Spring Tide (32 page)

“What? Stef is here?”

“I saw her a while ago in the park.”

“The park? You mean where we were playing?”

“Right. She was there, listening to you play.”

Jackie was stunned. “I didn’t see her.”

“Well, you were kinda busy.” Hartley bounced up. “Thanks for the tip about the boys. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

She nodded, preoccupied with the story she’d just heard. She tried to reassess everything she knew about Stef in the context of this new information. She must blame herself for what happened. Oh, God! Jackie thought with sudden realization. It was the man in the photo, the handsome young officer with his arm around her.

Tears sprang to her eyes. She had cried so much in the last few days, but only for herself. This time, she was crying for Stef. For all the grief and guilt and loneliness she must be feeling. Suddenly every wary expression on her face, every troubled look in her eyes made sense. But what didn’t make sense was why she couldn’t tell Jackie. She wasn’t in trouble and the story was already widely known, according to Hartley.

Jackie wiped the tears away and sat staring at the ice in her soda cup. She gradually began to understand. Stef was running away from everything that reminded her, from everyone who knew. She didn’t want the story to follow her. She didn’t want anyone to know because, like Hartley, they would feel sorry for her.

She was afraid Jackie would find her pitiable, would want to coddle and take care of her, as Gail had said, like a wounded mutt. It was easy to see Stef had far too much pride to be able to bear that sort of treatment. She was incapable even of asking for help when she needed it. Like now. Everybody needed help sometime. It didn’t mean you were weak or that anybody would think less of you. Sometimes problems were just too big for one person.

More than ever, Jackie wanted to go to Stef and try to comfort her. Stef clearly thought she needed to go away, to be alone and let herself heal. That’s what injured animals do. They withdraw into isolation to nurse themselves. It’s an instinctive response to injury. But it isn’t always the best solution.

She thought of Niko’s endless jokes that almost always started off, “A dog/cat/bird/giraffe walks into a vet’s office.” But the thing is, in real life, animals don’t walk into a vet’s office. They have to be dragged in against their will. Some people were like that too.

Jackie looked at her phone to see it was nearly two o’clock. She had to get back to the group. But she was desperate to go to Stef now that she knew her reason for running away.

It was okay, she told herself. Stef had been at the festival, so she hadn’t left town yet. She might even still be here. Jackie tried to reassure herself as she reluctantly returned to the park, searching the crowd for Stef as she did so.

The joy of finally getting her boat in the water was diminished by not having Jackie there to see it. She was the one person Stef wanted to share this with. Instead, she was sharing it with a taciturn, burly man who unceremoniously loaded and hauled
Mudbug
on a truck trailer to the boat launch ramp. He backed down the ramp until the trailer was in the water. Stef stood on the dock, nervously observing the process of freeing the boat from the trailer. No longer held in place, she rose up. Suddenly, she was afloat! Stef whooped and punched the air with her fist, marveling at the beautiful blue and white craft floating placidly beside the dock. She was elated. Even the sullen truck driver smiled, seeing her joy.

Stef and Deuce went aboard. She took the helm and turned the key. The engine started right up. “Thank you, Marcus!” she declared, listening with satisfaction to the steady hum of the engine.

She shifted into reverse and eased the boat back from the ramp into the wide river, gauging how the craft responded to the throttle. Marcus had given her a few tips about how to pilot a houseboat, reassuring her that because this one was small, it would be more like a regular boat than the really big ones. They, he claimed, were more like driving a tank or a spaceship, a description that made him laugh because he had driven neither. But
Mudbug
, he said, would run light and responsive, and she should get the hang of it in no time.

She maneuvered slowly over to a slip where she could park, so slowly it nearly hurt. She hoped he was right, that she’d soon get the hang of it. There was plenty of open water to practice in in the days to come. When the boat was securely moored and Deuce was locked in the cabin, Stef disembarked and stood on the dock looking at
Mudbug
, waiting for her to sink.

When ten minutes had gone by and the boat was still afloat, she decided it was safe to leave for a few minutes. She walked off the dock to the street. She wanted to get to Rudy’s Bait Shop before it closed, to get her fishing license. If you live on the water, you may as well fish, she reasoned. Especially with all that gear in the hold.

Both Rudy and Ida were in the shop tonight. Ida was sweeping in the bait room, wearing wacky pink shorts with yellow ducks on them. Rudy rolled a display rack in from the outside, getting ready to lock up.

“Hi, again,” he greeted her. “Stef, right?”

“Right. I’d like a fishing license. Do you have time for that?”

“Yeah, all right. We’re about to close up, but that’ll just take a minute. Such a busy day today. Festival day. Everybody comes in wanting to see the live crawdads.” He pointed to the tank by the door. “Like it’s an aquarium in here. But that’s okay because they buy things while they’re here.”

“It’s gotten awfully quiet out there now. The festival must be over.”

“Over at seven. Yep, it was a good day.” Rudy went behind the counter. “My crawdads there are the only ones in captivity that lived through this day, that’s for sure.”

Stef laughed.

Rudy pulled a form out from below the counter and set it on top, along with an ink pen. “But nobody out there was eating local crawdads anyway today. All those mudbugs at the festival were shipped in here from Louisiana.”

“Really?” Stef asked. “Why?”

“They need too many of ’em. No way we can supply this shindig. Not set up for it. When the festival first started, we served local ones, but not anymore. They’ve got commercial operations there in Louisiana, so they ship us a frozen ton of them, and we serve ’em up like we just caught ’em in the backyard. Nobody knows the difference. Now, that’s not for telling around. Just between us locals. So don’t tell anybody.”

