Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (9 page)

“‘Cause a lot happens up here,” I said.

Diamond touched the fried-out Beemer. “Case in point,” he said.

TWELVE

The next morning, I was up early drinking strong, black coffee. As dawn arrived, the wrecker showed up and hauled the BMW away. Diamond pulled up in his ancient pickup a few minutes later, followed by a Douglas County patrol unit.

“Your road gets steeper and steeper,” Diamond said as he got out of the ancient pickup. “My pride and joy barely made it up. The little rubber band engine was whining. I had to put that three-in-the-tree shifter in the upper position.”

“You mean first gear.”

“That what you gringos call it?” He reached over and burnished down a loose bit of duct tape on the edge of the windshield. The movement reminded me of a man giving a gentle caress to a woman’s forehead.

A young man got out of the patrol unit.

Diamond introduced us. “Owen, meet Cory Denell. Cory, Owen McKenna.”

We shook. Denell was what older cops like to see in rookies. He acted engaged, appeared to care, wanted to impress his sergeant, and even stood straight. And when he looked me in the eyes, he radiated intelligence.

We made small talk for a bit. Then Diamond and Cory left in the Douglas County vehicle, Cory driving.

I went inside and dialed Nadia Lassitor’s cell.

“It’s Owen McKenna,” I said when she answered. “Any more emails from the blackmailer?”

“No,” she said.

“Anyone following you?”

“Not that I’ve seen.”

“Good. Okay if we meet at my office?”

“When?”

“Twenty minutes?” I said.

“Okay.”

I squeezed Spot into Diamond’s pickup, shutting the door gently to minimize the rust raining onto my parking pad. The truck was slow starting, and it puffed white smoke when it finally caught, a sign of moisture getting into the system. We coasted down the mountain, Diamond’s pickup making little backfiring noises the whole way. We turned south at the highway. Miles later, I’d gotten the truck all the way up to 45 mph by the time I had to slow for Kingsbury Grade.

Nadia was in the lot waiting for me.

“I smell like your dog and I’ve got dog hair all over me,” she said when we got out of the truck.

“The hazards of hiring a private investigator.”

“Why do you have an old pickup? Where’s my BMW?”

“The people after you are trying to send a message about how serious they are.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Your car blew up last night.”

Nadia looked stunned. “I don’t understand.” She sounded devastated.

“It was in my driveway. Someone rigged a bomb to go off when I pressed the key fob lock button. You could have been in it. You need to stay in hiding as much as possible.”

Tears wet her cheeks. She looked like a child who’s just lost a favorite doll. “That was my baby. That car was the best. It was expensive, too.”

The statement struck me as absurd. “Your life is at stake, and you’re fussing about your car?” I didn’t mention her lack of concern for whether Spot and I were okay.

Another pause. “I’m sorry.”

“Your car was insured, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I hope so.”

I ushered her inside the building and up the stairs to my office.

After I’d made coffee and poured two mugs, I said, “Tell me about how you and Ian handled your financial affairs. You said that you didn’t know much about his business. Did you pay the household bills?”

She was still in shock, her face blank.

“Nadia?” I said.

She nodded, a slow, deliberate movement. “Ian set up an automatic deposit that gave me four thousand a month for the household account. The mortgage is paid off. At least, that’s what I think. Ian took care of the real estate taxes. So I paid all the miscellaneous stuff. Groceries, utility bills, lawn service, clothes.”

Nadia brushed her hand over her pant leg as if she’d seen more dog hairs. She didn’t pull out her sticky roller. Maybe she realized it was hopeless.

“Ian died during that big storm,” I said. “Do you have any idea why he would take his woodie out during a serious winter blow?”

“No,” she said. “But I’m not surprised. Ian was stubborn and headstrong. If someone told him that he shouldn’t do something, then he would do it.”

“Has he gone boating in the winter before?”

“I don’t know. He usually came up to the Tahoe house alone. I stayed in Santa Clara.”

“I understand the Tahoe house is on Hurricane Bay?” I said.

She nodded. “Just south of Tahoe City.”

“You said it was leased back to Ian for the next few months. Why aren’t you staying there?”

