The Helena Diaries - Trouble in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Series Novellas) Read online

  No way! He had some nerve driving my new car. He hadn’t even been allowed to be a passenger in my new car when I’d been alive.

  Death sucks.

  When he opened the door to the garage, I realized I had to get a move on or I’d be stuck in the house indefinitely. I raced across the kitchen, barely squeezing out the door before he slammed it shut. I wasn’t certain how to get past Harold’s big ass with my own big ass to get into the car, but I decided to just go for it.

  As soon as Harold opened the door, I ran like a linebacker and dove for the front seat. Then a most interesting thing happened—I passed right through Harold and landed in the car. Why could I launch through a solid object now but not last night when I tried to leave the house? It’s a question I will dwell on after the will-reading.

  Harold left the house in plenty of time to make the will-reading. In fact, at the rate of speed he was driving MY car, we would arrive early, but then he took a right turn off the highway and I felt a flush of anger rush through me. As he pulled up in front of what could only charitably be referred to as a shack, my worst fears were confirmed.

  Harold intended to let one of his floozies ride in my new Cadillac.

  It was all I could do to scramble over into the backseat before the nasty assembly of bleached-blond hair, fake boobs, skintight clothes, and cheap perfume climbed into the passenger’s seat. Harold leaned over to kiss her but I noticed she did more of an air kiss than a real kiss. Then he pulled the super-sexy move of squeezing her boob like a stress ball while staring down her shirt.

  She rolled her eyes. I gagged.

  Once we were back on the road, the floozy immediately launched into speculation about how much of the estate would go to Harold. I smiled. Even this cheap, completely useless woman had no interest in Harold except for the money she thought he had coming. When this will-reading was over, Harold’s life was going to move from bad to rock bottom.

  I couldn’t wait.

  Wherein Helena screws Harold from the grave

  Harold dropped his floozy off at a diner around the corner from Wheeler’s office. She looked more suited to walking the street outside, but then, she was with Harold, so that stood to reason.

  Maryse was already in the waiting room and didn’t look overly pleased to see me again. She didn’t even perk up when I hinted that Harold was going to get his just rewards during the will-reading. Clearly, she was distracted. She was probably hoping my useless son would show up so she could serve him with divorce papers, but even Hank wasn’t that stupid. He’s got problems with the law a mile long. Any number of law enforcement officers could be sitting outside the attorney’s office just waiting for an easy pickup.

  It wasn’t long before we filed into Wheeler’s office. As predicted, Hank elected to join the reading by phone. As otherwise predicted, Maryse was mad as hell. I found her outburst somewhat satisfying, as it showed she has backbone and a lot of anger in her. Those will come in useful when she’s looking for my killer.

  The nun almost passed out when she heard what I left to the orphanage, but they’ve been my best tenant for years, so it seemed only fair. Harold looked mad as hell. He knows how much income my New Orleans real estate produces, and he would have been a big enough bastard to put a bunch of orphans out on the street. But despite his obvious anger, he wasn’t saying a word—obviously still banking on the big payout.

  The one that wasn’t coming.

  Harold’s sour expression worsened when he found out I’d left my house and all its contents to the Mudbug Historical Society, along with my real estate holdings in Mudbug. This morning had been his last stroll through my mansion. I hoped he’d stolen everything he wanted, but rather doubted it.

  Hank’s cursing could be heard over the speakerphone when he found out that the conditions of his inheritance included remaining clean, sober, and gambling-free for five years. Maryse was pleased. She probably thinks it’s an impossible list for Hank to manage. She’s probably right, but he’s my son, so I was well within my rights to parent, even from the grave.

  Then came one of the moments I’d been waiting for—when Harold found out I was leaving him the Lower Bayou Motel. He was mad, but didn’t explode like I thought he would. But I knew the explosion was coming.

  I inched closer to Wheeler for the last assignment of property. This was the one that Harold had been waiting on—the one he thought he and Hank had in the bag. The one that would set them up for life.

  And World War III ensues!

  Harold tried to choke Wheeler when he found out I’d left the game preserve to Maryse. Only a relative could inherit the property, but since my fool son had ducked Maryse’s many divorce attempts, like it or not, she was still family.

  I liked it.

  Maryse was completely stunned, but I made a good choice. She’s the only person I know who would preserve the land in a way that keeps Mudbug the way it is. Hank and Harold would have squeezed every dime out of it until the town faded away.

  Once Harold stopped throttling Wheeler, he turned on Maryse and threatened her before stalking out of the office. I hurried behind him.

  No way was I missing the show when he told the floozy he hadn’t gotten shit.

  Trouble in Mudbug—Chapter Three

  Wherein Helena gets the last laugh on Harold and the floozy

  It was all I could do to keep up with Harold and hop in the car before he squealed away from the curb. I had no idea he could move that fast. Apparently, anger was like Red Bull for Harold.

  The floozy was standing on the street corner outside the café, looking like she belonged there, and had an expectant smile on her face as she jumped into the Cadillac. The first words out of her mouth were, “What did you get?”

  I leaned forward until my head was almost in the front seat, unable to stand the suspense.

