Mother-Daughter Murder Night(70)

“I’m fine. We’re good.” Beth tried to keep her voice light. “You’re still in Elkhorn?”

“For a few more days. Di and I have to review the offer I got to buy the ranch. Hopefully we can sign the papers this weekend so I can get back. Truth is, I should be in the city now. The company’s at a pivot point, our burn rate’s sky high, and I need to land another investor before . . . I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear this.”

“Sounds like you’re under a lot of pressure.” He hadn’t mentioned his father, but Beth wondered if the grief was still pressing down on him.

“Nothing a double-malt whiskey can’t cure. Di has a function she has to go to tomorrow with her husband. I’ll be at the yacht club at seven p.m., toasting my father. You should join me, if you can.”

“Tomorrow? Maybe—”

Beth heard a muffled crash from the back bedroom, followed by a hasty “I’m fine!” She said a quick goodbye, then hustled in to help Lana, who was wrestling with the fallen corkboard. A drink didn’t sound half-bad.





Chapter Thirty-Five




Everyone was on their best behavior during dinner. They ordered Jack’s favorite—clam chowder—and laid out mismatched plates and bowls, tearing open the crusty rolls to let the steam rise into their faces before dunking chunks of bread into the soup.

Jack told them about her unsuccessful campaign to retake the morning’s chemistry pop quiz and the kid who stuck Cheez Whiz down his pants in the cafeteria.

“But,” she added, “I did learn something interesting out on the slough this morning.”

Jack and Lana both looked at Beth. Beth took her time folding her paper napkin before responding, relishing a rare moment when the power in the room was tipped in her direction. When her napkin resembled a stubby swan, she spoke. “What is it, honey?”

“Well, I mean, it’s interesting to me. I don’t know if it’s important to the investigation or anything.”

Lana and Beth waited.

“So I wanted to follow some of those creeks? On Prima’s maps? I was thinking about the tides and where Ricardo’s body could have come from. I realized, for him to come down a creek for a day and end up in the mud flats, it would have to be a long one. One with enough twists and turns to get stuck in low tide and get going again in the high.”

Lana conjured up a rough image of one of the tidal charts, the water rising and falling every twelve hours. “I see what you mean.”

Jack pulled a binder out of her backpack and extracted a printed map covered in intricate marks and topographical lines. “All the creeks I know are short. But I’d noticed one on your land trust map that went up behind the mud flats. And a couple on the Rhoads ranch headed in that same direction.”

Lana leaned over. “Where’d you get this map?”

“I texted that grad student I told you about, the one studying ocean navigation. She had this whole database of contour maps of the creeks. This morning, I went out to see if any of them connect to each other.”

She looked up for a moment and across the table at Beth. “I know, I know. I should have told you.”

Beth stopped buttering a roll to gesture with the knife for Jack to keep talking.

“I found a linkup. It goes from all the way up here”—Jack wiped her hand and put one finger on the map—“to here.” Her finger wound from the far end of the mud flats up into the fields, across the land trust property line, and through the ranch, then let out at the public fishing dock. “It runs for at least three miles. You saw me just as I was coming out.”

Lana pulled the map to her. “Did you see anything unusual in the creek?”

“Like what?”

“Maybe something to indicate Ricardo had been there? A torn piece of fabric? Muddy boot prints?”

“A giant sign that said ‘Man Killed Here’?” Beth suggested.

Lana shot Beth a look. “Perhaps we should discuss this in the bedroom,” Lana said to Jack.

“I’ll be good,” Beth said.

Jack looked back and forth between her mother and grandmother. Were they teasing each other? Or was another war about to start? Was this what it was like to have two parents?

When nothing exploded, Jack continued. “Um, well, no, nothing like that. I was mostly just focused on figuring out if it went through. But then there was that man. I thought he was just some farmer or something, but he spooked me. He was doing something with a shovel for a long time. That’s why I was late. I was hiding, waiting for him to leave.”

“I know this morning you said you didn’t recognize him,” Lana said. “But was there anything about him or that spot, anything you remember?”

“It smelled bad, I remember that. Like a dead animal, maybe, or a live skunk. But I didn’t see anything. There were these big reeds all around me. I was hidden really well.” At least, that’s what she hoped. “But here’s the weird thing. He didn’t go back up into the fields when he was done. He left in a kayak.”

“Did you see the kayak?”

“I sort of followed it. That’s how I got back out to the slough.”

“Jack!”

“Mom, I was way behind him. And I ditched my life jacket. He couldn’t see me. I promise.”