Missing in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Mystery/Romance Series) (5 page)

“I’ve been thinking a lot about it ever since she returned, and ultimately, yes, I think she’s here for a specific reason. I also think she knows what that reason is.”

“Why wouldn’t she tell us? She’s never short on words.”

Sabine tapped her cup. “Maybe she doesn’t want to scare us. Or maybe it’s something she needs to do for her own growth and doesn’t want to admit it.” She shook her head. “I can’t put my finger on it, but I’m certain she’s holding something back.”

Maryse took a big drink of water, what little bit of worry she had left now taken up by Sabine’s words. If Helena was keeping a secret, it could only be a bad one.

Really, really bad.

###

Colt dragged himself into the sheriff’s department late that evening, more frustrated and tired than he remembered being in years. He’d spent seven hours with the FBI, searching the swamp on both sides of the highway, and they hadn’t turned up so much as a footprint. The dogs never gave an indication that Raissa had entered the swamp, and his own observations of the turf and foliage had led to the same conclusion.
 

He grabbed a bottled water from the small refrigerator next to the filing cabinet and took a long drink as he stared out the side window at the bayou behind the building. As the cold liquid burned his throat and settled like lead in his stomach, he slammed the bottle down on a nearby table.

“I guess you didn’t find anything,” Shirley, the daytime dispatcher, said.
 

“Not one damned thing,” he said as he turned to look at her.
 

Normally, Colt tried not to curse around Shirley, a hard-core Southern Baptist, but this time, she didn’t so much as lift an eyebrow, much less suggest he use better language as she usually did.
 

“What did the FBI have to say?”

He shook his head. “Nothing that we didn’t already know.”

“Do you think that’s all to it?”

“Maybe…yeah…I don’t know. I mean, I’ve usually got a good feel for when people are holding back on me, especially other cops, and I think the agent in charge has told me everything he knows.”

“But someone above him could be withholding information.”

“Exactly. But if they’re not telling the man leading the search what he could potentially run into, then there’s no way they’re going to tell me.” He clenched his hand until his fingers dug into his palm. “If the car that hit Zach continued west, there’s nowhere else it could have gone but here.”

“True, but that car could have turned around at any point and headed right back the way it came. You don’t have any reason to believe it did otherwise, do you?”

“No,” Colt admitted. He didn’t have any concrete reason for believing the car had continued into Mudbug city limits. In fact, it would have made far more sense for it to turn around and head back toward New Orleans. But he had a feeling.

And in his entire law enforcement career, that kind of feeling had never been wrong.

“Have you talked to Jadyn about all this?” Shirley asked.

“Briefly. She brought Mildred and Maryse to the hospital this morning.”

Shirley gave an approving nod. “She’s a keeper, that one. Reminds me some of Maryse but with better social skills and not so clinical. Doesn’t seem a bit like her mother.”

“You know her mother?” Colt asked, trying not to sound as curious as he felt.

“Can’t say I really know her, but I’ve met her. One of those former beauty queens—beautiful in physical form, but nasty as they come otherwise. Only took a minute of exposure to know she didn’t care about anyone but herself. Makes you wonder how Jadyn did growing up with her, especially as she don’t seem the beauty queen type even though she’s quite lovely.”

“Seems like she did all right.” Good heart and good-looking. Maybe she’d gotten the best part of her mother and the rest had come from her father.
 

“Seems like…well, speak of the devil.” Shirley pointed out the front window where Jadyn was crossing the street toward the sheriff’s department. Several seconds later, she stepped inside.

“Evening, Shirley,” Jadyn said. “How are you today?”

Shirley waved a hand in dismissal. “Same as always and ain’t nobody really cares. You go on about your business with the sheriff. I expect that’s what you came for.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jadyn said and smiled at her before turning toward Colt.
 

Colt inclined his head toward his office. As he turned, Shirley winked at him, and he held in a groan. Bad enough his attraction to Jadyn had caught him completely unaware and was something he fought daily. The last thing he needed was the town women playing matchmaker.

He opened his office door and waved Jadyn inside, careful not to glance at Shirley as he closed the door. Given her tendency to try to mother him, she might be holding up flash cards. “Have a seat,” he said.

Jadyn slipped into a chair in front of his desk as he took his seat behind the desk.
 

“How did it go today?” she asked.

“Not so good,” he said and filled her in on the dismal search results.

The tiny bit of hope she’d been wearing when she walked into his office slipped away to nothing by the time he’d finished his recount of the day.
 

“Crap,” she said when he finished.

He nodded. “I had a similar reaction, but not as polite.”

“My original reaction wasn’t as polite either. I just didn’t verbalize it.”

He smiled. “Normally, I prefer it when people see things my way, but this one is a hell of a thing to agree on.”

“Yeah. You got any ideas?”

“Not a one. I’ve been racking my brain, trying to figure out any connection this situation might have with something going on in Mudbug, but I come up empty every time. I know we went through that rough patch a couple weeks ago, but I assure you, Mudbug has been pretty quiet in the twelve months since I’ve taken the sheriff’s job.”

“It’s not the sort of place you expect high crime to occur, but then…”

She frowned and stared out the back window at the bayou. He held in a sigh. That was the crux of it—but then. If Mudbug were still only a bunch of average hardworking blue-collar folk and the occasional drunk or redneck, then the recent happenings wouldn’t have occurred at all. Sooner or later, Colt was going to have to wrap his mind around the fact that the things that happened in New Orleans could also happen in his hometown.
 

But he wasn’t going to get his mind around it today. “Did you check with the state on the contract worker thing?”

