Tahoe Chase (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) Read online

  TWENTY-SIX

  We were stunned. None of us spoke for a moment.

  “How did she hit the tree?” I asked.

  I got a call last night from a fellow Stevie named Howard,” Kevin said. “He was pretty broken up about it. He just said that he and Gigi and Jillian picked a good line with enough trees to protect the snow from the sun and wind but not enough trees to be crowded. He didn’t see any reason that Jillian would be cutting close to the trees. They were all together as they went down most of the slope. But you know how it is when you’re tree-skiing. The powder flies up in your face and you have to concentrate to see where you’re going. So it’s not like you can be watching your companions all the time. Sometimes the only way you know where they are is by listening to their shouts and yells.”

  We nodded, looked at him, waited.

  “Anyway, Howard said that he and Gigi pulled up for a rest on a knob. They couldn’t hear Jillian anywhere. So they started yelling. Then they called Jillian’s cell, but there was no answer. They yelled some more, but got no response.”

  “All three of them wore beacons and the new avalanche vests,” Debbie said. “But they had no signal from Jillian’s beacon, so they knew she was either too far away or the signal was blocked by the terrain. They traversed back and forth, looking for tracks. Unfortunately, quite a few other skiers had been down the same way, so there were too many tracks to suggest where she might be. Howard said they debated whether they should call nine-one-one and get a SARS team sent out.”

  “Search-And-Rescue,” Street said.

  “Right,” Kevin said. “It’s a hard decision, trying to decide when to put out the call. She could have been in a slide, but they saw no slide residue. You know how it is when you fall down a tree well and it takes you twenty minutes to get your skis off and climb out, pulling yourself up the snow walls. You’d feel bad if the county had mobilized a SARS unit and avalanche dog and it was a false alarm. But eventually, they did call nine-one-one. While they waited, they kept searching. Howard thought that he’d been in the lead at the last point that he heard both Gigi and Jillian. So he wanted to search upslope.”

  Kevin slurped coffee. “Of course, side-stepping up a steep slope is nearly impossible when the snow is deep, so he and Gigi put their skins back on their skis, and they traversed up, zig-zagging back and forth so that they didn’t get too far from the line. As they went up, they eventually got a signal from Jillian’s beacon. They found her about two hundred yards up. She was lying several feet above the tree. But they could tell from her tracks that she’d hit the tree and bounced back. No pulse, no breathing, blood pooled in her mouth. Howard said he knew she was gone, but he started CPR just in case, while Gigi phoned in their GPS coordinates and the physical description of their location. Then they both worked on her, one doing heart compressions, the other breathing.”

  Telling us about it made Kevin breathe hard.

  “They got a call back from the SARS team saying that it was too steep to get snowmobiles up from below, so they were going to drive around and up to Mt. Rose Meadows and try to come down from above, the same way that Jillian and Gigi and Howard had skied in. That meant the SARS team wouldn’t get there for two hours minimum. They asked if Howard and Gigi thought it was possible for a chopper to land or if a chopper could lower a medic on a cable. Howard told them not to take risks and not to bother with a chopper, either, because Jillian was dead. Howard is a Ski Patrol at Heavenly, full certified PSPA and First Responder. He said when he first saw her, he recognized severe trauma to the face and chest. And when he tried heart compressions, her chest sunk in, so he knew her sternum and ribs were crushed. He said he figured she had crushed her heart.”

  Kevin drank the rest of his coffee and crushed the cup in his fist as if he were crushing demons.

  “We’re so sorry,” Street said. “What a tragedy.”

  “Do you know if Jillian’s family has been notified?” I asked.

  “Gigi said, yes,” Debbie said. “Jillian was single, no kids. So there was only her mother in Marin to contact.”

  “What will you do now?” I asked. “Who takes over for Jillian?”

  “No idea,” Kevin said. “I guess RKS Properties will appoint someone. We’ll just keep doing what we’ve been doing until we hear.”

