“Are you sure?”
She looked up at the detectives and started ticking off reasons why. “He’s too old to go to my school. He doesn’t work at the Kayak Shack or any of the other places at the marina. I haven’t seen him on the slough. He doesn’t really look like a water guy, unless maybe he has a dad or an uncle he goes fishing with. And I know most of them.”
The detectives looked at Lana. This time, the woman, Ramirez, spoke.
“Ma’am, do you recognize him?”
Lana shook her head. “Cute kid,” she muttered.
“His name is Ricardo Cruz. He was twenty-nine years old. Resident of Santa Cruz. A naturalist, working for the land trust up there. And here’s the thing, Jacqueline: he was on the sunset tour you ran on Saturday.”
A flicker of surprise ran across Jack’s face. “Saturday? Not Sunday?”
“Saturday.”
Ramirez pulled out the logbook from the Kayak Shack, the one they used to manage reservations. Seeing a piece of the Shack in her kitchen felt impossible and a little dirty, like seeing your chemistry teacher at the beach in her swimsuit.
The detective opened to the pages from the weekend and turned the book around so Jack could see. Ramirez tapped a bejeweled fingernail halfway down. Ricardo Cruz, Saturday sunset tour, with a phone number and the word “PAID,” scrawled in Paul’s handwriting. Despite Paul’s supposedly glorious past career in technology, the Kayak Shack was strictly a phone and walk-in operation—no apps or online booking systems.
Jack pulled the logbook toward her. Holding it made her feel more confident. “He booked it Friday afternoon. But there’s no checkmark by his name. He must not have shown up Saturday. That night I had a group of eleven: eight guys from Fresno, a bachelor party. And two women. One older man. There wasn’t anyone else on the tour.”
“What do you do when there’s a no-show?” Ramirez asked.
“If we have a phone number, we call. But I wasn’t in the office. I was out hauling boats. I don’t know if Travis called him. When I’m guiding, I just go when I get the signal that we’re all good.”
“But what if Mr. Cruz just didn’t get checked off? He could have met you down by the water, right? Maybe even jumped in your boat with you?”
“No. I had seven boats at sunset, nine men, two women. No one else.”
The two detectives shared a look. Nicoletti leaned forward, putting his massive forearms on the table.
“Here’s the thing, Jack—can I call you Jack?” His voice was soft, but the false kind, the kind that’s hiding something hard behind it.
Jack gave him a tight nod and looked nervously toward Ramirez.
“Don’t look at her. Look at me,” Nicoletti said. “Here’s the problem, Jack. We talked to Carl Willis.”
Jack said nothing.
“Don’t remember him, Jack? From your Saturday sunset tour.”
“The bald guy?” Jack asked.
“So you do remember him,” Nicoletti said.
“I . . . uh, I don’t always learn their names.” Jack was watching the detective very closely now.
“Mr. Willis said you were having a real party out there on Saturday night, Tiny.” Nicoletti said the nickname sarcastically, in a way that implied she’d done something wrong. “He said you were drinking. Flirting. He said y’all splashed around in the dark, had yourself a good old time. He thought this Ricardo was there.”
“He’s wrong. Did you ask the women? Or the bachelor party? They’ll tell you.”
“As far as we’ve heard, Mr. Willis was the only guest on that tour who wasn’t drunk.”
This suddenly sounded bad. Very bad. Jack had seen enough cop shows to know that a bald, middle-aged white guy trumped a brown teenage girl every time. Jack could feel her heart thumping, her body tense.
“Is drinking something you do on a lot of tours, Jack?”
“No, I never—”
“You like to play it loose with your clients?”
Jack felt Lana’s cool hand cover her sweaty fist on the table. “Detective, my granddaughter just told you—”
“I’m not lying,” Jack said. It came out hoarse. She took a breath and tried again. “I never saw Ricardo Cruz before. You don’t underst—”
“Oh, I understand plenty. You like older men? Like Se?or Cruz?” Nicoletti waved the photo in Jack’s face. Jack looked toward Ramirez, hoping for sympathy, or solidarity, or something. Maybe they were running some kind of good cop/racist cop routine. But the female detective’s eyes were dark, mouth sealed shut. And Nicoletti kept coming at her. “I know about girls like you, you—”
“Enough!”
Lana’s voice shot across the table. She was standing now, glaring down at them, her hands clenched on the back of Jack’s chair. She looked frail, but her voice was regal, leaking fury. She glared down at Nicoletti, dropping her voice from a roar to a low, slow warning.
“We don’t care for your tone, Detective,” Lana said. “A man drowned. Jack found him. It was a tragic accident. That’s what happened.”
Jack breathed in her grandma’s precise, steady words. She hoped it was enough.
The detective matched Lana in tone, speaking slowly, as if to a child.
“All due respect, ma’am.” He made the word sound like an insult. “What happened to Ricardo Cruz was no accident.”
Chapter Nine
Lana closed her eyes, her hands held firm around the back of Jack’s chair. She didn’t care if the detectives thought she had fallen asleep. She needed time to recalibrate. And to resist the urge to drop her eyes to Jack’s with any kind of question in them.
There was no way her granddaughter was involved. But Lana now saw this conversation in a different light. They weren’t here to confirm the timeline of an accidental death. They were questioning Jack, aggressively, about someone who had been murdered. Which meant they had to be much more careful going forward.
“Someone killed him?” Jack said. “How do you know?”
Now Lana looked at Jack, trying to beg the girl with her eyes to be quiet. But Lana had never been any good at begging. And Jack kept talking.
“I mean, if he drowned, how do you know someone killed him? Like, wouldn’t it look the same?”
Lana sank down in the chair next to Jack. It was a good question. And a terrible question. As if Jack were trying to check her work. Everyone’s eyes were on the girl now.
“There’s more than one way to kill someone,” Nicoletti said.
“So he wasn’t drowned?” Jack said. “How did he—”
“You go out on the water a lot, Jack?” Ramirez’s voice cut in, but it didn’t sound harsh. She sounded curious. Warm. Jack turned gratefully toward her.
“Well, yeah,” Jack said. “It’s my job, guiding kayak tours. And I like to go out most mornings before school. On my paddleboard.” She waved to the ten-foot board by the door, its leash dangling, a lonely dog waiting for someone to take it out for a walk.
“Do you ever go out with anyone else? A friend, maybe?”
“You don’t have to answer that,” Lana said.
“No, it’s okay.” Jack gave Ramirez a tiny smile. “I don’t. I haven’t. None of my friends from school are into it.”
“And the people you work with at the Kayak Shack? Jorge Savila? Travis Whalen? Paul Hanley?”
Jack cursed herself for blushing. “Paul’s the boss. He’s older than my mom. And Travis and Jorge are in college. I wouldn’t say we’re friends.”
Nicoletti leered. “More than friends?”
This time, Jack kept her mouth shut. She pulled her hands into her sweatshirt sleeves, picking at the cuffs under the table.
When Jack had counted to fifteen, Detective Ramirez spoke again, leaving her partner’s question hanging in the air like a bad smell. “You’re younger than everyone there, right? Tiny, they call you?”
Jack nodded cautiously.
“Well, Tiny, here’s our problem.” Ramirez’s voice was smooth. “A young man paid for a tour Saturday night with you. You say he wasn’t there. Mr. Willis says maybe he was. Regardless, we all agree that you didn’t run that tour by the book.”