A Killing Tide (12 page)

"But—"

"Having you around is a reminder, okay? Of what your family has taken away…" She turned to Kaz, resolute. "Perhaps you should leave."

"Julie, Gary didn't do this, I
know
he didn't."

"I'm sure you'd like to believe that, being his sister and all." Julie nodded. "But Gary hasn't been okay for a long time now. Ken stuck with him out of loyalty, and because no one else would crew for him."

"That's not true," Kaz said, shocked. "I know Gary can be difficult at times—" She took in Julie's mulish expression and changed tactics. "Did Ken tell you what he and Gary had been arguing about?"

"No,"
Julie said. "Look, Kaz, there's nothing I can do to help you. Ken never said a word to me, other than to mention here and there when Gary had been a jerk on the water that day."

"At least tell me whether Ken came home last night," Kaz pressed.

"No." Julie's face crumpled. "The last time I saw him was early Saturday morning, before they left port. Then I had to go down to the morgue to identify him."

"I'm sorry," Kaz said again, feeling helpless. She turned to go.

"Kaz." Julie's sharpened voice stopped her.

Kaz glanced back.

The young woman trembled with rage, her expression fiercely determined. "If Gary
didn't
kill Ken, then I want to know who did. You find out who the hell did this to my children."

#

Lucy bounced a tennis ball against the far wall of the squad room while she waited for Ivar to summarize his stack of notes into what she figured was the Master Note he wanted to have with him when they went out to investigate possible murder sites. She'd already rolled her eyes, paced, and tried her best to annoy him in inventive ways, but he wasn't budging. If he spent even five more seconds writing in that neat little script of his, she was going to club him to death with the butt of her service revolver. "You about done?"

"You've already asked me that three times." He never glanced up from his task. "Why don't you go drop off your car for Kaz?"

"I already have, which you would've noticed if you weren't so driven to organize your life to death."

Jim Sykes emerged from his office. She snagged the ball mid-air and dropped it into her drawer. This afternoon, the chief was wearing a tailored, dark blue wool suit, tasteful tie, and spiffy, tasseled loafers. "Where the hell does he get the money for those kinds of clothes?" she muttered out loud, envious that his clothes budget was clearly more substantial than hers.

Ivar glanced up. "Inheritance. His aunt died about a month back."

"Huh."

Seeing them, Sykes rerouted from the coffee pot over to their desks. "McGuire. Status?"

She brought him up to date. "Brenner should have the truck heading for the impound right about now. If there's anything in it, we'll find it."

"What about Jorgensen? Any sign of him?"

She shook her head. "Clint is staking out the house, but so far, no go. We talked to Gary's fishing buddies early this morning, but no one's seen him."

"Talk to his friend Chuck Branson and see if you can pick up any clues. If Jorgensen's headed into the hills, we're better off bringing in the dogs before the scent gets diluted by all this rain."

Lucy made sure she didn't show any alarm. "I don't think we're at the point where we need tracking dogs, Sir."

"Murders are typically solved in the first 48 hours, McGuire, if they're going to be solved at all. And we're already—" he glanced at his watch, which looked as expensive as the rest of his outfit, "—almost twenty hours into the investigation. I don't want anyone dawdling."

"I've still got a number of people I can talk to, who can get a message to Gary so that he can turn himself in, if it comes to that."

"Good." Sykes shoved both hands into his pockets and stared at her. "The Jorgensens are good friends of yours. You got a problem with that? 'Cause if you do, I need to know right now so I can reassign you."

Lucy hesitated. She
did
have a problem with it, but she also wasn't willing to let anyone else on the detectives' squad be charge of the investigation. No matter how difficult it was for her, it was far worse for Kaz and Gary. And it was her fault that Kaz was involved at all.

And the truth was, Lucy couldn't handle having Gary's fate rest in anyone else's hands. Not that she was the world's greatest detective, but she'd never be able to keep her nose out of the investigation, so she might as well make sure it was run fairly, even if that meant she had to be the one to slap the cuffs on Gary. "No, sir. No problem."

"Good." Sykes nodded and turned to go, then stopped. "So why are you two still here? Don't you have a murder scene to locate?"

