Mother-Daughter Murder Night(61)
Lana arched one eyebrow. “No more murder night for you?”
“Ma, this isn’t—”
Lana stood up and rolled out her neck. “Jack, I know you have school tomorrow, but after that, I was hoping . . .”
“I’d love to help,” Jack said quickly, before her mother could interject.
“Tomorrow, then.” Lana gathered up the papers and patted them into a messy stack. “We’ll see what these have to say about who’s innocent.”
Chapter Thirty-One
By the following afternoon, Lana’s bedroom looked like the headquarters of a secret crime-solving squad. Which Jack supposed it was. Sort of. The corkboard was covered with the list of suspects, the greasy map of the slough, the handwritten note, and a sketch of the Rhoads ranch showing its many leases and subdivisions. The most recent addition to the board was a grainy blown-up photograph of Martin Rhoads standing on a stage in a gaggle of men at the nanotechnology pitch contest on February 3, which apparently was a real thing. All the men were wearing logo Tshirts from their various start-ups. Most of them looked about twenty-five, scrawny and spiky-haired. Martin looked like their nerdy uncle trying to fit in.
Lana had all the printed papers she’d photographed at the land trust on the bed, organized in piles. Jack sat down and started leafing through the messiest stack.
“That’s the historical stuff,” Lana said. “I haven’t gone through it yet. But let me show you this first.”
They walked over to the bulletin board. “I was thinking about what your mom said about the body and where it could have floated from.”
Jack figured this was the closest Lana might come to admitting she might be wrong.
“We don’t know where Ricardo died yet,” Lana continued, “but I thought it might be a good idea to really understand what happens where the land trust and the ranch hit the water. Creeks don’t obey property lines, and we know Mr. Rhoads leased out ranch land to other businesses. I found the details about the leases in the papers at the land trust, and here’s what that looks like.”
Lana pointed to the sketch on the board. It looked like a toddler’s rendition of a checkerboard, the land carved into blocks of different shapes and sizes.
“You want me to take notes?”
“Never volunteer to be a secretary,” Lana said, handing over her legal pad. “Now write this down. Mr. Rhoads and his family have always run the fifty acres at the top of the hill, where the main house and the barn are.”
“Where we went for the wake.”
“Right. The Rhoads family manages the fields on the hillside east of the house. The south hundred acres, closer to the slough, those are leased out to an organic strawberry farmer. Over here”—Lana circled an area north of the house—“there’s another hundred acres, leased to a salmon hatchery, cauliflower hybrids, one that just says Mrs. Pickle, and an outfit called Splatterball. I looked it up. Sounds terrible, all those young people in camouflage running around with guns.”
Lana paused. “Do you think a man like Ricardo Cruz could have been into paintball?” She made the word sound like a degrading sexual act. “I don’t see it.”
Her cell phone started buzzing on the comforter. Lana looked at it and shook her head. “Victor Morales. The man has called every day to apologize.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“Not yet. It’s always good to make a man sweat, Jack. At least until you have something you want from him.”
Lana ignored the call and turned back to the sketch, pointing to the southeastern corner of the ranch by the water and the boundary with the land trust property. “The interesting bit is over here. Last year, Mr. Rhoads leased this little slice of land to Paul. Your boss.”
Jack looked closer. “Mom mentioned something about that to me.”
“Your mother?”
“Yeah . . . I guess it came up when she got burritos with Martin. She told me she might have figured out why Mr. Rhoads had that double kayak in his barn. I guess he leased Paul some land and Paul gave him a kayak in exchange. That’s all I know.”
Lana wanted to ask more, but she turned to the board instead. “Well. Here it is. Technically it’s leased to something called Fruitful LLC, but Paul’s name is on the lease. Do you have any idea what he might be doing there?”
Jack shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it. It’s not like we have a snack stand or keep boats up there. Does it go all the way to the water?”
Jack and Lana looked at the skinny wedge. Paul’s land was small, less than an acre, a tiny Pac-Man mouth opening toward the slough from the vastness of the ranch. Lana wondered for a moment if it could be the seed of the kind of big, bold project referenced in the handwritten note she’d found.
“Judging from satellite images, it’s a field,” Lana said. “Close to the bank, but not right up to it. Probably a lot of those standing pools that fill with salt water too.”
Jack’s eyes darted between the sketch, the map of the slough, and her notes. “I think I know that area. There’s kind of a valley. And a fence. You can’t see much of what’s up there.”
“It’s pretty close to the mud flats.”
“Do you think . . .” Jack wasn’t sure if she wanted to ask. “Do you think I should stop working for him?”