Resurrection in Mudbug (18 page)

“So you want to tell me why you came in here for the local gossip instead of asking Mildred?”

“She’s not at the hotel. I’m supposed to be covering the desk while she’s out shopping, but I couldn’t stand that overwhelming feeling that something huge was happening and I was in the dark. I don’t know when Mildred will be back, and I didn’t want to wait for answers.” 

Maryse left out the part where Mildred wasn’t answering her phone and Jadyn was MIA. The longer she thought about those two things in relation to Colt’s visit and what Bill had told her, the more she was convinced that Mildred hadn’t gone shopping at all. 

She only hoped that whatever Mildred had gotten involved in, it didn’t put her at risk of ending up like Duke.

###

Marty was closing the garage bays when Colt walked up and pulled down the remaining open door. 

“You look like a man doing some heavy thinking,” Marty observed. “What’s on your mind?”

“Too many things to mention, and I couldn’t talk about most of them even if I wanted to.”

Marty nodded. “Rumor mill’s running. I got a good idea what’s eating at you. Anything I can do to help?”

“Maybe. We didn’t find anything yesterday when we searched the boat, but I can’t shake the feeling that I missed something.”

“You want to take another look?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“’Course not.” He waved Colt to the office door and they stepped inside the garage. 

“Do you have time to look with me?” Colt asked.

Marty shrugged. “I got the time…just don’t know how helpful I’ll be. I’m not trained like a detective or nothing.”

“No, but you know all the boats in this area.”

“That’s true enough.” He headed to the back bay where the boat was stored.

“What can you tell me about the boat?” Colt asked.

Marty walked the length of it and looked underneath, then straightened back up. “It’s an older model—looks like seventies construction. Pretty good maintenance, though, except for a hard hit on the front left. My guess is a stump.”

“Is that what made it sink?”

“Yes and no. The original impact looks to be a couple years old, and it would have taken on water after that but it wouldn’t have been anything a bilge pump couldn’t handle. But if the boat was twisted by the storm, that would have been enough to widen the crack or split it further than it was to begin with.”

“Any idea at all who this might belong to?”

Marty shook his head. “Heck, most of the boats in Mudbug were built in the seventies. People here can’t afford newer models and there’s no need as long as the old one is serviceable. Most of the younger shrimpers got their boats handed down from their fathers.”

“I don’t suppose you’d recognize an engine if you worked on it?”

“Probably, but I haven’t worked on a shrimp boat in years. The locals all handle their own engine work. Sometimes they’ll swing by here for me to change a propeller. It’s easier since I got the lift at the dock. Saves them trailering the boat to work on it.”

Marty stepped around to the back of the boat and frowned.

“Do you recognize the propeller?” Colt asked.

“Yeah, I’ve done two of ’em just this week, but that’s not what I’m looking at.”

Colt stepped beside him and stared at the back of the boat. “What then?”

“The paint doesn’t match. I mean, it’s all white, but look at the paint on the top of the hull versus the bottom.”

Colt looked closely at the paint. “You’re right. The bottom is faded. The top looks like it was done recently?”

Marty nodded. “There’s only one reason I can think of to paint just the top of the hull.”

“To cover the name of the boat.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have a grill around back, right?”

“Yeah…” 

“Charcoal or gas?”

Marty drew himself up straight. “No self-respecting Cajun grills with gas.”

Colt smiled. “Great. I’ll be right back.” He hurried out the back door of the garage and grabbed a piece of charcoal from the edge of the grill. The center pieces would collapse too easily, but this one should work fine.

When he came back inside, Marty looked at the charcoal in his hands and raised his eyebrows. “Should I even ask what you’re going to do with that?”

“You can watch,” Colt said and started lightly rubbing the charcoal along the top edge of the boat. “Whoever covered the name didn’t sand this down first. Some of the lines left by the previous lettering have created ridges in the paint. I’m hoping this charcoal will expose enough so that we can read the name.”

Marty grinned and stepped closer to the boat. “For a minute there, I thought you had gone crazy and was going to ask me to make you supper, but this is right smart.”

“We’ll see,” Colt said, praying that enough of the lettering showed.

