Tahoe Payback (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 15) Page 18

  I looked for contact information for Pacific Cruise Lines, the company where Professor Calvarenna was listed as giving enrichment talks, whatever those were. I found lots of photos that showed just how glamorous and exciting their cruises were, but the only contact information appeared to be sales offices.

  Next, I searched for enrichment lectures and Giuseppe Calvarenna and I found something called Travel World Enrichment Speakers, a company that appeared to be a booking agency.

  I dialed their number.

  I got a recorded message featuring an enthusiastic woman’s voice explaining that if I were an expert in my field and if I were a great public speaker, I could possibly be chosen by Travel World Enrichment Speakers to enjoy the amazing, exciting life of an enrichment speaker, traveling the globe, visiting exotic places, and meeting wonderful people from around the world. All I had to do was take the first step and mail them a DVD of one of my talks, and they would have their panel of world-class judges score it. If I became a Travel World Enrichment Associate, they would place me on any of dozens of exciting cruise ships, and the cost of the cruise would be discounted to only $100 per day of the cruise, thus saving me thousands of dollars. The message included the mailing address to which I should send my DVD. It repeated the address a second time, then disconnected.

  I wondered how customers and speakers who’d already been accepted got through to an actual person.

  I dialed again, and when the message began, I pressed zero.

  “Good afternoon, you’ve reached Travel World Enrichment Speakers,” said a young male voice. “How may I help you?”

  “I’m calling about one of your speakers, a Professor Giuseppe Calvarenna.”

  “Oh, yes. He is one of our most popular enrichment speakers. In fact, he just finished a fourteen-day cruise with us to Alaska. Three lectures per week. The boat docked in San Francisco yesterday. And it heads out tomorrow. Unfortunately, he disembarked with the passengers. So if you’re hoping to take a cruise that he will be on, it might be some time.”

  “I’d like to check on his next cruise, please.”

  “Let me check the schedule.” I heard some sounds that might have been him moving and clicking a computer mouse. Or it might have been him clinking his coffee cup as he picked it up, drank, set it down, and nibbled on a cookie. “I’m sorry, we don’t have him currently scheduled on any upcoming cruises.”

  “I’m wondering if you can forward a message to him?”

  “Yes, I can do that. Oh. Actually, he’s got the ‘Okay to Release’ box checked next to his email address. So I can give you that.”

  “Great.”

  I wrote as the man read off a Gmail address.

  I thanked him and hung up.

  I wrote an email.

  ‘Dear Professor Calvarenna. I’m an investigator in Tahoe looking into a murder that took place on Fannette Island in Emerald Bay. Although it might seem far-fetched, it’s possible that a clue to the crime involves Lagrangian points. I understand that you are an expert in this area, and I’m hoping I could have a few minutes of your time. Please let me know if there is a convenient moment when I could stop by. Thanks much, Owen McKenna.’

  I hit Send and turned off my computer.

  THIRTY

  I called FBI Agent Ramos, told him I’d been hired to look for a missing woman who turned out to be the one who was murdered on Fannette Island, and asked if I could ask him some questions. He said he was available at lunch.

  We met at an upscale cafe on South Shore’s Ski Run Blvd. Ramos was outside pacing the sidewalk, talking on his phone as I drove up. I had to drive down a block to find a parking place for this popular restaurant. Spot was sleeping and didn’t appear to notice as I got out and shut the door.

  As I walked up, Ramos was still talking on his phone, using a soft voice, gesturing with his free hand. He had that unusual quality of being able to make his words commanding even though his speaking style was calm. His physical demeanor was like his voice, radiating precision and thoughtfulness. Despite his slight build, no one would ever think that Ramos wasn’t powerful. And no one would ever underestimate him. He clicked off as I walked up.

  “Mr. McKenna,” he said. “It’s been awhile.” His tone made it sound as though I’d done something wrong. “Good to see you,” he added, although I didn’t think he actually felt that way. Agent Ramos was as self-contained as a man could get, in need of nothing and no one. His singular redeeming quality was that he was very good at putting bad guys away.

  As always, Ramos telegraphed fastidious grooming. His pencil-line moustache was even thinner than normal and so black it looked like he might use a permanent marker to make it look more intense. Ramos’s shirt collar was buttoned to the top. His black shoes shined like they were polished enamel. His trouser creases were sharp. He looked a lot like Clark Gable, and his style made him stand apart from the jeans-and-flannel Tahoe look the way Clark Gable would stand out among a group of coal miners.

  “Sergeant Diamond Martinez told me you were hired in regard to the dead woman on Fannette Island. So it seems I should be asking you about these crimes rather than the other way around.”

  I ignored the apparent rebuke, attributing it to Ramos’s style rather than an insufficiency on my part.

  “Coffee?” a server asked after we’d seated ourselves at an outdoor table.

  I asked for a black coffee. Ramos ordered an espresso mocha with a dash of cayenne pepper and a pinch of cinnamon. When she brought our drinks, Ramos held up his finger as if to signal to her that she should wait the way a sommelier waits for approval of a fine wine. Ramos picked up his little cup and took the tiniest sip, made a single nod of approval, and then said, “Good.” The server hesitated a moment to be sure she understood that she was now being dismissed, then left. Ramos set down his cup, then looked at me.

