Mischief in Mudbug Read online

  What the hell? Beau watched the door shut behind her, then slumped back in the booth, replaying the conversation and Sabine’s response over and over in his mind. Unbelievable. All those years of carefully guarding himself from crossing that line with a woman and the one time his resistance was too low, he’d run into the only person in the world more scared of relationships than he was.

  Chapter Six

  Sabine rushed out of the restaurant and crossed the street to her shop. She let herself inside and hurried upstairs without turning the sign out front to “Open.” She didn’t have any appointments that afternoon and anyone important had her cell phone number. In her tiny kitchen, she pulled a bottled water from the refrigerator and twisted off the top. Her hands shook as she lifted the bottle to her lips and took a drink.

  “It’s official,” she said to the empty room, “you are a nutbag.”

  She dropped into a chair at her kitchen table and set the water down. Beau Villeneuve was the best-looking man she’d ever met in real life, and he was nice. He’d actually tried to talk her out of locating her family because he was afraid she’d get hurt. Even worse, most improbably, he was interested in her. Helena’s rise from the dead had surprised her far less.

  And you ran. Idiot.

  She propped her elbows on the table, covered her face with her hands and groaned. A twenty-year search for her family she could handle. Helena Henry rising from the dead she could handle. Heck, she’d been teasing Maryse when she suggested bungee jumping, but even that she could have handled. But apparently a date was out of the question. Maryse was right—she was already dead.

  She reached for the water and knocked a stack of her aunt’s journals onto the floor. With a sigh, she reached over to pick them up. A sentence in one of the open books caught her eye. She lifted the journal and started to read.

  September 2, 1963

  A peculiar thing happened at work today. A woman and her husband came into the hospital with an infant who had an ear infection. I did my normal check on the baby, a beautiful little boy, while asking the mother our standard questions. When I asked her about breast-feeding, she got flustered, then looked at her husband. I’m not for certain as I could only see him out of the corner of my eye, but I swear he shook his head.

  Although she’d been chatty before, the woman immediately clammed up and simply said no, she wasn’t breast-feeding, with no further explanation. She answered the remainder of the questions with clipped responses, her gaze darting back and forth between me and her husband.

  Dr. Breaux came in to do his exam and gave the woman a prescription and some written instructions. As he was writing out the instructions, an orderly came by and told the husband that he’d left the windows down on his car and it was starting to rain. It was obvious the husband didn’t want to leave his wife alone, but with both Dr. Breaux and I standing there, it would have appeared odder for him not to.

  Dr. Breaux finished shortly after the husband left and as I was wrapping up the baby in his blanket, I tried to chat with the wife, asking her some questions about her recovery after the delivery. She hesitated with her responses, and based on her answers, I am suspicious that she never gave birth.

  Before I could pry any further, the husband returned and hustled the wife and the baby out of the room. The tension coming off of them both was so strong I could feel it, but for the life of me I don’t understand what the problem was. If the baby is not their biological child, why all the secrecy?

  If they weren’t honest about the child’s parentage with a doctor, what in the world were they telling people who knew she hadn’t been pregnant? Perhaps the child belonged to an unmarried relative and they were protecting the woman’s reputation. I hope that is the case since the only other alternative I could come up with for all the lying is that the baby was bought on the black market.

  The scene in the exam room played in my mind over and over the rest of the day.

  Sabine sat back in her chair and stared out the kitchen window. Black marketing babies. What a horrible thought, the level of desperation it would take to go such a route to have a family. She shook her head. And Sabine thought locating her family was hard. Imagine a black-market child ever finding their biological family. It was a sobering thought, especially given Sabine’s current medical crisis.

  Wondering if her aunt had ever come in contact with the woman again, Sabine lifted the journal and skimmed the pages, looking for any mention of babies. It was a couple of months later before she found another entry.

