Free Dead Wake (The Forgotten Coast Florida #5) by Dawn Lee McKenna

said.
    “I see.”
    “Did you know him?”
    “Of course I did,” Boudreaux said calmly. “I assume you read the file.” He glanced over at Maggie, and she could practically feel those blue eyes checking her bone density.
    “What was the issue between you and Crawford?” she asked him.
    She watched one finger scratch gently at his left eyebrow, something he did when he was choosing his words, which he always did carefully.
    “In general, the issues were between him and my father,” he said. “They were competitors. Between the two of them, they bought and sold ninety percent of the oysters that came out of the bay.”
    “What did that have to do with you?” Maggie asked.
    “Not much,” he answered. “But I had just graduated from Tulane, a Masters in finance. I’d started taking over the running of my father’s shrimping operation back home, so I was a little more involved in his business here as well.”
    “Did you have dealings with Crawford?” Wyatt asked.
    “Not really. But I was something of a go-between for the two of them, a role I found less than satisfying.”
    Maggie cleared her throat before speaking. “What happened at Papa Joe’s that night? The night he disappeared?”
    Boudreaux sighed softly and leaned forward onto his desk. “He was drunk. Or had been drinking. There was an event going on, what would probably be called a pub crawl these days. All of the raw bars and seafood restaurants were participating. I ran into him at Papa Joe’s.”
    “Okay,” Maggie said.
    “He had some nasty things to say about my father, in a fairly loud voice,” Boudreaux said. “I couldn’t disagree with anything he said, but I took exception nonetheless.”
    “What kind of things?” Wyatt asked.
    “That he underpaid for his oysters, which he did. That he undersold to the vendors to undercut Crawford, also true. That he was a bully and an ass, which he was.”
    “So where’d you go after Papa Joe’s?” Wyatt asked casually.
    Boudreaux regarded him for a moment. “I went home.”
    It wasn’t the answer Maggie expected. “To your father’s house?”
    “Yes.”
    “Was your father there?” Wyatt asked.
    “No, he was on a fishing trip that weekend.”
    “Huh,” Wyatt said.
    Boudreaux looked at him mildly. “That wasn’t unusual.”
    “Well, the thing is, according to Bradford Wilson, you had an alibi for the time at which Crawford was seen arguing with another man in front of his business. Home alone isn’t much, as alibis go.”
    “I suppose it isn’t,” Boudreaux agreed.
    “So why would he say you had one?”
    “Sheriff Wilson smoked a lot of pot,” Boudreaux said, and Maggie could just see one corner of his lip twitching.
    “Is that a fact?” Wyatt asked, as though Boudreaux had shared some mildly interesting fact about the mating habits of sandpipers.
    Wyatt had a low BS threshold, and Maggie could see by the set of his jaw that he’d already breached it.
    “Here’s the thing,” said Wyatt somewhat pleasantly. “At the time Crawford went missing, you were under some suspicion because of the argument you had with him at Papa’s, and the fact that a man of similar stature was seen arguing or fighting with Crawford later. Your alibi, or the alibi Wilson says you had, was what knocked you out of the running.”
    He waited for Boudreaux to say something. Boudreaux waited as well.
    “But now, there’s the fact that you bought Crawford’s business later on, including the building where his body was found,” Wyatt continued. “That alibi would be even handier for you now. And you’re telling me you don’t have one.”
    “Nor do I need one,” Boudreaux said quietly, as he folded his hands on the desk. “I didn’t have anything to do with his disappearance, or his death. Yes, I bought his business and his property later on. It was beneficial to me, and to his wife. The business was falling apart.”
    “What did you do with the building?” Wyatt asked.
    “For a