Tahoe Payback (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 15) Page 21

  “No sign of foul play?”

  “No. His paint bucket was still hanging up on the ladder, he had paint on his clothes and hands, and the brush he’d been using was on the ground. It was clearly a nasty accident.”

  “How was the body discovered?”

  “His neighbor was out walking her dogs on a path that goes behind the victim’s property. The dogs barked and ran off the trail toward the man’s house. The neighbor followed and found the dogs looking up at the body.”

  “When was this?”

  “Five weeks ago. Early May. The neighbor said it was the first stretch of nice weather in some time. A good time for painting.”

  “What do we know about the accident victim?”

  “Not much. Let me look at my notes.” There was pause. “His name was Dr. Jack Smith, age seventy-two. He’d retired and moved to Ukiah from Southern California. The neighbor thought it had been about two years before.”

  “Did the dead man have family?”

  “There was no mention of family in the report. You have many questions regarding an accidental death.”

  “Just trying to be thorough. Do you have an address?”

  “Yes. Are you going down there based on the coincidence of hanging by the feet? You must be struggling to find out anything about these murders.”

  “Yes and yes,” I said. “As you know, any homicide investigation is a struggle until it’s not. This one is taking longer than usual to morph out of the struggle phase. I guess that’s like most of our lives.”

  “Aren’t you the philosopher,” Ramos said.

  Ramos read off the address, and I wrote it down.

  “If you learn something interesting about the man’s death, let me know.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “One more thing,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You had asked if I could find any serious crimes connected to charity scammers.”

  “Right,” I said. “Any luck?”

  “Maybe, although it is a weird one. Several months ago, a Hyundai that had been stolen from a Vegas hotel valet lot was found out in the desert. In the trunk was the body of an old man, shot twice through the chest. The bullets had exited the body and were not found. Neither were the shells or the firearm. There was no appreciable blood, so it appeared that the victim was shot at a different location then put in the trunk and driven out to where the car was left. There was a note, standard computer copy paper, nailed to victim’s forehead with a sixteen penny nail. It said, ‘Charity scammers who break up families and abuse children deserve to die.’

  “That’s intriguing,” I said, remembering that Douglas Fairbanks was from Vegas. “ID?”

  “The victim had no ID. We still don’t know who he was. The car had been wiped clean. The car’s VIN number showed that it was owned by a beauty salon owner from Houston. She and her friend had just checked into the hotel when the car was taken.”

  “What about the nail?” I asked.

  “Old and rusted. Probably found on the ground somewhere. No hammer or anything else was found.”

  “How long had the victim been in the car?”

  “The ME estimated three days, which fit with the time the car was stolen.”

  “Any idea how the perp left the area where the Hyundai was found?”

  “No. But there are hard dirt trails that criss cross the area. It hadn’t rained in some time, so there were no tracks. The perp could have walked three miles to a truck stop, or four miles to a shopping center, or even eleven miles to the Strip hotels.”

  “So it’s a cold case,” I said.

  “Maybe not. After the murder was on the TV news, a journalist for the Vegas paper spent some time at the hotel where the car was stolen. The journalist made small talk with one of the hotel bartenders, asking if any customers ever mentioned charities. The bartender told the journalist a story, and the newspaper ran it.”

  “Which was?”

  “The bartender said he’d had a man in several days before the murder, a serious drinker knocking back vodka martinis. The man paid for his drinks with cash, and the bartender only saw him that one time. The man seemed very sad. As he got drunk, he told a story of a woman who was married. The couple had two children, a boy and a girl. The family was poor. The woman fell for another man who had lots of money, a man who supposedly ran a fraudulent charity.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Motivation for the husband and those children.”

  “Maybe. It gets worse. According to the customer’s rambling account, after the charity scammer stole the mother’s affections, the husband died from a heart attack. So the scammer got access to the children and abused the girl sexually.”

  “Now we have serious motivation for both the kids.”

