Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (18 page)

Santiago turned to me. “Just to be thorough, we should take a look inside Lassitor’s house. Lassitor’s wife is probably technically in charge of his lease rights on the castle. Do you think that she would allow us to look at his house?”

“Yes. Implicit in our relationship is that I look into all aspects of Lassitor’s life and death. However, she did not give me a key or alarm code.”

“I can show you the house, if you like,” Gower said.

“You have a key?”

“Sure. Ian has mine as well. We don’t share opinions about politics or religion or business or maybe anything else, but we both try to be good neighbors. If something happens like you get a frozen pipe and your house floods or something when you’re not around, you want your neighbor to be able to go in to turn off the water. I’ll go get it.”

Gower wheeled himself away.

“I don’t imagine there is anything to find,” Santiago said. “But it can’t hurt to look.”

TWENTY-FOUR

“Would you like to drive over there?” I said when Gower came back.

“No, no, not at all. You may have seen the path between our properties. It’s a broad sidewalk in the summer. The paths and our driveways allow me a little circuit I can roll for the exercise and fresh air. I have the snow service keep it clear in the winter.”

We waited as Gower put on his jacket and gloves. He telegraphed a strong sense of independence. I thought it best not to go out of my way to hold the door for him. When Gower rolled to the front door, I followed him outside.

Gower rolled down the ramp. He showed a bit of caution as he used his hands on the push rings to brake. He was focused and cautious on the icy surfaces, never noticing Spot in the Jeep as he went across the driveway and over to the walkway that headed toward Lassitor’s house. I followed.

The winding path was like a narrow canal with snow walls five feet tall. I could see over, but Gower couldn’t. As we approached the Lassitor house, I could see why everyone referred to it as a castle. It didn’t seem like someplace that people would call home. While it was impressive, nothing about it was inviting.

The pathway went close to the castle, then curved around to the drive, which had also been cleared of the recent snowfall. Like most castles, the place had few windows, mostly small. One large section of stone wall had no windows at all. Near the top of the roof was a line of clerestory windows, the kind that were designed only to let light in. Looking out from the inside, one would probably only see sky and trees. On the lake side, the sloped roof gave way to a horizontal section fronted with crenelations just like something out of King Arthur’s time.

Gower continued past the garage with its four individual doors designed to look like castle gates, and he headed up the walk to the front door. The door was recessed beneath a large overhang. There were light cans in the ceiling and heavy iron-framed sconces on the walls, but with them off, the area was very dark even in the middle of the day.

Gower slipped the key in the deadbolt and opened the door. A soft beeping signaled an alarm warning as he bump-rolled over the threshold inside. He stopped at a numeric panel, pushed five buttons, and the alarm stopped.

“Very trusting for neighbors to give each other their alarm codes,” I said.

Gower looked at me, frowning. “How else could a neighbor help with a problem? We both set our alarms to the same code for that reason.” He said it with the tone of a rebuke.

“Good idea,” I said.

“So this is it,” Gower said, gesturing at the cavernous space before us. “An unusual building that, like most unusual buildings, sacrifices the normal comforts for a big statement.”

The huge main room had walls made of stone. One wall had an out-sized fireplace with windows on either side looking out at a large deck and the spectacular lake view in the distance. Opposite the window wall was a built-in entertainment area with TV and shelving for speakers and multiple glass bowls filled with different kinds of pine cones, Jeffrey, Lodgepole, Ponderosa, California Red Fir, and, in two of them, huge Sugar Pine cones. To one side of the entertainment center was a big upright piano. On the other side was a built-in cabinet.

The kitchen was a galley design with a long counter and appliances along the outer wall. There was a parallel island, just as long, with a large gas stove top and a grill.

Gower waited by the lakeside windows while we looked around.

