“Sorry, guys,” she said. “It’s all yours.”
“Is there somebody we can call, like a real Sunshine Cleaning company?” William asked. “Because I need Amy Adams to come deal with this.”
Maggie hesitated a moment before answering, unsure if he was joking. Judging by the expectancy on his face, he was not. “There’s a company in Tallahassee. I can get the name for you, if you really need me to.”
“It’s okay, William,” Robert said. “We just go in and bleach the snot out of everything.”
“It’s not okay,” William told him before looking at Maggie. “I am not smitten with the idea of going in there with my little Magic Eraser, scrubbing away at smears of who knows what.”
“There’s really nothing there,” Maggie said. “The crime scene techs took anything with any evidence on it.” She rethought that for a second. “There may be some stained bricks, I don’t know. But honestly, you’re not facing anything awful.”
Robert jingled the keys in his hand like he was weighing them. “I’m going to go assess the situation,” he said, heading for the door.
“I’m going to finish my cigarette,” William said.
“Okay, but then let’s get this over with,” Robert said. He opened the door, but didn’t go in. Maggie sensed he was stalling a moment. “We’ll finish taking down the wall, reopen the shop, and once we’ve made up some of the money we’ve lost, we’re going down south for a few days to recover.”
“We’re not going to Key West,” William said firmly. Robert waved him off, then went inside and closed the door. William exhaled a plume of smoke, then looked at Maggie. “All those gays get on my final nerve.”
Maggie didn’t smile, but it took some effort.
“I see,” she said.
Maggie was setting the table out on the side deck when Wyatt pulled up out front. She would have known it was him by the sound of his truck, but Coco’s keening and groaning as she raced around to the stairs was a dead giveaway.
Maggie walked around the corner as Coco dissolved at Wyatt’s feet in the gravel driveway. Stoopid came flapping around the other corner and immediately began breakdancing his way down the stairs. He was halfway down when Wyatt and Coco were halfway up, and seemed disgusted that he had to turn around and retrace his steps.
Wyatt reached the deck and gave Coco’s head one last scratch before looking at Maggie. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
Wyatt and Maggie had been close friends, buddies really, for so long that their new relationship was still sometimes awkward. It didn’t always feel natural to kiss or to hold each other until they were actually doing it. They still fumbled a bit at the moments when people who had started out as a couple would normally hug or kiss.
This was one of those moments, and when Wyatt gave her a half smile and held out an arm, Maggie felt self-conscious and clumsy until she was actually up against his chest. Then the uneasiness drifted away. It was replaced by a sense of peace, and an underlying, more subtle chaos.
Maggie lifted her face and accepted a kiss that tasted of Mountain Dew and mouthwash and sincerity, and was almost glad when she heard Sky’s voice pop up from the front door.
“Put a lid on it; teenager on deck,” Sky said.
Wyatt pulled away from Maggie, but left an arm wrapped around her waist.
“Hiya, Sky,” he said.
“Hey, Sheriff,” Sky said as she came out onto the deck. “Mom, can we have a few extra bucks to grab a burger on the way?”
“Why don’t you just eat with us before you go?” Maggie asked.
“We don’t have time.”
“I thought you guys were hanging out with us,” Wyatt said.
Sky tossed him a grin capped with slightly-rolled eyes. “Yeah, as much as we like watching you guys watching each other, we’re gonna bail,” she said.
“The Martian,” Maggie told Wyatt.
“Yeah, and it’s already been out for like ten minutes, and little nerd man is in there practically vibrating out of his clothes,” Sky said.
“The show from the sixties?” Wyatt said.
“You need to bone up on popular culture,” Sky said.
“Science geek nirvana,” Maggie explained to Wyatt.
“Okeydokey,” he said.
Kyle came out onto the deck, the anxiousness coming off of him in waves. “Sky, are you ready?”
“Yeah, dude, hang on,” she said, then looked at Maggie.
“Go ahead,” Maggie said. “My purse is on the table.”
“Cool.” Sky disappeared back into the house and Kyle gave Wyatt a wave.