  November 4, 1963

  Sissy and her husband, friends of mine from high school, came in today with their baby. She’s about three months old and has a face like a cherub. Sissy could hardly contain herself. She had rheumatic fever when she was a child and knew that it would be unlikely she’d ever have a baby. They’d put their name on the adoption list the year before and her dream had come true. I was a bit surprised, as healthy white babies are in high demand and not so easy to get through the proper channels.

  When her husband left the room to speak with Dr. Breaux, I made a comment to Sissy about their good fortune, and she confided in me that the adoption had been private. The woman had been poor and unable to care for the baby. Apparently the father had been killed in Vietnam. The woman had asked the priest at their church to find a good home for the little girl. I asked whether they had any personal information on the mother or the father, in particular their medical history. Sissy told me the priest had only said that the mother was a devout Catholic.

  In less than two months, I’ve seen two healthy white babies being raised by women who didn’t give birth to them and live in the same small town. I have a bad feeling about it, but I don’t know what can be done. I worry that those mothers didn’t give up their babies voluntarily. Or even worse, maybe the mothers are dead.

  Something’s not right about any of this. I am going to check the obituaries for the past year and see if I find any military widows who had recently given birth. Hopefully, I am wrong in my suspicions. All I can do for now is pray for those babies and their mothers.

  Sabine flipped through the rest of the journal and three more after that but didn’t find another reference to the women or the babies. Frustrated, she placed the last journal on the table. There had to be an answer. Aunt Meg wasn’t given to flights of fancy. If she’d thought something was wrong, then something had been.

  Sabine tapped her finger on the stack of journals, but a good answer didn’t magically appear. She glanced down at her watch and shook her head. No wonder. Before figuring anything out, she’d need some lunch. She was deliberating between a grilled cheese or ham sandwich when the chair across from her slid back from the table. It took her a second to register the indentation on the chair cushion and process exactly what that meant. “Helena, jeez, you scared me.”

  “You sure are jumpy lately.”

  “Two break-ins in one week are a little beyond my lifetime limit,” Sabine said. “I’m allowed to be a little on edge if someone just strolls into my apartment and I can’t even see them.”

  “I guess.”

  “Is something wrong, Helena?” The ghost’s voice didn’t sound right, and for the first time since that horrible cone bra sighting, Sabine wished she could see her.

  “Today’s the exhumation.”

  Sabine sucked in a breath. “I’m sorry. I’d completely forgotten.” Maryse’s week-long adventure in trying to remain alive had produced a whole lot of surprises, one of them being the exhumation of Helena’s body. They were looking for evidence of murder, something the police and the coroner hadn’t considered the first time around.

  “Well, you’ve got other things on your mind,” Helena said. “I know that. But Maryse is off at the lab in New Orleans still trying to save the world with one of her concoctions, so I didn’t really have anyone else to talk to.”

  “Are you worried they won’t find anything?”

  “No. Yes.” Helena sighed. “That’s just it
. I feel funny, but I’m not sure why. You know that feeling that you get before you go to the dentist or something?”

  “Yes, I know that feeling well.” And ran out of a restaurant because of it. “I think it’s fear, Helena, even though you can’t put your finger on what it is exactly that you’re afraid of.”

  “Fear. Hmmmm. Maybe you’re right.”

  “I think I am. This is a huge event for you. You’re sure you were murdered, but what if the medical examiner doesn’t find any evidence of that…where does that leave you? Not to mention that even if they prove you were murdered, that doesn’t tell us who did it. And there’s just the overall ickiness of knowing your body is going to be lying on a table somewhere. That would definitely make my stomach flutter.”

  “Yeah. I think no matter what, it’s the ‘where does that leave me’ question that haunts me the most. What if I never leave here? What if this is it—death’s cruel joke for the lifetime of bullshit I put people through?”

  Sabine considered this for a moment. “I don’t think you’re being punished for being a bitch, if that’s what you’re asking. I honestly believe that you’re still around because no one has solved your murder. Apparently the world is just not in balance until that happens, so you’re stuck in the transition.”

