Tahoe Payback (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 15) Read online

  “Not to worry,” I said. “Fashion always changes.”

  Fairbanks seemed to have imploded. His face was now a deep crimson, and he looked profoundly depressed. “I’m remembering more looks I’ve gotten. How will I face those people if I see them again?”

  “Seriously,” I said. “Don’t stress about it. Let me ask you a personal question.”

  Fairbanks nodded.

  “Are you married?”

  He hesitated. He looked down at his left hand where there was no ring and no indication of a previous ring. It took him a long moment to shift his focus from his fashion embarrassment. “Yes,” he finally said. “Thirty years. We have an arrangement.”

  “Which is?”

  He seemed to think about whether he wanted to tell me. “My wife is an intelligent, thoughtful, and kind woman who prefers other women to men. It took us a decade or so to work out the best approach. We own our insurance brokerage jointly. I handle the broker issues, and she takes care of billing and appointments and most of the paperwork. We’ve always lived in the same house in Vegas. We still attend certain social functions together, especially those with business clients. It’s like a brother/sister arrangement. We are cordial and accommodating to each other’s needs. But there is no love. We’re like roommates. We have separate living quarters at home. Except for our household account and the brokerage, our finances are separate. Our rule is that we don’t bring our personal friends into the household. I respect the privacy she desires with her companions, and she respects mine. We don’t keep our personal inclinations secret, but we don’t advertise them, either. It has worked very well over the years.” Fairbanks gave me a probing look. “You probably know that for people with substantial income, being married has tax advantages.”

  I nodded. “Does your wife know Isadore?”

  “She knows of her, but they haven’t met.”

  “And Isadore knows of your wife?”

  “She knows I’m married and that my wife and I have an open marriage. But we haven’t discussed any of the details.”

  “Is there any animosity between your wife and Isadore?”

  “Of course not. Each respects the other’s hands-off approach. I won’t say it’s easy. It’s like what Lysander says in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’ I never thought our love would be perfect, and Lysander describes that perfectly. But it’s been good. The bard’s poetry is apt.”

  “I thought A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a play. I don’t remember poetry in it.”

  Fairbanks looked scornful. “All of his plays are poetry.”

  “Oh. Earlier, it seemed you had a pejorative attitude about Isadore going to see arty plays. Yet you quote Shakespeare. Weren’t his plays the essence of arty?”

  Fairbanks looked shocked. “God, no. They were spectacle. Gaudy spectacle. Yes, he was a poet, and poetry is the essence of art. But four hundred years ago, Shakespeare’s plays were like Vegas shows today.”

  His statement surprised me. I said, “I doubt that scripts of Vegas shows will be studied hundreds of years from now.”

  “Of course not.” Fairbanks looked at me like I was a dense child. “You’re missing the point. In Shakespeare’s days, his plays were the most popular shows in England. His comedies were bawdy and raucous. And the acting company members who owned shares made a great deal of money. It was very much like the most successful production companies in Las Vegas today. But at the time, he was just considered a playwright and producer. Successful, but not recognized as a particularly special poet. It was only hundreds of years later that Shakespeare came to be regarded as a genius poet.”

  “How is it that you know all of this stuff?”

  Fairbanks gestured toward the Sorolla monograph on my desk. “How do you know about painters? You read books. Maybe you studied art history in college.”

  “Were you an English major?”

  Fairbanks nodded. “Some of it has stayed with me. Especially the Shakespeare, which I love.”

  “Are you a writer?” I asked.

  “No. I wanted to be. But my high school English teacher said I had the heart but not the art. He told me that to achieve success, a person has to find an intersection of interest and aptitude. It was a harsh thing for him to say, but it was good that he said it.”

  “Insurance satisfied both requirements? Interest and aptitude?”

  “Yes. My interest in making money and my aptitude for business-loss mitigation. Shakespeare was as much a businessman as a writer. He happened to be very good at both. And when people find love, they find that he put it into words better than anyone in the last four hundred years. Anyway, now, with Isadore, I’ve finally felt the love of a woman.”