There was a stairway near the kitchen and a large arched opening in the wall next to it. I walked through the arch into an entertainment room. In the ceiling above were the clerestory windows I’d seen from the outside. On the outer wall were substantial built-in bookshelves maybe twelve feet high and thirty feet long. There was a top rail which supported a rolling ladder for access to the upper shelves. The shelves held a wide range of books, hardcover and softcover, along with vases with silk flowers and small, bronze figure sculptures that were tall and skinny like those of Giacometti, but without the rough surfaces. The bookshelves and their contents showed more of the owner’s personality than anything I’d seen in the living room, but nevertheless, nothing was notable. There was no TV as in the living room, but there were stereo components stacked in the shelving.

Back in the main room, I trotted up the stairs, a wide, grand design that rose a flight to a landing, turned ninety degrees, and then rose another flight. All but the last portion of the stairs looked out over the living room.

The castle’s second level was all bedroom suites, each with a sitting area and a bath. All the beds were made and unruffled. All of the bathroom sinks were polished and had no water stains. The towels appeared untouched.

 At the far end of the hallway was a spiral staircase. I went up and saw that it opened onto a rooftop deck. The deck perimeter was the crenelated castle wall I’d seen as we approached. Stepping out onto the deck and looking past the crenelations to the stone boathouse and the lake beyond, it almost felt like I was back in the Middle Ages, in the smallish castle of a minor feudal lord.

I went back inside.

“Nice place,” I said as I came back down the stairway.

Gower nodded. His chair faced the dark front door instead of the view windows. He seemed depressed.

“You okay?” I said.

“Yeah. Lassitor wasn’t what I’d call a friend, but it’s hard to come back into this place and realize he’s gone.”

I took another look around. “The garage is this way?” I pointed to a door by the entrance.

“Yeah. Have a look.”

I walked in. The four-car space had extra depth, extra width and extra height. It contained a Mercedes sports sedan and a Porsche Cayenne, and the remaining space was almost twice the size of my cabin.

Nowhere in the house was anything that spoke of Ian Lassitor or his life. It was like a sterile vacation home, set up with all of the expected comforts but no personal effects.

“What about the boathouse?” I said to Gower when I came back into the living room.

“I’ll show you when we head back. The lock uses the same key as this front door.”

Santiago walked back in from the entertainment room. “Seen enough?” he said.

I nodded. “Want to stop in the boathouse?”

“Sure.”

“Come with me,” Gower said. Then he paused. “I should probably set the alarm, right?”

“Yeah,” Santiago said. “This place belongs to some company. Until they come around and take over, they’d probably appreciate it if you kept it closed up tight.”

Gower punched the buttons, then rolled out the front door. After we passed through, he turned and locked the door. Then he rolled down the walkway that we had followed to the castle. Halfway to his own driveway, there was an intersecting path that was cleared of snow. He turned down it and rolled another winding path to the boathouse. He unlocked the door and let us in.

The boathouse was built with its rear half on land and its front half projecting out over the water. At the water end was a roll-up door that allowed someone to come and go in a boat just like driving a car into a garage. At the rear of the boathouse were racks that held three kayaks, red, green, and yellow. There was also a built-in case not unlike the bookshelves in the entertainment room. Instead of bookshelves, it had a closet in which hung wetsuits, rain jackets, and flotation vests. There was a vertical rack with four water skis and five kayak paddles.

Like the main house, there was nothing notable.

TWENTY-FIVE

We followed Gower as he rolled back to his house. Santiago thanked him for his time and help.

When we drove down to the end of Gower’s drive, I beeped the horn. Santiago stopped. I got out and walked up to his patrol unit.

“The other neighbor you mentioned?”

“The crazy lady?” he said.

“Where does she live? I thought I’d go talk to her.”

He reached his arm out the window and pointed. “Go down the highway a block, then turn up the next street. Her cabin is closest to the highway. You can almost see it from here.”

“Thanks.”

“Let me know if she actually talks to you and has any information?”

“Will do.” I made a little tap on Santiago’s roof and walked back to my Jeep.

Santiago turned north on 89 back toward Tahoe City. I drove south a bit, then turned in on the next street, which led to a small neighborhood of old cabins with a few nice vacation homes mixed in. I pulled over next to the snow wall and parked.

