Chapter Twenty
Beth met Jack at the back door before she’d even locked her bike.
“How did it go?”
Jack leaned the bike against the house and accepted a one-armed squeeze from her mother. Then she made a beeline for the kitchen.
“It was okay. Good, I guess.”
“The detective?”
“She was cool, actually. She wasn’t excited at first about being in nature. But then she got into it.” Jack sat down at the table with a bag of tortilla chips and a bowl of salsa. She glanced at her mother. “And Prima was right.”
Lana’s voice floated over from the couch. “Right about what?”
Beth raised an eyebrow. “Go back to sleep, Ma.”
Lana pulled herself up out of the couch and staggered over. The toxins never hit Lana smack on the day of chemotherapy—Beth knew the steroids kept her wired for at least a couple more days—but it still looked like an ordeal for her to shuffle over to the table.
Jack looked from her mother to her grandmother. “She told me I’m not a suspect anymore. I got downgraded, I guess.”
Hope surged in Beth’s throat. “What do you mean?”
Lana rewarded her with a wink. “See, Beth? I told you Jack didn’t need a lawyer.”
There was no way Beth was going to get sucked into that argument again. “What made them change their mind about your innocence?”
“I think it had nothing to do with me. It turns out Ricardo Cruz died on Friday, before my tours ever happened.”
“Friday?” Lana asked. “Do they know when?”
“During the day. And then he was in the water twenty-four to forty hours before I found him.”
“If he died in the daytime, and you found him midday on Sunday . . . isn’t that more like forty-eight hours? In which case—”
“Jack, this is fantastic,” Beth said. She pulled Jack in for another hug, a big one this time. She didn’t need to know how many hours Ricardo Cruz had been in the water. Her daughter was cleared, and that was all that mattered. “Now we can just put this whole thing behind us.”
Lana was still muttering to herself. “Maybe he was killed, and then put in the water later. Or maybe . . .”
Beth watched, annoyed, as Jack broke off their hug and looked at Lana.
“What is it, Prima?”
“Did she tell you anything else? Do anything detectivey?”
“Ma, Jack’s out of the woods. We’re safe. I don’t think—”
“There was one weird thing,” Jack said. “She made us unpack the first aid kits, and she took all the Maglites. Paul was pretty ticked off about that. She said they might be evidence.”
“Hold on.” Lana walked to the couch and returned with her legal pad and a pen in hand. “Tell me about the Maglites.”
Beth stared at her mother scrawling furiously across the yellow notebook. This was supposed to be a happy moment. A peaceful moment. But Lana wasn’t going to give her that.
Beth turned to her daughter. “Jack, you don’t have to . . .”
“I want to know too, Mom. The slough’s important to me. I want it to be safe. For everyone.”
Beth sighed. Then she got up from the table and started banging plates from the dishwasher to the cupboard.
*
“So. Maglites?” Lana asked. She was exhausted, and just taking notes felt like an ordeal, but she’d felt a flare of panic when Beth had proclaimed the problem solved. Like something had been taken from her, like she was in danger of losing the only source of energy she had. She wasn’t ready to give up her investigation, her small flicker of agency. Not yet.
“Every guide boat has a first aid kit in it,” Jack said. “Basic stuff, like Band-Aids and drinking water, and a big honking flashlight. In case we get stuck out late. The only time I used it was when someone lost their ring in the water.”
“Did you find it?”
“No. The lady wanted to dive in and look for it, but then she saw a jellyfish and changed her mind. She said she’d get her boyfriend to buy her a better one.”
“What do the Maglites look like?”
“Like normal flashlights, but beefy. They take like six of the big-size batteries. And they have an American flag design all over them. Paul got them on sale at Army Surplus.”
“Detective Ramirez took all of them?”
“I think so.”
“What do you mean?”
“We have six guide boats, so six first aid kits. But only five of them had flashlights in them. Paul said the other one got lost a while ago. It’s probably true. I don’t check inventory on the first aid kits.” Jack frowned. “I probably should.”