Page 44 of Forgotten Path

“Usually, he came in his boat. He’d row in from the bay and come ashore. Then he’d wade back into the water with a bunch of glass jars. He said he was taking water and algae samples. I said, didn’t matter, it was still trespassing.” Ralph fixed him with a defiant look.

“His boat? You can’t mean the houseboat?”

“No, not the clinic. You know, that little skiff of his.” Ralph chuckled at Bodhi’s expression. “No, you don’t know. Not a real close friend, are ya’?” He aimed another stream of brown liquid at Bodhi’s shoes.

Bodhi took his time responding; when he did, it was with a question. “When was the last time you saw Joel?”

He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “Last week. Must’ve been Thursday evening. He was back thataway, mucking around in the lagoon. I told him to beat it, and he started waving around a jar full of dead fish, yammering about fish kills and such.”

“What did you do?”

“First thing I did was take the jar from him.”

“With the dead fish? Why?”

“Welp, ‘cause that’s not his property.”

“The fish?”

“Yeah.”

“Fish are nobody’s property. They’re marine life.”

Ralph twisted his mouth to the side and tried to work out a rebuttal to that argument. Eventually, he conceded, “That may be so, but these dead fish were on Emerald Estuary Estates property. So I reckon they belong to Mr. Glazier.”

“Don’t you mean the paper company? That’s who owns this land, right?”

Ralph screwed up his face. “Well, I suppose. But … I work for Mr. Glazier.”

“Did you give them to him, then?”

Ralph slapped his thigh with his free hand and wheezed. “I could just imagine what would happen if I plopped some rotting fish on Mr. Glazier’s desk. No, after I kicked Doc Ashland off the lot, I threw ‘em in the dumpster at the worksite.”

“And that’s the last time you saw Joel? Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Ask him yourself if you don’t believe me.”

Bodhi gave him a sidelong look, but he didn’t seem to be joking. “I can’t do that.”

“How come?”

“Because Joel’s dead.”

The security guard shook his head vehemently and scoffed. “He is not.”

“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but he is. I found his body yesterday.”

The man’s watery blue eyes narrowed in his tanned face. “Where?”

“In the clinic.”

“That’s not possible. Doc didn’t open the clinic last weekend. He left town early Friday morning.”

The bloated green corpse he’d found leaking fluid all over the floor of the houseboat said otherwise, but Bodhi didn’t say that. Instead, he cocked his head and waited.

After a moment, Ralph stammered, “I mean … that’s what I heard.”

“Who told you that?”