“Hey, Wyatt,” he said.
“Hey, Kyle, how’s it going?”
“Okay.”
Maggie pulled away from Wyatt. “I’m gonna go make sure Sky doesn’t break me,” she said, and maneuvered around Stoopid to get to the door. Coco was content to sit at Wyatt’s feet, gazing up at him like he was the inventor of the tennis ball.
Maggie opened the screen door, and used her bare foot to gently sweep at Stoopid, who was excited about her plan to go indoors, where the refrigerator was kept.
“Not you, Stoopid,” Maggie said, and slapped the door shut behind her.
Wyatt watched Stoopid walk huffily over to the wood pile and hop atop it, then he looked over at Kyle.
“So, what are you doing with yourself now that baseball season’s over?”
Kyle shrugged a little. “Not much. Working on my Minecraft mods, skateboarding a little. Reading.”
“Did you finish that James Lee Burke I gave you?”
“Yeah. I’m ready for the next one,” Kyle said. “Robicheaux’s a cool guy.”
“Burke makes you feel like you’re right there in Louisiana, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah. I want to go to New Iberia sometime,” Kyle said. “I looked at some of those places on Google Earth. It’s cool ’cause they’re real places.”
“Your Mom loves Louisiana,” Wyatt said.
“Yeah, I know. Mom and Dad got Coco there when I was little.”
Coco smiled at Kyle in that way she did, and Wyatt gave her a pat.
“Maybe we could drive over there for a few days,” Wyatt said. “When you’re out of school.”
“You and me?” Kyle asked.
“The two of us, all of us. Whichever,” Wyatt said.
“That’d be pretty awesome.”
Kyle looked out at the yard, his face gone a bit wistful, and Wyatt wondered if he was thinking about his father.
“You know, I was a football guy, not a baseball player like your dad,” Wyatt said, “but if you want to practice, stay in shape, I know enough to throw the ball around with you.”
Kyle looked back at Wyatt. It took him a moment to answer, and Wyatt thought he was going to say something about only practicing with his dad.
“I need to work on my swing,” he said instead.
“I can pitch,” Wyatt said.
Kyle shrugged at him a little shyly. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Wyatt said back.
“Dude, let’s hit it,” Sky said as she hurried back out the door.
“See you later, Wyatt,” Kyle said as he followed Sky down the stairs.
“See you later,” Wyatt said.
Sky waved over her shoulder, then Wyatt watched them climb into David’s old Toyota truck and head up the driveway. He’d known Sky since she was in second grade, and it still felt weird to see her driving.
He watched them go, scratching at Coco’s ear, until Maggie came back out with a platter of chicken and roasted vegetables.
“Dinner’s ready, she said, and he followed her to the table.
“That smells amazing,” he said.
“My grandmother’s Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic,” Maggie said as she set it on the table. “Her mother was from Normandy. Sit down.”
Wyatt waited for Maggie to sit, then pulled out his chair and did the same. Coco settled democratically between them, trying to look like she wasn’t hopin
g someone would overturn the table.
Maggie filled their plates while Wyatt poured the wine she’d opened, and they settled in to eat.
“This is freakishly good,” Wyatt said after a couple of bites.
“Thank you.”
“I was starving,” he said.
“You’ve been starving for ten years,” she said.
“It is pretty chronic,” he agreed. He looked over at the deck railing as Stoopid flapped up to it and tapped over to peer at the table.
“Go away, Stoopid,” Maggie said without enthusiasm.
Wyatt watched Stoopid warily as Stoopid watched him take another bite. “Does he know this is chicken?” Wyatt asked after he’d chewed and swallowed.
“I’m not sure he knows he’s chicken,” Maggie answered.
“This isn’t one of his women, is it?”
“Are you kidding? I don’t eat my chickens. I raise them for manure and eggs. And company.”
Wyatt continued watching Stoopid, who was investigating Wyatt’s plate in that head-tilted, one-eyed way that chickens will. Maggie plucked a piece of roasted carrot from her plate and put it on the railing, which pleased Stoopid to no end.
