Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) Read online

  “If I sense that something’s going down in your happy hamlet, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “Check with Santiago. He handled the Lassitor drowning.” Mallory picked up the gun, turned it over, hefted it in his hand. “Wimpy, but nice size for a woman.”

  Back in the Jeep, I called Street.

  “You had lunch, yet?” I asked when she answered.

  “I figured that hauling a toboggan would make you hungry, but I didn’t know if you would still be speaking to me after losing so badly.”

  “Ah. Well, I learned as a kid that real sportsmanship is embracing the winning team after you get trounced. And then stealing their technique so you can kick their ass next time around.”

  “I’ll be careful what I say over cheeseburgers.”

  We met at the Mott Canyon Grill on Lower Kingsbury. Diamond Martinez was pulling up as we got out of our cars.

  “Sergeant,” I said. “We were just going to discuss tobogganing humiliation rules over lunch. Want to join us?”

  “Who got humiliated?”

  “Me.”

  He smiled. “I’m in,” he said.

  So we three ate, and we didn’t talk tobogganing. But I did tell them about Nadia, the woman being tailed, and Amanda, the Glock-packing tail, and the number of skiers who delayed their trip up the gondola in order to hug Spot and make him feel that I was a huge disappointment in how I dispensed my affection.

  After lunch, I took Street’s half-burger leftovers in a doggie bag to the doggie in the Jeep. I let him out onto the parking lot.

  Spot did the drool-anticipation thing followed by the black hole-devours-burger demonstration.

  “Drool-flood’s impressive,” Diamond said. “But you know we have rules about unregulated run-off in the Tahoe Basin.”

  “I’ll start carrying sandbags in my Jeep.”

  Street headed back to her bug lab where she was working on a new honeybee study, Diamond went back to the wide-ranging Douglas County trails to keep them safe from bad guys, and my hound and I went back to the office where we would likely take a nap.

  FOUR

  The phone was ringing as Spot and I climbed up the stairs. I tried to hurry, which made me fumble the key in the door and take twice as long to get in.

  Like before, it was Nadia Lassitor leaving a message on the machine. I picked it up and said my name.

  “I can’t believe it was a woman following me!” she said.

  “It happens.”

  “Did you arrest her?”

  “No. I’m a private cop, not an official cop. I can’t arrest people in the usual way. And it’s no crime to follow someone if you’re not threatening them.”

  “But she had a gun!”

  I ignored the comment. “We should talk. You could come to my office.”

  She hesitated. “I don’t know where it is.”

  “Turn up Kingsbury Grade. On the right. It’s the building with the nice new front entry.” I gave her the address.

  I watched out the window. Several minutes later, the dark blue BMW pulled into the office lot. No one followed her that I could see. Nadia opened her door and got out. She stood between the open door and the vehicle and looked around, studying the territory, ready to jump back into the safety of the car if necessary.

  Satisfied, she shut the door. I saw the Beemer’s lights flash as she hit the key fob lock button. She trotted to the office building’s entrance, doing that bent-knee stride peculiar to women in heels. Probably, there wasn’t another woman in all of Tahoe currently wearing heels outside of a bedroom or a showroom stage.

  I opened my door and waited. She came up the stairs and down the hall. After she was in my office, I shut the door and turned the deadbolt with force so that it made a click loud enough to reassure her.

  Spot’s tail wag was dialed up to medium high, the standard rate for women he’s seeing for the second time. He lifted his nose to sniff Nadia’s chin. She backed up until she hit the wall next to the door, her arms tucked behind her.

  “My God, he’s huge. I saw him in the ramp, but up close, he’s...”

  “If you give him a single pet, he’ll be happy. His name is Spot.”

  The woman slowly reached out and patted the top of his head. Then she quickly wiped her hand on her pant leg.

  “Spot, c’mere and sit.”

  I took hold of his collar and pulled him back behind my desk.

