Tahoe Dark (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 14) Page 4

  Lanzen nodded. “It would help me expedite the situation if I had your driver’s license number.”

  Evan got up, fetched a small fanny pack off the kitchen counter, and pulled out a wallet. She removed her driver’s license and handed it to Sergeant Lanzen. Lanzen wrote down the number and Evan’s date of birth.

  “How long have you been cleaning houses, Ms. Rosen?” I said.

  “Call me Evan. There’s no Ms. Rosen. There used to be. My mother. I’ve been cleaning houses for three years. It’s hard labor, but the best job I ever had. You can make decent money cleaning houses.”

  “Do you work for a cleaning company, or are you on your own?”

  “My own. I worked for a franchise outfit for a few months, but it wasn’t for me. Picky rules. No opportunity to make an individual decision, even if it would improve the service. It was more important to follow the rules than to make a customer happy. Mansfield Cleaning is the opposite.”

  I asked, “Is that your business name?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I like it,” I said. “Mansfield Cleaning sounds substantial.”

  “That’s the idea. But cleaning is no one’s ideal. So I’ll never hire employees to make it substantial. Besides, then I’d have to pay Worker’s Comp. Talk about a nightmare.” She pulled a business card out of her pocket and handed it to me.

  The words ‘Mansfield Cleaning’ were superimposed over an ink drawing of a large stately building with arched windows, a structure that looked like it was built for an important school or university a century ago. Underneath the building in small letters was the catch phrase ‘Your daily mess is our daily mission.’

  “Do you clean large buildings?” I asked.

  “You mean like the one on the card? No. Houses, mostly. Plus a dental building and a small café.”

  “Is Mansfield a family name?” I asked, trying to get her to open up.

  She glanced out the window, then made a tentative shake of her head. “Just a name I heard.”

  “Is business good?” Lanzen asked.

  “Yeah, when stuff doesn’t get in the way.”

  “What gets in the way?” Lanzen said. I knew she was trying to see what she could learn about Evan before she brought up the subject of Montrop’s murder, which would be like a subject trump card and make it impossible to talk or think about anything else.

  “When you wake up to no car, that screws things up big time,” Evan said. She closed her eyes as if counting to ten.

  I said, “You mentioned the woman who helps with babysitting. Do you have a child?”

  Evan shook her head. “My sister Mia. She’s older than me by two years. But she needs help with most things.”

  “Mia,” I said. “Interesting name.”

  “Her first name is actually Mira. But she could never make the R sound. So mom just let her say Mia.”

  “How long has she been with you?”

  “Mia always lived with mom in Reno. But when mom died two years ago, she had nowhere to go. I looked into some state services, but Nevada isn’t the best state for help. So I moved Mia up the mountain from Reno to live with me. After a year on the California side of the line, she qualified for some better assistance. But it still won’t pay for a sitter. So I bring her with me on my jobs.”

  “Your customers don’t mind?”

  “Two of them quit me when I first showed up with Mia. Some of the others weren’t too happy about it, but they’ve stayed on. The few new ones I told right up front. You want me, you get Mia. She’s quiet, but she’s not silent. She’s afraid of the dark, so if the power goes out, we’re going to have some upset to deal with. And if she sees a spider, she’s going to freak out, and there ain’t nothing I can do about it. One lady told me that she couldn’t have Mia freaking out, no way, so I better be damn sure I clean good enough that no spider ever wants in.” Evan rapped her knuckles against the wood arm of the couch.

  “Does Mia help with cleaning?”

  “No. Her right arm and hand never really worked well. But even if they did, she doesn’t track the way other people do. You gotta track to clean houses. Mia’s world is Peter Pan and never growing up and learning to fly. It’s best for me to park her in front of the TV while I clean. If the TV doesn’t have the shows she likes, then I give her my phone and earbuds, and I play the Peter Pan soundtrack.”

  “Where is Mia now?” I asked.

