Tahoe Payback (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 15) Page 17

  Street was silent for a moment. “That is so much like the murder of the woman who was hung from the Fannette Island tea house. One has to assume it’s also connected to a bad charity.”

  “I think so.” I drank beer. “When they removed the tennis ball, Spot alerted on the man’s mouth. I found a type of lapel pin in the man’s cheek. It was a miniature tennis player, gold in color but made of plastic.”

  “Like the necklace Spot found on Fannette Island.”

  “Right. I haven’t had an opportunity to look up what kind of charity would have a tennis focus.”

  Street frowned. The golden light of the setting sun lit her face in a warm glow.

  “Maybe it was also about children,” she said. “It could be a charity focused on getting underprivileged kids out to play tennis. They could provide funds to get kids with disabilities involved. Or, I should say, they could claim to provide funds.”

  “I bet you’re right.” I pointed at the sunset. “When the sun goes down, it gets chilly at seventy-two hundred feet. Wanna go in and sit by the fire?”

  Street nodded.

  When we were sitting, Blondie lay at Street’s feet but had her head lifted up with her jawbone resting on Street’s knee. Blondie gazed up at Street’s face, her eyes intent and focused, aware of every tiny shift of Street’s expression. I’d seen the same devotion in other rescue dogs. Even though dogs can’t articulate their experiences, they have long memories. I’d once seen a rescue dog, safe in a new home for ten years, flinch when a friend of his owner came over to visit for the first time and casually picked up a newspaper and rolled it up into a tight, hard tube.

  Unlike Spot, who’d never felt insecure in his life and thus took me and everything else for granted, Blondie seemed to sense that life was frangible, that she could count on nothing. To have Street save her from the emotional cliff was something she would be ever grateful for.

  Street seemed somber, probably still thinking about her dangerous, wayward father. She said, “What did you mean the other day when you said that when someone assaults you, they have all of the advantages?”

  “I just meant that they know they’re coming for you. You don’t. They know when they plan to take you down. You have no idea. They’ve planned which direction they’re coming from. You’re in the dark about that, too. Even if you’ve anticipated their attack, you have to consider all of the possibilities for how it might come about. Whereas, they only have to consider the one approach that appeals to them. So while they can exhaustively plan every aspect of that one approach, you have to spread your defensive planning over a wide range of variables.”

  “Give me a typical example?” Street said. Her voice was soft and higher pitched than normal. I could hear her fear.

  I reached over and put my hand on her forearm. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? We don’t have to talk about this now.”

  She clenched her jaw. “I’m okay.”

  “But the downside of me talking about it is that you have to once again endure me reiterating that you and Blondie are welcome to stay with me and Spot. That I can drop you off at work and take you back home. That we’d be happy to move into your condo. And, of course, that you can keep Spot without me hanging around. I know you treasure your independence.”

  She nodded. “It isn’t just that I treasure my independence as you say. It’s that my independence is critical to my sense of self, my sense of worth. Growing up with no autonomy over any aspect of my life… I couldn’t make my own decisions, I couldn’t have any privacy, I had no sense of self. It was psychological torture on top of the physical torture. We never knew when he would explode, striking us, screaming at us, blaming us for everything wrong in his world.”

  Street sipped more beer. “So if I even think about not being in my own place, largely alone, I start to get shaky. I’m a mess in that way, always have been. But after I ran away at fourteen, I learned that when I live alone and have large blocks of time to myself, I do better. When I’m able to take a timeout like a little kid, taking deep breaths as often as I need, then I can put on my game face and make my presentation to the world, to my clients, to my very few friends, and mostly to you. Independence for me is my sustenance. Also, you can’t always be there for me. I have to prepare. I have to be able to face the threat alone. Because whatever protection I have is something he can discern through observation, right? My father might be very twisted, but that doesn’t make him stupid. He will watch and listen and figure out when are those moments when you look away. And that will be when he strikes. Am I right?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “And I know that Blondie, for all of her alertness and the way she makes the little warning bark at unusual sounds, is not going to deter any attacker. It’s just not in her DNA. If someone broke in and grabbed me, I don’t know if she would even bite him.”

  “Again, Spot isn’t perfect, but he’s a serious intimidation to anyone thinking of coming after you,” I said. “I could still stay at my cabin, so we’d each have our own space.”

  “I’ve thought about that. You and I could keep our same patterns, together often, but with me having the distance I need. I think that would work even if I had Spot. In a normal situation, he would stop any intruder. I’ve even imagined having Spot when I took a shower. I could prop the door open. If Spot was in the condo, I’d be safe from anyone unless they had – I don’t know – a big weapon they were firing.”

  Street stared at the fire and drank some beer. Her frown was intense.

  “But that’s not the way I want to live, making sure I have a one hundred-seventy-pound guard dog protecting me at every moment. I think it’s better to stay with my original plan. I operate on the assumption of the possibility that my father will come to exact vengeance for the testimony I gave at his trial. I practice all reasonable precautions. But I still try to lead a normal life.” Street turned to look at me, her eyes imploring. “Does that seem crazy? Or is that something that makes sense?”

  “I think it makes sense.”