  “What’s with the ear stud?” she asked.

  “He’s hip.”

  The woman frowned at me, then looked at her palm. She looked down at her thigh. “Your dog sheds. There’s little white hairs on my clothes.”

  “Yes, dogs do that. But it’s minor. Nothing like some dogs.”

  Nadia reached into her little purse and pulled out a miniature sticky roller. She rolled it over her pant leg where she’d rubbed her hand after petting Spot. Her sculpted fingernails were large and dramatic, long blue arcs sparkling from glitter embedded in the varnish. Her skin was the color of a deep, permanent tan but so smooth that it suggested several layers of base paint, each one sanded before the next was applied. Assuming the resulting color was close to her natural color, and looking at Nadia’s face shape, I guessed her to be native Hawaiian.

  Her pressed suit was the same blue as her nails and the blue leather purse. She wore a heavy coat of blue eye-shadow, more than needed to emphasize dramatic, wide-set eyes with arched eyebrows, plucked-thin. Her hair was black and shiny with a thick wave that made it undulate when she turned her head. A strong perfume wafted through the room. It smelled vaguely like pineapple on a Hawaiian breeze with an overlay of rubbing alcohol.

  Although pretty, Nadia wasn’t a spectacular beauty. Yet it seemed that she thought it was achievable with enough cosmetics and expensive clothes. Everything about her had too much color, too much polish, and too much burnishing. She reminded me of a country music star in thick stage makeup, all of her features visible at 50 yards.

  “I grew up with a German shepherd,” she said as she worked the lint roller. “In Honolulu. He shed enough every month to stuff a pillow.” It was the first sentence she’d uttered that didn’t radiate tension and fear.

  “I bet he was smart, right?” I said, thinking it would be good to keep her on a more relaxing subject for a bit.

  “Oh, Lord, his name was Señor Inteligente.”

  “Spanish for Mr. Smart?”

  “You speak Español?”

  I shook my head. “You just heard twenty-five percent of my Spanish.”

  “When we didn’t want Mr. Smart to know what we were saying, we started spelling the words, like walk in Spanish.” She glanced at Spot. “But Señor Inteligente learned what that meant. So then we mouthed the words without any volume. But Mr. Smart also learned to read our lips. After that, we had to hold up our hand to block his view of our mouths.” Nadia held her hand to the side of her mouth and turned her head slightly, away from Spot, blocking his view of her mouth. He looked at her, did a slow wag, knowing, probably, that she was playing some game about keeping him from knowing what she said.

  “But that didn’t work, either,” she continued, “because whenever he saw us hold up our hands, he knew we were talking about something that would get him excited.” She looked at Spot, then back at me. “Does your dog read lips?”

  “Spot’s pretty smart,” I said, “but not like most German shepherds. Spot’s got some street smarts, but they’re mixed with low work ethic. Shepherds have classroom smarts and major work ethic. Even if Spot could learn to read lips, he’d think it was too much work.”

  The woman was more relaxed now that we were talking about dogs. She’d finished with the roller and put it back in her purse. She sat down in one of my chairs. I sat down behind my desk.

  “Why do you think the woman was following you?” I said.

  Instant change of mood. Eyes darkened. The fear came back.

  “I’m being blackmailed. I need you to catch him and put him in jail. I ca
n pay you whatever you charge.” She looked down. It wasn’t about looking at her lap. It was about avoiding my eyes. “It might take a while. But money is no object once I get my insurance settlement. My husband died ten days ago.” She paused. “I assume your fee is reasonable.”

  I explained my per diem and other expenses. She waved her hand in the air like it was nothing.

  “Tell me about the blackmail,” I said.

  “I got an email. I can’t remember the exact words, but it said something like, ‘We know about your husband’s life insurance policy. We know who you are and where you live.’

  “Then it said, ‘If you want to live, you will pay us the money your husband owes us. Two million dollars. We will contact you with payment instructions. Commit them to memory because our emails are self-deleting.’ Then the email vanished. I went back to my inbox, and it wasn’t there.”