“Listen to him,” Ida huffed. “Don’t tell anybody. Hasn’t he been telling everybody who came in here all day long? My Lord!”

“We’ll get you set up with a license,” Rudy said, ignoring his wife. “I’ll give you a list of all the rules. What you can keep, what you gotta throw back.”

“I wouldn’t want to break any rules,” Stef said, filling in the form. “By the way, can you tell me how Disappointment Slough got its name?” 

“Sure. Bad luck fishing hole, that’s how. Back in the day. But I’ve never understood that. It’s always been one of my favorite spots.”

“I should have guessed it had to do with fish.”

“Most things around here do.” Rudy’s eyes twinkled.

“As you can see, I’m going to try my hand at it.”

“If you’re going for cats,” Rudy said, “you wanna use a heavy sinker to keep you on the bottom. That’s where they are. They’re scavengers, bottom feeders. You know how to clean a fish?”

“I’ve got YouTube.” Stef signed the form and handed it to him.

“YouTube?” he asked. “What’s that?”

“A website where people put videos of how to do everything. You want to know how to cook a roast, go to YouTube. Want to know how to milk a sheep, go to YouTube.”

Ida stopped sweeping and stepped into the main room. “I’d like to know how to get my husband to put up the vertical blinds I bought six months ago.”

Rudy frowned.

“I don’t think YouTube can help with that.” Stef laughed.

Rudy put on reading glasses and perused her form. “What’s this address? Hayward? You need a current address. You want to put Baylor Road on this.”

“That’s my mother’s address. As of this afternoon, I don’t live on Baylor Road anymore, so that’s all I’ve got.”

Rudy looked over his glasses at her. “Where you living?” he asked suspiciously.

“On my boat. On the river.”

“No! You got her running?” His eyes opened wide, pushing his wild eyebrows further up on his forehead.

“See for yourself.” She indicated the window. “There she is, the blue and white one next to the marina office.”

Both Ida and Rudy rushed to the window and looked down the street.

“Look at that!” Rudy declared. “Well, I’ll be a—”

Ida nodded appreciatively at Stef while Rudy returned to his place at the counter.

“My husband thought it was impossible,” Ida confided. “He thought because you’re a woman, you wouldn’t be able to fix that boat.”

“I did not!” Rudy objected forcefully. “It had nothing to do with her being a woman. It had to do with her knowing nothing about boats.”

“I had YouTube,” Stef explained, unoffended. “And I had help.”

“There, you see,” Rudy said, glaring at his wife. “She had help.”

“Still,” Ida returned, “she deserves a lot of credit. She did a wonderful job.” She narrowed her eyes at Rudy. “For a woman!”

He sighed in exasperation and shook his head, then laminated the license and handed it over. Stef gave him her credit card and slid the license into her wallet.

“Now you’re legal,” he declared.

She looked from one to the other of them. Jackie’s parents, she reminded herself, wanting to give them both a hug. But they didn’t know about her. Besides, she wasn’t part of the family no matter how you looked at it. She’d had a brief affair with their daughter. Then broken up with her and broke her heart. Like they’d want to hug her for that! More likely they’d want to slap her.

“See ya,” she said breezily, then left the shop and walked swiftly across the street toward the marina. As she started to put her wallet away, she noticed the pocket where she kept her credit card was empty. She stopped walking and opened the wallet. The card wasn’t there. Rudy had forgotten to give it back to her.

She turned around and headed back toward the bait shop. The door was now shut, but she knew they hadn’t had time to leave yet, so she ran across the street and shoved open the door, saying, “Hey, I forgot my—”

She froze. Two men in ski masks, long pants, long-sleeved shirts and black sneakers stood in the shop. One of them, blue eyes peering out of the holes of the mask, had a semiautomatic Beretta trained on Rudy. He was behind the counter, his hands in the air. The other man, apparently unarmed, had an arm locked around Ida’s waist. She looked petrified. Her broom lay on the floor nearby. They were the same two who had held up the Quickie-Mart, Stef was positive. As she entered the store, the gunman swung toward her. She immediately put her hands on her head without waiting to be told.

“Get over there with her!” the gunman ordered, aiming his gun at her head, holding it at arm’s length in his left hand.

“Okay,” she said, her voice calm but her heart pounding wildly.

She slowly skirted him, watching the barrel of the gun follow her. He stood facing her, his back to Rudy. The other man pulled Ida toward the bait room. She remained stiff, like a mannequin, her feet dragging along the floor, but she was small enough that she created no problem for the man.

As Stef slid past the gunman, she saw Rudy reach down behind the counter, a look of grim determination on his face. When his hand reappeared, he was holding a small revolver.

No, no, no!
Stef thought, panic-stricken.
What the fuck are you doing?
She broke out in a cold sweat and could feel the tension in her throat. She tried to communicate with Rudy wordlessly, to make him put the gun away before anybody else saw it.

Too late. Ida suddenly let out a shriek of terror, her eyes on her husband. The man dragging her let go and she fell to the floor.

“He’s got a gun!” he yelled.

The gunman swung around to confront Rudy just as he pulled the trigger. The bullet grazed the robber’s torso. He spun, losing his grip on the Beretta. It skidded across the floor. The other guy lunged toward Rudy, who stood immobilized, still pointing the revolver at the dead air where he’d fired. He was in shock.