel. Why didn’t I think of that?” And even more, why didn’t Helena think of that? Did she have to do all the work here?
Mildred narrowed her eyes at Maryse. “You’re not thinking of tailing Harold, are you? ’Cause I don’t have enough savings to post bail for murder. I don’t want you anywhere near Hank Henry unless the police are involved. With guns. And Mace. Lots of Mace. And maybe one of those electric rods that makes you stupid senseless when it touches you.”
“A stun gun,” Maryse provided, although it was pointless information. Hank was already stupid senseless. Being jolted with fifty thousand or so volts of electricity might even make for an improvement. And if not, it would certainly make for a good show. “I’m not going to tail Harold,” Maryse assured her. “I’ll have someone else do it. Someone less conspicuous than me.”
Mildred nodded. “Good. Probably needs to be Luc then. You know I love Sabine, but she’s not exactly the sharpest tool in the box. You don’t have to know where you came from to decide where you’re going. If only she’d get her head out of the damned clouds and down her on Earth, that girl could probably make a lot of herself.”
“Sabine’s fine, and lately, she’s backed off a lot on the whole parental search thing.” Maryse waved a hand in dismissal. “I know you think the whole paranormal thing is complete bunk, but at least she’s making money. There are probably worse things.”
Mildred stared at her for a moment. “I think the whole paranormal thing is bunk? Last time I checked, you weren’t exactly jumping on that bandwagon either. Did you hit your head too hard in one of those mishaps of yours?”
Oops. Momentary lapse of consciousness. And definitely all Luc’s fault. She gave Mildred a sheepish smile. “Of course, I don’t buy into that stuff. I’ve just given up trying to convince Sabine otherwise. As long as her business is successful, I guess I just decided who cares.”
Mildred narrowed her eyes, and Maryse knew the hotel owner suspected something was up. Something Maryse wasn’t telling her. In ten billion years she’d never come up with the ghost of Helena Henry, so Maryse figured she was in the clear as long as she didn’t spout off something stupid again.
“Well, why don’t you try to rest,” Mildred said finally. “I’ll be right here if you need me.” She pointed to the front of the hotel. “And no standing in front of the plate-glass window.”
Maryse nodded and left the office. There was no way possible she could rest. Between ghosts, attempted murder, and videotaped sex, she was about to have that nervous breakdown she’d been putting off. And avoiding Mildred until she had control of her racing emotions probably wasn’t a bad idea. If she stayed in the office with Mildred’s hawk eye on her, she knew she’d end up confessing her sins of the flesh. And she wasn’t ready to discuss her romp with Luc the Liar, especially given her track record with questionable men.
She snuck in a call to Sabine but got her voice mail. She left her a brief message with instructions to come directly to the hotel when she got back from visiting Raissa, then closed her phone, shoved it in her pocket, and sighed. Finally deciding she couldn’t stand around in the hallway until Sabine showed up, she grabbed a bottle of Pledge and a rag from the storage closet and began to polish the spindles on the stairwell. She finished that chore in about thirty minutes, and then Sabine walked in, saving her from doing something really strange, like vacuuming the lobby. Sabine stared at her for a moment, then sniffed the air. Since the entire stairwell smelled lemony fresh, there was really no hiding what she’d been up to.
Sabine raised one eyebrow. “You want to tell me why you’re avoiding Mildred?”
Maryse glared. “I thought you weren’t psychic.”
Sabine laughed. “It doesn’t take a genius to see that something’s wrong if the woman who hates cleaning more than root canals starts breaking out the Pledge on a building that’s not even hers.”
Maryse shrugged. “I’m stressed.”
“Bullshit. You drink when you’re stressed. You clean when you’re avoiding.”
“Well, Mildred hasn’t figured it out, so I guess it doesn’t matter.”
Sabine shook her head. “Mildred knows damned good and well why you’re cleaning. She also knows that you won’t breathe a word to her about whatever secret you’re keeping until there’s no other choice.”
“Got that right,” Maryse mumbled.
“She also knows that you’ll tell me if it’s important, and I’ll tell her.”
Maryse stared at her so-called best friend in dismay. “Is this what the two of you do when I’m not around? Plot ways to analyze my life and then share things I’ve told you in confidence?”
Sabine had the good sense to look guilty. “It’s not like that. It’s just that Mildred and I both worry about you, and you don’t make it easy on people by secluding yourself so much on the bayou. I’ve seen you more since Helena died than I have in the past six months.”
Maryse sank onto the stairs. “You know you’re welcome at my place anytime, or at least you were when I had a place. And Mildred too. I know I didn’t come to town often, but it just wasn’t necessary. I had everything there that I needed.”
Sabine sat beside her on the stairwell and gave her a sad smile. “But don’t you see, Maryse? You didn’t have everything you needed. You’re losing sight of people, how they operate, what motivates them. If you were more social, you would have seen Christopher coming a mile away.” She paused for a moment, then took a breath before continuing. “And I hope this doesn’t make you mad, but I don’t have to be psychic to see what’s going on between you and Luc. Right now, I’d bet anything that’s what drove you to dusting.”
Maryse felt her back tense at the mention of Luc’s name. Was she really that easy to read? “Are you saying I have to become the life of the party or I’m always going to get screwed? If so, then I’m in trouble. I just don’t have what it takes to conquer the world.”
“Raissa’s worried about you. She has the feeling that you’re overlooking something important because it’s too close to you. She’s going to do another reading tonight and call me.” Sabine placed her hand on Maryse’s and squeezed. “You don’t have to conquer the world, Maryse, but you can’t hide from it either.”
She wasn’t hiding, Maryse wanted to yell. But somehow the words hung in her throat. She wasn’t hiding. Was she? Her laboratory work was the most important thing in her life, and it required an enormous amount of time, but surely no one was going to blame her for spending her time in the lab.
But as soon as that thought crossed her mind, she got flashes of long Saturdays where she’d finished up everything at the lab by noon and spent the rest of the day reading medical journals or cruising the bayou looking for hybrid plants that she might not have used for testing before. If she wasn’t working on her research, then she was tearing apart her kitchen to put in shelves or some other household chore that wasn’t really necessary. She hadn’t even picked up a novel or turned on the television in longer than she could remember.
Was her motivation to find a cure really as selfless as she’d thought? Or had the strain of watching her father waste away provided her with a convenient excuse to lock herself away from life?
“Maryse.” Sabine gently shook her arm. “Are you all right? I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings.”
“I know,” Maryse said. Sabine hadn’t hurt her feelings, but she’d unknowingly unlocked a floodgate that made it frighteningly clear that Maryse had been living away from the world far too long.