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

  She tucked it into her pocket.

  “When will all this happen?” I asked.

  “Going to Hollywood? Could be any time. I’m almost there. Maybe I just need to take a road trip. Like Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon in “Thelma and Louise.” That could give me my final inspiration. I could leave this afternoon. Running away would give me a new life, a life with purpose.”

  “Gertie, at the risk of sounding like a boring adult, running away isn’t the best way to handle disaffection with your current life. You might want to think about alternatives.”

  As soon as I said the words, I regretted it. A little fire grew in Gertie’s eyes. She squinted at me.

  “There’s no risk of you sounding like a boring adult. You are a boring adult. You have no vision. I bet you’ve never even had a dream of a new life.” Her eyes moistened. “A dream that you could really do something. That you could be somebody. Am I right?” Her voice wavered.

  “I’m sorry, Gertie. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  “Did you ever see Brando in “On The Waterfront?” Where he says he coulda been somebody? Well, I’m not going to wait while boring adults force me to go through all these boring classes all so I can get a boring job. I’m going to be what Brando wanted to be. A contender. Maybe I’m only fifteen, but that’s an advantage. I’ll still be a teenager when my debut has its premier. And boring adults like you will be thinking, ‘Wow, I didn’t believe that girl could do it.’”

  She took a last drag on her cigarette, her cheeks shiny with tears, tossed the butt onto the sidewalk at my feet, turned and went inside the house. She shut the door behind her.

  It was as good an exit as I had seen in any movie.

  EIGHT

  I drove east and found the building I was looking for just south of the freeway and 50 yards from a nice restaurant that looked out of place – and hence, hip – among several warehouses. I bypassed the front office and walked around the side of the building. There was a lot of asphalt and a wide area where trucks could pull to one side and back up to loading docks.

  At every fourth dock there was a ramp where drivers could walk up. It was shortly after 3 p.m. when I trotted up to the loading dock. Several of the big overhead doors were open. Inside were aisles of heavy steel shelving units that were two stories high, accessible only by forklifts, scissor lifts, or monkeys. The shelves were loaded with big cardboard boxes.

  There were no workers around that I could see. I walked down one aisle, turned, then came back another. At an intersection, I saw a group of men off to the side, clustered around some long tables. Most had cans of soda. Some had thermoses of coffee. Several smoked.

  As I approached, one of the men jumped up and intercepted me before I got close.

  “You can’t be in here.”

  “I need to talk with Merrill O’Leary.”

  “You’ll have to wait. He’s on break.”

  “I thought his break would be a good time to talk, keep from interrupting his work. It’s urgent.”

  “So’s our break. Union rules.”

  “What if I said his daughter’s in trouble?”

  “She in the hospital or something? An emergency?”

  “No.”

  He pointed back toward the loading dock. “You’ll have to wait on the dock.”

  “How long’s your break?”

  He looked at his watch. “Another fifteen minutes.”

  Twenty minutes later, a big, rotund guy marched out onto the loading dock. He was red of face, hair, and suspenders, and blue of eyes, jeans, and shirt. A toothpick barely poked out the left side of his mouth. He frowned, his eyes narrowed, and his lips scrunched up. His hair was a messy, crumpled bunch of thin wire. If he was half as mean as he looked, he would have been in prison, not out driving a forklift. I could not imagine him ever being married to Nadia.

  “Looking for me?” he said. Deep voice, half growl.

  “If you’re Merrill O’Leary.”

  Maybe he made a partial nod, but not that I could notice.

  I reached out my hand. “Owen McKenna,” I said.

  He looked at my hand but didn’t reach out his.

  “I’m a private investigator from Lake Tahoe. Your ex, Nadia Lassitor, just lost her husband to drowning.” I watched to gauge his reaction, but there was none.

  “So?” he said. “Maybe now she’ll finally get the money she’s been wanting all her life.”

  “Yes, except she’s being blackmailed for that money.”

  The toothpick twitched, then went still. “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Maybe nothing. But I’m worried about your daughter.”

  “Not your business,” he said. I noticed that it was the same phrase Amanda Horner had used when I questioned her about following Nadia.

  “If the blackmailer wants leverage with Nadia,” I said, “he might threaten Gertie.”

  “That wouldn’t matter to Nadia. She don’t care ’bout Gertie. And anyway, nothing’s gonna happen to Gertie as long as I’m in charge.”

  “How do you know? Is it because you are so close to her?” I asked.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” His eyebrows tipped inward, the outer tips rising up in pronounced arches.

  “Gertie told me about your loving parental attention. Half the time, she eats dinner alone. And when you finally come home, you have more of a relationship with your beer than you do with her. Or was that just a story she made up for the movie she’s writing?”

  Merrill reddened further. He made fists at his side and his arms came out a couple of inches. “I broke the nose of the last guy who insulted me.”

  “I believe it.”

  “She never said nothing about writing a movie.”

  “I believe that, too,” I said. “Has she talked to you about directing? Has she told you about the interview with Quentin Tarantino? Did she ask you about movie parodies?”

  He frowned. “Never heard about ‘parrot eats.’”