  “I got a motel,” Harold said. “But that attorney of hers hasn’t heard the end of this. I was married to that bitch for almost thirty years. She can’t cut me out of everything. I’ll get what I’m due one way or another.”

  The floozy frowned, clearly disappointed that she wasn’t riding in a Cadillac with a millionaire, but then she forced on a fake smile. “Well, a motel is not a bad take, right? We can make some serious money with a motel. I have all kinds of ideas about services we can offer.”

  I rolled my eyes. I just bet she did.

  Then she asked the sixty-four-million-dollar question: What motel is it?

  Harold hesitated before answering, and it was clear from his expression that he knew the gig was up. When he finally told her, she exploded in rage, throwing out all kinds of lies like “I’m too high-class to stay in that rattrap. I only met you there to seal this deal” and “Do you really think someone of my caliber would be with someone like you for anything but the money?”

  It ended with her insisting he pull over and let her out of the car. She probably thought she could pick up a better mark on the backstreets of New Orleans. Given that she only had to improve on Harold, it was a solid gamble.

  Harold shouted a few choice words at her like “money-grubbing bitch” as she slammed the door and walked away, and I fell over in the backseat and laughed until I cried. This whole ghost thing definitely had its benefits—you could watch people when they didn’t know you were watching, and you could laugh and yell and tell them exactly what you thought about them without them even knowing you were there.

  It was the perfect setup for a bitch like me.

  Trouble in Mudbug—Chapter Four

  Wherein Helena realizes she may have miscalculated

  Harold didn’t even bother returning to Mudbug. I’d bet anything word of his lack of inheritance hit the gossip train about two minutes after my cousins left Wheeler’s office. I suppose he didn’t want to show his face in town with his tail tucked in between his legs. Like he’d been a paragon of manliness and prosperity before.

  Instead, he drove my car straight to that rattletrap motel and went inside, dema
nding the largest suite. The clerk stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. Motels that rent by the hour usually don’t have suites, and the skill set for a minimum-wage job breathing asbestos and catering to prostitutes apparently didn’t include arguing with idiots. He just handed Harold a key and pointed to a hallway behind him.

  I shook my head. As many hours as Harold had spent in this hotel with his floozies, I would have thought he’d known better, but then on rethinking it, Harold was far too cheap and too broke to spring for a suite, nor would any of the women he ran around with know the difference.

  Harold mumbled something about how the room would do for tonight but he’d be relocating to New Orleans the next day. Whatever. Good riddance.

  I was still smiling when I headed outside to see if anyone from Mudbug happened to be in the parking lot. The thought of the long walk back into town was enough to take the edge off my post-will-reading buzz. I lucked out when I spotted a forest-green SUV that I knew belonged to Thelma Jenkins’s husband. I smirked. Thelma was always lording over everyone in Mudbug, claiming that since she came from Boston, she was higher-class than the rest of us rednecks. Guess her husband hadn’t gotten the memo on the low-class state of getting a piece of redneck strange.

  I sat on the curb and waited. I didn’t figure I’d be there long. I’d seen Bart Jenkins get winded walking down the sidewalk. No way was this activity going to take very long. Five minutes later, he walked outside, huffing like an asthmatic, and I bolted into his SUV as he leaned over to get his breath back before climbing inside. He made the drive to Mudbug in record time and parked on Main Street, where Thelma stood on the corner, frowning.

  “Your husband just slept with a floozy at the Lower Bayou Motel!” I screamed directly in her face before continuing down the sidewalk, feeling quite smug that Thelma’s superiority was all in her mind.

  My house wasn’t far from downtown when you were driving a car, but walking made it seem like a journey to hell and beyond. I had to take several breaks along the way, and finally huffed into my driveway an hour after leaving downtown. During Harold’s outburst at the will-reading, I’d gotten that niggling feeling that there was something about the will that was important—something I’d forgotten. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what.

  Then there was the fact that I’d caught Harold in my bedroom. It looked like he was just riffling through some items to hock, but the entire house was full of antiques. Why start in my room? The whole thing made me nervous. What if Harold had found the papers? I needed to get in the house and make sure the papers were still intact.

  Of course, that presented two huge problems: getting into my house and getting into the safe where I’d stored the papers.

  As I’d followed Wheeler around the house the day before, I knew he’d been thorough with the doors and windows, except for the small window in the laundry room. The latch looked like it was locked, but it had been broken for years. Still, the massive hedge in front of it made it an unlikely target for burglars. Unfortunately, my lack of ability to touch things made it just as irrelevant to me.

  I’m not even sure why I walked around to the backyard, as I already knew I couldn’t lift the window, but I’m glad I did because my luck changed for the better. Maryse was across the bayou, right behind my house, digging in the marsh grass.

  Pleased that things were finally going my way, I headed down to the dock and yelled at Maryse before stepping onto the bayou.

  Unfortunately, the tide was flowing away from Maryse’s boat, so it swept me downstream when I wanted to go upstream. I started walking, but the current was moving much faster than my normal stroll. I upped it to a jog, hoping Maryse would see my struggle and come pick me up, but no dice. Instead, she stared at me like the Loch Ness monster had just appeared in the middle of Mudbug Bayou.

