Page 67 of Mother-Daughter Murder Night

Jack’s eyes darted from Lana to her mother and then back down to the sheet of paper. Lana kept waggling the chopstick until Jack finally spoke. “Four,” she said. “I thought of this one. Ricardo’s body may have been dumped on the ranch.”

Beth looked confused. “I thought you found him in the mud flats?”

Jack nodded. “The mud flats, the slough, that isn’t technically owned by anyone. But Prima and I were looking at the property above the flats, and—hold on. I’ll show you.” Jack got up and disappeared into the back bedroom.

“You sure this is a good idea?” Beth asked Lana.

Lana’s eyes were shining.

Jack returned with a large map in her hands. She moved aside the container of fried rice and spread out the map on the table. “Here’s the ranch. And here’s the land trust property, right next door. See?”

Jack’s thumb left a smudge of grease across the farmland north of the slough. The land trust property snaked along the water for miles before taking a sharp left turn up into the hills to the east. Beth could see small creeks crisscrossing the land, ignoring property lines. She’d explored the north bank a few times, bushwhacking past No Trespassing signs, her boots kissing mud every fifth step. Some creeks were former irrigation ditches, shooting in straight lines across what had once been fertile fields. Others wound and turned and curled in on themselves, dead-ending in marshy bogs. Only a couple creeks linked back to the slough. You’d have to be a real expert to know which were shortcuts and which went nowhere.

“I found his body here.” Jack made another oily mark on the map, this time in the water, about a mile up past the land trust boundary.

“He could have floated in from anywhere,” Beth said.

“Not anywhere.” Lana’s voice was sharp, teacherly. “Jack showed me. It had to be from somewhere on the northern bank. Probably one of the creeks that lead to the slough. Or an irrigation ditch. It could be one that links up to the ranch.”

“Couldn’t it have come in from the open ocean? Or somewhere up by the lettuce fields?”

“We don’t think so,” Jack said. “He was in the water for twenty-four to forty hours. On a weekend. Someone would notice if a body was floating in the open slough. We think he had to be in one of the side creeks. On private property. Like these.”

Jack pointed at the maze of blue lines between the ranch, the land trust, and the mud flats.

Beth pushed her plate to the side. “Some of those creeks don’t cross onto the ranch.”

Lana nodded. “True. Victor Morales is high on my list of suspects right now.”

“In which case this would have nothing to do with Mr. Rhoads,” Beth said. “It could be all about the land trust, some kind of power grab there.”

Lana regarded Beth coolly. “Why the sudden interest, Beth? Anything to do with that nanotechnologist you’ve been consoling?”

“Please, Ma. I’m just trying to help you explore all the possibilities. And Martin and your new friend Lady Di just lost their father. I don’t love you pulling an innocent family like the Rhoadses into this”—Beth waved her hands at the papers on the table—“whatever this is.”

Lana arched one eyebrow. “No more murder night for you?”

“Ma, this isn’t—”

Lana stood up and rolled out her neck. “Jack, I know you have school tomorrow, but after that, I was hoping . . .”

“I’d love to help,” Jack said quickly, before her mother could interject.

“Tomorrow, then.” Lana gathered up the papers and patted them into a messy stack. “We’ll see what these have to say about who’s innocent.”

Chapter Thirty-One

By the following afternoon, Lana’s bedroom looked like the headquarters of a secret crime-solving squad. Which Jack supposed it was. Sort of. The corkboard was covered with the list of suspects, the greasy map of the slough, the handwritten note, and a sketch of the Rhoads ranch showing its many leases and subdivisions. The most recent addition to the board was a grainy blown-up photograph of Martin Rhoads standing on a stage in a gaggle of men at the nanotechnology pitch contest on February 3, which apparently was a real thing. All the men were wearing logo T-shirts from their various start-ups. Most of them looked about twenty-five, scrawny and spiky-haired. Martin looked like their nerdy uncle trying to fit in.

Lana had all the printed papers she’d photographed at the land trust on the bed, organized in piles. Jack sat down and started leafing through the messiest stack.

“That’s the historical stuff,” Lana said. “I haven’t gone through it yet. But let me show you this first.”

They walked over to the bulletin board. “I was thinking about what your mom said about the body and where it could have floated from.”

Jack figured this was the closest Lana might come to admitting she might be wrong.

“We don’t know where Ricardo died yet,” Lana continued, “but I thought it might be a good idea to really understand what happens where the land trust and the ranch hit the water. Creeks don’t obey property lines, and we know Mr. Rhoads leased out ranch land to other businesses. I found the details about the leases in the papers at the land trust, and here’s what that looks like.”