When he got to the far edge of the boat, he took several steps back and looked. Marty stepped back with him and narrowed his eyes. 

“Is that a
p
?” Marty asked, pointing to the first letter.

“It looks like it. Maybe
p
then
r
, but I can’t make out the next one.”

“Is that one big word or more than one, you think?”

Colt frowned. “Probably more than one, unless it’s a name.” He didn’t bother to say that the reason for his assessment was the unlikelihood of a Mudbug shrimper christening his boat with a four-syllable name.

“That’s an
f
,” Marty said. “In fact, that looks like ‘fish’ to me.”

Something clicked in Colt’s mind. “Pro Fisherman.”

“Yeah!” Marty said, getting excited. “I think you got it.” Then his smile disappeared. “That’s Junior’s daddy’s old boat.”

“I know,” Colt said. “I thought his daddy retired.”

Marty nodded. “Several years ago, as a matter of fact. Bad knees.”

“Did he sell the boat?”

“No. Far as I know, he gave it to Junior. He already had his own, of course, but when shrimp’s running hot, he’d let someone run this boat for a cut of profit.”

Colt sighed. Everything had come full circle right back to Junior.

“Marty, let’s keep this between you and me for now.”

“No problem. I’ll get a rag and wipe that charcoal off before I head home.”

“Thanks,” Colt said and left the garage. 

Had he underestimated Junior Thibodeaux? Was all that bumble and bluster a convenient cover for intelligence and cunning? He blew out a breath. Jeez, he didn’t think so, but he’d seen stranger things before.

He started his truck and pulled away from the garage. Apparently, he needed to have yet another conversation with Junior. The disgruntled shrimper lived in a shotgun house a couple of blocks off Main Street, so a couple of minutes later, Colt pulled into his drive behind his truck. He tried the front door, but no one answered, so he stepped around behind the house to the garage. 

The main garage door was down, but the side door was unlocked. He stuck his head in and yelled, but given that the lights were off, he didn’t expect an answer. When he returned to the front of the house, he tried the front door one more time before leaving, but finally decided that either Junior wasn’t home or he was so drunk he didn’t hear Colt knocking. Most likely, he headed to Bill’s for happy hour. 

Colt hopped into his truck and drove back to Main Street. First he’d check the bar for Junior, then he’d see if Jadyn had returned to the hotel. After that, he was going home for a hot shower and a cold beer.

It had been an extraordinarily long day.

Chapter Eighteen

Mildred clenched the steering wheel so tightly, Jadyn could see her knuckles whitening. 

“You’re sure this is the right way?” Mildred asked again.

“No, I’m not sure,” Helena said. “The last time I was here was over fifty years ago. I can’t remember shit I did yesterday. How am I supposed to be sure about something that old?”

“I can remember everything I did yesterday,” Jadyn grumbled from the backseat. They’d already been driving around in the swamp for over an hour and had wound up on at least ten dead ends, none of which had ended at Helena’s family cemetery. Jadyn was starting to wonder if Helena had imagined that entire scene from her childhood.

“Try that way,” Helena said and pointed at an overgrown path to the right. 

Mildred gave a long-suffering sigh and steered her car onto the narrow path. “This is the last one. If we don’t find the cemetery here, you’re going to return that key to the sheriff’s filing cabinet and Jadyn is going to tell him what it might unlock.”

Mildred gave both Helena and Jadyn a stern look. “Are we clear on that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jadyn said. At this point, she was out of arguments and as frustrated with the lack of progress as Mildred. Even Helena appeared more frazzled than usual. 

The trees that lined the path seemed to encroach farther onto the makeshift road, cutting out most of the fading sunlight. At any moment, Jadyn expected Mildred to put the car in reverse and start backing out of swamp, but as they rounded a corner, Mildred slammed on the brakes. 

“Holy crap!” Mildred cried as the car slid a couple of inches on the gravel and dirt and stopped right in front of a huge iron gate.

“That came up out of nowhere,” Mildred exclaimed, still clutching the steering wheel. 

