Mother-Daughter Murder Night(13)
Lana coughed again. “I’ll call the school and tell them you won’t be in tomorrow. You can stay home with me.”
Jack raised her head in surprise.
“What? No, Prima. I mean, thank you, but I should go to school. I’ll feel better that way.”
“We’ll all feel better in the morning,” Beth said. “Go get your pillow. And your blanket. It’s too cold tonight for you to steal mine.”
Lana watched them get up from the table and fingered the pills in the pocket of her robe. She was six days away from chemo, which meant a bad week was starting. She felt short of breath, her lungs laboring to push out a hacking cough that made her eyes water. Not that her girls noticed. They were focused on each other now, shuffling to Beth’s bedroom in a tight huddle of hugs and whispers. No “You okay, Ma?” Not even a “good night.” Lana felt the energy drain out of the room, the tide of love receding.
Chapter Eight
Jack floated through North Monterey County High on Monday in a fog. On one level, she felt comforted by the normalcy around her—the shouting kids, the smell of chalk, the ritual passing of papers from desk to desk—but each time the bell rang, Jack realized she had no memory of what the teacher had talked about all period. Presidents, maybe. Or covalent bonds. She headed home with a backpack stuffed with indecipherable notes and arrived to a quiet house. There was a note on the counter that her mom had gone to Gilroy to visit a former patient. She peeked into her old room and saw her grandma, snoring in bed. She grabbed some grapes from the fridge and settled on the couch to try to do her homework.
At six o’clock, there was a knock on the door.
Jack ignored it and kept plodding through Spanish verb conjugations. She figured it was one of Lana’s deliveries of new appliances or fancy face serums. But then the knock came again, louder.
Jack followed her mom’s rules. Walk to the door. Ask “Who is it?” without unlocking. Wait.
“We’re here from the Monterey sheriff’s department.”
Jack squeezed her eyes shut, hard. Her mind flashed back to the mud flats. The glint of sun on the dead man’s long hair, the water pooling in his jacket. Jack wanted to run into her old room and crawl under the covers. She wanted to grab her board and charge down the gravel hill to the water, to paddle back in time somehow to before yesterday ever happened, before the water darkened.
She opened the door.
It was the man and the woman from the day before, him in a dark brown suit, her in a shiny purple jacket that matched her nails.
“Jacqueline Rubicon?” the woman said. “We met yesterday?”
Jack stared at her, a mess of hair and discomfort.
“Is there an adult home with you?”
“Uh . . . hold on.” Jack shut the door, ran to the back bedroom, and woke up her grandma.
When the door opened the second time, Lana stood in front of Jack, wearing a headscarf and her thick, satiny bathrobe like a shield.
The man spoke. “I’m Detective Nicoletti. And my partner, Detective Ramirez. From the Monterey sheriff’s department. May we come in?”
Lana swept out her arm, directing them to the kitchen table.
Nicoletti seemed to be the one in charge. “We’re glad you’re both at home,” he said. “We were hoping to talk with you, Jacqueline, about what happened at the slough. Of course, if that’s all right with your mother.”
This last word earned the detective a full-wattage smile from Lana and an offer of something to drink.
“She’s my grandmother,” Jack said.
“You didn’t have to tell him that,” Lana hissed, her back to the detectives as she scrounged in the cabinet for matching water glasses.
The detectives lined up with their notebooks on one side of the table, Lana and Jack on the other. Before anyone else could speak, Lana leaned forward.
“Have you determined what happened?”
“We’ve identified the person who died,” Nicoletti said. “On Jacqueline’s tour yesterday.”
“He wasn’t on my tour.”
Nicoletti kept talking as if he hadn’t heard Jack speak. “We’d like to show you a picture of him. Not from when he was in the water. From before.”
The detective slid a photograph across the table. His thick fingers stuck to it for a moment. Then he looked up.
“Do you recognize this man?”
Jack and Lana both stared at the picture. The man was handsome, slim, with dark brown hair hanging past his shoulders. Thick eyebrows, big bright eyes, clean-shaven. He was wearing a fancy backpack with neon straps and clips, standing in a forest and smiling wide for the camera. He looked like he was ready to charge up a mountain.
Jack shook her head. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
She looked up at the detectives and started ticking off reasons why. “He’s too old to go to my school. He doesn’t work at the Kayak Shack or any of the other places at the marina. I haven’t seen him on the slough. He doesn’t really look like a water guy, unless maybe he has a dad or an uncle he goes fishing with. And I know most of them.”
The detectives looked at Lana. This time, the woman, Ramirez, spoke.
“Ma’am, do you recognize him?”