Mother-Daughter Murder Night

Ramirez spent the next few hours in the office, watching Paul sweat his way through a dozen bookings and paperwork for two more group tours. She rejoined Jack in the double kayak for the 4 p.m. sunset tour, the same one Ricardo Cruz had signed up for the Saturday before.

There were sixteen guests, and once again, Jorge took the lead boat, with Jack and Ramirez minding the stragglers in the back. This time Ramirez accepted a paddle. She even attempted a few shallow strokes before dropping the paddle back in the cockpit next to the first aid kit.

The wind was favorable, and they made it farther than they had on the morning tour. Just before they turned to head back in for the evening, Ramirez pointed port side, to the north bank. “The body was found up there, right?”

Jack leaned forward, and Ramirez grabbed the hull to keep from tipping. “More like over there.”

Jack crouched just behind the detective, pointing to the mud flats glinting in the quick-setting sun. Jack could smell the detective’s perfume mixed with sweat and swamp grass. When she glanced down, she could see Ramirez’s snub-nosed gun in its holster.

“How did someone on your tour get all the way out there?”

Jack grimaced. “I told you. He wasn’t. On. My. Tour.”

The detective swung around in her seat, forgetting the water for a moment. “Jacqueline, that’s not what I meant. I wasn’t asking about Mr. Cruz. I meant the Baldwin family, that poor man and his son who found the body.” She carefully turned back to the bow. “I don’t see anyone out that far today.”

Jack sat back in her seat. “The tides control everything out here.”

“So?” Ramirez’s braid cocked to one side.

“When the tide is coming in, ocean water rushes into the slough. It’s like pouring from a big bucket into a funnel. When the tide is going out, it’s the opposite. The water flows from the slough back out to the ocean.”

“How does that affect how far people go on your tours?”

“The tides don’t just impact how high the water is. They also affect the currents. At low tide, it’s like the kayaks just get swept up into the slough. It’s easy for boats to go too far, even past those mud flats. Sometimes we have to use a motorboat to haul them back. In high tide, like now, it’s the opposite. The boats swirl around closer to the river mouth. And the wind makes a difference too.”

Ramirez was silent. Jack couldn’t tell if she was boring her or if the detective was just thinking.

Thinking. “The tides are different every week, right? Because of the phases of the moon?”

Jack was impressed. Most people didn’t know anything about how the world worked. “That’s right. Tides are diurnal, which means they happen twice a day. Two high tides, two low tides. But since the moon isn’t on an exactly twenty-four-hour schedule, the tides shift by about an hour a day. That means a week ago, the tides were seven hours earlier than they are now. It’s confusing at first, but also totally predictable. Like today, there was a high tide at four forty-five a.m., and another one at four p.m. Low tide’s at eleven thirty a.m. and eleven tonight.”

Ramirez turned her head from left to right. “Right now is high tide. This morning was low,” she mumbled. “I guess the water does look different than it did this morning.”

Jack nodded. “The high tide makes the slough look more like a river and less like a swamp.”

The detective looked north. “So, over there, where Mr. Cruz was found, sometimes the mud is covered up?”

“Yup. Even right now, if you got close, there’d be a lot more water and less mud than there was this morning. The Baldwins might not even have found him there if the tide wasn’t shifting low during their tour.”

“But he was wearing a life jacket.”

“Yeah.” Jack closed her eyes and a flash of red fabric shot across her eyelids. “I guess we would have found him somewhere.”

“How far could something float in the slough in a day?”

“A day? Does that mean you know exactly when Ricardo Cruz was killed?”

The detective made a careful quarter turn to look at Jack. It seemed like she was deciding whether to answer.

“Ricardo Cruz was killed on February third,” Ramirez said carefully.

Jack counted in her head. “Last Friday? But . . .”

The detective nodded. “You found him Sunday. I know.”

“Then you also know he wasn’t on any of my tours.” Jack gave Ramirez a pained look, remembering the way Detective Nicoletti had yelled at her at the house.

Ramirez either forgot or wasn’t going to acknowledge it. “According to the coroner, Mr. Cruz was killed Friday between ten a.m. and four.p.m. And then he was in the water for twenty-four to forty hours.”

Jack did the math in her head. “So he was already in the slough when I did that Saturday sunset tour. We didn’t make it anywhere close to the mud flats that afternoon. Those guys were way too blitzed to paddle much beyond the bridge. Ugh. I hate thinking he was floating out there Saturday and we didn’t even know.”

“Did any Saturday tours go all the way to the mud flats?”

Jack considered. “None of mine did. But there are always people on the slough on a nice day like that. Somebody would have gone out that far. Farther. Even if it wasn’t one of ours. Is the coroner sure—”

“He’s sure Mr. Cruz was in the water at least twenty-four hours. And it was slough water. It wasn’t like he could have been dunked in a bathtub and then transferred here later.”

Jack suddenly felt her lunch knocking against the top of her stomach. A real-life person had been killed and dumped in her slough. It didn’t make sense that Ramirez was giving her all these details. Jack remembered her mom’s fear that the cops might set some kind of trap. Maybe she’d been stupid to say as much as she already had.

“Why are you telling me this?” Jack asked in a small voice. “I don’t want to—”

“Jack, I’m not in charge of this investigation. I don’t call the shots.” Ramirez’s eyes were tired. “But I think you have the right to know you’re no longer a serious suspect. As you said, Mr. Cruz died before your shifts even started. You went to school that Friday, right?”

“I was there all day.”

“Did you go out on the water afterward?”

“No. I went out in the early morning.” This time of year, it was too dark after school to get in a good paddle.

The detective nodded. “We’re doing a full survey of everyone who was on the slough starting at ten a.m. the day Ricardo died. If you weren’t here, you’ll be cleared.”

Jack felt a rush of relief. Then, just as quickly, the photograph of Ricardo Cruz flooded her brain, his bright eyes and wide smile. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.

Ramirez’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “If Ricardo Cruz was in the slough all day Saturday and no one saw him, where was he?”

“If he had thirty hours to float?” Jack thought about it. “He could have gone a long way. Or gotten stuck somewhere. There’s all these little creeks that let out into the slough on the north side. They go for miles. He could have gotten stuck in a dead end in the pickleweed, or one of the branches upriver. It all depends which way the water’s moving, and how fast.”

Ramirez gave a quick, involuntary shiver. The sun was down, and the temperature was dropping as well.

“We done here?”

Jack nodded. She dropped her paddle in the water, using it like a rudder to spin the boat around in one long swipe. The detective shimmied her paddle out from between her feet and started turning over cautious strokes. The water moved under their paddles like breath, emptying and filling in a steady rhythm, taking them back to the marina in silence.





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?”

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