Jadyn peered up at the massive iron fence and wondered just how long it had taken to erect it. Helena hadn’t been joking when she said there was no way over it without a crane. The fence was at least fifteen feet tall with each post spaced approximately four inches apart and with a giant spike on the top. One wrong move up there, and you’d be impaled. 

She climbed out of the car and pulled the key out of her pocket. Mildred climbed out and stood next to her, an anxious look on her face. 

“Here goes nothing,” Jadyn said and slid the key into the ancient lock.

She held her breath as she tried to turn the key, but it didn’t budge. Figuring it had been forever since the lock had been used, she twisted harder, but to no avail. The breath she’d been holding came out as a sigh and she looked over at Mildred and shook her head.

Mildred’s shoulders slumped. “Well, we knew it was a long shot. I’m afraid you’re going to have to get Colt’s help on this. I’m still sure I’m onto something about the type of lock that key opens. It just isn’t at this location.”

“You’re probably right.” Jadyn struggled to control her disappointment. “Still, since we’re already here, I’d like to take a look around the perimeter, if that’s okay.”

Mildred glanced up at the increasingly dim sky. “We can’t take very long. The sunlight will be gone completely in about thirty minutes. I don’t want to try to find our way out of here in the dark.”

Jadyn nodded, completely agreeing with Mildred’s unease. They’d made so many turns and backtracks that the way back to Mudbug wasn’t exactly obvious. The last thing she wanted was to be stuck in the swamp all night in a car, and certainly not with Helena, who she was certain wouldn’t give them even a moment’s peace.

Jadyn opened the driver’s door and peered in at Helena. “The key didn’t work but I want to take a look around the perimeter while we’re here. Just in case there’s another entrance that isn’t visible from the road. Do you want to come with us?”

“No way. I’m not getting any closer to that place than this car seat.”

“You’ll be here all alone.”

Helena looked momentarily conflicted, but fear won out and she shook her head. “I’ll just practice changing clothes. I’ve been watching
Project Runway
.”

Before her mind could begin to process the potential horror, Jadyn closed the car door and set out into the swamp to the left of the gate, Mildred creeping behind her. The brush was thick and scratched her bare arms.

“I should have brought a long-sleeved shirt,” Jadyn said, looking back at Mildred. “You don’t have to come with me. No sense in both of us getting scratched to hell.”

“I’d rather be out here with you, the bugs, brambles, and potential spooks than sitting in the car with Helena.”

Jadyn had no valid argument for Mildred’s statement, so she gave her a nod and continued pushing her way through the brush until the fence made a ninety-degree turn to the right. “I guess this is one end of the cemetery.”

She peered down the top of the fence line, but it disappeared into the cypress trees twenty feet from where they stood. “It doesn’t look like anyone has passed this way recently.”

Mildred nodded. “From the looks of the undergrowth, it’s been decades.”

“Let’s check in the other direction, then get out of here before the light fades completely.”

“Good idea.”

They tromped back through the swamp toward the gate and were about twenty yards away when they heard Helena scream bloody murder. Jadyn pulled the nine-millimeter from her waistband and ran through the brush, afraid to even think about what was happening.

She burst out of the trees and onto the path and skidded to a stop. Helena was outside of the car, running around it and screaming as loudly as possible, which was disconcerting, but that wasn’t what had Jadyn staring.

Helena’s speed was currently hindered by a dress that appeared to be constructed completely of interwoven lettuce. She looked like the Jolly Green Giant, minus the jolly part. As she sped past Jadyn, a piece of her dress flew off and smacked Jadyn in the face. She grabbed the piece and gave it a closer look. Yep, definitely lettuce.

“What the hell is she doing?” Mildred stopped beside Jadyn, panting. 

Jadyn shook her head and waited until Helena rounded the car for another pass. “Stop!” she yelled and stepped in front of the wall of green.

Helena bounced to a stop, losing enough of her dress to make a decent salad, and looked around, her eyes wide. “Do you see him? Is he gone?”

Jadyn’s grip tightened on her pistol and she scanned the brush. “Where did you see him? What did he look like?”

Helena gave her an exasperated look. “I saw him in the car, of course. He slid right through the door and into the driver’s seat. Has to be a relative. All the men in my family have these enormous foreheads and practically no hair.”