Tahoe Ice Grave Read online

  “Have you been there?”

  “No. I don’t know anybody who has.”

  “Does the cave have a spring?”

  Francis shook his head. “Just ice. Melting ice.”

  “And the water has special powers.”

  “Yes.” Francis paused. “I was told the cave gives off light.”

  “The water glows?”

  “No. The ice glows,” Francis said.

  “What is the ice grave?”

  “According to the story, the cave has a hole that goes to the center of the earth. The hole is coated with ice. If an evil person tries to drink the magic water, they will slip into the hole and fall to their death.”

  “If this cave does exist, do you think Thos wanted to find it?”

  “Yes. He asked about its location. But I could only tell him that it is supposed to have a small entrance high up on a cliff.”

  “I’m wondering why Thos was asking you this,” I said. “Did he give you any reason why he had such a sudden interest in the places of your family’s history?”

  “He was always interested in Washoe history and cared about our tribe. He wanted to start a winery in the California foothills and provide employment for the young people in our tribe.” Francis turned from the mountains and looked at me. His face looked as old as time. “I think he also had something he wanted to place on the land that nurtured our family.”

  “Do you mean place the way someone would place a marker or a plaque?”

  Francis shook his head. “My grandson asked if my ancestors had ever had a memorial, a way to immortalize someone. Years ago I had heard from Janeen about Thos’s Hawaiian ancestors having a family shrine where they put a person’s special objects. I think Thos wondered if he could do the same thing on our side of his family.”

  “Francis, I think Thos had a valuable item that he wanted to put on your family land. Would that make sense to you?”

  Francis made a single nod.

  “Did your ancestors always make their summer camp in the same spot?” I asked.

  “Yes. On the west shore of Lake Tahoe.”

  “Would you know where on the shore it was?”

  Another single nod. “A place that is now called Rubicon Point.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  I made good time getting back up Kingsbury Grade until I hit the snowstorm. The snowfall was heavier than before. Traffic moved slowly down toward the lake and even more slowly going through town. It was late in the afternoon when I pulled into the drive of the Rubicon Lodge.

  The young blond man I’d spoken with two days earlier was pushing a rolling cart with a computer on it through the lobby when I walked in. “Oh, it’s you,” he said.

  “Has Brock been in?” I said.

  The man’s jaw moved left, then right as he looked up at me. “You creditors are all alike. You never give any thought to how hard you squeeze people. Brock is hiding on instructions from his lawyer, that much is obvious. You won’t get your money, you might as well accept that.”

  “I’m not here to get, I’m here to give,” I said, “to invest and pay Brock’s bills. Remember?”

  “Oh, now I remember. Whatever. He’s gone.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “Away. God, you’re as pushy as that dead wine guy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The guy from Pacific Blue Wines who got shot.”

  “Thos Kahale knew Brock?” I asked.

  “Of course, he knew Brock. He sold him enough wine.”

  “I thought Pacific Blue Wines only sold wine in Hawaii.”

  “I don’t know about Hawaii, but he started calling on Brock a few months ago and put Brock onto some deals on Napa and Sonoma wines and his own Pacific Blue wine. Brock ended up cutting back on almost all of his local wines as a result.”

  “What do you mean, ‘local wines?’”

  “The El Dorado winemakers in the foothills. Especially that one near Placerville that he owes so much money to. American River Vineyards and Winery. Brock used to buy a lot of wine from them until that Hawaiian came around.”

  “Where is American River Vineyards?”

  “Their label says Placerville, but they’re actually quite a ways north on the American River. Brock had all of us from the Rubicon Lodge go down there once for a tasting. Not bad stuff, even though they do an awful Pinot. They should leave them for the Oregon winemakers. At least they...”

  I had stopped listening since he described the winery’s location. It sounded like the place where the dead body was found in the sauna. I wondered if the body was Brock. “How long has it been since you’ve seen Brock?” I interrupted.