“I wouldn’t stay there even if it still belonged to us. It’s a huge, cold stone house, not at all cozy. The first time Ian ever took me there, I told him that I wouldn’t sleep there.”

“Can you write down the address?”

Once again, she had to look it up in her little address book. She wrote it with such perfect handwriting, one would think she taught cursive at grammar school.

“What is the name of the company that bought the assets?” I asked. “You could write that down, too.”

“I have no idea of the company’s name. I just heard about it from Ian. A Mexican company was all he said. But he never gave me details.”

“Where did Ian keep his papers?”

“Papers?”

“Insurance, real estate deeds, vehicle titles, tax records.”

“They’re at the Santa Clara house. At least, some of them, anyway.”

“Does he still have an office in the Bay Area?”

She shook her head. “No, that went with all the other assets. He has his home office, of course. And maybe he keeps some stuff at the stone castle. I wouldn’t know.”

“Did he have any other places? A condo someplace?”

“No.” Nadia paused. “At least, not that I know of.”

“Who is Ian’s lawyer?”

“I don’t know. That’s bad of me, isn’t it? I should know more about my own husband.”

“What happened to your husband’s body?”

“It was cremated according to his wishes.”

After Nadia left, my phone rang.

“Owen McKenna,” I said.

“This is Gertie.”

“The film mogul,” I said. “How’s your debut formulating?”

“Well, I just got a good idea for how to add creepy noirish emotion into my screenplay.”

“Great,” I said.

“Maybe not. I think a man is watching me.”

That got my attention.

“Where did you see him?” I asked.

“Outside my school. I didn’t pay any attention. He was just a guy standing there.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing. I left with some other kids and got a ride home.”

“Have you seen him again?”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m calling you. He was there again today. He started to follow me when I left the school. Maybe it was just a coincidence. But I ran and caught up to some other kids and I got a ride again.”

“Gertie, you know about a person’s gut instinct, right?”

“You mean, like, a feeling?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Something that you don’t know in a logical way but you feel it anyway. I want to tell you an important law of human perception. When you have a gut instinct about safety, it’s very important to give it higher priority than your logical feelings.”

“You’re saying that my uncomfortable sense that the man was following me is a gut instinct.”

“Yeah. Always heed those kinds of feelings. They will save your life more often than any logical thoughts will.”

“Okay, I will.”

“Can you describe this guy?”

“Big. Strong. Not pretty. Kind of a lunk. Like someone who might have worked at my dad’s warehouse.”

“How old?”

“I don’t know. Maybe my dad’s age.”

“Where are you now?”

“At home.”

“Okay, here’s what you do. First, lock your doors and keep them locked. Always.”

“I did.”

“Don’t open your door unless it’s someone you know.”

“Okay.”

“You never go anywhere alone. Call other kids, get them to walk with you or give you rides. Get your dad to give you rides. If you can’t get a ride or escort to school, you stay home.”

Gertie hesitated. “That’s pretty extreme, don’t you think?”

“No, it’s not. Remember your gut instinct?”

“Right. That’s why I called you.”

“I’ll make some calls. I can get you a taxi service. And any time you use a taxi, you tell the driver to wait until you’re inside your house or your school, wherever you’re going. Okay?”

“Okay.”

We hung up and I called Nadia.

“Someone is following Gertie,” I said.

“What? Someone bad?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Someone bad.”

“How do you know this?”

“She called me and told me.”

“She called you, not me?” Nadia sounded whiny.

“Yeah. I need you to call Merrill and tell him to give Gertie money for a taxi. If you need to, send him money immediately. Whatever it takes. I also need him to make sure she has the phone numbers for two or three taxi services. She can no longer walk anywhere by herself. Either she gets rides, or she stays home. Do you understand that this is serious?”

“Yes, I get it.”

“And you will call Merrill right now?”

“Um, yeah. I will.”

We hung up.

Gertie worried me. I went over everything I’d said, wondering if I’d sufficiently impressed her with safety concerns. I paced back and forth. There were bills to pay and other desk work I needed to get done. But I couldn’t concentrate.

I took Spot down to Diamond’s pickup and we left.