  “That’s all I need to know. Let me leave you with this. I came down from Tahoe to warn you and Gertie to be careful. Until we catch this blackmailer, I don’t think she should be left in your house alone. Especially with the doors unlocked.”

  The man looked like he was about to attack me. “What happens with my daughter and my door locks is my business. It’s time for you to split, bub.”

  “Bub? I see where your daughter gets her flair for description.”

  The man lunged for me, his arms out like he’d seen NFL football players do it.

  I feinted, stepped the other way, grabbed one of his arms and swung him around in a circle like the end person on a crack-the-whip game. He floundered as he sped up, windmilling his other arm and flailing his feet in an effort not to lose his balance. As he was about to spin out, I shifted and jerked him the other way, back over his feet. Twisting his hand and wrist so that he yelped, I walked him backward over to a forklift. I reached out a single finger and pushed on his chest. He tried to take a little step back. But the metal arms of the forklift were about knee level. One of his calves hit the metal, and he went down, arms windmilling, his giant butt jamming between the forks. Merrill sat with his arms out like he was lounging in an easy chair. He panted so hard, I thought he might be having a heart attack.

  “Cost me a day and several bucks to drive down here just to let you know about the threat,” I said. “In return for my efforts, you attack me. Next time I’ll send you off the end of the loading dock and see how well you fly.”

  Merrill was still gasping. He probably hadn’t moved that fast in his life.

  I turned away from him, taking care not to let my own heavy breathing show. It was a stupid move, letting him out of my sight, directly behind me. I hadn’t even frisked him. But I was mad, and like an adolescent boy, I wanted him to try me one more time.

  “Try it, Merrill,” I said over my shoulder. “See if you can get your ass out of that chair and come after me.” All I heard behind me was hi
s breathing.

  As I walked away, I reached into my wallet, pulled out a card, and dropped it onto the concrete floor.

  “If you change your mind and decide to care about Gertie’s welfare, there’s my card.”

  I walked away without looking back.

  It was getting dark as I went through Placerville and headed up the ridge toward Pollock Pines. I pulled over when I got to 4000 feet of elevation and before I dropped down into the American River Canyon and lost cell reception. I called Street.

  “I’m coming up from Sac and was wondering if you could break away from your bees and have dinner with me at my cabin?”

  “Hmmm. Their honey is sweet. What’s the competition?”

  “Barbecued steelhead trout, a Central Coast Pinot, and whatever else you’d like me to pick up when I get up to Tahoe.”

  “How about serving it on a bed of kale and garlic mashed potatoes, the little red ones with the skins still on them?”

  “Always the healthy choices,” I said.

  “Tasty choices,” she said.

  So Street came up to my cabin for dinner, and we feasted. Over dinner I told her about Gertie O’Leary, the unwanted child of Nadia and Merrill.

  “A kid who wants to be a director, not an actor,” Street said. “That is so cool.”

  We stayed up late, and before she left, we stepped out onto my deck for a brace of the cold air at 7200 feet and a look at the world’s greatest view across the lake to the Sierra Nevada crest.

  There was just enough light to show thin clouds racing from southwest to northeast. Here and there were openings to the sky, moving black patches with hundreds of stars. Across the lake to the northwest, fifteen miles distant, were bright flickering lights crawling high across the mountains of Squaw Valley. It took me a moment to realize that they were the groomers driving the big snowcats, no doubt rocking out to their headset music while they laid down corduroy tracks for the next day’s skiers.

  I stood behind Street at the deck railing, my arms around her, feeling shapes which, despite her slender build, were the stuff to generate hormone surges.

  “Romantic isn’t it,” she said as she leaned her head back against my chest, “snow-covered mountains lit by stars. And as the earth rotates, the stars trace slow curves through the sky.”

  “Those aren’t the curves I was thinking about. But yes, it’s very romantic.”

  NINE

  I slept in the next day, and called Nadia after I’d had my second cup of coffee. She came to my office that afternoon. Her first words were to ask if I’d seen Gertie and Merrill. I nodded.

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The idea of me seeing Merrill made her tense and worried.

  “Did it, you know, go okay?”

  “Yeah, great. Merrill is a loving, caring dad, and he’s rearranging his schedule to be sure that Gertie isn’t at risk.”

  “Gertie? Not Trudy?”

  “Nadia, Gertie made it very clear that she prefers to be called Gertie and that everyone in the world but you calls her by the name she prefers.”

  Nadia hesitated. “I... I like the name Trudy.”

  “Yes. I can see that. At every step, you care more about your likes than your daughter’s.”

  Nadia colored. Her jaw muscles bulged. Her eyes moistened. She blinked multiple times. But no tears spilled over the dam.

  “Did Ian have substantial assets?” I asked.

  She blinked some more, then focused on the new subject.