  “Did you know Jillian well?” Debbie asked us.

  I shook my head. “I just met her two days ago. Her work for RKS intersects with a job I’m doing, so we talked shop while we skied at Northstar. I liked Jillian. She seemed like a very nice person. Great skier, too. I couldn’t keep up.”

  “That’s what bugs me,” Kevin said. “I don’t see Jillian hitting a tree.”

  “Really? What do you mean?”

  “She was a professional skier. Grew up racing. Won a couple of championships. That’s part of why us Stevies all respect her so much. When we interviewed for our jobs, we had to do onslope auditions. Jillian would take us up and ski with us. And frankly, we’re all good skiers. We’ve raced and performed and been in the ski world our entire lives. So it gave us a bit of a chip on our shoulders. When Jillian first took us up the mountain, we were all kind of skeptical, especially us guys. I mean, she’s a girl, and...” Kevin reached out and touched Debbie’s arm, “I don’t mean to sound sexist, but let’s face it, it’s hard for girls to keep up with the best guy skiers. Also, Jillian’s pretty old. She must be thirty. But we get up on the slope, and it turns out she’s hot on her boards. I mean, of course we could keep up with her, but you just don’t expect an older lady to kick ass like that.

  “Anyway, I’m rambling. But what I’m trying to say is this. After you ski with Jillian, you just can’t see her hitting a tree. She’s a professional. She was free-skiing. It’s not like a race where you’re pushing yourself to the max, punching sixty, seventy miles per hour on ice, skiing close to the gates because you have to. This is casual skiing, good snow conditions and good light, and there is no pressure to take unnecessary risks. Howard said that the area wasn’t tree-crowded.” Kevin shook his head as he stared at the distant snow, seeing a different slope on the other side of the lake.

  I said, “When I skied with her the other day, I also got the impression that she was a real pro. That she’d never make an avoidable mistake. But it still seems like mistakes are possible, even for the pros.”

  Kevin was still shaking his head. “Pro guys take dumb risks. Maybe it’s testosterone or something. I’ve seen it many times, a guy who knows better getting air when he doesn’t know the landing. Or a guy who cuts close to terrain hazards just for the rush. But I haven’t seen pro girls do that.” He turned to Debbie. “Have you, Debbie?”

  She looked down at the table, made a little head shake. “No,” she said. “It’s true. Women are just more sensible. We sometimes really push it, but we rarely take unnecessary risks.”

  “Debbie,” I said, “what’s your ski background?”

  “I grew up in SoCal,” Debbie said. “My parents were ski hippies, and they packed me and my sister into the VW Micro-Bus every weekend. We’d go up to Big Bear outside of L.A. and ride the terrain parks on our snowboards. My dad works remodel construction, so he can usually find jobs wherever we go. My mom works escrow for a title company. One day she got transferred to Placerville.

  “So we moved and started constantly going up to Tahoe. My mom was able to get a four/ten schedule, giving her three-day weekends. After a couple of years, they bought a tear-down cabin on the South Shore. Of course, they didn’t have money to tear it down, so my dad fixed it up. Right about then I switched from riding to skiing, and I took up racing. I practically grew up at Heavenly and Sierra and Kirkwood. Then I went to Sierra Nevada College and raced in their program. That’s how I met Jillian. She was a mentor to us because she’s an alumna. And when she started the Stevies, she called me.”

  “So you have basically been a professional skier most of your life.”

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
r />   “Do you think you could ever hit a tree?”

  Her head shake was immediate. “Never. We grow up learning never to come close to trees or lift towers or any other solid object. Even in snowboard class as a little kid, we always heard the phrase, Trees always win. You hear it enough that it is engraved in your brain. Trees always win.”

  “Assuming that Jillian is the same as you that way, how could she hit a tree?”

  “I have no idea. No idea at all. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “But she did, so imagine what it would take for you to hit a tree.”

