Tahoe Blue Fire (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 13) (6 page)

Diamond picked up his wine glass and drained it. He set the glass down on the counter and turned to Street. “I’m sorry. In an effort to change the subject away from Scarlett Milo’s murder, I went off a different direction that was no better. Please accept my apology.”

Street started to protest, but Diamond smiled and said, “I should be going. Thanks for your time.” He gave Spot a pet and then left.

Street and I looked at each other for a long, quiet moment.

Street spoke first. “I thought I’d grill the veggies on the perforated barbecue pan. Gives them great flavor. How about you light the charcoal while I pour more wine?”

I looked at her glass. It was down a half an inch. Either the wine was really good, or I’d stressed her talking about Scarlett Milo.

I picked up the box of wooden matches and headed out onto the deck. Spot pushed out before me. Like all dogs, he was always eager to figure out where the humans were going and then get in front of them and lead them.

I squirted lighter fluid on a pile of briquettes and lit them afire.

Street came out carrying our glasses. We stood at the railing, looking out toward the forest where here and there were filtered bits of lake view during the day, dense intimate forest at night. Spot stood to Street’s side. He looked at her, then looked where she was looking.

When the coals were ready, Street brought out two bowls of vegetables, one onions and garlic cloves and the other peppers and carrots and broccoli and celery and bok choy. She sprayed olive oil into a pan that had hundreds of holes in it, then poured the onions into the pan and set it on the grill. The heat and smoke seeped through as she stirred, and within a minute, the aroma was grand.

After the onions began to cook, she added the other veggies, and stirred the mix continuously. Within a few minutes, she removed the pan, and I followed her inside.

I learned what the previous cooking smells were as she dished up a mixture of wild, black, and brown rice into broad-brimmed, cherry-red bowls and put the veggies on top. Maybe  I could live without steak after all.

We sat across from each other at her small dining table, the lights down low, a single candle in the middle of the table, and her gas fireplace flickering off to the side. Tommy Flanagan had taken over the piano.  

Street was wearing a dark red, silk shirt with three-quarter sleeves. It was open to the third button so that her simple silver necklace would show. She had on a matching silver bracelet, and she’d coated her nails with a clear coat that was glossy enough to reflect the candle light. I sensed the slightest touch of smoky gray eye shadow, which set off her hair that was no longer auburn but back to black and styled in a kind of wind-blown look. The combination might have been harsh in some lights, but with the low light of fire and candle, she looked beautiful, her cheekbones dramatic beneath soft skin.

Spot sat to the side of the table, opposite the fireplace, his ears and eyes like laser beams focused on Street’s bowl, then my bowl, then back to Street’s. Sitting on his haunches, his chin was significantly higher than the table, and his head gradually glided forward, closer, centimeter by centimeter.

“Spot,” I said, snapping my fingers and making a downward pointed gesture that meant he should lie on the floor.

Spot looked at me. Instead of lying on the floor, he lowered his chin to the table and rested his head. With his head in one place, his eyes resumed their focus on our bowls of food. I thought of insisting that he lie down, then decided that his current position was okay as long as he wasn’t drooling, something that would come instantaneously if we gave him any indication that he was about to get food.

When we were done eating, Street rewarded Spot for his gentlemanly behavior. His wagging tail nearly broke her sliding glass door as she brought a bowl of food out to the deck.

Later, we lingered with wine on the couch in front of her fireplace. Oscar Peterson was now doing his keyboard magic.

Street talked about Diamond’s constant hunger for knowledge, from Thomas Aquinas’s writings to how we judge the way people die.

I was noticing the way the firelight danced along the delicate lines of her neck and shoulders.

Street segued into Enlightenment philosophy and how important it was to loosening the Catholic Church’s constraining hold on society and teaching us tolerance for other religions.

I was studying Street’s eyes and the little yellow flecks that made her nearly-black irises look mysterious.

Street talked about how philosophers taught us the importance of science and the value of democracy over monarchy.

I was thinking that the dramatic curve of her lips shortened my breath.

Street recounted how the most important points in our Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and our Bill of Rights all had their origin in the writings of philosophers and how most of the great principles we hold dear today came from a few great thinkers.

