Tahoe Blue Fire (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 13) Read online

  I thanked Felicite and left.

  It was ten-thirty as I drove away and two-thirty in the morning as I turned up the mountain to my cabin. Spot had snoozed the entire way.

  FORTY-SIX

  The next morning, I sent another email to [email protected], hoping to provoke some kind of reaction.

  ‘I know what you did. I’ve found evidence. Your time is almost up.’

  Then I drove up Kingsbury Grade and knocked on the door of the safe house.

  “Last night, I drove into San Francisco and spoke to Felicite,” I said to Adam when we were sitting in the living room.

  He made another single nod, a move that I was beginning to think was his signature, the mark of a taciturn man who was polite enough to acknowledge that someone had spoken but not loquacious enough to give every statement a verbal response.

  “In my duties as an investigator, it’s my job to look into every person who is proximate to a crime.”

  Adam’s face was impassive. I couldn’t yet tell if this was a good day or a bad day.

  “She didn’t want to say anything bad,” I said. “She’s naturally protective of you. But when I pressed, she said you were once charged with arson.”

  “I told you before that I’ve made mistakes. I was a kid. A frustrated kid. Eleven or twelve years old. At a time when I should have been playing softball or riding my bike, I played with fire.” He paused.

  “You’re having a better day,” I said, hoping to make him feel relaxed.

  “Old experiences are still there. They’re all muscle memories. It’s all the recent stuff that’s disappeared.”

  “So you lit some fires.”

  Adam made another single nod. “Not a lot. But striking matches, seeing how different things burned, being intrigued with the flame and the heat. Just like every kid. If someone had taken me camping, the campfire would have satisfied my curiosity. But in the French Quarter, it was sticks in the alley. An urban campfire. I’d seen old men huddling around a fire in a trash can, pouring whiskey into cups of coffee, warming their hands on a cold night. I wanted to try that.”

  “You’re saying that you didn’t try to burn anything down. Not with malice, anyway.”

  “No. But one of my fires lit a pile of leaves and sticks that were next to the back d…” He frowned.

  “Back door?”

  “The back door of a building. The fire in the leaves moved to the steps. I didn’t realize how fast a fire could spread. Someone called it in, and a firetruck came. They put it out. They also arrested me. Was what I did wrong? Absolutely. Did I need to spend years in the Juvenile system to correct my ways? No. I learned my lesson when I first heard the siren coming.”

  I pondered what Adam said, thinking about how a well-told lie, especially a well-rehearsed lie, can sound like the truth. Even more, it can sound like complete innocence.

  “Felicite also told me that you won a sharpshooting contest when you were in high school.”

  Adam smiled. “Yeah, it was great. We learned how to shoot, how rifles work, how to adjust a scope. Stuff like that. I wanted to learn about firearms and regular ammunition, but they only had us using air guns.” He looked off, still smiling. “That summer camp was the most fun I ever had.”

  “Do you see that your background of arson and shooting and working in proximity to rotary plows makes you a person of interest in these recent murders?”

  “Oh, man, my shooting was a good thing, not a bad thing! I won the contest. How many people in this country know how to shoot? A hundred million? Two hundred million? The arson was a bad thing, but I was a kid. And I already told you that I never drove a rotary plow. I was interested in them, sure. I asked questions about them. I looked inside of them. But I never drove them. You could see that two days ago. It was obvious that the yard man was lying when he said I drove them.”

  “And yesterday, the photo I saw on your phone was even more suspicious than all the other coincidences.”

  “What photo?”

  “The one with the two female murder victims.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  I reached my hand out. He handed me his phone.

  I found the photo and showed Adam.

  “I don’t remember ever seeing that,” he said.

  “Nor taking it, I suppose.”

  “No,” he said.

  I handed him back his phone and stopped and thought about the case. After all of my inquiries and interviews and travel, I still had nothing solid to go on. I wanted to keep Adam talking, but maybe on a different subject where he might say something casual and unguarded, something that would give me a different window into his world.

  I said, “Are you still writing your poems?”

  Adam nodded. He reached into the side of his chair cushion, pulled out the sketchbook, and held it up. “But it’s very hard to turn a good phrase anymore. I think I’m done writing anything decent.”

  “I’m curious about poems,” I said. “What motivates you to write them?”

  Adam said, “I suppose it’s the standard poet stuff. My way of making sense of the world. The loss of wildness. The loss of innocence. The loss of my brain.”

  “All very frustrating,” I said, wondering if those were the kind of issues that could make Adam mad, push him to explode as Felicite had described it when he lost his temper.

  “Mostly, it really bothers me that all wildness is disappearing and most people don’t seem to care. It’s modern day manifest destiny. It’s like people think that the forests and deserts and oceans and mountains and prairies are just there for us to cut and fish and mine and d…” Adam looked very frustrated.

  It took me a moment. “Drill?”

  “Drill. And if you don’t believe in that inexorable progression, then you aren’t a true American.” Adam paused.

  I was thinking, too, wondering yet again how a man coping with brain injury could sound so intellectual. I understood the concept of good days and bad days when it came to the brain, but his cycle seemed to be an extreme oscillation. Or a carefully-constructed lie.