  “Even worse, the bartender remembers the customer saying that the mother abandoned the children, and they were put in an orphanage. When they got older, they both left and disappeared.”

  “Very interesting. Did the bar’s customer provide any time frame for these events?”

  “No. The journalist who wrote the article thought that this may have taken place a long time ago, and that the bar’s customer was possibly the son resurrecting painful memories under the vodka truth serum.”

  I said, “I assume you don’t have the name of the customer.”

  “Correct,” Ramos said. “We do have the names of the bartender and journalist. Local law enforcement has interviewed both several times with no new information.”

  “Did the drinker mention any names for the people involved?”

  “In fact, the subject apparently came up,” Ramos said. “The bartender said that he always tries to talk to his customers to make them feel comfortable. So he asked the customer if he knew the kids well.”

  “Did the man give an answer?” I asked.

  “Yes, but who knows if it’s true. The man said he couldn’t even remember the kids names because they were interchangeable. The names were ones that get used for both boys and girls.”

  “Names that aren’t gender specific,” I said.

  “Right,” Ramos said. “Like Riley or Morgan.”

  I said, “Either the son or the daughter could have motivation to take out charity scammers. There seem to be lots of possibilities of payback, people upset with charities and pursuing some kind of vigilante justice.”

  “I agree,” Ramos said.

  “Quite the story,” I said. “Was there any security cam near the bar? Any images of the customer?”

  “No.”

  “I was thinking about Betty Rodriguez, the baker lady who gave money to lots of charities. Her son Gray was angry about it. “Gray is one of those names, right?”

  “I think so,” Ramos said.

  We said goodbye and hung up.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  A gent Ramos had given me the address of the house where the retired doctor had slipped from his ladder, caught his foot in the ladder’s extension rope, and hung upside down until he died. I thought I should pay a visit. I called Street and told her my plans. She assured me that she was comfortable with me leaving. But as she said it, she sounded tense and worried.

  “Are you sure you’re okay with it?”

  “Yes.”

  I took Street at her word, printed a Google map of the area, and drove over Echo Summit and down to the Central Valley. I took the freeway north out of Sacramento, then took back roads around Clear Lake to 101, and drove north to Ukiah. My map led me to a small road and a turnoff to a smaller road.

  As always in June, the Central Valley was hot. But when I got closer to the Pacific, lingering clouds swirled through the Mendocino National Forest. I rolled down the windows. The air was delightfully cool. Spot immediately stuck his head out. Clouds swirled so low that tendrils of fog wrapped the treetops.

  Following the map, I drove past Ukiah and turned off on a narrow side road. The paint lines at the road edges and centerline were faded. There was no shoulder. The road was
a motorcyclist’s dream, made of continuous turns, left and right and left, over and over. Every third turn seemed to arc up over a hill and then plunge down into a little valley. The landscape was very green from a wet spring. There was an irregular patchwork of meadows, farm fields, and forest. I came upon picture book vineyards, the vines showing thick, healthy foliage. Over another hill was the sudden appearance of a turnoff. I couldn’t see a sign. So I slowed to a stop and backed up.

  When I got to the road, the sign was there after all, but largely hidden by the leaves of a tree. The road was the one Jack Smith had lived on, so I turned.

  The new road was one lane wide. I went slowly around a sharp curve and over a steep hill. A pickup truck approached. We both had to slow to a crawl and put our outer tires into the dirt to pass. Every hundred yards or so, was a mailbox next to a dirt path that crawled back into the woods and meadows.

  There were no house numbers visible for the simple reason that the houses were all back from the road. Instead, I looked for mailbox numbers. Eventually, I saw the shape of an old farmhouse back in a field at the edge of the forest. Soon, I came to a mailbox that stood at the end of a dirt drive. The number was the one Agent Ramos had given me for the dead man’s address. I turned and followed a dirt path that meandered back through stands of fir and a meadow. The going was slow as the drive was bumpy.