I was looking at Street’s face, all cheekbones and hollows in the flickering firelight, a non-standard beauty that was the equal of any.

As Street continued to talk, I thought it was nothing more than good luck that I knew people who looked outward more than inward, people who expanded my world instead of shrinking it, people who were primarily interested in the big questions rather than the minutia of their own lives.

I didn’t have Street’s intellectual firepower, but I was smart enough to treasure the wonder of her existence.

When it came time to go, we said goodnight with the candle still flickering and Gerry Mulligan performing his sax wizardry.

I was sorry to leave the woman of my dreams. But Street didn’t invite me to stay, and she had said earlier that she needed to get up early. Although we had enjoyed many long evenings and sleepovers over the years, I understood her need to keep our lives from getting too intertwined, a need that arose from the very difficult childhood with parents who were evil.

I wondered if the powerful pullback that results from such abuse as a child prevents that person from fully enjoying a deep closeness in future adult relationships. I understood that close emotional connections and any degree of dependency brings with it the risk of revisiting unbearably painful memories should that closeness and dependency fall apart. Better to keep some emotional distance than risk shattering the balanced-yet-fragile psyche of an adult who grew out of the worst a child can experience.

But still I longed for her constant company.

Street and I hugged and kissed with Spot burrowing between us, and then Spot and I stepped out into the cold night. My eyes stung from the sadness of leaving Street as I walked to the Jeep.

When Spot and I were in the Jeep and driving back up the mountain, I said, “That girl back there is something special, isn’t she? Like breathing some rarefied perfume. Like holding a one-of-a-kind flower in your open palms. I could spend my entire life with that girl. But instead, we just get visits, you and I. But I guess we need to get comfortable with that. Visits have to be enough, huh, boy?”

Spot stuck his head forward from the back seat and touched his nose to the side of my neck. He held his massive head next to my ear while I reached up and pet him.

“Visits have to be enough,” I repeated as we headed up the dark mountain.

There was a folded piece of paper stuck into the crack of my cabin door. I pulled it out and brought it inside to look at it in the light. There was writing in blue ballpoint pen. All caps. The block letters were perfectly uniform, traced from some kind of template. It said,

“WALK AWAY FROM THE MILO CASE OR YOU DIE.”

Below the writing was a drawing printed upside down. I rotated the paper.

The image was printed from a computer. It was a five-point star. Within the star was a figure of a man. The man’s head was  positioned within the top point of the star. His outstretched arms  were  slightly raised to fit into the two star points to the left and right. His legs were spread to match the position of the lower two star points. At the perimeter was a circle that touched each of the star points, and at the center of the circle were crossed lines like the cross hairs in a rifle scope.

It was a disturbing drawing, and, despite the blinds on my windows, I turned off the lights and thought about it.

It appeared that whoever had shot at Scarlett and me knew where I lived. Maybe he’d simply followed me home.

I called Diamond and told him about it.

“It sounds like a seriously disturbed individual is after you,” he said. “Is there anything about the warning that suggests who might have left it?”

“No. It’s regular copy paper, an image probably printed off the internet, letters made with a template. No doubt it was handled with gloves.”

“The star and man mean nothing to you?”

“No.”

After a moment, Diamond said, “Want me to come over?”

“No. I can make a copy for you and give it to you in the morning.”

“Stay low.”

“Thanks,” I said, and we hung up.

My little three-room log cabin was chilly, the wood stove having been cold all day. I got a fire going, and when the flames cast their flickering light through the glass door and it began to throw off warmth, it should have been cozy as always. But this evening stayed chilly in spirit even as the temperature rose. And when I turned off the lights to go to bed, the firelight seemed harsh instead of warm.

In the middle of the night, I couldn’t sleep.

I got up and walked into the dark living room. Spot was asleep on his bed, warmed by the stove. I sat in the rocker in the dark, looking at the distant sparkle of lights around the lake one thousand feet below. If only my insomnia were simple loneliness. But I knew it was something deeper.

I went out the slider into the cold air that is a constant during Tahoe nights regardless of season. Spot jumped up and joined me, sticking his wet nose into my hand as he came through the slider next to me. Then he turned and trotted to the edge of the deck, thrusting his head over the railing, sniffing, listening. I followed and saw what had gotten his attention.

