Tahoe Blowup Page 5

  I separated myself from Spot’s grasp, vigorously pet them both again and walked with them back toward the Jeep.

  Ellie saw the changed mood of the dogs from a distance and she grinned. “A live find always makes them so happy,” she said as we got close.

  At that moment Diamond pulled up, followed by two young cops in a cruiser. Diamond got out and looked me up and down. Then his eyes went to Spot. Covered with ash and dirt, Spot and I must have resembled Hollywood extras for a disaster movie. “You have a big nose, even for an Anglo, but does it work so well that you’ve been down in the dirt, sniffing with the dogs?”

  “Dead finds are depressing for dogs,” I said. “We did a live find to cheer them up. I was the find.”

  “Inscrutable gringos,” Diamond muttered and turned to the young cops who were walking up. “This man has a body to show us. I want one of you to stay with the vehicles and...” He looked from me to Ellie.

  “Diamond,” I said. “I’d like you to meet Ellie Ibsen. She is a search and rescue trainer. It was her dog Natasha who found the body. Ellie, Diamond Martinez.”

  Diamond and Ellie nodded and smiled at each other.

  “Natasha,” Ellie called out from the passenger seat. She pointed at Diamond. “Please meet Officer Diamond Martinez.” Natasha trotted over, sat in front of Diamond and lifted her paw.

  Diamond, who prides himself on showing little emotion, broke into a large grin and shook his head. He bent over and shook the dog’s paw. “We got deputies ain’t this smart,” he said, looking at the two younger cops.

  The dogs stayed with Ellie and one of the cops. The other cop walked with Diamond and me out to the ravine. I pointed out the location of the body without walking back down the slope.

  “You think this corpse was killed in the fire?” Diamond asked.

  “I don’t know, but it makes sense it was the fire.”

  “Well, we know when the fire started,” Diamond said. “So maybe we should call in Street.”

  “Sure. She can do a time-of-death estimate. Although it’s hard to see how there could be any bugs on the body after a forest fire.”

  “But if there are any bugs, Street’s report and the coroner’s autopsy should tell us if the perp is just an arsonist or a murderer as well.”

  “Right. Okay if I take Ellie home? She could probably use some rest. It’s been a long day.”

  “Sure,” Diamond said. “I’ll call you with any questions.”

  EIGHT

  I brought Ellie up the mountain to my home for refreshments before the long drive back down to the foothills.

  When I pulled into the drive my eyes immediately went to an unusual dark object in front of my door. All my internal warning sensors went off. I angled the Jeep so Ellie wouldn’t see. “I’ll get your door,” I said. I jumped out, went around the back and trotted over to my front door. The object appeared to have been a stuffed animal before it had been burned black. Reaching down, I felt for heat. Sensing none, I picked the creature up by an ear and quickly carried it, clumps of stuffing falling out, over to the garbage can, put it inside and snugged the lid down tight.

  Hoping the burn smell would blend with all the other smells from the forest fire, I wiped my hand on my pants and hustled over to open Ellie’s door. I helped her out, then opened the rear door. The dogs bounded out with Spot immediately running and sniffing around the garbage can. I ushered Ellie and Natasha past the garbage can and into my cabin.

  “What a cute little place!” Ellie exclaimed. She walked through the living room and out onto the deck. “And the view of the lake! Kings and queens don’t get to see this!”

  “It’s true.” The dogs must have been warm for they both sprawled on the deck, a good thing being that they were covered with ash. I grabbed a towel and quickly wiped them down. “What can I get you to drink, Ellie?” I was mentally cataloging my lack of selection.

  “I’d take a little scotch if you had any.”

  I tried not to show surprise as I ushered Ellie in from the early evening chill. “I don’t think there’s any scotch in the cabinet, but I might have some Jack Daniel’s,” I said.

  “J.D. will work as well,” Ellie said. She sank into one of the chairs by the wood stove, leaned back and put her feet up on the hassock.

  “How do you like your libation?”

