Tahoe Ice Grave Read online

  “Your note says, ‘Rubicon dive.’ That wouldn’t be Folsom would it? It must mean this dive, Rubicon Point at Tahoe.”

  “You must have read it wrong. It doesn’t say Rubicon. It says Folsom.” The lightness had gone out of her voice and her eyes narrowed.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to pry.”

  “Not to worry. Like I said, it’s nothing.” She gave me another smile, this one forced. “If I find anything, I’ll be sure and call.”

  She got into the driver’s side of the van, shut the door and started the engine. I stepped aside as she drove away.

  Back in my Jeep, I wrote down all the possible combinations of the numbers I had seen as Spot leaned his head over the front seat, stuck his nose into my jacket and sniffed out faint hints of lodge and lake, stuffed trophy animals and green wet suits.

  I started the Jeep and turned out of the lot. A movement in my rear-view mirror caught my attention. I slowed to a stop and watched in the mirror. Brock Chambers appeared to be arguing with another man over by the service entrance to the lodge. He was backing up, looking small and defeated. His face may have looked red before, but it looked even redder now.

  I wanted to know who the other man was, but he was facing at an angle away from me. All I could see was that he had long blond hair that hung straight down past his shoulders and a bushy strawberry blond beard. Despite the weather, he wore a sleeveless shirt that showed hard arms. He looked very much like a picture book version of a Norwegian Viking. I wanted to back up and get a better look, but then I would become obvious to Brock and something made me think that it was better he didn’t think I was interested in him at all.

  I looked once more in the mirror, then drove down the lane, turned left on Highway 89 and drove back toward South Lake Tahoe.

  ELEVEN

  That evening I sat with Street in front of a crackling fire in her condo. Spot sprawled on the floor as if he were going to mold himself into it. His front legs were wide apart, head down so low that his jowls spread onto the carpet.

  Street was wearing a burgundy velour lounging outfit that probably wasn’t legal attire more than ten feet from a bedroom. If Rodin had seen her, he would have stopped sculpting nudes and draped all his figures in velour.

  We had opened a Ravenwood Zinfandel. Street was making her standard seven drops last an hour, while I had a couple of glasses. I told her about Morella Meyer and the note that said she was to call someone named Strict after her dive.

  “And she acted suspicious when you asked her about it?” Street said.

  “More tense than suspicious. Almost irritated.”

  “Maybe there’s an officer named Strict on the SLT force.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve seen the roster a few times and I think I would have remembered such a name. Besides, she’d logically be calling the person who hired her, and that was Mallory. But I’ll call Mallory and ask him just to be sure.” I picked up Street’s phone and dialed Mallory at home.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said when he answered.

  “Why?” Mallory said. “Just because you’re interrupting my favorite show?”

  “Just a quick question. Was it you who hired Morella Meyer or was it someone else?”

  “Me. Why?”

  I ignored the why. “Which phone numbers did you give her to call you?”

  “Just the ones on my card, of course. I didn’t want her bothering me at home.”

  “I don’t have your card handy. Can you tell me which numbers those were?”

  “If you tell me why you’re asking.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” I said.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “If it turns out to be something, I promise you’ll get it all. If not, I don’t want to waste your time.”

  Mallory grunted, then rattled off three numbers which I presumed were his office, his cell and dispatch.

  “Thanks,” I said. “One more thing. Anybody on the force named Strict?”

  “What kind of a name is that?”

  “I don’t know. But not a cop name?”

  “No,” Mallory said, the gruffness in his voice indicating that he thought I was wasting his time.

  I thanked him and hung up.

  Street said, “Maybe Strict is Morella’s nickname for Mallory. It fits.”

  “True. But do the numbers fit?” I wrote Mallory’s numbers next to the various combinations I’d surmised from Morella’s messy handwriting. Street came up with a couple more possibilities based on how numbers could be formed. Even so, we couldn’t make anything match up. Either my memory was unclear, or else Strict was someone other than Mallory.

  Street sipped another drop of wine. “You’re thinking that Strict may be someone connected to the murder rather than someone connected to the police.”

  “It’s possible. Morella may be collecting two fees for one job.”

  Street tapped her finger on the paper next to the phone numbers. “You could call all of these possibilities and ask to speak to Strict.”

  While I ruminated on that, Street thought better of it and shook her head. “No, maybe that is a bad idea. Not only don’t we know if Strict is a real name or some other kind of moniker, we don’t even know if it is a man or woman. If Strict is the bad guy then a phone call would just tip him off and make him go deeper under cover.”

  “I’ll run these numbers through the reverse directories and see what I can find out. If none of them connects to a name, I can always prevail on a colleague in San Francisco who has connections in the phone company.”

  “A cop you used to work with?”

  “Yeah. Upton. But I still owe him a favor so I don’t want to bug him until I’ve exhausted any other possibilities.”

  “Isn’t he the one who helped you after...” Street stopped.

  “Yes,” I said. “After the shooting at the bank, I became an automaton going through the motions, numb from the neck up. Upton steered me through the inquiries and sat next to me during the long hours while the various commissions interrogated me. Without him, it would have been even harder.”

  Street put her hand on my arm and we sat in silence for a minute. She said, “You spoke to Janeen Kahale again today?”

  “Yes.” I drank some wine, then told Street about my afternoon with Janeen Kahale and her grandson Phillip.

  When I was through, Street said, “Do you think that other people would have found out about the Kahale tradition of putting sacred items in the family shrine?”

  “Absolutely. Janeen said that it was talked about freely. But she also said that the younger Kahales never paid much attention to the whole idea. Even so, I have to think that when other people heard about it they would be intrigued.”