  Street swallowed, then made a little nod. “Then let’s go back to the lesson plan.” Her voice sounded stronger. The scientist was back. Life experience, the entire world even, could be parsed into discrete components. Propositions. Hypotheses. Concepts that can be tested and verified and studied and analyzed for risk. And from that, reasonable courses of action can be planned.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s start with time of day. You know he could come at any time, morning, noon, or night. The time we are normally the most asleep and hence most vulnerable is between three a.m. and five a.m. But maybe he plans to make his move just as you come home and reach into the trunk of the car to lift out your groceries. No matter how you analyze it, you won’t know when an attack might come.”

  “What’s the best way to deal with not knowing when he comes? If he comes at all.”

  “First, you vary your schedule. If he’s a good planner, he’ll watch you from a distance. He’ll spend time out in the woods, noting what time you pull your blinds and when and in which rooms the lights go on and off behind the blinds. He’ll park down the highway and see when you drive by and whether or not you have Blondie with you. He’ll follow you. He’ll take binoculars up into the forest behind your lab and find out when you arrive and when you leave for lunch and he’ll note who comes to visit. He may attach a listening device to the outside of your bathroom window so that he can hear when you are running water and learn when you usually take a shower.”

  Street’s frown deepened.

  “Don’t let this stress you. In fact, just knowing this makes you safer. Realizing what he can learn from a distance allows you to mess it up and confuse him.”

  “You mean I should fake stuff?”

  “Yes. Plant false clues. You turn on the water in the shower. But while the water is running, you take Blondie out the front door. You sleep when the lights are on and move around and make noise when they’re off. You head to work at different
times each day, and you sometimes sleep over at your lab or here at my cabin. You figure out the times when you’re most likely to be alone and then arrange to be seen with me at those times. You vary your driving routes, your walking routes, your sleep times, which grocery stores you shop at. As much as possible, you appear to have no regular schedule.”

  I paused, wondering about the line between useful information and too much information.

  “Of course, you always make sure your doors are locked. In your car, at work, at home. If you are making multiple trips from car to condo, carrying groceries, you lock the door each time you go inside. Having someone assault you outside is obviously very dangerous. But having someone assault you inside is much worse.”

  Street said, “Because when I’m outside, I may have a chance to run. But when I’m inside, I’m trapped.”

  “Exactly. Last, always keep Blondie with you. Next to you. In your car. In your bedroom. In your bathroom. Think of Blondie as a new appendage on your body. You never go into a room at home or the storeroom at work and shut the door with Blondie on the other side. Bring her in with you. She goes into the bathroom with you and waits there when you shower. She goes in your car with you. And when you get out of the car, you hold the front door open so she can come out behind you. Never let her outside to run alone. Go with her on her walks. Remind yourself that the only time Blondie can be out of your sight is when you are with someone else. Even if she won’t bite or attack, she’s still a dog, she still barks, and she will still make a potential attacker worry about her response. At the very least, an attacker will wonder who else will hear her bark and come to your aid.”

  “Got it,” Street said. “I’ve got the alarms at home and at work. I vary my schedule. I stay alert, and I keep Blondie with me twenty-four seven. But let’s say someone gets to me anyway? Someone who disables Blondie. What then?”

  “That’s why we practice the self defense moves. I already mentioned the most important and most effective one.”

  “Right,” Street said. “Run. Bolt like a sprinter. Be explosive in my reaction. Run fast and long. Calling nine one one, or reaching for a weapon, or screaming for help, all take second place to running away.”

  I nodded. “Few people can run as fast as you. Even fewer can run as long as you.”

  “And Blondie would have no trouble keeping up with me.”

  “Right.”

  “But,” Street said, “what if an attacker keeps Blondie away from me? What if, as I get out of the car, he kicks the door shut, trapping her inside when I’m outside. I should still run, right?”

  “Absolutely. Whenever possible, Blondie stays with you to help ward off trouble. But if the trouble comes to you anyway, you get out of there.”

  Street reached up and touched the lockett necklace hanging at her throat. “When they installed the alarm, they gave me this panic button. Just having it is discomforting, a constant reminder of danger.”

  “More self-defense practice will help,” I said. “Shall we work on some moves now?”

  “No. I think it’s time to roast hotdogs.”

  “And a zucchini,” I said, “which you will eat naked. Which makes me think things.”

  Street held my eyes for a bit. “We can figure out the naked part later.”

  I grinned.

  TWENTY-NINE

  T he next morning, I had a fire going in the wood stove and coffee brewed, and the dogs had already gone out for their run and come back and passed out on the giant dog bed, when Street came out of my bedroom wearing one of my shirts. I poured a mug of coffee and handed it to her and kissed her forehead.

  “Did you get some sleep?” I asked.

  She nodded, looking a bit groggy. “Best in a long time. And yes, I’m noticing the circumstances that led to it.”

  I must have given her a look.

  She said, “You in the bed next to me, and two dogs – one bigger than a mountain lion – in the room. What am I forgetting?”

  “Sierra Nevada Pale Ale,” I said. “An entire bottle. I made a check mark on my calendar.”

  Street sat in the rocker, stared at the fire, sipped coffee.

