Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (17 page)

“A crazy lady?”

“That’s what we’ve called her ever since we first tried to talk to her years ago when we had a string of burglaries. She won’t answer her door. Once, she was outside when we pulled up, but she wouldn’t talk other than mumbling something about aliens.”

Santiago sipped coffee. “Maybe you should check from the insurance angle. Who did Nadia tell about the policy? Did Ian tell someone about it? Stuff like that.”

I nodded.

The waiter brought us our sandwiches.

I bit into turkey, lettuce and tomato on whole grain Ciabatta.

“Have you learned anything about Lassitor’s drowning?” I asked.

“Not much,” Santiago said with a full mouth. “The boat was broken in two. Lassitor’s body was in the bow section, which was still floating. The stern had sunk. There were scrape marks on the bow that made it look like some other boat had run over the woodie.”

“You think there’s any chance of recovering the stern?”

Santiago shook his head. “The body and bow were found about a half mile offshore. My map says the lake is seven hundred fifty feet deep there. Too deep to find any wreckage unless we had a submersible and the budget to drive it around. And even if we found it, bringing up the wreckage is another problem.”

“What was the body’s condition?” I asked.

“Bad. One elbow was broken in multiple pieces, and it looked like Lassitor tried to smash the cockpit dash with his face. But there wasn’t much swelling or bruising. Probably the cold water iced him so thoroughly that the body shut down before it could react to the facial blow. Also, his hand was impaled with a shard of wood that also penetrated the dash of the boat. We had to saw the wood to disconnect Lassitor from the boat. Other than that, his body was fine.”

Santiago nodded as he chewed and swallowed. He showed no discomfort at talking about dead bodies while he ate, the mark of a seasoned law officer.

“Who ID’d the body?”

“The neighbor first, then later, the widow.”

“The neighbor is the one who lives in Carson Valley?”

“Yeah. Craig Gower. Carson Valley and Tahoe. Has a dainty little beach house of maybe seven thousand square feet. Compared to Lassitor’s castle, Gower could feel a bit inferior if he was given to such thoughts. But he’s an old guy and wheelchair-bound, so maybe house size isn’t at the top of his worries. We know him from a few years ago. A real sad story. He was driving with his wife and daughter and got in a head-on collision. His wife and daughter were killed, and he was paralyzed. He’s about as broken as you can get. But he still has his business in Minden. A factory that makes thermostats. But even with money and a nice house or two, I don’t know how he keeps on going.”

“The circumstances of Lassitor’s death suggests a lot of questions,” I said.

“No kidding. Like how could Lassitor be so stupid to go boating in a storm?” Santiago shook his head.

“If there was a collision, it could have been intentional.”

Santiago grinned. “Two million would be a nice bank account for a woman who wanted to start over, wouldn’t it?”

I nodded.

“But how would you do it?” he said. “Run Lassitor out into the lake, hope that there were no witnesses, and then arrange the collision? Why not just tie a concrete block to him, and toss him overboard?”

“Unless the killer wanted the body found.”

“Like the woman who was drowned on the South Shore,” Santiago said. “A kind of a message.”

“I should go chat with Gower,” I said.

“Actually, I have a couple of questions to ask him that I forgot the last time around. You can join me, if you want.”

“Don’t want to interfere with official sheriff’s office business.”

Santiago was shaking his head before I finished my sentence. “You handed us the big collar last fall. I owe you.”

Santiago got out his cell, dialed, and arranged a visit.

When he hung up, he said, “I’ve spoken to old man Gower a few times and he sounds more fragile each time.”

“In addition to being paralyzed, he’s probably got survivor’s guilt too,” I said.

“What makes it worse is that he was driving and it was his fault. Apparently, he drifted over the center line.”

 Santiago drove his patrol unit, and I followed. We continued south on 89, passed the Sunnyside restaurant, and after another mile Santiago turned left into a long, narrow drive that had vertical snow walls like those near Nevada Beach but that were much higher because the West Shore gets three times as much snow as the East Shore.

I turned in after him. After winding through the trees for sixty or seventy yards, Santiago pulled up at a rambling home that probably dated from the 1950s. Sided with cedar shingles, it looked like someone had slid wooden boxes up against each other in a scatter-shot combination, which created unusual roof lines intersecting like geometry puzzles.

