Tahoe Avalanche Page 21

  “They’re actually Japanese,” John Sun finally said.

  “Oh, sorry. I’ve never been very expert at art. But I enjoy them.”

  Sun said, “The Chinese invented landscape painting in the Tenth Century. Hundreds of years later, Japanese artists became fixated on painting in the style of Chinese painters from the Sung Dynasty. The ones downstairs are by a Fifteenth Century Japanese master from the Ashikaga period. Like many Japanese intellectuals of the day, he was infatuated with all things Chinese. Buddhism. Tea rituals. Chinese landscapes. The Japanese were very studious in capturing every nuance and technique of their Chinese predecessors from five hundred years earlier. Some say the Japanese painted Sung period landscapes even better than the Chinese. But don’t say that to a Chinese person.”

  Sun’s mouth may have hinted at the tiniest of smiles, but I couldn’t see it.

  “Your Mandarin translator on the phone,” he said, “mentioned Bill Smith by way of trying to convince us to meet with you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “A Japanese tough guy I could use to stick a pry bar into your resistance should you resist me. I understand he is trying to move in on your business.”

  “That,” Sun said, “is true to some extent. But Mr. Smith’s major problem with Mr. Lee is that Mr. Lee collects these Japanese paintings. Smith feels that it is an insult for a Chinese businessman to collect priceless artifacts of Japanese culture. Never mind that the paintings are copies of Chinese paintings. Smith has been apoplectic ever since he found out about it.”

  I nodded.

  “We understand that you are a man of honor,” Sun said.

  “Thank you.” I spoke toward Mr. Lee. “When I say I don’t intend to pursue Mr. Lee for providing avalanche explosives or electronic detonators to Paul Riceman, I mean it. When I say I will make his life difficult if you don’t help me, I also mean it. But I can’t speak for other law enforcement. If other cops come after you, I can’t stop them. If they ask me what I know, I will tell them. But I won’t advertise what you tell me. My goal is to stop the person setting the avalanches. Other than that, you are outside of my purview.”

  Mr. Lee was still quiet.

  I waited.

  John Sun spoke. “Mr. Lee and his agents did not sell any explosives or detonators or electronic devices to anyone named Paul Riceman.”

  I sensed there was more and waited longer.

  “One of Mr. Lee’s agents did sell materials to a young woman from Tahoe. That agent understood that she was an instructor in a school that teaches avalanche control classes, and he arranged for her to come here.”

  “When was she here?”

  “Two weeks ago,” Sun said.

  “What did she buy?”

  “Two dozen electronic transmitters and detonators.”

  “No dynamite?”

  “No dynamite,” Sun said.

  “What’s the difference between an electronic detonator and a detonator with a fuse?” I asked

  “The electronic detonator has a built-in receiver, like a pager. You must also have an accompanying transmitter. Like pagers, they operate on a radio frequency.”

  “Would the transmitters work at a distance of a mile or more?”

  “Several miles, yes.”

  “Are they made for avalanche control?”

  “They are designed for the Chinese military,” Sun said. “But they are useful to other organizations as well.”

  “So you import them for avalanche control?”

  “We import them to sell to the U.S. military. But they have proven attractive to a wide range of companies and individuals.”

  “How does it work,” I said, “setting the transmitter to fire the detonator?”

  “It’s very simple. The detonators are stamped with a number corresponding to the appropriate transmission frequency and firing code. The transmitter has a standard digital readout. You pull up the appropriate menu and enter the number code for the detonator. There is a safety sequence to prevent accidental firing. It has proven to be foolproof.”

  “Do you sell them to anybody who asks?”

  “No. We use discretion. Among other things, we require the purchaser to have a valid Blaster’s license.”

  “And this young woman from Tahoe has a Blaster’s license?”

  Sun glanced at Mr. Lee. Mr. Lee’s face didn’t move. He still hadn’t said a word. Nor had Sun translated anything into Chinese.

