Mourning Tide by Christine Kling

Author:Christine Kling
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9910508-8-8
Publisher: Tell-Tale Press

15

After Mike and Randy left, we took the dirty dishes and empty beer bottles into the kitchen. B.J. told me he needed to make a run to McDonald Hardware to pick up some sandpaper and thinner.

“Do you mind taking Nestor with you?” I asked. “It’s only three o’clock, and I haven’t had any exercise in days. I’m thinking I could do with a bit of nice solitary kayaking this afternoon.”

He wiped his hands on a dish towel. “That sounds like a good idea.” He pulled me to him and kissed me. When our lips separated, he tapped my nose with his forefinger. “Stay safe.”

B.J. knew perfectly well that I wasn’t just going out for exercise. I grabbed my phone, a hat, and a water bottle before stepping out the back door.

I dragged our old green plastic kayak out from under the bushes along the fence in the backyard. I turned it over and brushed off the dirt and leaves. The paddle and an old kapok lifejacket were stored under it. I stuffed the life jacket behind the seat and dragged the kayak to the seawall behind Gorda. Abaco followed me, wagging her tail so hard her whole butt wiggled.

“Sorry, girl. Not this time.” She hung her head and plopped down in the grass to watch me. She was hoping to guilt-trip me into changing my mind.

Once the kayak was in the water, I climbed on my tug, the kayak’s bow line in my hand. Gorda is low in the stern, and my dad had welded on a pipe swim ladder on the port side of the transom. I stepped onto the tippy little boat.

Once I was settled on the boat, I pushed off with the paddle and began to stroke my way upriver. The tide was running against me so I had to work to make any headway.

Any other Monday, there wouldn’t have been much traffic on the river, but it was the end of a long weekend, and boatloads of folks were returning home after a day or even a whole weekend out on the water. It was late enough that I paddled through the shadows of the big buildings downtown and passed the lineups of boats waiting for the drawbridges to open.

My shoulders started to ache, but I kept working at a steady rhythm. Soon I moved beyond the pain. I kept thinking about what Mike’s friend Randy had said about Tom Cheatam. The man is dangerous. His own wife had to take out a restraining order against him. Then he’d married a younger woman.

And Toby said he’d heard Cheatam sexually harassing Grace in the galley of Prince of Peace.

Somebody had killed Grace, and as Busco said, with murder, it was rarely a random stranger. It was likely someone who knew her, and that circle was smaller for Grace than it was for most people.

The view from the kayak was so much lower to the surface than it was from Gorda’s wheelhouse, it was like the river was new again for me.

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