In the distance below were red flashing lights heading south down the East Shore highway toward the Cave Rock Tunnel. There were two vehicles. Although they were a long way down, I could tell that one was a firetruck being followed by a rescue vehicle. They were no doubt coming from the Glenbrook Fire Station, going to assist on a fire somewhere south of Cave Rock. I watched until they went around the curve and disappeared into the Cave Rock Tunnel.

As I turned and went back into the warmth of the cabin, I thought of the heartbreak that accompanies fire.

Then I remembered what Scarlett Milo said. She had worried that someone might ‘pick her off’ or ‘burn down her house with her inside.’

With my heart beating much too fast to sleep, I sat in the dark and drank a beer, staring into the red coals behind the wood stove glass. Spot sat next to me, lowered his head to my lap, and I rubbed his ears.

It was obvious that I’d screwed up in a major way. Scarlett was dead. I’d merely done as she asked, showed up at the turn below her house, there to be inspected from above by not just the client but the murderer as well. My complacent response to Scarlett’s instructions wasn’t enough. When a person calls to engage my help, it is up to me to gauge the situation and recognize threats that even the client doesn’t see. I should have told Scarlett to stay inside, should have arranged for her to judge the situation in some other way. Whatever would have been the best way to respond eluded me still. But that only increased my sense of wrongdoing.

The situation was as breathtakingly simple as it was devastating. A client relied on me for help, and now that client was dead. There is no clearer definition of utter failure.

Like Diamond, Street was kind, at least to the extent of not judging me to my face. But how could either of them have not immediately thought that I’d made a tragic mistake, that as a detective for hire, it was my responsibility to know better, to figure out an approach to a client’s problem that would keep the client alive?

Now I was up on the mountain alone with my judgment and my dog. And somewhere down below, other lives were likely being gutted as a fire burned.

EIGHT

I woke up with a pervasive discomfort. Tahoe is not the kind of place where snipers sit up on a mountainside and pick off people down below on their decks.

With no clues to go on, I called each of my main contacts at Tahoe’s various law enforcement agencies and asked them if anyone in their jurisdiction had recently died, whether from a gunshot wound or any other suspicious or unusual circumstances. I started with Diamond even though I’d just spoken to him the previous evening.

“You get through the night okay?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good. First thing this morning, I checked for suspicious deaths in Douglas County and there haven’t been any,” he said. “But we did get a missing persons report. That is rare in our county. Also, the fire in Zephyr Heights last night appears to be arson. That’s equally rare. Especially when there are people in the house.”

“Don’t tell me they died.”

“No. Apparently, one of them was up with insomnia. His dog barked, alerting him to the fire. He woke up his sister and they both got out before the house was consumed.”

I thought about how I too had been up, unable to sleep, as the Glenbrook Fire trucks raced south to help fight the fire.

“Any idea whose house it was?”

“No. They’re currently at the neighbors. I’m on my way there now, so I’ll know more soon.”

“What about the missing persons report?” I said.

“A man named Malcolm Warner called from San Francisco. Said his twenty-seven-year-old son Sean went up to Tahoe for a last weekend of spring skiing. The dad said the boy always checks in every couple of days, but it had been several days since they’d heard from Sean. The dad is very worried.”

“So it would have been about the weekend before last?”

“Sí.”

“Why did the dad call your county?”

“Because Sean was staying in our territory,” Diamond said, “a studio condo up near the Stagecoach chairlift at Heavenly.”

“What was Sean’s last communication to his parents?”

“He texted his mother that he was taking some unused vacation days and staying on in Tahoe for a bit. That text was five days ago, and neither the parents nor any friends have heard anything since.”

“You turn up anything on the case?” I asked.

“Just one little thing. Sean’s been working on his sheet. One for grand larceny. One for possession of a firearm without a permit. And two priors for burglary. Both were houses where he went in a window on an upper floor, giving him a rep as a second story man.”

“He do time on any of these?” I asked.

