Mother-Daughter Murder Night(39)

Jack considered it. “I doubt it. The water moves fastest in the middle, west to east, ocean to farmland. When the wind comes up, kayakers hug the banks so they don’t have to fight the current as much. It would have to be totally stagnant or swirling weird for something to cut across in either direction.”

Lana watched a pelican choke down a fish, anchovy probably, shaking silver in the dusky light.

“And besides, if there was a body floating right in the middle of the slough, someone would see it before twenty-four hours had passed,” Jack said. She sat down on the concrete pad that pretended to be a back porch. “Ricardo must have gotten stuck in a creek, or snagged on something. He had a life jacket, but he was wearing shoes, and jeans, which would weigh him down. He could have gotten caught underwater, on a rock or one of those old shark-hunting blinds, and spun around.”

“Especially at low tide? When the water is lower in the channels, right?”

“Right.”

Lana sat beside her granddaughter and squinted across the water, searching out places a man could get trapped. The Rhoads ranch was over there. And the land trust property beyond it. “Could he get stuck, and then break loose again?”

“I guess,” Jack said. “Yeah. In twenty-four hours he’d hit multiple high and low tides. But it would have to be somewhere people wouldn’t see. A creek or a drainage ditch. There’s hundreds of those. He could travel down a creek at high tide, get stuck at low, and then get moving again.”

“Always staying on one side of the slough?”

“Right. None of the creeks cross over.”

According to Jack, Ricardo couldn’t have floated to the mud flats from just anywhere. He must have been traveling somewhere along the north side of the slough. He could have been killed along a creek that let out into the slough, or maybe an irrigation ditch. But the path of travel was all along the far bank.

Lana was comforted to learn he hadn’t died on their side of the slough. It put the murder farther from her window, past the weeds and fast-moving water. She gazed out to the far shore, wondering where Ricardo’s life had ended.

“Can I ask you something?” Jack’s voice was thin, uncertain. “Why don’t you and my mom get along?”

Lana tilted her face to the sky, her eyes tracking a pair of white-tailed kites circling the marsh for their dinner. She wondered how much Jack had heard of their argument on Thursday night.

“You know how you call me Prima?” Lana finally said.

Jack nodded, too fast. “If it hurts your feelings, I could call you something else—”

“No. I like it. In opera, prima donnas are the stars. Leading ladies. Some people say they’re demanding, but that’s just another way of describing women who have power, women who know their own worth.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

With Beth as her mother, of course she didn’t.

“Your mother is always supporting others, Jack. It’s a good thing. Noble, even. She loves you more than she loves herself.” Lana turned to look at Jack. “But you have to love yourself the most. No one else can do that for you.”

They stayed there on the freezing step for a long time.

“But do you—don’t you—?” Jack didn’t have the words to ask, or didn’t want to find them.

“Of course I love you. Your mom too. But I don’t think for a second you’re what makes me strong. I’m strong because I go after what I want. A Prima. Like you.”

Jack let out an involuntary smile, the compliment washing over her like warm milk. But then she shook her head.

“My mom might not be a Prima. But she did all this”—she waved her hands wide, taking in the house, the labyrinth, herself—“on her own. I think you’re more alike than different.”

Lana looked up one more time. The birds were gone now, the sky darkening like a bruise. Whatever pain was floating there, whatever wisps of forgiveness, the night swallowed it all.





Chapter Twenty-One




“Do you always hum in the morning?”

Beth jumped at the sound of her mother’s voice. Seven thirty a.m. on Monday, and Lana was already sitting at the table, laptop open, legal pad covered in notes. It was the earliest she’d been up since she came to Elkhorn.

“I’m allowed to make noise in my own house, Ma.” Beth turned away and smiled at the coffeemaker. “Nice to see you’ve got some energy.”

“It’s my last day of the steroids this month. I might as well get some use out of them.”

Jack walked over to the table, waffle in hand. “What’re you working on, Prima?”

“I’m trying to make a map of the slough. The jurisdictions. Who owns what. Did you know the Rhoads ranch is two hundred and fifty acres?”

“Massive, huh?” Beth said.

“I’ve developed bigger.”

Jack leaned over her grandma’s mess of arrows and jagged lines, punctuated by question marks. “I met this grad student at the marina last month who does ocean cartography. She goes out with this sonar machine and measures how the seafloor is changing. She offered to take me out on her boat sometime. If it’s okay with you, maybe I could ask—”

“Did Ricardo Cruz die in the ocean?” Beth asked.