  “Someone would have to push me. It would have to be a good-sized person compared to me, and they’d have to ski next to me and hip-check me hard when I came near a tree. That’s the only way it could happen.”

  I thought about the man in white following Jillian down the ski runs. In a misguided attempt to keep her from worrying, I decided not to tell her.

  Now she was dead.

  I tried to shake the thought, tried to keep my focus on the current task.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Debbie, I’m sorry for all of these questions, but I have a reason to ask. I’m a private investigator. I met Jillian because she was friends with a woman who may have suffered an assault. I was talking with Jillian to learn more about the woman.”

  Kevin interrupted, “What does that mean, may have suffered an assault?”

  “She had a bad fall, and she’s in a coma. The doctors say she suffered severe brain damage. So we can never ask her. The nature of the fall sounds like Jillian hitting a tree. The people close to her can’t believe it was accidental.”

  “Let me get this clear,” Kevin said slowly. “You’re a detective and you’re investigating an attempted murder?”

  “Yes.”

  Kevin stared at me like I had suddenly become an alien.

  I turned to Debbie. “I have one more question for you, Debbie.”

  She nodded, her forehead wrinkled with worry.

  “You said that for someone to hip-check you into a tree, they would have to be a fair amount bigger than you. I’d like you to think about when you’re skiing along at a pretty high speed. You’re an expert skier, stable and solid, and you have the ability to adjust and react to changing conditions as quickly and as well as any skier out there. Can you estimate how big a person would have to be in order to hit you so hard that you couldn’t arrest yourself and keep from hitting a tree?”

  Debbie thought about it. “Well, if you want my guess, I’m a hundred fifteen pounds, so I’d guess the person hitting me would have to have a good thirty or forty pounds on me. So maybe one fifty or so would do it.”

  “Kevin, what do you think?”

  He pushed his lips out, then pulled them in. “Yeah, I think Debbie’s probably right.”

  “So we’re talking about either a somewhat large woman or most any man.”

  Both Kevin and Debbie nodded.

  Before we left, Street had the sense to ask them for phone numbers including Gigi’s and Howard’s. Debbie pulled out a brochure on the proposed Steven’s Peak Resort and wrote on the blank spaces. We thanked them for their time and thoughts and left.

  It was a long, quiet drive through the basin and down the East Shore.

  I dropped Street at her condo and drove with Spot to my office. I was still wearing my ski suit, but I didn’t intend to be long.

  I took the Steven’s Peak Resort flyer as I stepped out of the Jeep. Two workmen were just coming down from the scaffolding as Spot and I approached the building. One of them called down to me.

  “Hey, you were right about the scaffolding bolts. There were quite a few of them. We picked up all we could find, so hopefully no one will slip on them.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  When I got inside, my phone machine was blinking. I pressed the button and looked at the Steven’s Peak Resort flyer while I waited for the recording. One of the pictures looked familiar. A restaurant scene. It was the same one on the torn piece of brochure that I’d found in Manuel’s crushed Prius.

  “Owen, this is Joe,” the voice on the machine said. “I found something you should see.”

  I called Joe, and he said I could come by anytime, so I headed to his house.

  When he let us in the door, Spot was excited to see Joe. In contrast, Joe seemed imbued with melancholy, and he dragged his feet as we walked into his house.

  “Remember you said that I should be aware of anything unexpected, something out of place?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Joe walked over to the counter, picked up a bent cigarette pack, and handed it to me.

  “I found that in my desk drawer. Like what you found in Manuel’s car, right?”

  “Yeah. And like Manuel, you don’t smoke,” I said.

  “Right.” Joe shook his head twice, slow and solemn.

  “How do you think the cigarettes got inside your desk?” I asked.

  “The burglar. The person who threw Rell off the deck.”

  “You haven’t opened that desk drawer since Rell’s fall?”

  “No. It’s the lower left one. I keep insurance papers in there. I only opened it because I got to thinking about what you said about the unexpected. So I opened every cupboard in the kitchen, every cabinet in the bathrooms, every drawer in my desk. And there it was.”