I heard Diamond snort into the phone. “Father Malcolm has a lot of money. It’s amazing what sufficient legal firepower can do. Sean did some probation, community service. Never spent a single night in the lockup.”

“So our missing boy is another example of how the dregs of humanity get just as attracted to the excitement of Tahoe as the rest of us.”

“Unfortunately, yes. We found the condo where Sean stayed. The manager said he never checked out. He just disappeared.”

I was trying to think like a parent with a missing child. “The parents call the kid’s workplace?”

“Yeah. The kid works at a tire store. He hasn’t turned up there since he left for Tahoe. No one’s heard anything.”

“Maybe Sean met a girl up on the ski slopes.”

Diamond paused. “I can remember a time when I might have gone AWOL had I met the right girl.”

“Ha,” I said. “You’d do that now.”

“Have to be a really right girl.”

“They’re out there,” I said.

“At least one, but you got her.”

“I only got her three-quarters of the way. Any chance you found out what kind of car Sean drives?”

“A blue Toyota. His dad said it’s dark blue. His words were, ‘navy faded to dull dark blue.’”

“You check the Douglas County impound lot to see if it got towed in?”

“Yes I did, and no it didn’t.”

I thanked Diamond and asked him to let me know if he learned anything interesting about the Zephyr Heights fire.

I next called Santiago in Placer County. He said there’d been no other suspicious deaths either before or after Scarlett Milo’s. He added that Milo’s death was enough to satisfy any cop’s appetite for crime solving for the next ten years.

I didn’t have a current close contact at Washoe County, and Carson City County’s claim at the lake consisted of a narrow slice of East Shore land that was mostly uninhabited. So neither was on my priority list.

I called Sergeant Bains of El Dorado County and asked him the same question. He said they’d had no recent unnatural deaths or missing persons report, but added that his records didn’t include the city of South Lake Tahoe.

I dialed Commander Mallory of the SLTPD.

“Nope,” he said in answer to my question. “We did have a woman go missing, but missing doesn’t seem flashy enough for your shooter’s style.”

“Diamond just told me they had a missing person. Could he be referring to the same person?”

“A woman named Darla Ali?” Mallory said.

“No. Diamond’s MP was a man named Sean Warner.”

Mallory paused a bit, and I could hear him sucking the last drops of what surely was Coke in a can. “Darla’s roommate reported her missing when she didn’t come home from work.”

“Descriptors?”

“Five-six,” he continued, “blonde, blue, and, as her roommate Sanford Burroughs described her when he filed the missing persons report, twenty-four and fabulous.”

“Boyfriend?” I said.

“No, he’s not the fabulous-girls type. Real concerned, though. He reported her missing two nights ago when she didn’t come home from work, and he’s called twice since then, wondering if we’ve learned anything.”

“Have you?”

“Not much. I ran an errand with Officer Harlan first thing this morning. He and I were backtracking a suspect and we had some extra time. We were near Darla’s place, so we stopped by. Darla and Burroughs share the top floor of a triplex. I’m sure Burroughs would be real pleased to have you stop by. Make him think the world cares about Darla.”

“She have family?”

“According to Burroughs, yes, but Darla never told him much about them other than they were in Maine and she came to Tahoe to get as far from them as she could. Something about bad blood with the dad for bad things he did when Darla was younger, and bad blood with the mom for staying with the dad after she found out about the bad things. Burroughs said that Darla said she’s never going to see or speak with her parents again.”

“Lot of that going around,” I said. “Job?”

“Waitress somewhere. I forget.”

“Do you have the home address handy?”

“There’s more to my job than playing secretary for you, McKenna. But hold on and I’ll leave all these other robbers and killers and wife beaters and accident victims and ringing phones and unanswered emails and text messages while I look for you.”

My phone went silent. I waited two minutes. Mallory and I get along pretty well, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t attend to some business and fetch another Coke and maybe order some Chinese takeout before he came back.

The phone line clicked, and Mallory read off an address.

“What about her car?” I asked.

“No car.”

“Anything else unusual happen in town recently?”

“Nope. Lemme know if you find anything.”

“Will do. Hey, Mallory.”

“What?” he said.

“You make a helluva secretary,” I said.

He hung up.