  “Yes, she had a Blaster’s license,” Sun finally said.

  “How old would you guess her to be?”

  “Mid-twenties. Maybe older. Maybe younger.”

  “What did she look like?” I asked.

  “She was fair, Caucasian, pretty and slightly built. Like a Chinese girl.”

  “Do women of that age often come in with Blaster’s licenses?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Yet you believed it to be authentic?”

  “It looked authentic,” Sun said.

  “Do you make photocopies of your customers’ Blaster’s licenses?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Sun said. “Her driver’s license as well.”

  “Perhaps I could have a copy of your copy,” I said.

  Sun looked at Lee. Lee was motionless. Sun looked at Morris. I saw no expression, no communication, but Morris walked over to some office equipment behind Mr. Lee and pulled open a file drawer. He flipped through some files, pulled out two pieces of paper, put them on a copier. When the copier was done, Morris re-filed the originals and brought the copies to me.

  I held them up to the light. One was a certificate with a fancy border and state seals and verbiage that looked official. At the top it said California Blaster’s License. At the bottom it was validated by two different state functionaries. The name of the person to whom the certificate was awarded was written in a delicate cursive script. The other paper showed a California driver’s license.

  The name on both was Lorraine Simon.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  This time Sam Simon met me at the door of the palace in Seacliff. “Oh,” he said, his face expressionless, his eyes dead. “It’s you.”

  “Sorry to interrupt you like this. Something came up I’d like to ask you about.”

  The two little Pomeranians jumped around at my feet, yapping at me with their high-pitched barks. This time I snatched the other dog, Salt, off the floor and gently held her until she submitted. Pepper stopped barking and pawed at my legs, wanting another ride. I picked her up in my other arm.

  Simon looked worse than the last time as if trying to adjust to his daughter’s death became more difficult with time. His face was haggard and unshaven. His hair went in all directions, and he smelled like garbage. It was hard to imagine that he was a doctor and an entrepreneur, saving lives and handling business details and making a thousand decisions a day. Now he couldn’t even manage a shower.

  “I should get Clarice,” Simon said, walking away.

  I shut the door behind me. Because he hadn’t given me a clear sense that I should wait, I followed him.

  He made small steps, like someone recovering from a stroke, and we went on the long trip through the central part of the house to a study of sorts. There was a cozy sitting area of three small couches arranged in front of a stone fireplace with a gas insert. The gas flames curled around ceramic logs that looked about as much like real wood as a Barbie doll looks like a real woman.

  There were two desks facing each other at one end of the room, and Clarice Simon sat at one of them, typing on a laptop computer. She looked up with a serious frown as though Sam were a child who disobeyed an order never to enter her room when she was working. Then she saw me and wrestled her face into a phony smile.

  I set the dogs down, and they both started jumping at my legs, begging to be held.

  “Oh, Mr. McKenna, what a pleasant surprise,” Clarice said. She pushed back from the desk and stood up. She didn’t move toward me, but came around and sat on the edge of the desk, her long legs in n
avy dress pants stretched out in front of her. Her hands were to the sides of her hips, white fingers gripping the edge of the desk. I couldn’t tell if she was simply awkward at my unannounced visit, or if she wanted to block my view of her desk.

  “Have you new information about Lori’s death?” she asked in the kind of cheery voice that one uses to say, ‘did you have fun at the party?’

  “I don’t have much information. But I have some questions.” I got out the copies of Lori Simon’s Blaster’s license and driver’s license. “I wonder if you’ve seen these?” I walked past Sam and handed the papers to Clarice.

  She took them, the sheets trembling in her hands. It took her a moment to read them.

  “What is it?” Sam said.

  “I don’t understand,” Clarice said, ignoring him.

  “Did you know your daughter had a Blaster’s license?”

  “No. I don’t even know what a Blaster’s license is.”

  “It’s what people obtain in order to buy explosives.”