  I wondered if it had any prints on it, but whoever placed it in Joe’s desk had probably wiped it clean.

  “Why do you think Rell’s assailant would leave a cigarette pack in there?” I asked.

  “I think it’s a message.”

  “In what way?”

  “I think it’s about my involvement with the Stevens Peak Resort Commission. I told you that I was somewhat inclined to vote in favor of the development. Rell was against it. She’s in a coma. Manuel was against it, and he’s dead. My neighbor Dwight Frankman is an even more committed environmentalist than Manuel was, and he was just run off the road. He could have been killed. It would seem that someone is telling me to not let these people influence me. That I should vote in favor.”

  “What do the cigarettes mean?”

  “When the commission was first formed by the U.S. Forest Service, the Steven’s Peak Resort Association, and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, there was an initial meeting. Those of us chosen for the commission made short statements. Several members of the press were there including one who had written a story about my past and how I used to smoke cigarettes back when I was a ski racer. Before I retired from ski racing, I had begun to lose ski races. At the time, the press said it was my cigarette addiction that was destroying my fitness. They were correct of course, and I quit smoking soon after I announced my retirement.

  “Now, I have a bit of a reputation as a curmudgeon. So I tried to lighten things up with a little self-deprecating humor. I said that considering all of the efforts to protect Tahoe’s environment, the forests and lakes needed another ski resort like a ski racer needs cigarettes. I intended the joke to poke fun at myself.”

  I nodded.

  “The joke was also intended to show that I was open-minded on limiting resort development because I also have a history of being pro-development. Now it appears that someone is referencing my past smoking or at least my comment about smoking.”

  “Who could be doing it?”

  “Anybody who wants the resort to go through and who knows of me because they were at that meeting. Or anybody who read about the meeting in the paper. For that matter, they could have just read the minutes of the meeting, which were also in the paper.”

  “If this is true,” I said, “it’s a threat or blackmail. Do you think the other commission members would be targeted in a similar way?”

  “I doubt it. From my sense of the makeup of the group, my vote will probably be the deciding vote. I’m like the swing vote on the Supreme Court. The others look to be set in their opinions, and they make an even split.”

  Joe looked stressed. I felt stressed. Ev
en Spot turned from me to Joe and back, his ears up and forward, his brow wrinkled.

  “Joe, you told me about Jillian Oleska. Did you ever talk to her about the resort?”

  “No. But it’s funny that you ask because Rell said that even though Jillian is working for the resort people, and she acts like a huge cheerleader for it, she has some doubts about it.”

  “Really? Then she’s a good actor.”

  “Does her job well,” Joe said.

  “Yeah. Did you ever feel that Jillian’s position on the subject could influence you in any way?”

  “No, of course not. But indirectly, who knows? Rell influences me, and Jillian might influence Rell. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I just found out that Jillian died yesterday in a ski accident.”

  Joe looked like he’d been struck by lightning. He staggered back. I was about to rush forward and grab him when he suddenly sat down in his chair.

  “My God! They’re killing everyone I know!” he said.

  “It’s officially an accident. It has all the characteristics of an accident.”

  “You wouldn’t refer to it that way if you believed it was an accident. And I don’t care what they officially call it! I don’t believe it. What if everyone you knew died?! What would you think? You’d think that it was a grand scheme directed at you! You’d think it was designed to unravel you, to make you go unhinged!”

  “If these deaths are in fact not accidents,” I said, “it seems an extreme way to reduce your exposure to any anti-resort influence.”

  “Of course, it’s too extreme. It makes no sense. And I’m going to lose what sanity I have left because of it.” Joe’s eyes were red and moist like he was about to cry. “Murder to limit influence over me is counter productive. If I lose everyone close to me, and if I have any sanity left, and if I believe that these deaths are connected to the pro-development block, then I’d vote against it just to spite them. Why not? I have nothing more to lose?”