  “Straight up with water on the side, if you please,” she said.

  “Coming right up.” I washed the soot off my hands and was getting out a shot glass for Ellie and a beer glass for me when the phone rang. It was Street.

  “I just got a call from Diamond,” she said. “He said you found a body?”

  “Yeah,” I said, moving into the bedroom so that Ellie would not hear me talk about it. “A burn victim.”

  “He wants me to take samples.”

  “He mentioned it to me,” I said. “Can you do that? Are there bugs on a burned body? I’d think the fire would have torched all the bugs in the area.”

  “I’m sure it did. But flies will come from miles away if they smell a body.”

  “But they have to lay eggs on the body. How are eggs going to hatch on charred skin? I would think it would take much longer for maggots to develop and it would throw off your time of death estimate.”

  “Actually, a burn will speed things up a bit because there are usually multiple cracks in a burn victim’s skin and the flies lay their eggs in those cracks. The maggots get a jump-start at getting into the body.”

  “A lovely image,” I said.

  “Anyway, I thought I’d come by after I’m done. Want some company?”

  “We’d love it.”

  “We? Having a party?”

  “You’ll remember Ellie Ibsen, the search and rescue trainer I told you about. She’s here with the amazing dog Natasha. Only thing we need to make the evening complete is you.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I’m done,” she said, then hung up.

  I brought Ellie her Jack Daniel’s with water on the side.

  She picked up the shot glass. “Here’s to keeping the old ticker motivated,” she said and downed a third of the whiskey.

  I toasted with her, then put some paper and kindling in the woodstove and lit it. As the flames grew behind the glass I wondered who would put a burned, stuffed animal on my doorstep.

  Ellie looked at my shelves. “You have a lot of art books,” she said. “Are you an artist?”

  “No. More of a dilettante.”

  Ellie scanned the number of volumes on my shelves then turned back to me. “You’re being self-deprecating. You certainly have large appetite if not large scholarship.”

  “I guess I’m just continually amazed that artists toil away to make something which has no earthly purpose other than for the rest of us to look at. What good fortune that is, don’t you think?”

  Ellie nodded. “How do you do it, studying art? Do you just read the books straight through? Or do you make sketches of your favorite paintings?”

  “I kind of poke around in the books, reading, looking at the reproductions. I’m not at all focused in my approach. An academic would be horrified.”

  “I’ll bet,” Ellie said, the first touch of sarcasm that I’d witnessed in her. We spoke about art for a long time while Ellie sipped her whiskey and I drank a couple of beers.

  “Would you show me some art?” Ellie said just as I was thinking she must be bored with the subject. “Something you like?”

  “Sure,” I said after thinking a moment. I was reaching for a book when I heard a car pull up outside. “Excuse me, Ellie, while I check and see if that is Street.”

  Ellie nodded as I went out.

  Street got out of her VW bug to the enthusiastic greetings of the dogs. She was wearing a white blouse, black skirt and tights and low black pumps.

  “You took samples in your skirt?” I said.

  “No. I wore jeans in the woods and put this on in the car. A change of clothes helps me change the mood. She spun in a cir
cle and her skirt billowed enticingly. Her exceptional posture gave her the grace of a dancer. I kissed her.

  Street lowered her voice. “So how did you find the body? It was practically hidden down in that ravine.”

  “Natasha, here, traced gas, I mean petrol, down into the ravine and found it.” I turned to the dog. “Natasha, I want you to meet Street.” The German Shepherd immediately sat and raised a paw.

  “Oh my God!” Street exclaimed as she shook hands with the dog. She turned to my dog. “Spot, are you watching this?” He stuck his nose in her stomach, then raised his head and licked her neck.

  Street turned her head toward me as she hugged him. The bright red gloss on her full lips and the dark eyeliner made her high cheekbones and distinct jaw line look a bit severe. Although Street was a woman of impeccable grooming, she used no other makeup. In the same way that she didn’t try to hide her excessive thinness with bulky clothing, she preferred to let her acne scars remain uncovered. It was clear that her efforts were not designed to make herself look prettier, but instead to make her look dramatic. Even so, she was still beautiful.

