Free What Washes Up by Dawn Lee McKenna Page A

Oak. I don’t know where the other one is.”
    “So what makes you think he has anything to do with this?”
    “I’ve never seen Boudreaux look anything less than perfect. He doesn’t dress up much, but even dressed down, he’s immaculate,” Maggie said. “But he was wearing the same clothes I’d seen him in earlier that day. He was all wrinkled. And he was drinking scotch at sunrise.”
    Maggie realized that Wyatt might think she’d intentionally withheld this information and she jerked her head his way. “I thought he must have had a fight with his wife or something.”
    Tomlinson looked at Wyatt. “What do you think?”
    “Nothing would surprise me where Boudreaux’s concerned,” Wyatt said, sounding tired.
    “Where do I find him?”
    “He’s got a business called Sea-Fair about a block north of the Bayview,” Wyatt said. Maggie wished he would look at her.
    “Okay, I’ll look in on him. I really don’t have anything, so I don’t expect him to offer anything, but maybe I can get a feel for the guy.”
    “Can I go with you?” Maggie asked. She wanted to see Boudreaux’s face when Tomlinson questioned him, wanted to see for herself whether he seemed to be telling the truth, regardless of what he actually said.
    “I’m sorry, but I think I’ll say no,” Tomlinson said, not unkindly. “I will brief you guys once I’ve talked with him, though.”
    He sighed and scratched at his closely-cropped hair. “Damn sad shame. The boy’s father pushed him and his sister up on top of the bow of the dinghy, which was still partly above water, and told him to hang on. Then he disappeared. A few other people managed to grab hold, too, but not for very long.”
    He rubbed at his face. “The dinghy was mostly underwater. At some point, the boy lost his grip on his little sister and let go of the dinghy to go after her, but he lost her. He woke up on the beach.”
    The three of them were silent for a moment. Maggie blinked a few times, then focused on the back of Wyatt’s monitor to get a grip on her feelings. When she looked up at Wyatt, he was staring at his desk, his jaw clenched.
    Tomlinson got up from his chair. “I’m gonna head over to this guy Boudreaux’s. I’ll get with you guys later on.”
    After he left, Wyatt and Maggie sat without speaking. The tapping of Wyatt’s pencil on the edge of his desk was the only thing that broke the silence.
    Maggie got up and walked out.
    She walked down the hall to the ladies’ room and opened the door, smiled at Deputy Sue Thornton, who was on her way out. She was relieved that no one else was in the bathroom.
    She turned on one of the faucets and splashed cold water on her face. She felt her chest filling up, expanding, like someone was blowing up a balloon inside her. She yanked a couple of coarse brown paper towels out of the dispenser and held them under the water for a moment, then shut it off and walked into the stall furthest from the door.
    She slapped the door shut and locked it, then covered her mouth and nose with the bunched up wet towels. Then she cried surprisingly hard, given the silence with which she did it.

M aggie was adrift.
    She had no case to actually work. It was only three in the afternoon, and she had nowhere to be. She had thought about picking up the kids and taking them to the pool at the community center, but when she’d called her parents’ house, she’d been advised by Georgia that they’d gone out on the oyster beds with Gray.
    She found herself with nothing to do but think, and too many things she didn’t want to think about. When she got off the bridge from Eastpoint into Apalach, she turned right, intending to go home, but the thought suddenly made her feel more alone than she wanted to be. Instead, she decided to stop at Boss Oyster. She hadn’t eaten since the day before, and Gray would be coming in soon; she’d be able to see him and the kids as they passed Boss on the way to the marina.
    She got a seat out on