  “I’m not sure. Four or five days. Maybe a week, now that you mention it. I don’t miss him if that’s what you’re wondering. The guy’s a jerk and if it gets me fired for saying it, I don’t mind.”

  “Tell me,... I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

  “Mike.”

  “Tell me, Mike. Do you know how much Brock owed Thos Kahale?”

  “No. A lot, I assume. Why else would the guy hassle Brock so much?”

  “Any idea which creditors Brock owed the most?”

  “No. I’d guess the landlord, followed by a couple of the food wholesalers. But wait, if you’re willing to invest in this operation, wouldn’t you already know all this?”

  “Just checking,” I said. “Doesn’t hurt to get information from more than one source, does it? What do you know of Brock’s payables?”

  “As if you don’t know,” Mike said. “I’ve heard he’s out a hundred twenty days on a good half million.” He walked off pushing the cart and disappeared through an office door.

  I lingered in the lobby, gazing at the animal heads. A young couple was sitting together on a big leather couch in front of the crackling fire. I walked over to a rack of wooden rods with newspapers, pulled out the San Francisco Chronicle and sat down in an upholstered chair that felt sizable even to my out-sized frame.

  The newspaper was cover while I sat and pondered the significance of Rubicon Point.

  I thought of Rodin. I believed that one of his themes was that passion is the strongest of emotions, a desire that was not necessarily good or bad, just powerful. I’d found plenty of passion, the crazed desire for a priceless, missing manuscript or something equally valuable. It was passion that killed so many people.

  But if passion created my case, I felt that balance would solve it. To make his mobiles, Calder must have approached it like a puzzle. It was easy to collect all the disparate pieces. The problem was to assemble them so they made sense. To Calder, the answer was found by pursuing balance. When he was done, he’d transformed a pile of disconnected parts into a balanced whole. Once he’d performed his magic, one could step back and easily see how all the pieces joined together.

  Could I do like Calder, arrange what I’d learned so that there was a kind of balance? Most of my pieces originated in Hawaii, the deaths of Thos’s cousin, grandfather and uncle, the missing Twain manuscript, the death of the young tough named Napoleon, a wine company called Pacific Blue.

  For a long time Thos’s death in Tahoe seemed disconnected from everything else. But now his Washoe grandfather Francis Plummer had pointed me back to Rubicon Point as a place where his ancestors had summered for generations, a history that possibly went back as far as the Polynesian history in Hawaii.

  Thos had recently begun selling Pacific Blue wine to the Rubicon Lodge. Brock owed him money. Thos got killed at Rubicon Point. Morella Meyers got killed not far away. How would Calder arrange it? What hidden information was needed to achieve balance?

  Francis Plummer told me the story of the ice grave in a cave high up on a cliff. Could it be near Rubicon Point?

  I stood up and walked over to the windows on the mountain side of the lodge. There was a row of 9000-foot mountains that stretched north from Emerald Bay. The northernmost one is named Rubicon Peak. The summit is a vertical point of granite hund
reds of feet high. It was cloaked in ice and snow.

  “Good day, sir. May I be of service?”

  I turned at the voice and saw the woman who worked behind the lodge counter. She was a thin woman in her early forties. She was tall, but stood bent. She looked at my face as if to check that I’d washed. She seemed very disapproving of my bruises. “I remember you. You are the investor.” She said the word investor with the same tone she would have used for the word rattlesnake.

  “Yes. I was just admiring Rubicon Peak. Have you ever climbed it?”

  “Oh, no. With all these insufferable outdoor types around here, they don’t need one more hiker crowding the trails.”

  “Brock is a hiker?”

  “Brock? No, he’s more the type to drive up the mountains in his four-wheel-drive. It’s people like Mike who think the end of the universe is hiking and camping and climbing.”

  “What about Rubicon Peak? Has Mike hiked up there?”

  She laughed. “Only about once a week. He’s into ice climbing. He goes up there with his brother all the time.”

  “Even now in the middle of winter?”