  “How deep is your relationship? Are you intimate?”

  Fairbanks looked shocked. “Why would you think that?”

  “Sometimes that’s what men and women do when they feel love.”

  “Well, not us. I mean, you know… It would be wonderful if that came to pass. But I wouldn’t want Isadore to feel pressure. I want to be her support man, her Rock of Gibraltar. But I would never push her toward a sexual relationship. That would be up to her. When she’s ready. If she’s comfortable.”

  I paused, thinking about the best words. “You are a smart man, so I know you have considered the possibility that Isadore has chosen you as a lonely heart with a bank account. I’m asking you to consider it again.”

  Fairbanks looked angry.

  “You are suggesting that the love of my life is a con artist, a thief?” Fairbanks’s eyes flashed almost as if they were lit by fire. “You are committing the worst sin possible against me. Impugning the character of the person I love.” He stood up, turned, and walked out of my office, closing the door fast. I heard the sounds of hard footsteps as he rolled his bicycle down the hall to the stairs.

  Spot turned his head and looked at me, then looked back at the closed door. He lowered his jaw, rested it in the space between his paws, and made a long sigh.

  THREE

  I realized that I probably lost my client. I definitely lost my chance at an advance retainer. But maybe I could do something useful.

  I called the Placer County Sheriff’s Office, gave my name, and asked for Jack Santiago. The secretary put me through.

  “Hey, McKenna,” he answered.

  “Sergeant. I just had a man named Douglas Fairbanks in here looking for his paramour, a woman named Isadore who went out for a smoke yesterday at the Sunnyside restaurant south of Tahoe City and didn’t come back.”

  “I talked to him,” Santiago said. “He was in yesterday, back today, stressed like a piano wire. So after he filled out a missing persons’ report, I gave him your number and said you were good at finding people. I hope that was okay.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Any news on the missing woman?” I said.

  “No. You know how these things usually go. In another day or two, she’ll probably walk in his front door. Nevertheless, we’re doing the usual routine. I sent a deputy on a walk-and-talk at the restaurant. Fairbanks said there’d been no threat against her, and he hadn’t received any ransom demand. Then again, he didn’t know much about her, didn’t know if she even had a family. What kind of relationship is that? And even if she were a victim of foul play, Fairbanks would probably be our number one suspect, right?”

  “Yeah. What was your sense of his relationship to the missing woman?”

  “I think this guy is dreamy over a young woman, and he doesn’t want to face the fact that she took a hike. He’s what, fifty something and doesn’t exactly look like the movie star he was named after. And he said his girlfriend’s twenty-nine and beautiful and goes by a single name. Where’s the stability in that? But I’ll let you know if we hear anything.”

  “Thanks much.”

  I hung up and looked at Spot.

  Without any inflection or enthusiasm, I said, “The health benefit of a peripatetic lifestyle, especia
lly in the form of frequent W-A-L-K-S has been widely recognized. Perhaps you would like to join me.”

  Spot jumped up as if I’d stood up and grabbed my jacket or pulled jerky out of my desk. He turned toward the door, staring at the knob.

  “How did you know? Oh, never mind.”

  His wagging tail banged against the closest chair, the one Fairbanks had been sitting in. When I turned the knob and pulled the door open, he pushed out fast.

  We’d just gotten down the stairs and walked out into the parking lot when I saw Sergeant Diamond Martinez hurrying down Kingsbury Grade, his Douglas County Sheriff’s SUV going about ten over the limit.

  I waved.

  He hit his brakes, swerved off onto the far shoulder to gain some turning room, then pulled a U-turn and came back up to the parking lot of my building. He stopped fast enough that his tires made scraping sounds on the gritty pavement.

  Spot ran to Diamond’s window, stuck his head inside, and Diamond gave him a headlock rub. Spot wagged hard enough to make Diamond’s patrol unit do a perceptible wobble.