  “That shirt you’re wearing is like a very short mini-dress.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “The shirttails don’t provide much coverage front and back, and the sides are open so that I can see all of your legs, right down to your perfect ankles.”

  “Your wardrobe doesn’t give a girl much to choose from. Despite your excessive height, none of your shirts covers my ankles at all. And anyway, most guys, presented with this much bare leg, wouldn’t focus on ankles.”

  “That’s because most guys have never seen yours.”

  Street studied the fire, and I studied her legs, and she drank coffee. And after a long time, she said, “The person who killed Dory Spatt...” She trailed off as she thought. “Any kind of murder requires a great deal of motivation, right?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “Many murders come from great, sudden emotion. Your boyfriend beats you up one too many times, so you shoot him dead. Two drunken guys get in a brawl in a bar and one kills the other. A crazed driver on meth perceives some insult on the highway and kills someone in road rage. And of course, there is self-defense. Someone tries to rob you or attack you or your loved one, and you fight back, possibly killing the attacker. None of those are premeditated. They don’t require any advance motivation. They’re crimes of passion.”

  I walked over, opened the top on the wood stove, and dropped in two more splits. Then I went back into my kitchen nook, pulled out the coffee pot, and refilled my mug.

  Street hadn’t responded.

  “Premeditated murders are special,” I said. “The advance planning it takes to get a woman out to Fannette Island in Lake Tahoe and suspend her up by her ankles until she dies of exposure indicates a very high level of motivation. Such a murder probably involves greed or, to a lesser extent, revenge or anger.”

  “Why would revenge or anger be to a lesser extent?”

  “Because emotional motives like revenge and anger tend to fuel crimes of passion, events without advance planning. Whereas murders that are carefully thought out in advance are usually about money. Even though revenge is not a common factor in premeditated homicide, it can be a motive. Especially if the murderer believes that someone destroyed their life. In that case, they may feel they have nothing to lose. They might go to great lengths to plan and carry out the ultimate punishment.”

  Street sipped her coffee. “Aside from Dory Spatt’s scam charity, was there anything unusual about her?”

  “Nothing I could find. Everything seemed to fit together in a clear way. She had a lousy, deprived childhood, a mother who, despite working two jobs, wasn’t able to provide much and, worse, apparently taunted Dory for her desire to have money. So Dory ran away. She got involved in a scam charity as an employee and then later became a partner. He made her a joint owner, then he died in a boating accident. Dory was on the boat at the time but wasn’t charged with any crime. Once she had taken full control of the charity, she managed to grow the business a great deal.”

  Street said, “Makes one wonder about the boating accident.”

  “Yes, it does,” I said.

  “It could be that someone close to the former owner plotted her murder.”

  “Yes, it could.”

  Street said, “Which brings me back to Dory’s life and the question of whether every aspect of it was normal, that is, normal for a person who perpetrates a massive fraud.”

  I nodded. “I’ve gone over what I learned about her and her brother Kyle. I’ve considered that everything he told me might be suspect, either fabrications or merely a simple spinning of his tale for one effect or another. I’ve revisited her house in my mind, walking through it by memory, looking for anything that stands out, anything different from other people’s houses…” I stopped as a memory nagged at me.

  “You pause on that thought,” Street said.


  “Well, it’s just that I now remember an unusual framed print that Dory had hanging on the wall. It was a graphic depicting the Solar System, but it only showed the inner planets.”

  “Was she into astronomy?”

  “Not according to her brother Kyle. He explained that the former manager of the Red Roses of Hope charity had a thing for certain places in outer space. Let me think of what they’re called. Lagrangian points. They are apparently places where the gravity of two different planetary bodies cancels each other out or something like that. Other forces figure in there as well, if I’m remembering correctly.”

  “Are these points a real thing?” Street asked. “It sounds like something in a science fiction novel.”

  “I don’t know. But Kyle made it sound like they are a real thing, and he said that the former manager saw them in some kind of metaphorical way that helped him build his business.”

  “Okay, now we’re talking about my question about whether there was anything unusual in Dory Spatt’s world. A framed picture of Lagrangian points certainly could qualify. I think you need to find out more about this.”

  “I think I do, too,” I said.

  Spot and I walked Street and Blondie down the mountain to her condo, a road trip that was a mile each way and was the equivalent of going from the top of a 100-story skyscraper to the bottom and back up. It was a gorgeous day with hot sun glistening on the snow-capped mountains. It was hard to imagine that just one week ago, a woman had been strung up on Fannette Island in a storm.

  Back at my cabin, I searched Lagrangian points online and saw a short article about a scientist who was an expert on the subject. His name was Professor Giuseppe Calvarenna, a name that sounded familiar. The article was about what were billed as “Enrichment Lectures” that he gave on Pacific Cruise Lines ships.

  So I searched on his name and saw why it was familiar. Calvarenna was kind of a local celebrity because he had a place in Tahoe and some years back had won a major prize for physics. I’d heard he was a recluse. I’d never met him, nor had I ever heard of anyone who knew him. But he was often talked about in the same way that people talk about the movie actors and rock stars and tech company CEOs who have houses in Tahoe.