  Evan glanced toward a door that led to what had once been the neighboring motel room. “She’s sleeping. Her midday nap is the only way to keep her calm. She wakes up every morning at four-thirty like she’s got an onboard alarm clock. I have to get her down from eleven to noon or so, or she’ll have a storm fit by mid-afternoon. The doctor calls it diurnal rhythm deficiency. It goes back to the birth asphyxia. She’ll be awake soon.” Evan frowned. “This is an awful lot of questions for a stolen car investigation.”

  “Evan,” Lanzen said, “tell us about your relationship with David Montrop.”

  “What’s to say? He’s a stuck-up rich guy who acts like he’s special. He refers to his Mercedes instead of referring to his car.” Evan imitated him, “‘Hey, I left the groceries in the Mercedes. Can you put them away, little darlin’?’ Gimme a break. I clean his house every week. He lives in a palace. And he feels the need to lord his Mercedes over me like I haven’t noticed it. But I try to keep my mouth shut because his house is my easiest job. He never makes a mess, no one else is ever at the house except the gardener, and Mia likes it there. Montrop’s got this giant TV that she watches.”

  “Did you or anyone you know ever have disagreements with him?”

  “No, why?”

  Sergeant Lanzen answered, “Because he was found murdered this morning.”

  SIX

  I watched Evan Rosen as Sergeant Lanzen informed her of Montrop’s murder. Evan made a little jerk, her eyes went wide, and then the hardness in her face softened. Tears pooled in her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, then swallowed.

  “That’s terrible,” she finally said in a tiny voice. “What kind of person would kill an old man like that? He might not have been the nicest guy, but murder…” She lifted up her hands and put one index finger into the cuff of her other sleeve to wipe the tears from her eyes.

  “Now that you know he was murdered,” Lanzen said, “does anything about him come to mind? Something that seemed of no account before but may take on significance in light of his death?”

  “No. I’m shocked. I don’t know what to say.” She paused, and then she looked startled. “That’s why you called. It was about his murder, wasn’t it? It wasn’t about my stolen car.” Her startled looked morphed into worry. “You must have found my stolen car near his house! Someone told you that I was the house cleaner. Oh, of course, it had to be Kang. He probably told you what my car looked like. Then you found it near Montrop’s house. So now it looks like I killed him. I’ll be one of those defendants who are convicted on circumstantial evidence. I look good for the crime, right? Maybe it’s a frame job. And I can’t afford a lawyer.” She took a sudden breath and looked away again.

  “You thought of something,” I said.

  She nodded. “I realize that there’s something else.”

  “What’s that?” Lanzen asked.

  “The last time I was there, Thursday, Montrop and I got into an argument. He said I’d gotten fingerprints on the wine glasses when I took them out of the dishwasher. I said that I didn’t know that fingerprints were a special crime with wine glasses. And he said that of course I wouldn’t know about wine because it was above my station. So I yelled at him. What did he know about my station?!” Evan made a fist and slammed it down onto the arm of the couch.

  After a long silence, she said, “Look, I know I’m kind of a hothead. I get bent out of shape when people downtalk me. If someone heard the way I yelled at Montrop, it wouldn’t be a stretch for them to think I might go wacko and cleave that geezer’s brain. So arrest me and convict me. At least I won�
��t have to wonder where my next meal is coming from.” She turned her head and looked out the window. “But I wouldn’t know what to do with Mia.”

  As she mentioned Mia, her eyes teared up again. If it was for show, she was a good actor.

  “Mia’s a big responsibility,” I said.

  Evan shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s…”

  After a long moment, I said, “It’s what?”

  “It’s just that Mia is the only person who ever believed in me.”

  Lanzen said, “You refer to cleaving Montrop’s brain…”

  Evan interrupted her. “No! Don’t tell me that’s how he died! I just meant it as a figure of speech.”

  Lanzen said, “How did Mr. Kang and Montrop get along?”