“Be good,” I said to Spot as I once again left him in the Jeep.

I walked down the slippery road to the cabin that was closest to the highway. From the way it was positioned above the street, it had a good view of the trees around the Lassitor castle. It’s possible one could even see the castle from the cabin’s front windows. As I approached, I sensed movement near the house. I stopped.

The backyard had a six-foot fence around its perimeter. There was a porch on the back of the cabin with a gabled roof. A substantial snow drift curled down from the roof and hung in a cornice off the eave of the gable. My view from the street was very limited. But I could see over the top of the fence and under the edge of the hanging snow cornice. A woman was moving around on the porch. I could only see her head and shoulders. From her movements, it looked like she was sweeping. Probably, snow blew off the roof and swirled around under the gable overhang.

She was humming a little tune, the notes disorganized as if she made it up as she went along. There was a refrain where she sang words. The first time she sang it, the words were too garbled to make any sense of them. The second time, it still sounded like gibberish, but I could imagine what words they might be. It sounded like she was saying, “He thinks he’s king, hums and crows, true the crown.”

I walked up her short driveway, which looked like it hadn’t been plowed since the last two snowfalls. There was no car in her drive, no garage, and no footprints either. How did she get her groceries and other supplies? Did someone shop for her? Did someone plow intermittently just so she could walk out?

 I trudged through foot-deep snow up to her door and knocked.

There was no answer.

After a minute, I knocked louder. Still no answer.

After another minute, I called out, “Hello? Anybody home? My name is Owen McKenna. I’d like to talk to you, please.” Then I knocked again.

There was no loud music or TV on inside, so I knew she could hear me from anywhere in the cabin or even from out on her back porch.

But she wouldn’t come to the door. I listened carefully for the sound of running water in case she had decided to wash the dishes. But all was silent.

I walked back out to the street. The woman was no longer on the back porch. For whatever reason, she didn’t want to talk to me.

When I got back home, I had a message from Agent Ramos. I called him back.

“I’m thinking you haven’t checked the widow to see if she had a record,” he said.

“Correct. I probably should have.”

“I saved you the trouble,” Ramos said. “Her sheet shows an arrest for shoplifting when she was eighteen. She pled guilty, and her mama paid a large fine. Less than a year later, she had gotten a job working in accounts payable at a perfume distributor and after only a half-year on the job she was fired and convicted on a misdemeanor embezzling charge. She served four months and paid a thousand-dollar fine.”

“I obviously have a top-drawer client.”

“Good luck,” Ramos said and hung up.

Then I called Nadia’s cell number.

“Are you okay?” I asked when she answered.

“I think so. I just got another email from the blackmailer.”

“What did it say?”

“It had a bank account number. It said something like, ‘You have twenty seconds to read this email and write down this number. If you tell anyone the number, we’ll kill your daughter. When you get your insurance payment, you will have twenty-four hours to make a bank transfer to this account.’”

The news hit me hard. We now knew for certain that Gertie had been kidnapped.

I heard Nadia take a deep breath. “So I wrote down the number,” she said, “and then the email vanished.”

“There was no other information about the bank account?”

“No. How does that even work?” she asked. “Don’t I need to know what bank the account is in?”

“Does the account number have both letters and numbers?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s probably an offshore account in a country with strong bank secrecy laws. The country and bank codes are embedded in the account number. Your bank will know how and where to make the transfer.”

“If I pay them,” Nadia said, “then they will probably kill Trud... Gertie. Maybe me, too. Don’t you agree?”

“I don’t know. But yes, it’s possible. Have you heard from your insurance company?”

“No. I sent them an email. I hope they write back soon.”

“Nadia, why didn’t you tell me about your past run-ins with the law?”

There was a long pause. “I was very young. I was a kid. Sometimes kids do stupid things. I paid my debt to society.”

“Don’t you realize that with this large insurance settlement coming to you, people are going to wonder if you somehow helped your husband to his end?”