  I walked up and leaned my elbow on the top of his vehicle. “Hey, sarge.”

  “Why does that nickname always give me a vague sense of something in the movies?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Probably there’ve been some super smart and devastatingly handsome characters on the big screen who were called sarge. Guys who exude personality and magnetic sex appeal. So, of course, that would remind people of you.”

  Diamond was silent for a moment. “Now that you’ve explained it, it makes perfect sense.” Diamond said it as dryly as it could be said.

  “Then there’s your emotional intelligence about people, which relates to my question of the moment.”

  “Some kind of big favor you must be about to request, all this ego buffing.”

  “I just had a potential client named Douglas Fairbanks in my office. His much younger girlfriend named Isadore went missing yesterday. After I talked to Fairbanks a bit, he got mad and left. I’d like to ask you about it because you know more about love poems than most.”

  “Love poems being critical to the case?” Diamond said.

  “Maybe. In the space of a few minutes, Fairbanks quoted poems from E.B. White and Yeats and Shakespeare. The White poem wasn’t about love, but the others were. Do you think that reveals anything?”

  “Maybe.” Diamond shrugged. “Dead white guys from back east, two of them way back east, one of them way back in time.”

  “You think dead white poets are overrated?” I said.

  “No. Those guys were great. But not my specialty.”

  “Your specialty being…”

  “Dudes like Cervantes. Juana Inés de la Cruz. Pablo Neruda. Octavio Paz. And, of course, Juan Felipe Herrera.”

  “Never heard of Herrera,” I said.

  Diamond flared his nostrils. “The current National Poet Laureate of the United States. Poor migrant farm kid goes to UCLA, Stanford, Iowa Writers Workshop, writes two dozen books, TV shows on PBS, becomes a professor at UC Irvine. The list goes on.”

  “Is that all. Which leads to my question. My potential client stomped out of my office, angry because he thought I was disrespectful of his relationship with his missing girlfriend. I’m wondering what it means that when his girlfriend goes missing, he talks poetry. Any thoughts?”

  “Yeah,” Diamond said. “You can learn a lot about a guy from his connection, or his lack of connection, to poetry. If he’s willing to reveal elite tastes, he’s probably a truth teller.”

  “You lost me,” I said.

  “What historians call the high culture/low culture divide is significant. The assumption is that high culture is the best of what humans create. But the reality is that low culture has a larger influence. If you want to make an impression on lots of people, you’ll have a much better chance with Hallmark verse than with serious poetry. Same for rock and roll versus classical symphonies or opera. Street dancing versus ballet. Action movies versus stage plays. TV shows versus books. Who reads books anymore, anyway? Bunch of strange people who prefer silence and contemplative thought. How weird is that?”

  “What does that have to do with Douglas Fairbanks?” I asked.

  “If I were a shrink, my quick psychological profile of this guy would be that he’s not a bullshitter or a poser.”

  “Because he likes poetry.”

  “Right. Think about it. A guy who admits to a fondness for stuff like love sonnets or still-life painting won’t lie or fake up his resume to impress a girl. Confessing to liking that stuff would result in a lot of women thinking that he was a wimp and maybe gay and certainly not a manly guy into sports. Lots of women go for jocks. Always have, always will. Therefore, at some level, the fact that Fairbanks reveals his connection to poetry tells me he’s genuine and thoughtful and truthful. Is he a guy you’d like to have a beer with and talk football? Maybe not. Is he a guy you’d want for a serious, life-long friend you could always count on? Maybe.”

  “You think he could be a killer? Could he, as we speak, have this missing woman tied up in some cellar, torturing her for some twisted reason?”

  Diamond shook his head. “I don’t think so. A guy who walks out of your office in a huff sounds like a classic romantic, a good guy, maybe a goofball who’s no fun to hang out with, but someone whose heart is made of good stuff.”

  “And you can tell all of this without ever having met him because he likes poetry?”