I left Spot in the Jeep and joined Santiago at the front door.

TWENTY-THREE

The door opened sooner than I expected. Perhaps a sensor had picked us up as we turned into the drive. A man in a wheelchair looked out. He looked to be in his mid-70s, with a gentle if sad face and soft gray hair. A lap blanket covered his legs.

“Sergeant Santiago,” the old man said. “Back to ask more questions about Ian Lassitor, I presume.”

“Just a few things I’d like to go over, if you’ve got a minute,” Santiago said.

The man seemed to think about it. A gust of air swirled in through the open door, fluttering the corner of the lap blanket.

“Come in. We can talk near the fire. Get you boys warmed up.”

He reached down and pulled on one of his chair’s push rings and pushed on the other, rotating the chair. I noticed that Gower’s chair was outfitted with a motor and a small control stick on the right arm, but he propelled himself across dark oak floors. I shut the door behind us, and we followed him through the entry.

There was a staircase that was fitted with a platform lift that Gower could roll onto and then it would travel up the stairs.

We went by a large, open kitchen area with long, polished, black-granite counters and a black-granite dining table. In the center of the table was a big glass bowl of oranges. The orange color reflected off the black granite.

Gower rolled past the dining room, then turned left into another room.

In striking contrast to the modern kitchen, the living room felt like the lobby of an old lodge, with a row of small-paned windows facing the lake and, on the opposite wall, a crackling fire behind a heavy screen in a stone fireplace. There was a low wooden table, rustic in design. On it was another glass bowl of oranges.

 The man turned his chair to me and reached out his arm. “Craig Gower,” he said.

 “Owen McKenna.” We shook. Gower’s grip seemed fragile.

He saw me notice the oranges.

“I own part interest in an orange grove in Southern California. Valencia oranges. The best for peeling and eating. Of course, I’m biased. The grove doesn’t supply a significant income, but it allows me the indulgence of oranges for much of the fall and winter.”

“They are beautiful,” I said.

“I see you have no uniform,” he said.

“I’m a private investigator. I’m helping with the Lassitor case.”

Gower nodded. “You boys want a beer?”

“Thanks, but I’m working,” Santiago said.

Gower turned to me. “I always thought that the point of self-employment is that you can have a beer during the day, right? I’ve got Paddleboard Pale Ale from the Tahoe Mountain Brewing Company.”

“Sounds great,” I said. Many times in the past, I’d noticed that the camaraderie of a shared beer resulted in people saying things they wouldn’t have said had they been in a formal interview without libation.

Gower turned the chair again and slowly rolled himself out of the living room. I wasn’t sure, but I guessed that it might have been inappropriate to offer my help. He was obviously independent in his wheelchair.

I looked out the windows. There was a path that led out to Gower’s dock where a good-sized cruiser was moored under a rigid canopy. It was like half a boathouse, providing protection from snow and rain. In the distance to the side was a stone boathouse that must have been Lassitor’s. I couldn’t see Lassitor’s house, or castle as they referred to it.

Gower returned in a minute with two tall glasses of beer, each set in holders on the sides of the chair. “They don’t bottle their beers in regular bottles yet,” Gower said. “But I get them to bring me the large-size growlers. With that and my fire, I’ve pretty much got what I need.”

Gower handed a glass to me, raised his, and said, “To your health,” and drank. I joined him.

“Good stuff,” I said.

He nodded, licked some foam off his upper lip.

“You have a motor on your chair,” I said, “but you roll yourself.”

“Only exercise I get. Motorized rigs are great for quads and others who need them,” he said. “And it’s handy for me when I’m going up ramps or trying to hold a couple of grocery bags in my lap as I’m going from my van into the house.

“But lots of people in chairs have use of their upper bodies. Like everybody, we can use all the exercise we can get. Unfortunately, some of us just end up using the motor for convenience. Then our upper body strength goes away.”

“Just like able-bodied people taking the elevator when they could walk the stairs,” I said. “I’m guilty of it, too. Like going to the club for exercise and driving around the parking lot trying to find the closest space.”

Gower smiled. He looked warm and pleasant with a smile, but I guessed that he didn’t find much cause for it.