  “With yesterday’s murder in Kings Beach,” I said, “we now have two victims who were both strung up the same way.”

  “Yes, of course,” he said, like I was wasting his time. “And they had items in their mouths.”

  I nodded. “The woman had roses, the man a tennis ball and a little tennis player lapel pin. My dog also found a necklace depicting roses on Fannette Island. Perhaps that had been in the woman’s mouth as well.”

  “Then how did it get out of her mouth?”

  “I don’t know. It was down below where she was hanging. Maybe it fell out.”

  Ramos frowned and pursed his lips. “I heard that the woman ran a fraudulent charity,” Ramos said, with no acknowledgment that I was the one who uncovered that information. Maybe he didn’t know.

  “Correct. I’m guessing we’ll find out that the man ran a similar operation with a focus on tennis or sports.”

  “And so these murders probably have something to do with the charity festival here in Tahoe,” Ramos said.

  “Right.”

  “So how can I help you?” Ramos said.

  “Because of the way the victims were displayed, it appears that the whole point was to get them noticed. The murders have gotten national media attention. Although this could be focused exclusively on the Tahoe area, I’m wondering if there might be other murders across the country where the victims may have been found hanging from their feet. The FBI has various databases like ViCAP and NCIC. Would they include that kind of crime scene information?”

  Ramos took another sip of his espresso, tiny and delicate, the way Street savors mere drops of beer. “The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program and the National Crime Information Center are great sources of information, but they are far from comprehensive. In fact, they rely on information provided by local law enforcement across the country. But there’s no requirement that they share that information. It’s the same for the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. They have a Violent Felon File. But that file comes from information gathered piece by piece from other law enforcement agencies. Even the CIRG is dependent on information pr
ovided by local law enforcement agencies.”

  “Critical...” I couldn’t come up with the words.

  “Critical Incident Response Group. The FBI unit that responds to bombings and plane crashes and hostage situations. Any kind of crisis that needs a rapid response. Significant events that involve loss of life, or potential loss of life.”

  “I remember now,” I said. “Events that could be terrorism.”

  “That, too. The point I’m making is that national law enforcement agencies are not top-down organizations. They are bottom-up. They get nearly all of their information at the local level and feed it into the national level to formulate and coordinate an appropriate response. This is why I pay attention to murders that may seem to fall within the jurisdiction of states.”

  I drank coffee. “If a local sheriff’s department thinks it’s got information that the FBI might like, they can turn it over. But they don’t have to.”

  Ramos nodded. “While investigating a crime or even a murder, they might see something that doesn’t look important and not realize that it could be a useful reference point when looking at a bigger picture of crime across the country.”

  “But a victim hanging from his feet would be so dramatic, they would want to turn that over, right?”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. Sometimes local law enforcement is not always eager to help the FBI. Imagine that.”

  “Acknowledging that, could you still make some inquiries?” I said. “See if any other bodies have been found hanging upside down?”

  Another nod, another sip of espresso. “Even though these victims were found displayed in an unusual manner here in the Tahoe area, our perpetrator could have been plying his trade elsewhere. I’ll see if anything turns up.” He seemed to think of something. “Your client was the murder victim’s boyfriend, correct?”

  “Yeah. Douglas Fairbanks from Vegas.”

  “There’s a name. You’re confident he isn’t the murderer?”

  “I don’t think he is. But I’m not confident. He did have motive beyond the fact that she was playing him.”

  Ramos gave me a questioning look.

  “In what must have been the throes of hopeful love, he gave her half interest in his Tahoe condo. If he decided she had manipulated him into making the gift, he might have been angry enough to kill her. Because he’d made their ownership a joint title with right of survivorship, he once again owns one hundred percent of his condo. I don’t know the condo’s value. But it could be half a million.”

  “Then why do you think he didn’t kill her? You know the statistics about how many women are killed by their husbands and boyfriends.”

  I finished my coffee. “Gut instinct. He’s a soft, lovelorn guy who’s focused on poetry. I can’t see him plotting to get her out to the island in a storm. I can’t see him doing something so physically wicked as stringing her up by her feet. If he were a killer, I’d guess his weapon would be poison.”

  Ramos nodded. “You say he’s focused on poetry. Didn’t you also find a little poem out on Fannette Island?”

  “Yes. When Street and I were paddling away, my dog alerted again, and we basically followed his nose back to the east shore of the island. We found a little roll of paper floating in the water. On it was written a haiku about roses and deceit. Sergeant Bains has it with the other evidence.”

  “Yet you don’t think this implicates your poetry-loving client.”

  “Like I said, it’s a visceral sense. Nevertheless, I asked him some questions about haikus, and his answers were focused on the art form. He didn’t think he had any useful expertise.”

  “How does that contribute to his innocence?” Ramos asked.