  “I didn’t know that at the time I married him. But later, I learned that his company was a much bigger deal than he’d led me to believe. I also found out that his vacation home here in Tahoe is practically a castle. It’s this big stone place with a matching stone boathouse. Much bigger than the house in Santa Clara. I learned that he collects expensive toys like that fancy old wood boat that he died in. He used them for employee perks and for entertaining clients. Of course, they all were lost when Symphony TechNation went out of business.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “Another lawsuit. Or maybe it was mostly a prosecution thing. Anyway, this time Ian was on the receiving end. He had to liquidate everything. Even the Tahoe castle was sold. Although he got the new owners to lease it back to him for six months. The only thing left was the house in Santa Clara.”

  “Besides the insurance, what are you left with?”

  “Just my car and the house, and that’s about it. I could always sell the house. It’s small, but it’s still worth about two million, so I could move to a nice apartment and still be okay.”

  “You said Ian was prosecuted? For what?”

  “I don’t know the details. But one of the companies Ian sued some time back counter-sued a few years later. Something about discovery and whether or not Ian or his lawyers had been forthcoming during the first lawsuit. So the next thing Ian knew, the District Attorney came calling. It took a couple of years for the lawyers to do their dance. That’s what Ian calls it. Lawyers dancing. In the end, they made a deal. Ian paid a fine to the government and pleaded guilty to some minor thing, and he also paid a giant settlement to this other company on some civil case. He said it cost him about twenty million, which was all he had including all his property.”

  “Tell me about his insurance.”

  “I don’t really know anything about it. I just went through the file about a week ago after I got over the shock of Ian dying. There was a form that I found. I filled it out and sent it in along with a certified death certificate. Now I just wait.”

  “Was Ian worried about dying?” I asked.

  “I doubt it. He was too cocky for that. He probably thought he was going to live forever. I think that the only reason he even had insurance was that some salesman sold him on the concept. Probably, there was something else that Ian got out of the deal.”

  “Like what? A bribe from the agent?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. But I don’t think that Ian would have bought the policy out of the goodness of his heart.”

  “Do you inherit his entire estate?”

  “I guess so. As far as I know, he didn’t have a will. But the Santa Clara house was in both our names, so now it’s mine.”

  “Most people like Ian have some other investments, even if small. Stocks, bonds, that sort of thing.”

  “He never mentioned anything to me.”

  “This all must be quite the shock,” I said, thinking that it didn’t seem like much of a shock to her at all.

  “I wasn’t prepared,” Nadia said, a serious understatement. “Ian was only forty-two. I never imagined that he would die. Probably people think about that sort of thing when they get into their sixties or seventies. The news knocked me down for the first few days. Then I got the email from the blackmailer. So I looked you up and put your number in my purse. I hoped they might think I’ve been out of town and haven’t gotten their email.”

  “Nadia, the fact that the email self-deleted tells us that they know how to do fancy stuff. There are companies that specialize in vanishing emails. I’m pretty sure they can embed code in it that tells them it’s been opened.”

  Nadia looked sick, but it had a feigned quality to it.

  “How did the woman following you find you?” I asked. “Did she wait outside your house?”

  “I don’t know. I just noticed her SUV on the highway. Following me forever. It was relentless. So scary.”

  “Have you had your car looked at for a GPS device?”

  “I don’t need to. My car came with GPS.” She paused. “You mean they could use that to track my location?”

  “Sort of. But to use the built-in system, they’d have to hack into the network your car uses. That would require serious expertise. Much easier just to attach a separate GPS unit. Something they could put under your car.”

  “Oh, my God. That would explain how the woman found me. They could find me again. I might be in danger. What should I do?” Her forehead was a network of worry lines.r />
  “I can solve the problem.”

  “How? Can you inspect my car for the GPS and remove it?”

  “No. Those things can be very small. It could take a long time to find. There is an easier way.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We switch cars.”

  TEN

  Nadia stared at me.

  I waited.

  “That car is my baby,” she said, as if it were much more dear to her than her daughter Gertie.

  I didn’t comment.

  “But I can see that it would make me safer,” she said.

  I nodded. “Where are you staying?”

  “I got a room at the Marriott.”

  “What was your plan when you drove up here?”

  “I was coming up to visit the new shops at Heavenly and Northstar when I saw that person following me.”

  It was dark when we walked down to the office entrance. We traded keys. In the dim light spilling over from a neighboring building, I saw her scowl as she turned my key over in her hand.

  “I have to put the key in the lock to unlock it,” she said.

  “Right. Old vehicle. You’ve never unlocked a car with a key?”

  “I’ve seen it done. But I didn’t get my driver’s license until I got married the second time. Ian’s cars just use key fobs.”

  She put the key in, turned it both ways several times until it finally turned.

  “It’s a bit sticky,” I said.

  “I see.” She opened up the car door. “It smells of dog.”

  “Yeah. It’s Spot’s car, too. You’ll get more of his hair on you.”

  “That means that his hair will get in my car, too.”

  “The price of safety,” I said. “But he will enjoy it.”

  Nadia hesitated but didn’t protest. She got into the Jeep, and reached down and found the seat lever to move the seat. It lurched all the way forward with a screech of old metal. I showed her the headlight switch, how to work the parking brake, and I made certain that she understood where to smack the dash when the defroster fan tried to die.