She nodded. “I have $750 a month to spend on contract help. If I pay you the minimum of fifteen dollars, that only gives us fifty hours.”

“That’s no problem. If we have to go that direction, it’s not like anyone’s watching me punch a time clock. As long as it’s legit, that’s all that concerns me.”

“Then we’re good…if we find a reason to need it.”

She was still hopeful that a happy ending was forthcoming. He heard it in her voice. Hell, truth be told, he felt the same way. He just wasn’t about to count on it.

He reached into his filing drawer and pulled out a stack of folders, then pushed half across the table to Jadyn. “This is every crime committed in Mudbug the past month. I was about to flip through them and see if anything stood out. Why don’t you take a look at that stack and when we’re done we can trade.”

“You’re letting me read your case files?” She seemed pleased but a bit surprised.

“Sometimes a second set of eyes sees something different. And that’s especially true in your case as you won’t have preconceived notions about most of the people in those files.”

Jadyn sat back in the chair and opened the first file. Colt reached for the top of his stack but before he could pick up the file, Shirley sounded over his intercom.
 

“Burton Foster is on line two and he sounds stressed.”

Colt frowned as he reached for the phone. The last time Colt could recall Burton, who was retired military, being even remotely perturbed was the day he’d had a heart attack while eating a slice of blackberry pie. And the heart attack wasn’t what got him riled. It was the fact that the paramedics wouldn’t let him take the rest with him in the ambulance. Rumor had it that Burton had even had fun in the Vietnam conflict. Colt tended to believe the rumors.
 

“What can I do for you?” Colt asked as he answered.

“There’s a boat done sank at the front of Boudreaux’s Pond,” Burton said. “It’s blocking the whole entrance, and red snapper are biting.”

Colt held in a sigh. Really? All that worry over fish?

“Damn thing is just under the surface,” Burton continued. “I would have tore up my boat something awful if I’d gone through there at my normal clip. Funny thing, too, the top of it’s black. Who paints their boat black?”

Colt stiffened and clenched the phone. “Stay right there. I’m on my way.”

He dropped the phone back in the cradle and jumped out of his seat. “Come on.”

Jadyn popped up out of her chair and put the files on his desk. “What’s wrong?”

He opened the cabinet behind him and pulled out scuba gear. “There’s something with a black top submerged in Boudreaux’s Pond.”

Jadyn sucked in a breath.

“Don’t assume anything,” he said as he caught her expression. “Until we know differently, we proceed as if someone painted his boat black.”

She gave him a single nod and took one of the tanks. He hurried out of his office, striding past Shirley so fast she jumped up from her desk.
 

“Unless it’s an emergency,” he said as he reached for the front door, “hold all my calls.”

He rushed outside, Jadyn following close behind.
 

As he pulled away from the sheriff’s department, he tried to come up with another explanation for what he was on his way to see. Any explanation that didn’t include Raissa in that car at the bottom of Boudreaux’s Pond.
 

But no matter how hard he tried, nothing reasonable came.

###

Jadyn held the scuba mask with one hand and clutched her seat belt with the other as Colt’s truck bounced down what could most charitably be called a trail. This was one of the few times she would have welcomed a million thoughts running through her mind, but instead, she had only one. A really bad one.
 

Colt stared straight ahead, his hands clenching the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white. He’d been completely silent the entire ten minutes of the drive and Jadyn wished he’d say something…anything. Hell, at this point, she’d even settle for a sneeze to break the uncomfortable silence.

“Does this road go all the way to the pond?” she asked.

“It ends about twenty yards short of the place we want, so if it is a car, then it went off-roading for a good clip. But driving there is quicker than taking the boat. That pond isn’t exactly a direct shot down the channels.”

“How will we get the…umm, submerged object out?”

“We won’t. At least not yet. I want to assess the situation underwater first, then I’ll see what kind of equipment we can get back there. I haven’t been there in quite some time. I’m not sure what the undergrowth looks like or if the channel has narrowed.”

Assess the situation underwater.

The words repeated over and over in her head. They sounded so innocuous, but the literal translation went more like “We need to see if it’s a car and if there’s a body in it.”

He looked over at her. “I just assumed you know how to dive?”

“I do. You never know…”

In north Louisiana she hadn’t covered near the span of water that she did in Mudbug, but the need for water recovery was always a possibility, so she’d gotten her certification years ago. Several times, she’d dove on vacation—beautiful, tropical waters with brightly striped fish and coral reefs that looked like a coloring box.
 

This would be her first dive as part of her job.
 

Colt slowed and she scanned the brush in front of them. No sign of the trail remained, but Jadyn’s chest tightened when she saw the broken trees and scattered brush with two clear tire tracks running through it. Colt’s gaze immediately locked on the tire tracks and he frowned.
 

One question answered, but not the answer they were hoping for.

Colt rolled to a stop at the end of the trail, and they grabbed their gear.

“This way,” he said.

She fell in step behind him as he pushed a broken sapling aside and hurried into the brush.
 

Jadyn expected the density of the foliage to decline as they approached the water and was surprised when she stepped out of the thick underbrush and found herself standing right at the edge of the bayou.

“Careful,” Colt said. “The edge of the bank is sandy and could easily give. Just inch along the side here until we get to where there’s more bank.”

She stepped lightly behind him until they reached hard-packed mud and weeds. A tall, thin man with silver hair stood next to the pond, checking his watch. Jadyn glanced upstream and saw a bass boat tied off to the bank just before the entrance to the pond. As they approached, the man stuck out his hand to Colt.