  “I’m not sure how to say it. If you have a question about a building where a murder victim was found, you’d assume the murderer is thinking about the building in relation to the murder. But if their comments were focused on the architectural aspects of the building, it would make you think that they weren’t preoccupied with the dead person. When I mentioned the haiku, Fairbanks started talking about Basho, and then he segued into how modern haiku is moving away from traditional nature images.”

  Ramos said, “You’re thinking that if he were the woman’s killer, he’d talk about the haiku in terms of its subject rather than the haiku as an art form.”

  “Yes, you put it better than I did.”

  I picked up the tab. “Thanks very much for your help,” I said.

  Ramos made a little nod, stood up, and paused. “It might seem that I’m not that interested in the case,” he said. “In fact, I’m quite intrigued. Please keep me informed.”

  It seemed a surprising thing for Ramos to say. He liked to keep his thoughts to himself. Rarely, did he ever reach out.

  “Will do,” I said.

  We left.

  Spot was still passed out in the Jeep, sprawled across the back seat from one door to the other. He lifted his head when I opened the front door. He sniffed the air as if searching for hints of leftovers in a doggie bag. From the speed with which he lowered his head and resumed snoring, I could tell how exciting it was to see me sans treats.

  THIRTY-ONE

  A fter leaving Agent Ramos, I stopped by my office. The phone rang as I bent down to pick up the mail. In with the bills was the newspaper. As with the last murder, the headline was bold.

  Murder Victim Hung From Flagpole

  I answered the phone.

  “Owen McKenna,” I said.

  “I want to talk to the detective. Is that you?” A young man’s voice. Garbled like he was talking through a thick scarf. Or maybe he’d put stones in his mouth to disguise his voice, Socrates-style.

  “I’m the detective. What can I help you with?”

  “I heard something about the, um, the woman who got killed. Then the man got killed. So I should tell you.”

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “The thing is, I can’t talk here. I gotta go.”

  “Wait, Mr.?”

  “Matt…” he cut himself off mid-word. “I shouldn’t say my name. Come to the pop-up charity party. I saw a pic of you, so I know you’re real tall. I’ll find you.”

  “What does that mean, a pop-up party?” I asked.

  “A pop-up rave in a secret location. So the cops can’t find it until it’s over. They pick the place at the last moment. The last day of the festival is the Grand Tour race. After the Grand Tour, everyone goes home. So the pop-up party is the night before.”

  “Just so I’m sure, you’re talking about the Tahoe Mountain Bike for Charity festival?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “How will I find out where the party is?” I asked.

  “Check the website. You must know some of the participants. Some of them will be getting email invitations at the last moment. Just be ready to go. Nine o’clock is what I heard.”

  “Is this going to be in Tahoe?”

  “Of course.”

  “North Shore, or South Shore, or…?”

  “Probably the South Shore. I’ll see you there.” He hung up.

  The phone rang again.

  “Checking in,” Diamond said when I answered.

  “No doubt you know about the second victim,” I said.

  “Dude on the flagpole,” Diamond said. “This killer is imaginative.”

  “And effective at public relations,” I said. “He knows how to get press.”

  “No kidding. I saw a piece about it on national TV. The reporter mentioned a Great Dane that sniffed the body and focused on the victim’s mouth, which led to the discovery of something revealing in the victim’s cheek.”

  “It was a plastic lapel pin, depicting a tennis player. With the tennis ball and the similar MO to the Fannette Island killing, it suggested some kind of sports-related charity. But other issues have kept me from looking into it.”

  “Issues about...”

  “I’m worried about Street,” I said. “She may be in danger from her father.”

>   “I know her father is a felon. But tell me again why the current worry?”

  “Killer dad went AWOL from parole in Missouri, and Street’s aunt believes he’s coming to exact vengeance on Street for testifying against him twenty-some years ago. Add to that Street’s memory of him threatening her when he was led out of the courtroom. She was fourteen at the time.”

  “Ouch. Has he been spotted in Tahoe?”

  “No. But several times, she’s been creeped out, feeling like she’s being followed. With many people, I might just chalk that up to standard worry. But she’s a scientist. She automatically discounts any data that comes from feelings. She always demands hard, observable evidence. So when she thinks someone might be following her, I give it a certain credibility.”

  “You could let her take your hound. That would put off any would-be attacker.”

  “I told her that. I also said she could live with me. But she says life isn’t worth living if she lets a hypothetical threat put her day-to-day routine in lockdown. My wording, not hers.”

  “I can see that living with you would be hard.”

  “Funny guy.”

  “Like being a cop,” Diamond said. “I’ve had several perps tell me they were going to fry my ass when they get out of the cage. Now they’re out. I can’t cover every aspect of my world all the time. I have to decide what’s critical and prioritize accordingly. “ He paused. “I’d give her space.”

  “Thanks. I’ll think on that. I also have another bit of news. I just got a call from a stranger who would only identify himself as Matt. He said he has info for me, and he told me about a pop-up party that is supposed to happen on the last night of the charity festival.”

  “What’s a pop-up party?” Diamond said.

  “That was my question too.” I explained it to Diamond. “Matt is planning to meet me there and tell me secrets about the murder victims.”