“You have an odd relationship with your rooster,” Wyatt said.
“All of my relationships are odd,” she said.
“Thank you.”
Maggie ate a bite of turnip before she spoke again. “I ordered Stoopid through the mail. He was a week old when I got him. When he came, he was kind of sick, so I may have coddled him a little. He slept on my chest for the first week he was here.”
Wyatt looked at her for a moment. “I can see the healing potential in that,” he said, straight-faced.
“Are we already at the point in the evening where you try to irritate me?”
“It’s almost effortless, really,” he answered.
Maggie sighed, and they ate in silence for a moment. There was a good breeze coming off of the river, and it rustled through the live oaks and pines, danced through the Capiz shell chimes that hung outside the living room window. The air smelled of riverbed and leaves and garlic.
“Speaking of irritation,” Wyatt said after a few minutes. “I did some digging around on Boudreaux today. Both Boudreauxes, actually.”
Maggie paused before forking up a piece of chicken. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Bradford Wilson seriously downplayed Bennett Boudreaux’s reputation back then.”
“In what way?”
“That whole ‘quiet but intimidating’ thing. There was more to it than that.”
“Okay.”
“I talked to Murphey Carmichael on the phone,” Wyatt said.
Maggie knew Murph. He’d been with Apalach PD at the same time as her grandfather. Now he was in his eighties, selling pallet shelves at farmer’s markets and craft shows.
“He said that Boudreaux got into a thing with some guy I don’t know, earlier that summer,” Wyatt said. “Over a girl. Apparently, the girl had eyes for Boudreaux and the guy didn’t like it. The guy jumped Boudreaux out at the marina, and Boudreaux damn near killed him.”
“Why isn’t that on Boudreaux’s record?”
“Because the guy was on probation and was carrying,” Wyatt answered. “He never reported it, but everybody knew about it.”
“Boudreaux beat up a man who was carrying a gun?”
“Apparently so.”
Maggie busied herself for a moment with cutting some chicken.
“I also did some checking with Terrebonne Parish PD,” Wyatt said. “Boudreaux had a juvenile record. Sealed. That wasn’t in the fax they sent the Sheriff’s Office in ’77.”
Maggie poked at her food. “You’re spending a lot of time with Boudreaux,” she said eventually.
“So are you,” Wyatt replied.
They looked at each other for a moment, and the teasing and joking were clearly behind them.
“Not lately,” Maggie said.
“Nevertheless.” Wyatt had stopped eating.
“I’m worried that you’re focusing too much on Boudreaux,” Maggie said quietly. “That you’re assuming he had something to do with Crawford because that’s what you’d like to be true.”
“Sure, I’d love to nail him for something from thirty-something years ago, since we haven’t nailed him for anything since,” Wyatt said. “But I’m focusing on Boudreaux partly because it’s the most likely scenario, and partly because I’m afraid you won’t. Because you don’t want that to be true.”
No, she didn’t. Known killings aside, Maggie would prefer to believe that Boudreaux was innocent of this particular crime, that there were things he hadn’t done. Things that could somehow balance the things he had, and make it more okay for her to respect and even like him. Make it alright for her to feel grateful to him, and a little obligated.
“I’m staying objective,” she said. “I’m open to the possibility that he was involved, but I’m not as enthusiastic about it as you are.”
“I’m sure you’re not,” Wyatt said. “But we’re going to have to yin-yang each other on this one.”
“I understand,” she said. “But I feel like it’s too simple, Boudreaux being the answer.”
“No, simple would be if the spouse was behind it, like they usually are.” Wyatt took a sip of wine. “But the case file says Mrs. Crawford was with her sick sister out off of Gibson Road. Also, no motive anyone could find. Then there was Fitch’s statement.”
“Even so,” Maggie said. “I know you feel like I’m advocating for Boudreaux, and I know that’s a problem for you personally—it is for me, too—but it doesn’t seem all that likely to me.”