  “Can you tell anything yet from your samples?”

  “Probably. I found a lot of first instar maggots and a few in the second instar stage.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The first flies’ eggs were probably laid while the body was still smoldering. They would hatch in about ten hours and those first instar maggots would begin molting into second instars in another ten or eleven hours. Which would mean death came about twenty one hours ago, or just about the time the fire started. But this is still speculation,” she said.

  “You have to raise the maggots to adult flies to verify the species and their specific growth patterns, right?”

  “Exactly. I also left a hygrothermograph at the scene so I can get temperature data over the next few days. That could alter my findings. Even so, it looks like the victim perished just about when the fire started, whether from the fire or not.”

  I gestured toward my cabin door. “Before you meet Ellie, I should say that finding the body was somewhat upsetting to Ellie and, for that matter, the dogs as well. So we’re kind of trying not to talk about it.”

  Street looked up at me and fixed me with a penetrating gaze from narrowed eyes. “But a big macho guy like you isn’t even fazed by such discoveries.”

  I smiled. “Of course not,” I said as I directed her inside. “Unless lying awake the next three nights qualifies.”

  When we were inside I said, “Ellie, I’d like you to meet Street Casey, woman of my dreams.”

  “I’m delighted,” Ellie said with scintillating eyes and smile.

  “And I’m pleased to finally meet you, Ellie,” Street said.

  Ellie brightened at Street’s vivacious presence. As always, Street was like fresh air in a room, and she seemed to fill my entire cabin with life.

  “Ellie,” Street said, “You should know that when Owen met you last year he spoke about you at some length. How did you describe her, Owen? Oh, I remember. He said you were as light and luminous as a Japanese paper lantern.”

  “Stop, you’re embarrassing me,” Ellie said.

  “Me, too.” I said.

  Ellie sipped more whiskey and turned to Street. “Owen was going to show me some art.”

  “Indeed,” I said as I got out a beer and glass for Street.

  Street poured a couple of inches or so into the glass while I pulled a book off the shelf, squatted down next to Ellie’s chair and paged through the book. “Here is a painting I’ve come to really admire.”

  “Oh, my, look at that jagged, snow-capped peak.” Ellie took the book into her delicate hands, slipped on the glasses that had been hanging on a gold chain around her neck and looked at the painting up close. “And that beautiful lake with the waterfalls plunging into it! Is that by Thomas Moran? He was always my favorite landscape painter.”

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “Close. Albert Bierstadt. This one is called ‘The Sierra Nevada In California.’”

  “It’s a mythical place, isn’t it? I suppose this peak is like Mt. Whitney, only more majestic. And the waterfalls are as perfect as those in Yosemite. Deer and ducks, and a forest that looks like Merlin lives there... it’s a perfect fantasy!”

  I left the book in Ellie’s lap, sat down in my rocker and drank some beer.

  Street walked behind Ellie’s chair and leaned over Ellie’s shoulder to see the reproduction. One foot was cocked back. I could see her ankle. It was perfect. Her lovely ankle bones looked delicate and vulnerable, although I knew better of it having struggled on many occasions to keep up with her as she rocketed down ski slopes or scrambled up cliffs on a mountain hike.

  “Owen,” Ellie said. “Was Bierstadt one of the first people to see the Sierra Nevada? Was this painting a way to show what the West looked like to all the people back east? If so, it would kind of fool them, wouldn’t it? It’s not as if the whole West looks like this.”

  “Right,” I said. “Imagine that you’re an Easterner in the Nineteenth Century. You’ve never been past the Mississippi. You see this painting and you think that’s what the West looks like. It would take hold of your imagination and not let go until your wagon broke a wheel in the middle of the Oklahoma prairie.”

  “So what makes it art, Owen?” Ellie asked. “Is this more than just a pretty picture?”