  “But what if we never know? What if the man who killed me dies without ever being caught and I’m doomed to roam here like this forever? I mean, right now I have you and Maryse, but what about a hundred years from now or two hundred? Once you guys are gone no one will even know about me, much less care.”

  “You can’t think that way. I’m sure this will all work out all right.”

  “You mean like your life is working out? Face it, life sucks and the earth barely tolerates our existence. Thanks for listening, Sabine. I’ll see you later.”

  “Wait!” Sabine cried, but there was no answer and the depression in the cushion was gone. “Damn.” She picked up the journal and opened it to the first entry she’d read. What if someone had killed those women for their babies? What if they were roaming the earth like Helena, still waiting for someone to set them free? What if everyone had forgotten?

  And now Sabine was the only one who knew anything about them at all.

  If ever there was a time that Sabine wished she didn’t have a conscience, it would be now. She already had enough on her plate: Helena’s murder, her missing family, her cancer, and now her completely unexpected and unwanted attraction to Beau Villeneuve. She probably wouldn’t sleep for a year at this rate.

  But what if others were stuck in between?

  Sabine slumped back in her chair with a sigh. Even though she didn’t have a psychic bone in her body, that didn’t mean she didn’t believe in the afterlife and spirits and, well, pretty much darn near everything. And even if she hadn’t before, Helena was a pretty convincing argument. Sabine couldn’t bear the thought of someone else’s soul in limbo. She could at least spend a couple of hours looking into it.

  She rose from the table and grabbed her purse. She’d start at the library. They had microfiche for the Mudbug newspaper for as many years back as there had been one. The obituaries would be a good place to start. Her aunt hadn’t made another note about the women in her journals, so Sabine had to assume she’d either let the whole thing drop, hadn’t found out anything in her own search, or hadn’t been able to prove anything if she had. She picked up the journal from the table and slid it into her purse. At least she had a decent idea of the dates to start looking.

  From his booth at Carolyn’s, Beau had a clear view of Sabine’s building. She’d left the restaurant almost an hour ago but still hadn’t changed her shop sign to “Open,” which meant she either didn’t have any appointments for the rest of the day or she’d cancelled them because he had absolutely no skill at asking a woman for a date. And why should he? He’d shot more people in the line of duty than he’d asked on dates. Which, now that he thought about it, must say something about him, but he had absolutely no idea what.

  He took one last bite of an absolutely heavenly banana pudding and rose from the booth. That attempted break-in at Sabine’s still weighed on him. The hospital break-in didn’t really concern him, as that was a choice spot for a drug user to try to get a fix if they couldn’t find any other way. But there was nothing about Sabine or her business to suggest it was worth breaking into her building, especially in broad daylight. Even if the burglar had thought no one was inside, it was a huge risk, even from the back door. Again, the desperation of junkies came to mind but he didn’t want to force that to fit. Not just yet. Nothing about Sabine had made him think she used illegal drugs, and she’d been vehement in her denial of keeping anything but a minimal amount of cash on hand.

  Beau pulled some bills out of his wallet and set them on the table. He mulled over the possibilities, limited as they were, as he paid the bill. The timing of the attempted break-in coupled with his search for Sabine’s family troubled him, but for the life of him he couldn’t see where the two could have intersected. Sabine had never come up with anything remotely close to the angle he was working now, and all his activity so far had been restricted to FBI files and news articles. The family had no way of knowing that he was researching them. Not yet. So they had no way of knowing about Sabine.

  Which meant her trouble was coming from something else. But what? And who would try a break-in in the middle of the morning, in broad daylight, and with occupants inside the building? It was damned odd, but if Sabine couldn’t even handle Beau admitting his attraction, she sure as hell wasn’t going to start unloading her secrets on him. And then there was always the chance that Sabine had no idea what had set this into motion. So many times in his work with the FBI, he’d seen cases of normal people thrust into the middle of something sordid without ever intending to step in shit. Certainly none of them realized it until it was too late.