  The road went over a small rise. The air coming in the window made a sudden, startling change from cool and moist to warm and dry, no doubt a pocket of air that flowed from the sun-baked meadow. Then as we entered another stand of conifers, the air went cool again.

  The dirt drive ended at the house I’d glimpsed from the main road. I got out of the Jeep and let Spot out of the back.

  “Time to explore, Largeness,” I said, giving Spot a rough pet. He ran off toward the house, then arced around it.

  I knocked on the door. No one answered. Agent Ramos said the doctor had died five weeks earlier. Maybe no one else had lived with him.

  I walked around the house, an old structure with walls that leaned a bit and a roof that sagged. It was once painted deep red as evidenced by flecks of rust red that still lingered in the weathered grain.

  When I got to the other side, I saw that the top left side was bright red. The new paint came to a ragged, irregular edge. I realized that was what Smith had been painting when he fell.

  I knocked and peered in the windows. I could see nothing.

  There was a path into the woods. I called Spot, then explored farther down the path.

  Spot ran past me as I walked. No doubt the low-elevation forest had scents much different from those of the pine and fir and bear and mountain lion at 7000-plus feet. He seemed eager and excited as he ran this way and that, with no apparent focus other than the joy of discovering a new world of smells.

  The trail was narrow but well-used. A hundred yards into the woods, I saw a house in another meadow at the edge of the forest. Dogs began barking. The house door opened, and two dogs charged out. One looked like an Australian Shepherd, the other was a Boxer. Spot ran toward them. They, too, ran toward Spot as fast as dogs go, then slowed, then stopped, perhaps trying to comprehend that the animal running toward them was in fact a dog, despite its size. As Spot drew close, they burst forward, one to Spot’s left, the other to his right. The standard dog ballet ensued, the three running around in frantic excitement. Few if any animals get such joy out of running.

  The house I was approaching was more sway-backed and rundown than Dr. Smith’s.

  As I walked forward, I saw a woman in the doorway. When I got close, I called out to introduce myself. When I saw her eyes, I realized that she wasn’t watching me, but was instead focused on the dogs, who were still racing around.

  “Great Dane, huh?” she said. “Seen them before, but not this close. My God, he must eat a lot.”

  “Yup,” I said. “I parked over at the old, red farmhouse. That’s where Dr. Smith lived, right?”

  “Yessir. I know you were coming,” she said, an unusual use of the present tense. “I got a feeling for things. My friend Carol say, Judy, you’re so psychic. I say it’s my sixth sense.”

  “Hi, Judy,” I said. “I’m Owen McKenna.”

  The woman shook my hand. She was around 80 years old, but she dressed like a forester half her age. She had on Dickies work boots below her Carhartt jeans, a red flannel shirt and a leather jacket that was 50 or 60 years old. It was a lot of clothes for June, but the woods were cool.

  The woman’s dogs came charging up. They sniffed me and wagged and jumped. The Australian Shepherd made whining sounds, then picked up a stick and dropped it at my feet. I knew where that would lead, so I let it lie there. The boxer jumped up as if to sniff my face, pawed my thigh, then ran off to rejoin Spot.

  “So innaway,” the woman said, “the house is vacant and it’s got holes with the animals coming and going. It’s so run down, I know it will be torn down. But about two year ago, along come Dr. Smith who buy the place. I’m thinking, what’s the deal with that? It’s really just a pile of old lumber.” She looked up at the sky, frowning, thinking. “What’s that word I always call it? Rickety. That’s what it look to me. Good for nothin’. But you know that one man’s rickety is another man’s mansion. At least, a crazy man’s. So crazy Smith come up here from... A place near San Diego. Let me think. Oh yeah. Encinitas. Never been there myself. Probably get good tacos, name like that.”

  The Australian dropped a different stick on my shoe, then looked up at me with imploring eyes.