  “Absolutely. He says there’s some special area on the cliff that is all ice.”

  “I’d like to talk to him about that.”

  “Be my guest. He’s in the office pretending he knows how to install reservations software.” She gestured toward the room where Mike had pushed the cart.

  I walked across the lobby and stuck my head in the open door. The cart with the computer on it was sitting in the middle of the small office. But Mike was not there.

  I walked back out into the lobby. “Mike isn’t in that office. Could you page him?”

  At that moment, a red Toyota 4-Runner flashed by the window, out of the parking lot and up the drive toward the highway.

  “That’s Mike,” she said. “What does he think he’s doing? He can’t just leave work like that.”

  For a moment, I thought of giving pursuit, but realized he’d be long gone before I even got to my Jeep. “Does he do this often, going AWOL?”

  “No. Never before.”

  “Is Mike a hunter as well as a climber?”

  “Oh, yes. He and his brother are like Brock. Their motto seems to be, ‘If it moves, shoot it.’”

  “Have you met Mike’s brother?” I asked.

  “No. I just hear about him all the time. Mike kind of worships him. But I think it is one of those love hate things.”

  “So you wouldn’t know if he has long blond hair?”

  She shook her head. “Looking at Mike, it would make sense his brother is blond, but, no, I’ve never met him.”

  “Any idea why Mike would suddenly leave? Was he acting sick earlier?”

  “No. The only thing unusual around here today is you coming back. Come to think of it, Mike did seem stressed when he saw you walking up to the lodge.”

  “What is Mike’s last name?”

  “Packard.”

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “Near Tahoe City from what I’ve heard. Why?”

  “I’d like to talk to him. Can you look up his address and phone for me?”

  She suddenly became wary and took a half-step back from me. “You know I’m not allowed to give that out.”

  “His job here,” I said. “Does he mostly work the front counter?” I walked across the lobby to the registration desk and pushed through the swing doors.

  “Hey, you can’t go back there! That is private!”

  “Call Brock and tell him you have an intruder. Maybe he’ll finally talk to me.”

  “I can’t... And you can’t... Don’t you dare!” she yelled at me as I began opening drawers in the back side of the front counter.

  I rifled papers, looked through files, pulled clipboards off of hooks. The woman ran over and picked up the phone. I expected to hear her press the three digits of 911. Instead she dialed a seven-digit number. I kept looking for something, anything that might catch my eye.

  “He’s here,” the woman said into the phone.

  I turned and looked at her.

  She was staring back at me, a touch of fire in her eyes. “Not yet,” she said. “He’s behind the counter, prying through our papers.” There was a pause. “Yes, the sooner you get out here, the better.” She hung up.

  I kept searching. I found invoices, sales records, office supplies and a small DVD library. I found a petty cash box, the computerized cash drawer, credit card swiper and credit card printer. Over by the fax was a built-in cabinet with name tags on each drawer. Louise, Brian, Robin, Hazel, Mike.

  I pulled open Mike’s drawer. Inside was a disorganized pile of personal effects. I pushed the stuff around to see better. A leather glove, some spare change, a key ring with four keys and a plastic fob that said ‘No Fear,’ a deck of cards, several miscellaneous business cards, some pens, two triple A batteries, a floppy disk, a couple of climber’s chocks, half a Mars Bar wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag. And a totem.

  It was just like the one I found in Janeen’s kitchen. It was painted glossy blue with two large, red, penetrating eyes, no arms, three legs. I slipped it into my pocket as I turned.

  The woman was still watching me. She glanced at her watch, then outside at the parking lot.

  “Thanks,” I said to her. I pushed back through the half-doors and left.

  As I drove away from the Rubicon Lodge, I called Mallory. “Do you know about the body the Placerville police found in the sauna?” I asked.

  “I heard about it. Didn’t they call Street down to take maggot samples?”

  “Yeah. It may be Brock Chambers.”