  “This is why you write poetry? Do you think your poetry is going to change the way people think about wildness?”

  “No, because no one is ever going to read my poetry. And most of it already burned up in the fire. Who cares about poetry, anyway?”

  “I do. It’s like art,” I said. “I like to listen to poetry the same way I like to look at art. I don’t know much about it, but they both make me feel good.”

  Adam didn’t respond.

  “Maybe you should do a book,” I said. “If your poems were available to the world, they might make a difference.”

  “I don’t have any idea how to do that.”

  “I don’t either, but I’ve read about it. It doesn’t sound too hard. I think the basic principle is that you upload your poems to a company like Amazon, and they make the book and put it on their website. It doesn’t cost anything. If someone buys your book, they print it and ship it, and they pay you a portion of the proceeds.”

  “I could never figure it out. My brain is too far gone.”

  “I’m sure there are lots of people who’d be willing to help you. Maybe I could help.”

  Adam frowned. “You’re just saying that.”

  “No, I mean it. I think you have something valuable to say.”

  Adam shook his head. “People won’t want to read about wildness. They would think my poems were a downer.”

  “It sounds to me like your poems are more celebrations of wildness. People might think your poems are inspirational. You could make it a kind of memoir. People would want to read the thoughts of their football hero. The presentation could be the writings of Adam Simms. And the subtle effect would be that your poems would sneak up on them, get them thinking about wildness.”

  Adam looked doubtful.

  “I sacked everyone’s heroes. Fans love the quarterbacks. They hate me.”

  “That makes you more interesting
.”

  Adam was silent. I could tell I had him thinking. I waited and didn’t speak.

  “What would I call it?” Adam asked. “If I called it something like ‘A Celebration of Wildness,’ readers would fall asleep.”

  “Then call it something about you. ‘Adam Simms, The Poetry of a Killer Sack Artist.’”

  Adam looked serious.

  After another minute, I said, “I understand the seriousness of your brain injury. And I’ve seen the effects. But I have to say that your brain works pretty well when you start talking about preserving wildness.”

  “That’s because I think about it all the time.”

  I stood up, walked over and gave Blondie a pet. I said, “I have to go. Good luck with your poetry.”

  I let myself out and drove away, thinking about a man in the grips of approaching dementia yet who had ideas that could help the world. And, unlike nearly any other poet, millions of people knew who he was.

  I also thought about his past history of arson and sharpshooting and working in the yard where they kept the rotary highway snowblowers.

  Adam Simms might be a gentle poet, but he was also a murder suspect.

  Which gave me a sudden, disturbing thought. Could Adam be faking the brain injury? If so, why would he have let me see the photo with Scarlett Milo and Darla Ali? Because anyone would assume that, if he were guilty, he would never let anyone see the photo. If he were guilty, he would have deleted the photo. But as I thought about it, the photo was no evidence of anything. So not deleting it and letting me and other people see it would add to the sense of his confusion, and it would make him seem innocent.

  It could be a fantastic counter-intuitive cover and misdirection.

  Maybe Adam was playing with me, bringing me into his web of deceit.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The next morning, I had coffee with Street at her condo. Spot lay on the rug in her living room. He appeared to be asleep, but I could tell by his ears that he was listening.

  “I’m making no progress,” I said to Street. “I don’t know who the killer is. I have no idea whether the killer is going to strike again, and if so, where or how. I’m not even sure why the killer is killing, although I assume it’s because he wants the Blue Fire Diamond. Now if I could find that diamond, assuming it really exists, I’d have something.”

  “You would.” Street was nodding. “What about putting the word out that you have it, and try to get the killer to come after you? Not that I’d want you to take such a risk, of course.”

  “I’ve already suggested that in my email to the TahoeBlueFire address. But putting the idea out to the public is a great idea. I could have Glennie write an article.”

  “Perfect! But would Glennie feel comfortable reporting a false story?”

  “No. But she needn’t report a false story. She could write the true report of Owen McKenna describing how he found the diamond. I would be the only one telling a falsehood. If Glennie reports it as something that I’m claiming and not as objective truth, then she won’t compromise her journalistic integrity.”

  “The only question is whether or not she’ll agree to your idea.”

  I got ahold of Glenda Gorman at The Herald, and I asked her if I could buy her lunch and tell her my story, and she said absolutely not because that would not be ethical.

  “A reporter can never take as much as a cup of free coffee while getting a story, or she could be accused of bias.”

  “Just testing you,” I said. “Hear me out, and you can decide if you think my story is news.”

  So we met, and I told her a story about the Blue Fire of Florence.

  Glennie took lots of notes and went back to work.

  She called when she’d filed the story. “If this story doesn’t bring the killer after you, I don’t think he’s still alive.”

  The next day the headline was huge.

  LOCAL DETECTIVE CLAIMS

  SOLUTION TO TAHOE MURDERS

  Private investigator Owen McKenna reported yesterday that he has solved the case of the recent killings in Tahoe, and he is on the verge of catching the killer.