  Her question surprised me, revealing an acuity of thinking that few lay people brought to art. I supposed it was what made her a great trainer of search dogs. She knew that to look at a scene for its obvious attributes was to be partially blind. It was only when one looked beneath the surface, literally and metaphorically, did one begin to really see.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think it is more than just a pretty picture.”

  Ellie looked at me. After a moment of silence she grinned and said, “Well?”

  “My guess is that Bierstadt was exploring the difference between the natural landscape and a man-made landscape. Even though he came long before shopping malls, I think he understood that man had violated the essential grandeur of nature. The perfect places in the world, places that man had not trampled, were beginning to disappear. So he wanted to paint those places and make them as perfect as he could imagine.” I leaned forward in my chair and pointed to the reproduction. “Look at the way these misty shafts of light come through the clouds. Amazing.”

  “It’s almost too much,” Ellie said.

  “You’re echoing what an art critic said at a talk in Reno a few months back. He was explaining that Nineteenth Century landscape painters like Cole and Church depicted the untrammeled American wilderness as sacred. But when Bierstadt went west of the Mississippi, he went wild with ostentatious detail and overboard metaphors.”

  “Meaning,” Ellie said, “that the light shafts coming through the clouds are supposed to represent God’s presence.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Even so, I like it. I think Bierstadt was saying that these mountains were God’s vision of a perfect place, and that they should remain pristine.”

  “If this painting shows God’s idea of perfection,” Street said, “then where are the insects?”

  Ellie raised her eyebrows.

  “Street’s an entomologist,” I said. “Sees the whole world in terms of bugs.”

  “And so should God,” Street said. “If it weren’t for bugs...”

  “I know,” I interrupted. “Without the insects pollinating the plants, which are the basis of all food chains, we wouldn’t be here.”

  “Among other things,” Street said. She sipped her beer so slowly it was if she were savoring each molecule. The level in her glass had already dropped a quarter of an inch.

  “How does an entomologist find work in Tahoe?” Ellie asked.

  “It’s not plentiful,” Street said. “But I’ve been doing an increasing amount of forensic consulting recently.”

  “Forensic?” Ellie said. “You mean insects can tell you
...” She trailed off.

  “Right,” Street said. “Time of death. Sometimes even cause of death.”

  “Oh, my,” Ellie said. “That doesn’t sound pleasant.”

  “Street also does consulting for the Forest Service.”

  “Well, at least that sounds less macabre,” Ellie said, grinning.

  Street was deadpan when she responded. “I did a study comparing the gallery patterns chewed under tree bark by Ips beetle larvae in pine and Scolytus beetle larvae in firs. Pretty exciting, huh?”

  Ellie grinned like a child. “Yes! It is! Tell me more.”

  Street looked embarrassed. “Well, the more robust the galleries, the quicker the trees die. Yet a few of the trees that are infested show inexplicable resistance to the beetles. It’s like those rare prostitutes in Africa that seem to be immune to AIDS. The more we learn about the trees, the more...” Street suddenly stopped talking. “Sorry, I go on. But it is fun, actually.”

  “I can see,” Ellie said, sincerely amused. “So what kind of bugs should Bierstadt have put in this painting?”

  “Let’s see,” Street said, still looking over Ellie’s shoulder. Street pointed to the picture. “We’ve got all the boreal zones up to arctic alpine. Within that range are a greater diversity of insect species than all other plant and animal species combined.”

  “I’m envisioning a single grand mythic bug for this painting,” I said.

  “Oh yes!” Ellie exclaimed. She held her arms up and her eyes sparkled. “A Kafka bug thirty feet tall! Scratching its way up the glacier on this mountain!” She made clawing motions in the air with her hands.

  “Actually, bugs do live on glaciers,” Street said, grinning at Ellie. “For example, there is a type of Springtail, Achorutes nivicola, that swarms in enormous numbers on snow. They’re commonly referred to as snow fleas, although they aren’t fleas at all.”