  “That is ridiculous. My daughter did not work with explosives. She wasn’t some kind of terrorist. This must be a forgery. Somebody is trying to implicate her in something nefarious. Postmortem. This is outrageous. Obscene.” She flipped the papers toward me. They fluttered to the floor.

  “A Chinese mobster sold your daughter electronic detonators and the transmitters that operate them. His description of her matched. She had to bring him her license before he would sell her anything. The license may have been forged, and she may have been put up to it, but it was not postmortem.”

  Clarice Simon narrowed her eyes at me as if I were the enemy. “And you’ve brought us this news to, what, destroy what’s left of our memories of Lorraine?”

  “I came to ask about her friends and acquaintances. Especially those in Tahoe.”

  “And what good will that do? She’s dead. She moved to your fetid mountains with your twisted, squeal-like-a-pig rednecks and now she’s dead. But instead of looking for the psycho who killed her, you’re going to dig up some forged document and harass her parents? You are one razor-sharp cop, McKenna. No wonder they kicked you off the San Francisco Police Department.” She was panting with anger.

  I tried to leave that alone, but I couldn’t. “Wrong information. I resigned. They wanted me to stay.”

  She ignored me. “Sam should never have taken that girl to Tahoe to ride horses,” she continued. “Right, Sam? I knew it was a mistake. You knew it was a mistake. But you were weak. A civilized girl from a good family should study ballet and music, not be horsing around, Western Style, in the mountains like some ranch hand on a weekend bender. She met that boy there. You knew that would happen, Sam. You were the beginning of her problems.”

  Clarice pushed away from the desk and walked over to the window where she stood facing the lawn, her shoulders heaving as if she’d just run a hundred-meter sprint.

  “What was the boy’s name?”

  “I don’t know!” Clarice shouted at the glass.

  “Do you know where he lived?”

  “No. Tahoe someplace.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I told you, I don’t know! I only saw him once, out the window, when he came to pick up Lori.”

  “Tall or short?” I asked.

  “He was tall and big. I hate big men!”

  “Hair color?”

  “He had a baseball cap on.”

  “Did Lori talk about him?”

  “No,” Clarice said. “She knew we disapproved.”

  “What can you tell me about Lori’s other friends from Tahoe?”

  Neither of them answered me.

  “Did Lori even have any other friends?”

  “She had lots of friends, of course,” Clarice said, still looking out the window. “Lori was always good at making friends.”

  “Can you give me any names?”

  Clarice didn’t move. Sam bent over and picked up the copy of the Blaster’s license, sat down on one of the couches and stared at it.

  “Names?” I said again.

  “Well, there was a girl she went snowboarding with,” Clarice said.

  “Her name?”

  “I... I forget. I’ll think of it in a moment.”

  “Where did this girl live?”

  “Tahoe. Where else?” Clarice sneered.

  “Tahoe’s a big place. Eight or ten times the size of San Francisco.”

  “I know how big Tahoe is!” Clarice was still yelling at her reflection. “I’m a state legislator. I was the liaison between the governor and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency on that last property rights issue. You think I don’t know Tahoe better than practically anyone in this state? I can quote chapter and verse on the history of Tahoe regulations and development! I have friends with places in Tahoe!”

  “Yet you don’t know the name of a single friend of your daughter’s.”

  Clarice spun around and walked up to me. She stopped far enough from me that she wouldn’t have to look up at too steep an angle. “You are an insolent, disrespectful cop who doesn’t know his place. Instead of finding a murderer, you have the audacity to come into our house and question our parenting skills when we have practically broken our backs trying to provide everything for our only child.” She pushed past me and hurried out of the room.

  Sam was still sitting on the couch near the fireplace. He hadn’t even looked up. I walked over and sat next to him, his overripe smell enveloping me. Salt and Pepper immediately jumped into my lap, desperate for affection.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Sam. I’m trying to find your daughter’s killer.”