  I’d expected a bit more from the woman I’d just left my most valuable possession, but Maryse was probably still holding the last decade of insults against me. If I’d known she was this petty, I may have reconsidered my decision.

  Trouble in Mudbug—Chapter Five

  Wherein Helena breaks into her own house

  It took some convincing, but Maryse finally agreed to help me get into the house. She argued that it wasn’t mine any more, but I could tell she thought the argument was pretty weak. And given that I’d just bequeathed her property with an annual income that was likely more than the state paid her, she probably felt guilty saying no.

  Guilty and indebted was the way I like people. Indebted to me, that is.

  I launched into my argument with a reminder that if we solved my murder, I’d be able to ascend and be out of her hair. Maryse still looked skeptical, and now I wonder if that was because of the “out of her hair” part of the statement or the “ascension” part. I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer. It might piss me off.

  I managed to seal the deal by telling her that Harold received a call from Hank while I was in the house that morning and had written a phone number on the pad in the kitchen. I had no idea what Harold had written on the pad, but I was desperate, exhausted, and out of ideas.

  Maryse wasn’t thrilled to climb into the house through the laundry room window, and was even less than impressed when I told her she had to let me in the side door off the laundry room. She threw out a “why don’t you walk through a wall” insult, which I thought was totally uncalled for. Even Maryse should have better manners than picking on the disabled.

  I managed to get her up to my bedroom with a minimal amount of grumbling, then had her open my safe. My worst fears were confirmed. The stack of cash I kept inside was gone, and the only person who could have taken it was Harold. I didn’t think he had the combination, but he must have figured it out somehow. That truly vexed me. I hadn’t given Harold credit for that much intelligence. Now, it looked like I had to factor a little smarts into the equation, which changed everything.

  But the real downer was when Maryse told me the paperwork I was looking for—the real reason I wanted in the safe—was missing.

  Crap! Crap! Crap!

  That niggling feeling from earlier returned, and I couldn’t help but think that the missing paperwork was only the beginning of the bad news. If only I could remember what it was that bothered me about the inheritance. Maybe I should have read the documents again before I’d changed out my will, but then I’d only changed my will because Wheeler had nagged me about it. I hadn’t planned on actually dying.

  I thought the worst discovery of the day was the missing paperwork, but I was wrong. Maryse pointed to a blinking light on the wall and I panicked. When he stole my car, Harold must have accidentally pressed the button to arm the security system.

  Maryse bolted for the bedroom door, but hadn’t taken a step outside of it when the alarm went off, shrieking with a deafening whine. I ran after Maryse, trying to keep up, but that girl is in seriously good shape. All those hours cataloging stinkweed must do great things for your endurance, or perhaps it was sheer fear. By the time we hit the stairs, the police sirens were sounding in the distance and closing fast. I didn’t think it possible, but Maryse increased speed and was out of sight before I even made it down the stairs.

  As I skidded around the corner into the kitchen, she was already out of the house and slamming the laundry room door behind her.

  Damn it.

  Locked in my own house again.

  Trouble in Mudbug—Chapter Six

  Wherein Helena hears the local gossip

  That Wheeler is even better than I gave him credit for. He must have left a key to my house and instructions with the local police department. They rushed in and swept the place, looking for any sign of forced entry. As Maryse had closed all entry points when she bolted, they didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Chalking it up to a system failure, they headed back out. I took the opportunity to exit along with them, but managed to take a look at that pad of paper before dashing out.

  Sure enough, Harold had jotted down the n
ame and room number for a motel in one of those dive bayou towns not far from Mudbug.

  I figured Maryse needed a break from me and my issues, and quite frankly, the girl had been a disappointment on the investigation end of things, so I decided to head to the beauty shop and get the local gossip, hoping I could use it to narrow down the suspect list.

  Those biddies at the beauty shop ran me down for a good hour before shifting topics to something on the television. Funny how they’d had completely different things to say when I’d been sitting in there visible every week.

  I tried everything to get back at them for their vile words—tried to lift a curling iron to burn them, tried to lift bleach to ruin their hair—all of it in vain.

  Then I realized the television was tuned to a show on ghost hunting, and I took a seat on the couch and started watching. An all-day marathon was going on, so I managed several hours of information before I had to hustle out of the shop or be locked in there all night. I might have considered it if they’d left the television on.

  As I walked down Main Street, all of this newfound information tumbled around in my mind. In all the shows I’d seen, the ghosts were able to make noise and move things—some of them in the most creative and elaborate ways. And none of those ghosts seemed to have a problem with locked doors. If I could learn to move things and walk through walls, this investigation would be so much easier.

  I wondered if the Mudbug library had any books on the subject, and decided it was worth checking out. Plus, one of the biddies said you could find anything on the Internet, and I knew they had computers for public use at the library. I’d never really bothered with the Internet other than checking e-mail, but I’d bet anything Maryse knew how to use it. I figured she didn’t have any Internet-connecty stuff at her cabin on Deliverance Island, but the library opened at 9:00 a.m., and we could be there first thing tomorrow.