Page 39 of Mother-Daughter Murder Night

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?”