Lucy managed to contain her glee as Ivar hurriedly gathered up the rest of his notes.

~~~~

Chapter 10

Kaz walked back up the hill to pick up Lucy's car, deep in thought. Julie's attitude had been puzzling—one minute unfriendly, the next nervous and almost afraid. And though Kaz hadn't expected a particularly warm reception, she hadn't realized Julie would assume Gary was guilty. Julie knew how tight he and Ken had been. If she was convinced Gary murdered her husband, did the rest of the town believe that as well? It was a depressing thought.

Kaz didn't believe for one minute that the Lundquists had been the target of a random burglary. Someone had been looking for something. What if Ken had put that 'something' on the
Anna Marie
? And he'd gone back to retrieve it? Had the murderer followed him there?

Kaz reached the edge of her yard. So someone thought that Ken had something valuable, maybe even worth killing for. And Julie possibly knew what it was. Given Gary's argument with Ken in the tavern, it was a safe bet that Gary also knew. But what could it be? The only items Gary and Ken ever handled that were of any value were a few fish.

Eighteen hours after the fire, she hadn't found Gary, and she wasn't any further along in figuring out who had Killed Ken and set the fire. In fact, she was more confused than ever. Some super sleuth she was turning out to be. Clearly, she should stick to consulting with Fortune 500 executives. Even with all their political agendas and power plays, they were turning out to be downright straightforward in comparison to her hometown friends.

She glanced at her watch. They were starting into flood tide, so the fishermen were coming into port soon. They had to know what was going on, what Ken had been mixed up in. Those guys kept track of their own.

Lucy's street car was a shiny black Jeep Cherokee, complete with roll bars, which she rarely pulled out of her garage. The city provided her with a patrol car when she was on duty, and weather permitting, she biked to the police station to stay in shape. Kaz retrieved the keys from underneath the floor mat, climbed in, and cranked the ignition. The engine growled to life, attesting to the excessive amount of horsepower under the hood. The clutch had a different feel than the one in Kaz's SUV, and she burned it more than Lucy would've liked as she backed out of the driveway.

#

In less than ten minutes, Kaz had parked on the wharf at the mooring basin. Many of the boat slips were still empty, but there was a line of trawlers coming upriver. Her timing was good.

Someone had pulled back the crime scene tape from the parking area so that it now only surrounded the
Anna Marie.
The cops were there with a tow truck, working on Gary's pickup. She tossed Brenner her key to the pickup so that they wouldn't have to jimmy the locks. If she couldn't manage to help Gary in any other way, she could at least keep his repair bills to a minimum.

As she headed toward the docks, she spied Chapman and Zeke on board the burned trawler. Gathering more evidence, no doubt. He kept poking around in her and Gary's lives, and she resented the hell out it. It was all she could do to keep herself from marching right over there and demanding that he let her on board.

Several of the fishermen who'd already made port noticed her approach, and they didn't look happy to see her. She grimaced. Her status seemed to have gone from 'buddy' to 'outsider' in less than a day. Then again, maybe they'd never considered her their buddy; maybe she'd been deluding herself.

Karl Svensen stood at the bow as his crewman brought the trawler up into its slip. "Karl," she called when he drew close enough to hear her. "I need to talk to you for a moment."

"Well, Kaz, that doesn't mean I want to talk to you." He shoved aside a stack of crab pots. "I'm busy."

Karl was the fisherman who had refused to press charges six months ago, even though Gary had broken his jaw. Kaz had never been able to ferret out what the argument had been over. The usual rumors had circulated—one had it that they'd fought over a woman; another, over fishing territory. But Kaz had always believed that Gary had been protecting Ken, which was what Lucy also believed.

Kaz deliberately raised her voice, hoping others would hear. "
Someone
here must know what Gary and Ken were arguing about at the tavern last night."

"We don't tell tales out of school," Svensen retorted. "This doesn't concern you, Kaz."

"The
hell
it doesn't!" She was heartily sick of hearing that. "
My
brother is the one the cops want to pin this on." She looked each one of the crew in the eye, and they dropped their gazes, flushing with embarrassment. Yet no one was forthcoming. "You're Gary's friends," she stressed. "Do you really want him to take the rap for this?"

"Gary hasn't been an easy person to get along with in recent years, Kaz." She turned toward Bjorn Ewald, the captain of one of the larger trawlers and the medical examiner's brother.

Bjorn was a mountain of a man, well over six feet, with red hair and a bushy beard. And he had a huge family to match—eight children at last count. When Gary needed extra crew, Bjorn sometimes lent out one of his teenage sons. Personally, Kaz had always liked Bjorn.

"Maybe not," she acknowledged his comment. "But that doesn't make Gary a murderer." She turned back to Svensen. "Who was standing next to Gary and Ken last night? You, Karl? They were standing near where you always sit."

Svensen uncoiled the bowline and jumped onto the dock to tie off. "Who told you that?"

"So you
were
there."

He shrugged. "I didn't want to tell you, because I knew that if you found out about the argument, it'd upset you."

"Knowing what I'm dealing with is better than not knowing anything at all. What were they arguing about?"

"All I heard was that Gary was real upset with something Ken had done. Ken told him that he hadn't had any choice. And Gary got even madder, told him that if he didn't fix it, he'd be sorry."

Karl's eyes kept darting toward the other fishermen. Was he lying? "Did you talk to Ken?" she asked.

"No."

"Witnesses in the bar say that you weren't exactly uninvolved," she said, taking a shot in the dark.

He climbed back on board his trawler and started stowing gear. His expression was no longer even marginally friendly. "Even if I know more than I've told you, I'm not saying anything else."

"Where were you last night around eight-thirty? You weren't in the bar, I would've seen you."

"Butt out, Kaz."

"I can't do that," she said evenly. "My brother is about to take the fall for something he didn't do."

Karl's smile was cold. "Are you sure about that? I'd rather face down forty-foot waves than your brother, given the mood he's been in. And like I said, I heard him threaten Ken."

Her anger bubbled to the surface. "Are you willing to swear to that in court? Because that's what it will come down to."

He shrugged. "No skin off my nose. You Jorgensens have never done any favors for me."

"I'm not looking for favors, Karl. I'm looking for the truth."

"Yeah, well, I've already told you everything I'm going to, so why don't you take a hike so I can get straightened away and go home to the wife?"

"Fine. If you remember anything else, would you please give me a call?"

"I won't."

She stood there a moment longer, rubbing her forehead to ease the headache that was starting to pound, then turned to leave. Bjorn came out of his trawler's engine room, rubbing grease off his hands with a rag. "Don't pay any attention to Karl," he said, his voice low so that it wouldn't carry. "He's grumpy because his catch has been so light lately."

Kaz searched his face, but all she saw was concern for her. Bjorn hated to see people at odds. "Are you sure that's all it is?"

His expression turned wary. "I don't know anything, if that's what you're asking."

"Don't know, or won't say?"

"Kaz…"

She made an angry gesture with her hand. "Never mind. When push comes to shove, you guys don't seem very willing to help one of your own."

"That's not true, and you know it."