Mother Daughter Murder Night

Lana gets a call from Jack’s school saying that Jack is not there. She contacts Beth, and the two panic about what could have happened to her.

Lana plans to look on the docks while Beth searches the Kayak Shack. At the docks, Lana sees Paul “with a cooler, a shovel, and an enormous black duffel bag” (206). Paul tells Lana that he will help her look for Jack, and he calls Scotty to come get the cooler. They meet at Dock L, where Paul’s motorboat is tethered. Lana asks Paul if they can go to the creeks that she and Jack had been looking at on the map the previous night, but he says neither a boat nor a kayak can fit back there. He also tells her that it is private property. Lana whispers to Beth that she thinks Jack is likely on the land trust or else on the ranch. To cover their bases, they leave messages with Martin, Diana, and Victor. They are about to go hiking to find Jack when they see her in the distance. Jack had gotten lost trying to follow her homemade map, but she noticed a man digging by the creek when she was back there. She hid and watched him.

Beth tells Jack that while they can both help Lana investigate, Jack is currently not allowed to go to the slough by herself. Back at home, Lana tells Beth that she stayed away because she was afraid of messing up Jack and Beth’s life. Beth asks her if this is the reason she never came to visit, and Lana says yes. Beth tells her mother that she needed her during that first year and almost came home many times. She tells Lana that she is glad Lana has the investigation to focus on and that Jack’s going out by herself that morning sounds like something Lana would do. When Lana tells Beth about Ricardo and Rhoads’s doctor’s appointments, Beth tells her that they never happened because all of Hal’s doctor’s appointments were conducted at Bayshore Oaks. Beth says Ricardo did not regularly come to the facility while she was there.

Jack looks at the maps and believes she found the creek where Ricardo could have died. Jack remembers a bad, skunk-like smell coming from where the man was digging. She says the man rode away in a kayak that had something, possibly a cooler, in it. Lana tells Beth she is concerned the man could have seen Jack. They both wonder if it was Paul, but Lana does not know about any connection between Ricardo and Paul unless they were secret business partners. Lana wonders if she is putting Jack and Beth in danger by pursuing the case, but Beth thinks they have no choice but to be involved. Lana realizes that Beth does not appear scared but rather calm.

While at work, Beth is given mail intended for Mr. Rhoads. She does not give it to Lana like her mother wants her to, but she tells her mother that it is from an architectural firm.

Lana meets with Diana and tells her about the suspected arson as well as about her investigation into Ricardo. Diana, in turn, tells her that her brother has an offer on the family property, and Diana has further worked on her plans for her business and wants Lana’s insight. Diana explains that after her father’s stroke, she started spending a couple of days a week with her father, and his death came as a surprise to her. Lana explains the letter she found and asks Diana if her father may have known more about the project than Diana realized, but when Diana looks at the letter, she says that it is not her father’s handwriting though she does not know if it is Ricardo’s. Lana tells her that from what she can tell, Hal had been planning to give the land to a land trust for years, but when he started working with Ricardo at the land trust, things changed. 

Diana tells Lana that Ricardo’s father died in the same fire that killed Diana’s mother. Ricardo’s mother, Sofia, was pregnant with him at the time, and when he was born, people considered him a miracle baby. Sofia, Ricardo, Martin, and Hal all lived together in the main house until Ricardo was four years old. At that time, Diana convinced her father to have the two move out because people were talking, and she did not think it was proper to have Sofia living in her mother’s house. Lana is not sure Diana is telling her everything, and Diana asks her to keep the information from Victor. Lana tells Diana that she believes Ricardo and Hal had some kind of plan in the works when Ricardo was murdered.

Ramirez is again wearing a bright blazer when she meets with Jack at the marina. As the detectives search Paul’s business, Ramirez asks Jack to tell her if anything is out of place. Paul is missing. Jack notices a nice green bike and says that bikes are not allowed in the Shack. She says that Paul does not ride a bike, but she recognizes it from the Saturday they found the dead body. The bike has a pannier on it.

Lana looks at information about Verdadera Libertad. According to the plan, Hal and Ricardo were going to give “below-market leases to women and disadvantaged entrepreneurs” (244). Except for Paul, all of the people they are considering—Cruz, Diana, and Martin—want the land for some reason. The only thing Paul could be protecting is a secret. Lana speaks to Ramirez and tells her that Ricardo and Hal were supposed to meet the day Ricardo died, but she does not know if they did. Lana also tells her that she thinks the deaths are related, but Ramirez is not interested.

Martin and Beth meet up. He asks her if her mother has figured anything else out about the case, but she says that it does not seem like it. She gives Martin the mail that was supposed to go to his father.

Beth tells Lana about the plans Martin opened in front of her, and they discuss whether the project is a surprise to him. They do not believe that either Martin or Diana knew about the plans, but Lana thinks it is possible that either of them could have murdered Hal.

Lana considers how she raised Beth. She never displayed signs of her daughter at work because she feared it would ruin her career. Now, she wonders if this was a bad decision. Beth tells Lana that Diana was the only one to see Hal on that Friday, as Cruz did not sign in at all that week. Victor visited that week, but not on Friday. As Lana writes out the dates Hal regularly had visitors, she realizes that DRW does not refer to a doctor’s appointment; it refers to Diana Whitacre Rhoads, demonstrating that Ricardo had been spending time with Diana weekly, making Lana think the two were having an affair. Ricardo died two days after he met with Diana.