“I’m determined to get exercise even if nothing works in the lower half of my body. I crushed my lumbar vertebrae in a car accident a couple of years ago.”

He paused.

After a moment, Santiago said, “Mr. Gower, unlike before when we spoke of the details of what you saw when Lassitor went out in his boat, today I’d like to ask you about your opinions rather than facts.”

“Opinions about what?”

“What did you think about Lassitor’s death?”

“How do you mean?”

Santiago seemed to hesitate. “In trying to figure out how Lassitor drowned during a winter storm, the facts don’t seem to help us at all. Whereas your thoughts about Lassitor could give us an indication of what to look for.”

Gower frowned. “I’m not sure what you want from me.”

“I’d like your personal opinion of the man. For example, do you think he was the kind of man who could get mixed up in something that would lead to his murder?”

“Oh, whoa. I didn’t see that question coming. You think it could have been murder? Let me think.” Gower’s frown deepened. “Well, the simplest way to describe Lassitor is that he had bad judgment. Long ago I had the thought that he would probably die as a result of a stupid decision. He liked to live hard and fast and dangerous. I saw him drive drunk and also drive like a wild man. I saw him go hiking just to climb mountain peaks in cold weather with no extra clothes or food or water or even sunglasses. He called it speed climbing, and he said that having extra water or clothes took the excitement out of it. And he was a base-jumper, that crazy sport where you leap off buildings or bridges or cliffs with a parachute. Another thing he told me – and this will make you think he was truly nuts – was that he occasionally played a game called Ten Little Pills where he would pour a bunch of different prescription pills into a bowl and mix them up. He’d also pour himself a tall glass of Scotch, straight up. Then he’d put on gloves and close his eyes and pick ten pills out of the bowl. Because of the gloves, he couldn’t tell by feel which pills he was getting. Then he’d down the ten pills with Scotch.”

“That’s insane,” Santiago said.

Gower nodded. “But then look at me. Here I am being judgmental about Lassitor, and I’m paralyzed because I veered over the center line in a car. So forget everything I just said.”

Santiago stared at Gower as if shocked at what he heard.

I noticed that Gower didn’t mention losing his wife and daughter in the accident. Probably that was too painful for him to even think about.

After a silence, Santiago said, “Did Lassitor ever say he was going to take his little boat out in a winter storm?”

“Not specifically. But like I said the last time you came here, it’s the only thing that made sense. He’d try any idea that came to him, regardless of whether it was crazy. He had no impulse control. He probably was going too fast, hit a wave and swamped his little woodie, breaking it in two.”

“Which would explain his injuries,” Santiago said.

Gower nodded. “Or someone didn’t see him and plowed into him in another boat. Although, leaving him there to drown is beyond comprehension. But if he was murdered, then I have no idea how someone would know when and where he would be out in his boat.”

“Did he have a friend he liked to visit across the lake?”

“He never said anything about knowing someone across the lake. Frankly, I’d be surprised if he had any friends.” Gower drank some beer and stared into the fire.

I spoke up, “You have seen Lassitor go out in his woodie in the past, right?”

“Sure. Several times. And I’m gone half the time or more attending to my business. So I have to assume that he went out quite often.”

“Did he always wear a flotation vest?”

Gower looked up at the ceiling. “I never thought about it, but as I think back, no, I don’t think I ever saw him put one on. I can see him standing up at the wheel, sometimes even standing up on the seat, whooping and hollering as he raced across the waves. But I can’t remember any life jacket.”

“Yet, he had one on,” Santiago said. “Going out on a nice summer day isn’t like heading into a winter storm.”

“What kind of business are you in?” I asked Gower.

“I have a small thermostat manufacturing company. Down in Minden. That’s why I live down in Carson Valley for a good part of the year, although I love to be up here in the winter when there is solitude. I have twenty-nine employees. I started it forty-three years ago after I bought a thermostat that didn’t work properly. I’ve done quite well with it, although there is new competition from all over the world. My company has some modern, programmable thermostats, but any tech device more than six months old is in danger of obsolescence. We’re not good at keeping up. I would like to sell the business, but to tell the truth, I would never recommend that anyone buy it. So I’ll probably just give it to my employees and let them try to find a way to make it relevant to the new world.”