Free Chaos in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Mystery/Romance Series) by Jana DeLeon Page A

go throwing even worse disasters into her mind. “Then ride in the back.”
    Helena stared. “Seriously?”
    “Either you ride in the back, or I have to stop every mile or so to get ill. I need you downwind.”
    “Then take me back to Mudbug.”
    “I don’t have time. Work? Missing person? Any of that ringing a bell?”
    Helena stood on the passenger’s seat, then attempted to slip between the front seats and into the back, but halfway through, she got wedged in between, her pink-and-black-clad butt perched right in Jadyn’s face.
    “Help me,” Helena said. “I’m stuck.”
    “You have got to be kidding me.”
    “Do I look like I’m kidding?”
    “Then get ready to push because I’m only doing this once. On three.” Jadyn turned in her seat so that she could get better leverage, then lifted her hands in front of Helena’s rear and tried not to cringe.
    “One. Two. Three!” Jadyn planted her hands on Helena’s butt cheeks and shoved as hard as she could. Her hands sank a good inch into the flab before she got results, but finally, Helena popped out from between the seats and fell onto the floorboard in the back. She flailed around a bit but managed to crawl onto the seat.
    Finally, she huffed and crossed her arms across her chest. “With the way you’re treating me, I shouldn’t even tell you what I overheard.”
    Jadyn perked up. “Did Peter and Bobby say something after I left?”
    “Oh, they said plenty. Mostly about someone named Leonard, who Bobby thinks is a problem, but I meant the two guys with the stinky pile of fish.”
    “What did they say?”
    “One said the boat looked like Clifton’s. The other said Clifton’s boat didn’t have flooring that color. The second guy accused the first guy of being color-blind. Then I hit the fish and that was it.”
    Jadyn glanced at the fish house and saw the pajamas starting to slide down the tin roof. She needed to get out of there before she raised any suspicion. She put the Jeep in gear and headed across the parking lot. As she turned onto the road, she looked to her left and saw Bobby exiting the shrimp house, slamming the door behind him. The pajamas lost their last grip on the edge of the roof and plopped right onto Bobby’s head.  
    Helena set up a howl as Bobby whirled around, pulling at the offending garments and only managing to wrap them tighter around his head. Jadyn floored her Jeep and sped away, determined to be out of Bobby’s line of sight when he got the pajamas off his head.
    When she got to the junction of the road and the highway, Jadyn pulled into a convenience store parking lot and stopped at the far end.
    “Are you going to get me a snack?” Helena asked. “I might be able to forgive you a little if you bought me Twinkies.”
    “No.” Jadyn pulled out her cell phone and called Shirley. “I need to see if you can track down an address for me. I only have a first name—Clifton—and he probably lives somewhere near Pirate’s Cove.”
    “Let me take a look,” Shirley said. A couple seconds later, she said, “There’s a Clifton Paschal near Sinful, but he’s ninety-two and disabled. Probably not our fisherman.”
    “Anyone else?”
    “Just a sec…one more. A Clifton Vines. Fifty-three.”
    “What’s the address?”
    “Box 65, FM 1168.”
    Jadyn grabbed a pen out of her glove compartment and jotted down the address on her map. “Great, thanks.”
    Jadyn hung up the phone and located the farm road on her map. “It’s not that far away, but with all the winding roads, it’s probably a twenty-minute drive.”
    “I’m not traipsing naked through the swamp.”
    Jadyn sighed. “You bitch more than any twenty people, you know that? I’m going to start calling you Queen of Complaints.”
    “Oh, I see. I’m the problem. So you wouldn’t complain if you were parading around in broad daylight wearing only your underwear?”
    “If no one could see me, I’d consider it an expedient way of getting out of doing