Trouble in Mudbug (5 page)

Water began to spill in through the cracks in the floorboard and the door, and Maryse figured now was as good a time as any to make her exit. As she cranked down the window, she was grateful she hadn’t been able to afford the fully loaded truck with power everything. Sometimes the old-fashioned way is the best way, she thought as she grabbed her keys and her purse and crawled out.

She cautiously moved into the water, hoping she wasn’t stepping on anything dangerous. As it took her weight, her foot sank into the mud up to her calf. She tugged on the foot to remove it from the vacuum created by the mud hole and took another step with the same result.

By the time she got to the bank, one shoe was missing—lost forever to a bayou sinkhole—and the other was so full of the stinky, gooey muck that it felt like her leg weighed a hundred pounds. She flopped onto the bank and groaned when she felt the jolt through her head.

“Ouch,” she said, and gently rubbed her forehead. There was definitely a knot, but a quick body inspection didn’t reveal anything bleeding profusely. Just minors cuts and what would probably develop into some lovely bruises over the next couple of days. She looked over at her truck and sighed. The water was over the hood now and pouring into the cab. Definitely a total loss. Her insurance rates were going to go through the roof.

What in the world had happened? She’d just had her truck in for its scheduled maintenance a couple of weeks before. If there had been a problem with her brakes, the dealership would have let her know. Hell, if there had been a problem with the brakes, the dealership would have been delighted to charge her more money.

She tugged her cell phone from her wet jeans pocket, but it was just as she’d feared—totally fried. Looking back at the road, she considered her options. It was probably five miles or more back to her cabin, which put her around two miles from the office. Maybe Sabine could give her a ride into New Orleans. She pushed herself up from the ground, swaying for a moment as the blood rushed to her aching head.

Unbelievable. She’d totaled her car and had a raging headache, and she hadn’t even had the pleasure of being drunk to accomplish it. Disgusted, she shot one final look at her sunken truck and stepped onto the road with one muddy tennis shoe and one muddy bare foot. The gravel immediately dug into the sensitive skin on her bare foot, and she grimaced. All this and then a will reading—probably complete with a ghost.

The day just kept getting better.

Luc pushed his Jeep faster down the gravel road to the office. He had planned on arriving early, hoping Maryse might make a stop in before her appointment in New Orleans, but a faulty alarm clock put him thirty minutes later than he had hoped. He tried to tell himself that his desire to catch Maryse at the office was part of the case, just doing his job, but the truth was the woman intrigued him.

How in the world had such an intelligent, attractive woman allowed herself to get hooked up with the likes of Hank Henry? It simply boggled the mind.

As he approached a large curve in the road, sunlight glinted off something ahead of him, and he squinted, trying to make out where it was coming from. As he neared the turn, it was all too clear. Maryse’s truck was buried in the bayou just off the curve, the sun bouncing off her side window.

He slammed on his brakes and threw his Jeep in park before it had even come to a complete stop. Panicked, he jumped out and rushed to the edge of the water, trying to make out whether a person was inside the truck, but he couldn’t see a thing. He was just about to wade in when he saw a trail of flattened marsh grass followed by muddy footprints.

Thank God.
Maryse had definitely made it out of the truck. His tension eased a bit now that he knew she was alive, but then his thoughts immediately turned to injury. The truck was totaled, and any number of things could have happened to Maryse during the wreck or wading through the bayou afterward.

The office was a couple of miles away, and since he hadn’t passed her on his way from town, he had to assume she’d started walking in that direction. He rushed back to his Jeep, threw it in drive, and tore down the road to the office, scanning the sides of the road as he went, just in case she’d stopped to rest, or worse, collapsed.

He’d gone about half a mile when he rounded a corner and saw her walking on the road ahead of him. She turned around to look, and the relief on her face was apparent, even from a distance.

“I thought I’d scared you away yesterday,” she said, as he pulled up beside her.

Luc shook his head. “I love a challenge. I thought I’d head in to the office early—practice putting the seat down on the toilet.”

“Well, three cheers for work ethic,” she said. “I was beginning to think I’d be walking the rest of the day.”

He stepped out of the Jeep and gently gripped her arm with one hand, checking her up and down. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“I’ll be okay,” she said. “I banged my head on the steering wheel, so I have an enormous headache, and walking on a gravel road with a bare foot wasn’t exactly fun. But I don’t think there’s anything serious.”

He reached up to her face and moved her bangs to the side. She definitely had a goose egg, and from the size of it, he didn’t doubt the severity of her headache. It was going to take more than Tylenol to fix this one.

“What happened?” he asked.

Maryse shrugged. “I don’t really know. The brakes just failed, and I couldn’t make the turn.”

Luc felt his heart beat a little faster. “Have you had the truck serviced lately?”

“Yeah, that’s the weird thing. I just had it in for a sixty-thousand-mile service. They checked everything.” She paused for a moment. “Or at least they said they did.”

Luc nodded, trying to keep his facial expression normal, but his senses were on high alert. This accident sounded fishy. “We need to get you to the hospital,” he said. “Someone should take a look at that knot. Just to be safe.”