She looked away from him, unwilling to see him looking at her like she was headed for disillusionment.
Wyatt watched her for a moment, as she stared out at the trees beyond her yard. “Try not to look so crestfallen,” he said. “Boudreaux is a problem between us, but we’ve handled worse.”
Maggie looked back at him as he leaned his elbows on the table and sighed. “Okay,” she said.
“One of the benefits of being very close friends before becoming romantically involved is that we can roll with the hard stuff a little more easily,” he said.
“I hope so,” Maggie said, her brain snagging on the word romantically.
“Okay, let’s forget about work for the night,” he said, stabbing at a carrot. “This is why we suck at dating.”
Maggie smiled, relieved to be done with the talk of Boudreaux. It made her examine herself too closely, and she’d never cared for that much.
Wyatt smiled across the table at her. “Let’s enjoy our dinner and our wine, and talk about fun things,” he said. “Like how bad I feel about all that sexual tension you’re battling.”
Maggie’s cell phone rang at 5:30am. She would have been more annoyed if it hadn’t been preceded seven minutes earlier by the sound of Stoopid scrambling onto the window sill and coughing up a chicken lung.
She picked the phone up from the nightstand and saw it was her father.
“Hey, Daddy,” she said.
“Hey, Sunshine,” he said quietly. Daddy was always up by five, but Maggie’s mother lazed in bed until seven. “You want to go out for a little bit?”
Maggie rubbed at her face. “Sure. I have to be in at eight.”
“Then you should get a move on,” he said, and hung up.
Maggie slid her legs off of the bed and headed for the bathroom.
Maggie and Gray said very little to each other as they stowed the lines and got underway. They spent more of their relationship in comfortable silences than they did in conversation, though when they did talk, it tended to be meaningful.
Before the sun was fully up, they reached one of Gray’s favorite spots, where the bay was less than six feet deep and the gulls and the pelicans were their only company. Gray worked the tongs, his sinewy arms manipulating the long handles efficiently, without any extraneous movement, feeling the bottom for clusters of oysters, then swin
ging them over the side and onto the deck of the small oyster skiff.
Maggie culled the oysters, tossing out empty shells, rocks, and other debris, then chipping the oysters apart and cleaning them off. After a short time, they had a decent number, and Gray shucked the oysters while Maggie cleaned off the wooden platform and sliced a lemon.
When he had more than two dozen sweet, plump oysters on the half shell arranged on the platform, Maggie grabbed a couple of orange juices from the cooler and popped them open. Then they each chose one particularly nice-looking oyster, squeezed on some lemon, raised their shells to each other, and slurped.
Maggie closed her eyes as the brine filled her mouth first. The oysters were saltier this year. Cities upriver, particularly Atlanta, continued to pull fresh water from the Apalachicola River, throwing off the perfect balance of fresh water and salt that made Apalach oysters so special.
Maggie swallowed the water, then gently bit down on the flesh. It was sweet and tender and tasted like home.
When she opened her eyes, her father nodded at her and smiled, as he always did. They ate a few more before he spoke.
“You know, I think people undervalue the peace that comes from things that remain the same,” he said.
“How do you mean?”
“People are always rushing to get the newest product, try the newest thing, move to a new house, a new country.” He squeezed some lemon onto an oyster and swallowed it whole. “There’s a significance to continuity that I think people overlook.”
“I can see that,” Maggie said.
He sat and looked at her for a moment, squinting in the brightening day. “Take you, for instance, sitting there with your oysters, just like you did when you were five and twelve and seventeen.”
Maggie smiled at him as she took another sweet oyster into her mouth. He watched her eat it, his face pensive and thoughtful.
“I appreciate it, too, Daddy,” she said when she’d finished. “Mornings like this grounded me. So did you.”
He nodded, and looked out at the bay for a moment.
“How was your dinner with Wyatt last night?” he asked.
“Good. It was a nice night,” she said.
“You need some of those,” Gray said.
Dead Wake (The Forgotten Coast Florida #5) Page 9
