Page 112 of Mother-Daughter Murder Night

Paul took a swallow from his glass, then looked up at the decorative fishing nets hanging from the ceiling. “It would have been Saturday. Late morning. The day before he was found.”

“Did you know it belonged to Ricardo Cruz?”

“No!”

“Do you have any idea how it got there?”

“No, but . . .” Paul looked reflective. “That Friday night, Scotty and I went out. With those chicks from Seaside, remember?”

Scotty grimaced. “You sang Nickelback at karaoke. Talk about a mood killer.”

“Yeah, well, anyway, I got back to the Shack about midnight. I was blitzed, so I crashed on the cot in the back. But then some weird sounds woke me up around two, three a.m. I thought raccoons were raiding the dumpsters again. Then on Saturday morning Jack mentioned the bike when she got here, and I went outside to check it out.”

“You think the bike was dumped in the middle of the night?”

“Maybe.” Paul shrugged. “It makes as much sense as any of this.”

“So Saturday morning you saw this mystery bike, which maybe was dropped on your doorstep in the middle of the night. And you took it inside.”

“I thought I was being a Good Samaritan, helping someone who’d come back for it later.”

Lana ran it through her head and gave one tight nod of satisfaction. “It fits.”

“What do you mean?” Scotty asked.

“The detectives told me this theory they had, that Paul killed Ricardo and then floated him down the slough and made a fake kayak tour booking to pin the death on whoever was leading the tours when, or just before, Ricardo was discovered. I didn’t think Paul was smart enough to come up with that. No offense,” she said, turning to him.

Paul shrugged. He took another swig of whiskey.

“But there was someone else who’s pretty damn smart. Someone I think could have come up with that plan. Someone who could have killed Ricardo, used Ricardo’s phone to call in the tour booking, and then dropped the bike down here in the middle of the night to complete the picture.”

“And you know who that is?”

She nodded.

“Why don’t we just go commando and grab ’em ourselves?” Paul said.

“I don’t have enough evidence yet,” Lana said. “The cops still think you’re the bad guy. I don’t think a citizen kidnapping would change their minds.”

She picked up a water glass and took a sip.

“Tell me why you moved your grow operation here,” she said.

Paul and Scotty exchanged a look.

“Clock is ticking,” she said.

Paul sighed. “You gotta understand, this isn’t about drugs. It’s an entrepreneurial experiment. An innovation. Fruitful. We had this idea of hybridizing marijuana plants with fruit, well, not really hybridize, but we thought if we grew the plants in proximity to strawberries, there might be some interesting ways the leaf would take on the character—”

“Look.” Scotty turned to Lana. “It’s not complicated. I knew Hal Rhoads from way back. He was always up for a new idea. I pitched him on this one, and he gave us some land.”

“Were you growing legally, with a permit?”

Now Scotty took a slug from the bottle.

“It was just an experiment,” Paul said. “At first no one ever came down there. It seemed safe enough.”

“What changed?”