A block down, I saw that Street’s VW Beetle was at her lab. I pulled in and stopped. Street was the world’s most supportive person, but I didn’t want to stress her out about possible danger to Gertie, so I took a moment to calm down before I got out.

THIRTEEN

Spot and I walked up to the door of Street’s lab. I made my secret rap against the door.

Street opened the door.

Spot wagged and pushed past her through the doorway.

Street saw Diamond’s pickup. She raised her eyebrows.

“Where’s your Jeep?” she asked.

“I traded the Jeep for Nadia Lassitor’s BMW. But it blew up when I pressed her key fob lock button.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just did. It happened late last night.”

I heard the sound of a vehicle behind me. I turned to see a Douglas County patrol unit pull off Kingsbury Grade and come to a stop next to the pickup. For a short moment, the patrol unit’s Christmas bar flashed blue and red LEDs and the siren began the briefest bleep before it was truncated. All went silent. The driver’s door opened, and Diamond got out. He looked at his pickup as if checking to make sure it was still okay. Once again, he reached over and smoothed down the errant piece of duct tape.

“Running okay?” he asked.

“Yup.”

“Gonna invite me in, or do I have to find some fine print building code infraction to gain admittance.”

“Help yourself,” I said. “But keep your sidearm close. There are bugs in there that take at least two nines to put down.”

With his left hand, Diamond raised his flashlight alongside his temple and flipped it on. He put his right hand on the butt of his gun and walked into Street’s lab.

“Watch out for the large hound,” I said.

Street and I came in after him. I shut the door behind me.

Spot ran up to Diamond, sniffing and pushing and leaning and wagging.

“Hound has a casual, carefree insouciance insufficient to his stature,” Diamond said.

“What I think every morning at my point of deepest slumber when he wakes me by sticking his nose in my face,” I said. “But he’s rebounding from the slight of not being allowed to sniff a woman who indulged in excessive makeup while he looked on. So we may need to extend him some tolerance.”

“What kind of woman would say no sniffing to Spot?” Diamond said.

“The Beemer lady, Nadia Lassitor.”

Diamond walked over to a counter and looked at a terrarium, standing a safe distance away. Inside were dirt and twigs and leaves that looked like fresh spinach and lots of bugs, the make and model of which were unclear.

One of the bugs in the terrarium leaped an inch or more. Diamond jumped back, his right hand moving back to the butt of his sidearm.

“You think the woman tailing her was for real?” Diamond said.

“Amanda? You’re wondering if Nadia might have made up the blackmail scheme to deflect questions about whether she arranged her husband’s death in order to get the insurance payout. And then she might have hired Amanda to give her story a sense of legitimacy.”

Diamond nodded. “Vanishing email threats have a high threshold of proof.”

“That’s what I thought. But Amanda seemed like an actual dirtball. Of course, hiring Amanda would be a great setup to make it seem real.”

“Lot of work for some verisimilitude,” Diamond said. “And then there was Amanda’s supposed boss, the guy who said you were going to get dead. Nadia could have arranged that, too.”

“I don’t like this,” Street said. “It’s possible that this is all real. You could be in real danger.”

I thought of Gertie’s phone call about a man following her. But I didn’t want to alarm Street further.

“Amanda said she was going to get dead, right?” Diamond said. “All because she let you relieve her of her gun and ID and phone.”

“Time to change the subject,” Street said.

Diamond nodded as he moved around Street’s lab. He stopped at another large container not unlike an aquarium. Inside was an impressive beehive and a fair number of bees that were buzzing their wings if not flying around with energy.

“You collecting honey?” he said.

“No,” Street answered. “It’s winter, so this hive is dormant. I’m joining with a thousand scientists to try to find out what ails bees worldwide.”

“With enough ailing, they’ll go extinct and we’ll no longer get stung?” Diamond said.

“You Luddite,” Street said. “Bees are the most important...” She saw him grinning. “Oh, you’re kidding. But this isn’t something to joke about. Bees pollinate a huge portion of human food. If we lose all the bees, our species will be stricken. Imagine a world with almost no fruits or vegetables or nuts. Bees have reached a tipping point. They are dying off in record numbers.”