  “I know,” he said in a soft voice, nearly a whisper. He had folded the Blaster’s and Driver’s license copies up, over and over, making the sheets as tiny as possible. “I don’t know the name of Lori’s boyfriend, but he drove a big red pickup truck. I think he worked construction.”

  “Did you meet him?”

  “No. But Lori told me about him. She talked to me sometimes.”

  “What did she say about him?”

  “Just that he was a great skier, and he was fun, and they were making some big plans together.”

  “She say what kind of plans?” I asked. “Were they getting married?”

  “No, not like that. Some kind of financial plans. I remember because I told her we would provide for her finances and that she didn’t need to worry about that. But she said that it was more exciting to provide for herself. And she had figured out a way to do that.”

  “With this guy,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did she tell you about other friends?” I said.

  It was a moment before Sam spoke. “She told me about Ada. She was at Ada’s place a couple of days before they found her in the avalanche. I know because she called me from there.”

  “Where’s Ada’s place?”

  “Ada is the manager of her parents’ vineyard and winery. I haven’t been there. Lori said it’s in the foothills up above Auburn, up around twenty-eight hundred feet. They make pinots. The Sierra Red Winery. Someone had picked Lori up, and they were driving to Tahoe, and they stopped at Ada’s winery.”

  “Do you know who picked Lori up?”

  “No.” Sam shook his head. “I wasn’t home at the time she left. Maybe the guy with the pickup. Maybe someone else. But they stopped at Ada’s on the way up.” Sam made a slow shake of his head. He had a small smile on his face. “Lori was such a city girl. She still got excited when she saw snow. She expected snow when they got higher up the mountains, of course, but when they got to Ada’s vineyard and it was snowing hard, Lori called to tell me about it. I still remember. She said that Ada was gone, but there was six inches of fresh snow. Lori said she ran into the vineyard and made snow-angels.”

  Sam rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I taught her how when she was a little girl. We were up at the lake one Christmas, and we laid down on the snowy beach, and I showed her how to move her
arms and legs to make the wing shapes in the snow. Then I picked her up and held her high so she could see her angel. When I put her down, she ran circles around her angel, careful not to touch it.”

  Sam stopped and stared into the gas flames. “I’ll never forget the joy on her face.”

  I stood up and put my hand on his shoulder. “Hang on to that thought, Sam.” I left the room and let myself out.

  I called Bains from my car.

  “I’ve got a possible connection between Lori Simon and Paul Riceman.”

  “Besides the fact that they both died in slides?”

  “Yeah.” I told him about Lori’s visit to Mr. Lee to buy detonators and Lori’s boyfriend who fit Paul’s description.

  Bains said, “So the two of them could have been in on the avalanche plan from the very beginning, but then Paul maybe killed her after she got the detonators. Question is, who killed Paul if his death wasn’t accidental?”

  “I’ll let you know when I find out.”

  I followed Interstate 80 east through Sac and on toward Reno. I took one of the Auburn exits, stopped and made some calls to locate Sierra Red, the winery Sam Simon had mentioned. It was fifteen miles up into the foothills.

  The road was a turny narrow asphalt ribbon that climbed up and over and down and around a deeply folded landscape. The entrance appeared on the left, just after a bridge that arched over a stream gushing with snowmelt.

  The gate was not as imposing as those of Napa wineries, but it was nevertheless a grand design of brick and wrought iron. I headed down a long crushed-rock drive that made a meandering path through a vineyard that was about the size of a city block. The air coming in the window was crisp. The snow that Lori had told her dad about had melted, leaving the vineyard redolent of cold moist dirt.

  At the end of the drive was a parking area big enough for a dozen cars. Two of the buildings looked like a cross between warehouses and barns. A large sliding door was open in one and I could see huge stainless steel tanks inside.

  The third building looked like a large rambling ranch house with a steep roof interrupted with several gables. A sign said, Sierra Red Tasting Room.