  “Fine, I think. Montrop would tell Kang if Kang didn’t get all the leaves out of a flower bed or something. Montrop could be as rough with Kang as he was with me. But the thing about Kang is that nothing phases him. Maybe it’s a Buddhist thing or something. I don’t know. But whenever I saw Montrop raise his voice, Kang would just put his palms together, fingertips under his chin, and do a little bow. He never spoke.”

  “It seems that he barely understands any English,” Lanzen said.

  “That’s what it seems like. But you can’t pass anything by him. I think the non-English thing is an act so that he doesn’t have to speak. He can just lose himself in Montrop’s gardens.” Evan paused, about to speak but hesitating. “So what happened to Montrop?”

  Lanzen glanced at me.

  I said, “Someone threw his paddle board at him, and it split his head open.”

  Evan winced.

  As I looked at her, I realized that Evan Rosen seemed much too tiny to throw a paddle board. If she was involved in Montrop’s murder, she’d need an accomplice. Then again, house cleaning was a lot of work. If the tennis racket and swim goggles were any indication, she probably was in very good shape. I’d heard of petite women who compete in powerlifting tournaments.

  “I see your tennis racket by the door,” I said. “You play much?”

  Evan shook her head. “This guy I met wanted me to take it up. He gave me a racket, and we tried playing a few times. I was pretty good for a newbie. But he was one of those guys who have to slam the ball down your throat to show how much better they are than a girl. I told him he was obviously insecure. So that was the end of my tennis career. He never came back for the racket.”

  “What about the swim goggles?” I asked.

  “I’m…” Evan stopped. She looked embarrassed.

  “I didn’t mean to pry,” I said.

  “You’re not prying. You’re just trying to learn about me so you can decide if you think I’m Montrop’s killer.”

  I didn’t respond. Probably, Lanzen was thinking the same thing I was, that Evan kept mentioning the idea that we might be considering her for murder.

  “I’m trying to be a night swimmer,” Evan finally said.

  Lanzen looked interested. “What’s that mean?”

  “There’s a group from the rec center. Seven of us. We play soccer. One day during a break, we found out that we’re all afraid of the water. It’s not like we can’t swim, but we’re not good at it. If we were, we wouldn’t be afraid.” Evan stopped talking.

  “So you swim at night?” I said.

  Evan made fists on her thighs, her knuckles white. “We found out that we’ve all had a version of a drowning nightmare. For some, like me, it’s about being asleep and then waking up just as someone has tossed you off a ship into the ocean, a thousand miles from land. The thing that frightens us the most is the idea of being dropped into the water at night.” Evan made a little shiver as she said it. “You suddenly find yourself in cold, black, bottomless water, and you don’t know what’s down there, and you’re sure that something’s going to grab your feet and pull you down into the inky depths.” She paused, looking at us. “You’re both thinking, ‘What is this girl’s problem?’ But trust me, for us there is no greater fear. And Tahoe is so deep and so cold...” She stopped talking, looked at us, and gritted her teeth, her jaw muscles bulging. “It would be worse than being murdered.”

  We waited.

  Evan resumed, “Nan Trudeau is our group leader. She studied psychology at Sac State. She said that the way you deal with your worst fears is to face them, and force yourself to find out that your fears can’t defeat you. So if you can’t stand to fly, you get on airplanes and confront the fact that you’re still alive after you land. If snakes are your nightmare, you go to one of those places that has snakes, and you handle them. You let them slither all over your body, and it makes you realize that they are just animals without legs. Maybe they’re not cuddly like dogs, but they’re still animals.”

  I said, “So you go swimming at night.”

  “Yeah.” Another shiver. “We did it as a group. Six times last summer. We got special permission to turn off all the lights in the pool room at the rec center. Then we went into the pool in the dark. It was terrifying, but we survived.”

  Sergeant Lanzen said, “I imagine your goal is to do a night swim in Lake Tahoe.”