  Diamond nodded. “Of course.”

  FOUR

  S treet Casey’s lab was across and down from my office. One or two blocks, depending how one measured. Spot and I jogged.

  As we got close, Spot’s tail was on high speed. Partly to see Street. Mostly to see Blondie, the Yellow Lab that Street rescued after Blondie’s owner was incapacitated by dementia.

  Spot ran up and reached his paw out to swipe at Street’s door. Before he could add claw marks to the previous ones, the door opened, and Blondie raced out, jumping at Spot and then racing off toward the trees.

  “Good timing opening the door,” I said to Street and then bent down to kiss her.

  “Blondie alerts to an impending visit by His Largeness in a subtle way,” she said, a bit of sarcasm in her voice.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “She leaps up from wherever she is, sprints for the door, and jumps up on it, clawing it, whining.” Street pointed to the door’s inside surface. “See? Claw marks almost as deep as the ones Spot leaves on the outside.”

  “Dogs are hard on a building,” I said.

  “Are you done for the day?”

  “Ready for my evening beer.” I told Street about my visitor and how he was distraught over his missing girlfriend. “He seems like a very sensitive guy. Quotes love poems. I worry that maybe his girlfriend simply walked out and that he’s much more invested in her than she is in him.”

  “The story of many relationships,” Street said. “Let me know how it works out.”

  “I will. And you? Are you still working?”

  “Yes, but with little focus. I’ve been thinking about our plan to give me self-defense training.”

  “I can begin any time you’re ready.”

  I’d frequently thought about Street’s father, who was on the run from the Missouri Parole Board. He’d threatened Street back when he was convicted of murdering her brother twenty-some years ago.

  I said, “Your aunt believes he’s coming after you. I believe the threat to you is real. I think you should be living with me and have Spot with you all the time, at work and at home. You’ve said that’s too constraining, and I respect that. But that makes me even more determined to turn you into a self-defense warrior.”

  “Oh, right,” Street scoffed. “Street Casey, ninja entomologist.”

  “It sounds catchy,” I said. “Maybe you should put that on your business card.”

  Street smiled, but she looked wan and exhausted. “The truth is, I’ve been getting bad feelin
gs,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “It’s probably just my mind playing tricks on me. But sometimes I think someone is following me when I drive. Three or four cars back. A dark vehicle. Like an old sedan. And sometimes at home, Blondie will lift her head and stare at the wall. She furrows her brow with concern. Once in the middle of the night, she ran out of the bedroom and began barking. I went out and watched her in the dark. She was barking at the kitchen door. The outside light was on as always, and when I peeked out through the blinds, I couldn’t see anyone. But her bark was insistent. That was one time when I really wished Spot had been with me. Not to let him out because someone could shoot him with a gun. But it would have been nice to know that if someone broke in, he’d be there to take the man down. Blondie is very alert and focused, but if I had a home invasion, I think she’d just bark at the man.”

  I took Street’s hands in mine. “Blondie has become very attached to you, and she might be more protective than you think. But please take Spot. He’d love to live with you and Blondie. Did you order the burglar alarm we talked about?”

  “Yes. They’re scheduled to install it tomorrow. I’m also getting the panic button you mentioned. It dials nine one one and sends a GPS signal for my location. Of course, I have the emergency nine one one button on my phone, which is always with me. But the panic button is smaller. I can have it in my pocket or around my neck. If I’m attacked, I might be able to get to it when I couldn’t get my phone out. Of course, this all might be an overreaction. Maybe sounds and glimpses in the rearview mirror are just products of my state of mind.”

  “Maybe not. Best to be prepared.”

  “I know I can stay with you. But despite my fear of my father, I can’t shake the fear of losing my independence. That’s something that dogs me from my childhood. When you run away at fourteen to escape abuse, you know that the need for independence is hard-wired into you. Being cautious and prudent is good. But taking too many security measures starts to feel like a kind of prison.”