  “Anyway, Smith starts working on that house. I think, give me a break, the place is good for firewood, nothin’ more. And Smith’s an old guy. Not old like me, but seventy or more. ’Course, my curiosity can’t stand it. So one day, I go over there. I walk right up and say, what gives. And you know what Smith say?”

  She looked at me.

  “No, what did Smith say?”

  “He say he gonna live there. With the owl and mouse and skunk and whatnot that call that place home.” She was shaking her head at the thought.

  “So I ask why he’s not buying a nice house. And he just shrug his shoulders and say he like it. Not a real talkative one, that Smith. So then I ask if he’s one of those hippy types what got some inheritance and is gonna start a nudie commune like the one north of town. He say no, he just like fixing up stuff.”

  The woman leaned toward me a bit and lowered her voice to a near whisper. “Then his cell phone ring. He walk away from me as he pull it out of his pocket. He go around the corner so I can’t hear him. So I kind of walk real quiet toward him but stay where he can’t see me. I listen real good. And I hear him saying something about he was only trying to do good with his money and that he didn’t know it was a bad thing. His voice was all tense. And I get the feeling someone is pressuring him about what he do and how he spend. And I start to feel sorry for him, so I start bringing him my cookies. I’m probably the best cookie maker in the county. I have a secret ingredient. Want to know what that is? I’ll give you a clue. It ain’t weed like what everyone else ’round here use.”

  She stopped and looked at me, waiting.

  “What’s your secret ingredient?”

  “Cinnamon. Just a tiny bit. You can use it in chocolate chip or peanut butter or oatmeal cookies. Make them all taste just a little bit like Christmas. Don’t get me wrong. I love weed. But weed is for smoking. Cinnamon is for cookies.”

  She paused again as if waiting for me to say something.

  “Did Dr. Smith have a family?”

  “I ask him once and he doesn’t answer real quick. Then he says not really. What’s that about? Then it occur to me that maybe he has a wife who die. Or she divorce him. Whatever it is, my sixth sense tell me yes, he’s got some kind of family. Then one day I’m walking the dogs on the trail near his place when he drive up. I go over to talk because he likes my dogs. He get out of the van, and he’s holding his mail. The top envelope has a handwritten address in a real thin blue in
k line. I can see it’s a woman’s writing. My sixth sense tells me it’s from his daughter.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because it’s not like the way a girlfriend would write, all attractive and such. It’s more matter-of-fact writing. But still feminine. Handwriting is practically never used no more, right? What with everyone but me using computers. What else would it be? But a computer-type daughter maybe still write by hand if she sending a letter to daddy. Right?”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “Dr. Smith died, didn’t he?”

  She shrugged. “Yup. Some do it real natural like. Others do it like Smith. I’m the one what found him. Soon as I see him hanging upside down, I know what happen. He fall, catch his foot in the ladder rope, and dangle upside down until a little pipe burst in his brain. Then me and the dogs come along about ten in the morning and he already dead. Now even an old guy would probably survive hanging upside down that long unless something in his brain goes pop.

  “’Course, I call it in, and the medics come out, and eventually a lady doctor come too, and I tell her what probably happen. She look at me like I’m a hillbilly who don’t know anything beyond baking cookies. Later, the mailman tell me that he hear the man who die on the ladder has a stroke. That’s what I say, right? A stroke is when a brain pipe blows its gasket. That ain’t even my sixth sense talking. That’s just common sense.”

  “When you found the body, was there anything that stood out as unusual? Something you didn’t expect?”

  “She shook her head. I’ve seen dead people before. He look like them, except his head is all swole up red and purple. But I know that’s because of hanging by his feet.”

  “What happened to Dr. Smith’s stuff? Did someone come to pick it up?”

  “Yeah. Two, three week after he die, I’m out walking my dogs when two workmen come with a truck with a tilt flatbed. There’s just a few things, mostly tools, that Smith has in the house. They take his stuff put it in his van. Then they winch the van up onto the flatbed.