  Mallory was silent for a moment. “That would explain why we couldn’t find him. Maybe they’ve ordered a DNA test. I’ll let you know what I find out,” Mallory said. “Placer County Sheriff’s Office got a look at the valve off that scuba tank. It has marks like it took a blow from some high-powered lead. Although they haven’t found the slug.”

  “Any more news on that carved figurine you found near Thos’s body?”

  “No.” Mallory sounded disappointed. “I just talked to Diamond about it. He’s been showing it around the local gangs, asking the Mexican kids about the black wind and such. But he’s got nothing to show for it. He said the kids all just look at him with stone faces. They pretend they’ve never seen the figurine before.”

  I proceeded to tell Mallory about the figurine I found in Mike’s drawer at the Rubicon Lodge. I also told him that Mike, while having short blond hair, has a blond brother who likes to hunt and climb cliffs. Hair length unknown.

  That got Mallory’s attention. He said he’d call his colleagues on the north side of the lake and see if they could track down Mike and his brother for questioning.

  I said goodbye and continued south through the snowfall.

  They often close the highway at Emerald Bay due to avalanche danger and I worried that I’d be forced to turn and go all the way around the lake the other way. But I lucked out and went by the highway crew just as they were getting ready to shut the gates.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I could paint two pictures of Brock and I discussed them with Street over dinner at Evan’s Café on Emerald Bay Road. Outside, the snowfall was heavy and blowing, but the inside of the popular gourmet restaurant was warm and filled with the delicious scents of marvelous dishes.

  “You think Brock bought the manuscript from Thos?” Street asked after we’d ordered appetizers and dinner.

  “Could be he agreed to buy it, then killed Thos to avoid paying. Or maybe he hired the Viking to get it and the Viking killed Thos.”

  “Then why would the Viking still be looking for it after Thos’s death?”

  “Maybe Brock didn’t pay for the actual manuscript, but for information about where the manuscript was hidden. He killed Thos, then sent the Viking off to Kauai to retrieve it.”

  Street was nodding, eating a shrimp in dainty bites, chewing thoughtfully. Who would have thought my hor
mones could respond to someone eating a shrimp.

  “If Brock couldn’t afford to pay his wine bill,” she said, “then where would he get money for a manuscript? Maybe the Viking found it and sold it behind Brock’s back.”

  “That’s a possibility, although I don’t think the Viking ever got it. My reading of Thos is that he’s the one who took the manuscript from his computer monitor where he’d hid it for a time. I think he decided it would be better to hide it in Tahoe, away from the Viking and anyone else looking for it in Kauai. He asked his maternal grandfather Francis Plummer about the Washoe side of the family and if they had special places like the Hawaiian side of the family.”

  “Do they?” Street asked.

  “Sort of. Francis said he told Thos that Rubicon Point is where the family spent summers for generations.”

  “Where the Rubicon Lodge is.”

  “Right,” I nodded. “He also told Thos about an ice grave.”

  “What is that?”

  “I asked him and he said it may be a mythical place. But the story handed down is that there is a cave in a cliff, high up on a mountain. The cave is filled with ice, or maybe it is a cave inside of ice. Either way, the ice is supposed to glow.”

  “What’s the grave?”

  “An icy hole that goes to the center of the earth, into which evil people fall.”

  Street was squinting in the way that indicated excitement. “How would Morella Meyer be connected?”

  “I don’t know. But I think someone wanted to keep her from talking. My guess is that her killer wanted to learn if she found the slug that killed Thos.”

  “Earlier, you said that you had another interpretation of the events.”

  “Yes, almost an opposite version. It may be that the body you took the samples off of is Brock Chambers.”

  The waiter arrived with the wine, a Silver Rose merlot. I tasted it, nodded and he filled our glasses. When he left, I continued.

  “Brock’s been missing for several days. A guy I spoke to at the Rubicon Lodge says Brock is hiding from his creditors. One of those creditors is American River Winery. They recently lost their account with the Rubicon Lodge when Brock replaced their wines with Thos’s Pacific Blue brand.”