  According to McKenna, the case reaches back 500 years to the Italian Renaissance. If McKenna’s reconstruction is correct, the famous Hope Diamond had an equally valuable sister diamond, mined from the same quarry in India, a huge blue gem that was hidden for centuries by the Medici family of Florence.

  This diamond, called the Blue Fire of Florence, was purchased by Frank Sinatra back in the early nineteen sixties, the same period when he owned the Cal Neva Hotel in Crystal Bay on the North Shore. McKenna believes that Sinatra wanted the Blue Fire of Florence to help him win the affections of the most famous woman in the world, Marilyn Monroe.

  McKenna says that the world will never know why Marilyn, who’d had a previous affair with Sinatra, was not swayed by this gem, which was upwards of 45 carats. Nevertheless, the diamond disappeared.

  McKenna speculated that it may have been sold by Sinatra. Or, perhaps Sinatra, in a deep depression, threw it into Lake Tahoe. Whatever the history, the Blue Fire of Florence has remained hidden for all of these intervening years.

  When asked how he knew if the gem in question is really the Blue Fire of Florence, McKenna stated that historical records show that it is a red fluorescing diamond, a rare characteristic that a few blue diamonds exhibit. McKenna explained that this characteristic is like fingerprinting, and it allows a positive identification.

  The Blue Fire of Florence is estimated to have a value of 200 million dollars.

  McKenna also stated that because the Blue Fire Diamond has never been authenticated and until now has existed only in the realm of rumor, there is no line of provenance establishing ownership. Thus, the diamond is like bearer bonds or treasure found at the bottom of the sea. It belongs to whomever possesses it.

  According to McKenna, several people recently learned of the Blue Fire Diamond’s existence, and the killer’s motive is to eliminate the others so that he will not have to share ownership of the diamond when he finds it. McKenna said that the killer believes he knew where to find the gem, but, unfortunately for the killer, McKenna got to it first. In the absence of others who might claim to have discussed its location with McKenna, McKenna says that the diamond now belongs to him.

  As to the question of what will happen to the diamond, McKenna said that its value requires him to keep it hidden until he’s brought the murderer into custody.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  I stopped by the house where Darla Ali had lived before she was killed. Her roommate, Sanford Burroughs, had previously told me that his car was a silver Subaru Outback. I didn’t see it in the street.

  Nevertheless, I trotted up the stairs and knocked. There was no answer. I leaned off to the side of the stairway landing and tried to look in one of the windows. I couldn’t see much through the narrow opening in the drapes, but I was looking into the kitchen area. The counters were clear and clean. It had been some time since my previous visit, but I thought there had been a collection of microbrew beer bottles along the back of the counters.

  I went back down to my Jeep, where Spot stood in the back seat, watching. I realized that he wasn’t looking at me but at a Post Office vehicle that was pulling away from a set of triple mailboxes.

  Because it is so hard to maintain and clear snow from outdoor mailboxes in Tahoe, most people have P.O. boxes. But the Post Office has been trying outdoor boxes in some neighborhoods to see, presumably, if there is some advantage, cost or otherwise. Most people haven’t signed up for them, but apparently, Sanford and Darla and the two apartments below them had given them a try.

  Most of us detectives, whether private or employed by the police, don’t have a big ethical problem with glancing at the front of someone’s mail unless we think that it might produce critical evidence about a crime, in which case we like to get a warrant so that the evidence is admissible in court. But if we’re just a little curious…

  I flipped open
Sanford and Darla’s box and fanned through the mail. There was a gas bill, a credit card bill, and a clothing catalog addressed to Darla Ali. For Sanford, there was a letter from a credit union stamped ‘third notice’ in red letters, a notice from the DMV, and a magazine. I turned it over to see the front.

  It was a magazine for rifle enthusiasts. This one had a cover story on a specialty sniper rifle made by Accuracy International. I flipped open the magazine and saw related articles on scopes and distance shooting with discussions of elevation and air density, wind velocity and direction, bullet drop, bullet trajectory, the Coriolis effect, many of the aspects of long distance shooting that military snipers grapple with.

  It was obviously time for another talk with Sanford Burroughs.

  I drove over to Pizza Pan International where he worked. There was no silver Outback nearby.

  I walked in. A young woman was at the rear of the front room. She held a pencil and a pad of paper and was going through supplies in a tall cabinet, making marks on the pad.

  “Hi, I’m here to see Sanford,” I said.

  “He quit.”

  “When was that?”

  She made another mark on the clipboard, frowned, looked again at the shelf, erased what she’d just written, then rewrote it.

  “Sorry. Yesterday. Talk about not giving us a two-week notice. He just called in and said something came up and he had to leave town. He’d only worked one day into the new pay period, so he said that we could just keep the money because he wasn’t going to be reachable. Of course, we can’t do that. So this will be a pain in the neck for us. We’ll have to issue a check, then we’ll have to hold it for him for who knows how long. I don’t know the rule on that. We’ll have this discrepancy on the books. It would be so much easier if he’d just give us a forwarding address.”