  “Do you remember the sender?”

  “No. I just saw the subject line. It said something like, ‘Your future is in our hands.’ I opened it and had just enough time to read it before it vanished.”

  “Tell me about your deceased husband.”

  She nodded. “Ian Lassitor. He drowned. They found his body out in the lake. His boat was broken in two with only the front part still floating, and he was on that. He had on a life vest, but it couldn’t protect him from the cold water.”

  “Did he tell you he was going out on the lake?”

  “No. But Ian was impulsive. He had a restored woodie, and he liked to do bold things like take it out in a winter storm.”

  “Pardon my saying this, but you don’t seem very upset,” I said.

  “I was very upset when it happened. But what you’re really asking is if we were close. And the answer is no. We were cordial and accommodating and respectful of each other. We had appreciation for each other’s efforts. But we weren’t close or especially caring. Not romantic at all.”

  “Have you been married a long time?”

  “Four years. Long enough for us to realize that our initial attraction was more about hopes than reality. You know how it is. Some people really like each other at some deep level. They actually like to talk and be together. Other people never find that. They just get the thrill of initial attraction. Next thing you know, you’ve planned a big wedding. But after you’re married, you realize that you put more planning into the wedding than the marriage. Then you find out you’ve married a jerk.”

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “Well, it’s true. Ian could be a real bastard. I won’t deny it. He was often rude to me, to his employees, to his customers. Even so, having him die was very traumatic.”

  “Right. He was thoughtful to leave you with a hefty life insurance policy,” I said.

  “Yes. The payout is two million, just like the email mentioned. I wonder if the blackmailer killed Ian to make the insurance company pay out.”

  “Always a possibility,” I said, wondering if she could have done so herself.

  “When they called me up to identify the body, the cop I talked to said it looked like he’d been in a collision with another boat. How else could his boat have broken in two? Maybe it was an accident. Or maybe it was on purpose. Either way, there was no sign of the other boat. They said he drowned. But I’ve heard that Tahoe water is so cold even in the summer that it can kill you. So wearing a life vest did him no good.”

  I nodded. “That’s true.”

  She looked at me, over-painted eyes holding a slow and steady gaze but imbued with something like sadness. But I couldn’t tell if it was the genuine kind or the manufactured kind.

  “Do you have a picture of Ian?”

  She nodded, reached into her little purse and pulled out a tiny wallet. From it she pulled out a small newspaper picture of Ian. It was so small that it was hard to see much.

  “What kind of business was Ian in?” I asked.

  “Tech stuff. Down in Silicon Valley.”

  “Hardware or software?” I asked.

  “I think software, mostly. He was writing some program about facial recognition. And he was involved in patents. Patents for inventions about the Internet. That’s all I really know. He would rarely talk about work, but when he did, the words would just go through my head. None of it makes sense to me. It’s like lawyer talk. I understand real stuff. Like clothes. And cars. And iPhones. I use my computer for shopping. But the behind-the-scenes computer stuff, the Internet stuff, I don’t get it. I don’t even know what a patent does.”

  “Who’d Ian work for?”

  “His own company. Symphony TechNation.”

  “The company produced software?” I asked.

  “Like I said, I don’t really know. I actually think that most of the money Ian made was from lawsuits.”

  “I don’t understand. He sued people?”

  “Companies, I think. A few times that I know. Maybe lots. Something about patent infringement.”

  “You mean, he invented stuff, patented it, and then sued someone who illegally used his invention?”

  Nadia frowned. “I don’t think he ever patented anything. If he did, he would have bragged about that. He was pretty insecure, and that made him boastful. I’m not sure how it worked, but I think he bought a bunch of patents on the cheap when a company was going out of business. Then he got lawyers to sue companies for infringement about really complex stuff. I think the companies usually thought that it was cheaper to pay him than fight the lawsuit. I know that sounds really bad.”

