Lana parked outside the house and sat in her car, her thoughts turning back to murder. She had to admit it. She’d been wrong. She’d been biased by her professional experience into thinking this whole thing was about land. Who owned it. Who controlled it. What you could and couldn’t do with it. Hal and Ricardo had Verdadera Libertad. Victor had his conservation plans. Paul had his mysterious Fruitful company. And the Rhoads children had an entire ranch to fight over. It added up to a hundred different reasons for someone to commit murder.
But love was the trump card. Love was more potent than land. Especially when it got twisted into something ugly by surprise.
What kind of love had led to Ricardo’s death? Was it the fatherly love Victor had for Ricardo, and the pain that followed when the older man discovered the younger had betrayed him to pursue his own dream? Or was it lust—an affair gone wrong with Diana?
Lana thought back to Jack’s comment about Ricardo being the linchpin, and what Diana had said about not suffering betrayal by men. Perhaps Ricardo was the operations manager she’d mentioned, the one she’d picked out for her wellness ranch. Lana could imagine Diana mapping it all out: Ricardo running the spa by day, then keeping her bed warm at night. Maybe she’d even pitched him on that fantasy. Maybe he’d pretended to go along with it. If Ricardo was promising Diana one thing about her project, stringing along Victor on his, and then making plans behind both their backs with Hal about something entirely different . . . well, that was the best motive for murder she’d heard so far. For either of them.
Chapter Forty-Four
Jack spent the bike ride home from school debating what to write back to the guy with the boat in San Luis Obispo. When she got inside, Lana emerged from the back bedroom with a roll of papers in her hand.
“What are you up to tonight?” Lana asked.
“Um . . . homework? I have to write an essay about early twentieth-century presidents. What about you?”
Lana unfurled the roll onto the table. “Learning what I can about Lady Di’s horse spa.”
“Ooh . . . can I look?”
“You do your work. I’ll do mine. Then we’ll talk.”
While Jack tackled her essay, Lana marked up the set of plans Diana had given her at lunch the day before. After her discoveries that afternoon, she’d decided to do whatever she could to stay close to Diana. And the plans were interesting. Lana didn’t really know whether a wellness spa needed two equine hydrotherapy pools, but the business model looked sound. She had just shot Diana an email with a few bullets on the profitability calculations when she looked up and saw Jack staring at her.
“What?” Lana asked.
“You know how you told me winners never mumble?” Jack held up the book she was reading about Theodore Roosevelt. “He says you should speak softly and carry a big stick.”
Lana scoffed. “You think they let women have sticks?”
Nicoletti appeared on the six o’clock news, after a segment about a despondent lady in Salinas whose winning lottery ticket got shredded in a lettuce harvester. Jack and Lana watched from the couch, sharing a pot of mac and cheese, peas, and corn all mixed together.
The detective stood on the asphalt behind the Kayak Shack, his nubbly brown suit making him look like a bedraggled teddy bear. Nicoletti’s droning recitation of the facts of the case was intercut with ominous shots of the slough at night, pickleweed popping out bloodred against the dark water.
“They made the slough look kind of scary with those weird angles,” Jack said.
“Someone on the crew thinks they’re an artist,” Lana replied. “Check out that close-up on the life jacket.”
As the camera zoomed out, Nicoletti shared the basics: Ricardo Cruz, twenty-nine, born in Salinas, resident of Santa Cruz, died Friday, February 3, by blunt force trauma, followed by submersion in Elkhorn Slough. Weapon not yet recovered. While the sheriffs anticipated a speedy arrest, anyone with any information about the crime should call the Monterey County sheriff’s department tip line.
“Good luck with that,” Lana grumbled. She reached for the remote.
“Prima! Look.”
The TV screen was flashing the sheriff’s department tip line number, under a photograph of Ricardo Cruz smiling and leaning against a green road bike.
“That’s the abandoned bike I saw at the Kayak Shack,” Jack said. “It must have been Ricardo’s.”
Both of them leaned forward, Lana reaching out with her phone to take a shaky photo of the TV.