  Beau stuffed his change in his wallet and turned to the exit. He looked across the street just in time to see Sabine lock the front door on her shop, hurry to her car, and drive away. What now? He exited the restaurant and paused outside on the sidewalk, making a quick assessment of the town. The entire downtown wasn’t any bigger than a city block, but with the wooded areas and the bayou surrounding every side of the tiny town, there were too many possibilities for an unobserved approach to make Beau happy with Sabine’s safety.

  The hotel was the tallest building on the street. If he could manage a front room, he’d have a clear view of Sabine’s building—the front of it anyway. He hoped she’d taken the necessary precautions with the back door after the last attempt. It was something he’d ask her about as soon as he had an opportunity. If she’d let him see the door and secure it, even better. Mind made up, he walked down the street to the hotel and stepped inside. A large woman with silver hair sticking up in all directions looked up from the counter as he entered.

  “Hi,” she said. “Are you here for the sales convention?”

  For a fleeting moment, Beau considered lying, but quickly changed his mind. The town was simply too small and once his cover was blown he’d have an even harder time convincing Sabine to trust him than before. “No. I’m here doing a little work and need a room.”

  “Welcome. My name’s Mildred and this is my hotel. ’Bout how many nights you need to stay?”

  Beau considered this for a minute. “I’m not really sure. Are you full, or can I negotiate something for a day at a time?”

  Mildred shrugged. “Fine by me. But the hotel’s completely booked a week from now. Think you’ll be done with your work by then?”

  Beau nodded. “I hope to be.” He pulled his license and a credit card from his wallet and handed them to Mildred. It was only Tuesday and with any luck, he would either figure out what was going on or reassure himself that it was an isolated incident and be satisfied Sabine was safe.

  Mildred ran his credit card and pushed the receipt across the counter along with a pen. “What kind of work do you do, Mr. Ville
neuve?” she asked as she glanced down at his license.

  “Research, mostly.”

  “Sounds fascinating. Medical?”

  “No.” Beau pushed the completed registration card back across the counter. “Family history stuff mostly. Is there a room available in the front of the hotel?”

  Mildred pulled a key from the pegboard behind her and handed it to Beau. “Third floor.” She studied him for a moment. “Anyone I might know?”

  “It really wouldn’t be appropriate for me to say without permission.”

  Mildred gave him a shrewd look. “Not for nothing, Mr. Villeneuve, but I’ve most often found that opening up family business long since dead is like stepping on a land mine.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” Beau took the key and started toward the stairwell.

  Sabine shoved the copies she’d made from the library microfiche into her shoulder bag and waved at old Mrs. Hebert, the librarian, as she exited the building. Three possibilities to fill two possible slots—Amelia Watson, Sandra Franks, and Ruth Moore, all living in nearby bayou towns. No cause of death was listed, or surviving family. But at least she had a starting point.

  She’d gone through the microfiche index for ten years preceding their deaths but had found no mention of any of the women. She’d ask Mildred and Helena if they knew any of the names, even though both would have been teenagers at the time of the women’s deaths. Beyond that, Sabine felt she’d spent enough time chasing a “bad feeling.” If Mildred or Helena had never heard of the women, then Sabine had already decided she would let it go without regret. Well, with almost no regret. Who was she kidding? She’d probably feel like crap but what other choice did she have? Maybe when things were more settled in her own life she’d pick it up again.

  She glanced at her watch and realized it was getting toward suppertime and she still hadn’t eaten lunch. No wonder she was starving. She briefly considered the limited options in her apartment. She really had to get to the grocery store. And since Maryse had known good and well that Sabine had been joking about the bungee jumping and Luc had left that afternoon for his undercover assignment, Sabine knew her friend would remain at the lab in New Orleans until all hours of the night. Which put her out of the running as a dinner date.