  “It sounds like a kind of legal extortion.”

  Nadia nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry to say it. He said someone once called him a patent troll. I don’t know what that means, but it’s obviously not good. So maybe the blackmailer was one of the companies he sued, and they had to pay him, and now they want their money back.”

  Nadia blinked one eye as if a piece of dust had gotten in it. She reached up her little finger and, with surgical precision, used the point of the nail to get the dust.

  “Ian wasn’t your typical tech guy who just wrote software,” she said. “He grew up in the poor part of San Jose like me. We went to the same high school but never were friends. Years later, after I divorced my first husband, we found out how similar we were. That we had ambition. That we’d always looked at the rich kids and thought it wasn’t fair that they got all the breaks.”

  “Ian’s ambition was to be a software engineer?” I said.

  “Not so much software, although he was good at it. Mostly, he just wanted money.”

  “What was your ambition?”

  “Me?” Nadia looked surprised. Maybe no one had ever asked her before. As she hesitated, I thought that maybe she didn’t know.

  “My ambition was to pull myself out of poverty, to make money, to live a good life and not be trapped. Kind of like Ian.”

  “What kind of career did you want?”

  More hesitation. “Well, my ambition wasn’t about a career so much as a quality of life.”

  She stopped at that as if satisfied that it provided a good example of ambition.

  “Was Ian ever combative? Did he make enemies?”

  “Of course. He had to force his way in the world. No one ever made it easy. He was like me that way. If no one will give you a break, then sometimes you have to push people aside. I’m sure that some of them would have become enemies.”

  “The people he sued,” I said.

  “Well, yeah. But Ian always pointed out that it’s just business. He wasn’t suing them personally. He was just suing them as a... as a prudent business move.”

  I thought about people who might be destroyed by a lawsuit against them. It might not just take them down financially, but emotionally, too.

  “When you first called,” I said, “you said that I shouldn’t call the cops. Why?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? The email said that if I went to the cops, I would die.”

  “Did your husband have any other family?”

  “Just his brother Will
iam who died when he was in middle school. Some kind of infection, I guess.”

  “Do you have family? Or anyone you’re close to?”

  “My parents died a few years ago. I was an only child. The people who are closest to me are my friends. I do have some cousins back in Hawaii. And my neighbor lady in Los Altos who is very dear. Oh! I also have a daughter.”

  “A daughter. And she’s not at the top of your list of people you’re close to?”

  “Well, she lives with her father, my ex. They’re in Sacramento. That’s a long way from my world. Even though I drive through there on the way to Tahoe, I’ve never visited them there. And she’s... She’s very different from me. She doesn’t like what I like. She doesn’t even like me. She’s pretty much told me she doesn’t want me in her life. We never bonded. Even when she was a baby, she wouldn’t nurse. It’s like from point A, she was telling me that she didn’t care for me.”

  “This was her decision, not a reaction to anything you did.”

  “Of course! I just told you. My daughter rejected me. I’ve been suffering ever since.”

  “And she rejected you from the time she was a helpless baby.”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I thought that parents of newborn babies were in charge. Not the other way around.”

  Nadia squinted her eyes at me as if I’d suddenly become her enemy.

  “I guess I never had a good family experience,” she said. “My mother was mean. She never missed a chance to tell me that I was homely. Two or three times when I was a kid and I put on something nice and did my hair and tried some makeup, my mother said, ‘What’s the point? You could never make yourself look good. Why bother trying?’ One time, she even told me I was ugly.”

  “So you’ve been trying to make up for those slights ever since,” I said.

  “Yeah.” Nadia seemed to look inward. “For most of my life, I believed what my mother said. I had self-contempt. I would wear ratty clothes and not comb my hair. In high school, the other kids would taunt me. Especially the kids who had new clothes and their own cars. They were the worst.”