  “We already did.” Evan shivered yet again, this time violently. “To make it the worst it could be, we went when there wasn’t any moon. The night was black. Black as… obsidian. There was a light cloud cover so we didn’t even have starlight. We all met at Kings Beach. Just staring out at the black water, cold as ice, created a fear in us that was breathtaking. We could barely see the water. But the black waves crashing in were huge. There was a south wind, so the waves had twenty miles to build from the south end of the lake. None of us would have ever done it alone. But we’d made a pact on a sunny day the week before. We were going to be night swimmers if it was the last thing we’d ever do. We swore on the Goddess Nyx.”

  “Who’s that?” Lanzen asked.

  “Gabby Hernandez told us about her. Nyx is the Greek goddess of the night. She lives in the darkness, and she’s so scary that all the other gods, even Zeus the king of gods, is afraid of her. So we made a circle and each of us held out a hand in a center stack and swore that we’d take the night swim or let Nyx have our souls.”

  “And you all made a night swim,” I said. “That’s impressive.”

  Evan clenched her teeth, jaw muscles bulging.

  “They did,” she said. “I couldn’t make myself do it.”

  Lanzen glanced at me. I didn’t know what to say.

  Evan sounded like she was on some kind of edge, revealing a dark secret.

  “It was the scariest thing I’ve ever contemplated,” she said. “We all gathered at the beach in the dark. We stripped down to our swim suits and walked to the water’s edge. The waves crashed on the beach, rolled up and splashed over our feet. The water was so cold that just having it on my feet made it hard to breathe. The plan was that on the count of three, we’d all run into the water up to our thighs and then take a deep breath and dive forward into the waves. Then we’d swim underwater as far as we could. Our goal was to make it fifty yards out into the lake while staying at least three feet under.”

  “You mean, hold your breath and do the entire distance without coming up for air?” Lanzen said.

  Evan nodded. “It’s actually a regular swimming discipline. It’s called Dynamic Apnea. People do it in swimming pools and try to set records for how far you can swim underwater on one breath. But all we wanted to do was to confront the black water. It was an absolutely terrifying concept. Swimming underwater in the freezing lake at night. I had put on my swim goggles like the rest of the women. But when we counted to three and ran to the water, I froze. They all did it. They went out about fifty yards, swimming underwater. Only three of them came up for air just once. The other three kept going on a single breath. Just like in the pool. The whole time they swam, I was imagining that swimming underwater in Tahoe at night would feel like I was a hundred feet down and I’d never find the surface again. My feet burned from the cold of the water, and I h
ad ferocious shivers. When the other women got out there, they treaded water together. They shouted for me, worried that something was wrong. So I lied and shouted out to them that I was okay and just had a leg cramp.”

  Lanzen and I were silent, not sure how to respond to a confession about a humiliating experience. Even the confession must have been humiliating.

  “They all conquered their fear of a night swim. I failed.” Evan’s lower lip quivered. She reached up and rubbed it. “The hardest thing was when I came home and Mia asked if I did the night swim. I told her I was too afraid. She looked so disappointed. It was like she stopped believing in me that night.” Evan’s eyes were moist again. “Not the first time I’ve been an utter failure,” she said. “Won’t be the last, either.”

  “It doesn’t sound like failure to me,” I said. “More like a disappointment, a setback, the kind of thing that makes a person take stock of their goals, then regroup and try again.”

  “That’s your approach,” Evan said. “But if enough bad stuff happens, it can drive anybody to the edge. There’s been times where if I didn’t have Mia to take care of…”

  We three sat in silence for a minute.

  “Dying by paddle board is ironic for Montrop,” Evan said, changing the subject.

  “Why?” Lanzen asked.

  “Because Montrop was getting rid of stuff. He had a garage sale. He ran ads on Craigslist. He even put stuff down at the bottom of his driveway with a sign that said ‘Free.’ It was like he’d decided that he was going to clear out the crapola in his life before the cancer could take him down. I guess you have to admire him for that, a man who’s looking at death and not turning away. But while he was throwing stuff out, he decided to buy a paddle board. So then the one thing that he does acquire becomes the murder weapon.”

  “Montrop had cancer?” I said.