Maryse shook her head, then put on hand over her forehead and groaned. “No time. I have to be at this will reading this afternoon. I still need to send some samples to the state, change clothes, and pick up my spare cell phone. The old one took a dip with the truck.”

“The samples can wait. I’m pretty sure this rates a sick day.”

“Maybe, but the reading won’t wait, and I can’t exactly go looking like this. If you’ll just drop me off at the dock to my cabin, I’d really appreciate it.”

“It’s not a contest, Maryse. You don’t have to be present to win. I’m pretty sure the attorney can tell you about it afterward.”

Maryse gave him a withering stare. “Can you arrange to have my wayward husband served with divorce papers, too? I have to find Hank, and Helena’s death may be my last chance. There’s more at stake here than some inheritance. Besides, knowing Helena, she probably left me more debt or a pig farm or bubonic plague.”

“Fine. But as soon as you’ve showered and changed, I want to take you to the hospital.”

Maryse frowned. “I’ve already told you there’s no time. It’s a headache. I’ll have it checked out after the will reading.”

“What about your truck?”

“It’s not exactly going anywhere. It can wait until this evening.”

“You’ve got insurance?”

She gave him a dirty look. “Of course I have insurance. I also have smoke detectors and contribute to my 401(k).”

Luc held in a smile. “If you give me your insurance card, I can take care of the tow.”

“I can take care of the tow myself. I’m fairly certain no one’s going to steal it.”

Luc threw his hands up in exasperation. “Are you always this stubborn?”

“Are you always this bossy?”

He stared at her for a moment, then grinned. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well, you’ve just run into a brick wall.”

No shit.
He looked at her and shook his head. “At least let me drive you to your appointment in New Orleans. I need to run an errand there today anyway, and you can pick up a rental car in the city a lot easier than getting one delivered to Mudbug.”

She narrowed her eyes at him and stared for a couple of seconds, and Luc knew she was wondering what his angle was. He hoped to God she didn’t find out until he was gone, because if Maryse was this prickly when she thought he was trying to help, he’d hate to see her reaction if she knew he was actually in Mudbug investigating her.

“Okay,” she said finally, “you can drop me off at the attorney’s office.”

Luc nodded, and she pointed a finger at him.

“But I want to be very clear,” she said, “that the only reason I’m accepting your offer is because I’m down to one source of transportation and I don’t think I can get my bass boat all the way to New Orleans—at least not by one o’clock.”

Luc couldn’t hold back a grin. “You make me feel very special, Maryse. I’m so glad you’re going to allow me to chauffer you around.”

Maryse shook her head. “Don’t get any ideas. Just because I’m catching a ride with you doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind about sharing an office.”

“Now, what in the world makes you think I would get any ideas?”

Maryse frowned and walked over to the passenger side of the Jeep. “I know your type, LeJeune. Technically, I’m still married to him. Guys like you are always full of ideas.”

As she climbed inside his Jeep, Luc took a peek at her firm, round bottom, every curve clearly outlined in her wet jeans. Maryse was dead wrong about him. He wasn’t full of ideas—he was overflowing with them.

Chapter Three

Maryse stepped carefully out of her bass boat, making sure one of her shiny, satin heels didn’t slip between the boards of the dock. Luc sat at the dock in his Jeep and stared at her with a mixture of amusement and disbelief. Okay, so it probably wasn’t an everyday sight, but did he have to laugh? She glared at him as she climbed up in his Jeep. “What? You’ve never seen a woman in a dress before, LeJeune?”

Luc shook his head. “Mostly I see women out of dresses, and I’ve absolutely never seen a woman wearing fancy clothes in a bass boat.”

“You would if you lived in Mudbug.”

Luc smiled. “Aren’t you a little overdressed for a will reading?”

Maryse shrugged. “It was either this or jeans.”

“You need to get out more.”

“Just drive,” Maryse said, and reached over to turn the radio on—loud. Then she leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes, shutting out all images and sounds of Luc LeJeune. God knows she had enough to think about. She was about to come face to face with Hank Henry for the first time in two years. It was probably a good thing she was wearing a dress. It wouldn’t be as easy to kick his ass in high heels.

Luc pulled up in front of the attorney’s office fifteen minutes early, and Maryse felt her back stiffen as she picked up her purse and prepared to step out of the Jeep. Turning to Luc, she gave him what was probably a grim smile. “I really appreciate you giving me a lift. And I’m sorry if I was a big bitch earlier.”

Luc smiled. “You weren’t that bad.”

Maryse felt a momentary burst of disappointment. “I’ll try harder next time.”

Now Luc laughed. “I don’t have any doubt about that. Now get inside and claim your pig farm and your divorce and anything else you’ve got riding on this reading.”

Maryse smiled for real this time, stepped out of the Jeep, and glanced over at the attorney’s office. Luc pulled onto the street, waving as he drove off. Maryse sighed and tore her gaze from the Jeep, trying to refocus on the will reading and everything that went along with it. Luc LeJeune was Hank Henry all over again…good-looking, charming, a professional flirt, confident beyond belief, and probably had a list of conquests that rivaled Alexander the Great. He was everything she was trying to avoid in one neat, gorgeous, well-defined package.