  “What about the location?” Street asked. “Wouldn’t that secret have been discovered by others?”

  “Hard to say. You know how some people are. Tell them that something is a secret and it just ensures that they pass it on sooner rather than later.”

  “Isn’t that the truth,” Street said.

  “But in this case, it is a father/son thing, with only the two of them ever knowing at any one time. And it sounds like the location is not something that one could simply convey by telling. Those cliffs are huge. Apparently, the father has to personally take the son there. Janeen said it is a two or three day experience. That kind of ritual would be powerful and very effective in convincing the son of the significance of keeping the location private.”

  “The ultimate bonding between father and son.”

  “I would think so,” I said.

  “What about those fathers and sons who don’t get along or even hate each other? The Kahale family must have had its share of strained relationships over the generations since this tradition was started.”

  “Certainly,” I said. “And I have to think that here and there someone gave their best friend or their spouse a good idea of where the secret place was. Or even took them there and showed them th
e cache of goods. But my hunch is that almost no one knows of the place outside of Janeen’s ex-husband Jasper. According to Janeen, now that her son Thos is dead Jasper will pass on the secret to his nephew John.”

  “Why are you so sure that almost no one else knows?” Street asked.

  “Because of Thos’s murder. I think that Janeen Kahale knew her son quite well. And from our discussion it seems that the only thing about his life that might draw in a killer is this secret. If the killer forced the information out of Thos, he probably killed Thos to cover his tracks. The very fact that Thos was killed suggests that Thos betrayed the secret, a secret that only Thos and Jasper knew.” I said. “Turns out there is another death that may connect as well.”

  Street cocked her head.

  I told her about how shortly after Jasper’s father died of cancer, his brother died in an auto accident on the road to the top of the Na Pali cliffs.

  Street seemed appalled at the implication. “You couldn’t fake the father’s cancer, but you think that the brother knew where the shrine was and got killed because of it?”

  “It’s possible, although Janeen didn’t think Jasper would have broken tradition and told his brother the location. So I have another theory.

  “Let’s assume,” I continued, “that someone learned about the shrine and wanted to discover the location. He doesn’t want to wait for a Kahale family member to die so that he can secretly follow Jasper to the shrine. Who knows how long that would take?”

  “You’re saying that this predator caused the accident that killed Jasper’s brother just so that Jasper or Thos could be followed to the cliff?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “If Jasper’s father died of lung cancer, the bad guy could have followed Jasper then.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know about the shrine then. Or maybe it was that event and the subsequent trip to the shrine that got talked about and alerted this guy in the first place.”

  “You have an imagination, I’ll give you that.”

  “Morella Meyer just told me that imagination is more important than knowledge.”

  “She’s quoting Einstein?” Street said.

  “How’d you know Einstein said that?” I asked, astonished. Street never failed to surprise me.

  “I learned about more than bugs in college,” she said.

  “So I see.”

  Street looked at me with amusement. “You’re pretty convinced of this wild idea, huh?”

  “Why do you say this is a wild idea?” I said. “Oh, you think that there are other reasons that cause people to get murdered besides secret shrines on the cliffs of Kauai.”

  “Well, now that you put it that way, probably not.” Street grinned. “But it is a possibility. I remember reading about one or two murders in the paper over the years where there was no mention at all of shrines or sacred cliffs.”

  “It’s usually in the follow-up article the next day,” I said. “Remember, a detective has to be good at follow-through.” I put my hand on her thigh. Her muscles were firm under the soft velour.

  “You mean, you never just start something and then drop it before you’ve completed a full investigation?”

  I turned sideways on the loveseat and gently traced the line of Street’s jaw from her ear to her chin and then down her perfect neck to the hollow of her throat. “Never,” I said. The top to her outfit had some buttons that never got hitched. That made it easy to trace lower.

  “What if your investigation suggests that you make a closer examination?” Her breathing was audible.

  “I keep at it until I’ve uncovered everything.”

  Later, I watched from her bed while Street slipped into a nightgown. She pulled a brush through her hair and saw me looking at her in the mirror. “I feel like a spotlight is trained on me,” she said. “You’re giving me one of those intense stares again.”

  “If I looked like a cross between Audrey Hepburn and a Formula One race car, you’d give me an intense stare, too.”

  “Don’t,” Street said. “I need to concentrate on finishing some homework this evening and then getting a good night’s sleep.”

  I remembered that just yesterday Street had announced she was going solo again. I was expected to go home to my cabin and sleep alone for the first time in months. An ache grew in my solar plexus.

  Street continued, “I’m supposed to turn in my bark beetle counts to the Forest Service tomorrow and I’m nowhere near ready.”

  “Can’t you call them and tell them the data isn’t analyzed yet? Maybe say that you have to go on a sudden unexpected vacation?”

  “I would if I were going on vacation.”

  “Which brings up something I forgot to ask you. Would you like to go to Kauai with me?”

  Street stopped brushing her hair, dropped her arms to her sides and faced me. “When did you have in mind?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  Street stared at me. Finally she said, “Thos was killed here in Tahoe. Shouldn’t you be investigating here?”

  “Mallory and a bunch of cops are investigating here. I’d be retracing their steps. Thos lived in Kauai. The other people who have died and were connected to Thos were in Kauai. And the only unusual thing in Thos’s life that I’ve learned about is the shrine which is in Kauai. Makes sense I should start there. Maybe you and I could vacation a little when I’m not detecting.”

  Street turned and picked up the phone. “This is why the Forest Service installed voice mail,” she said, dialing.

  TWELVE

  Street decided that since I was already in her bed, I might as well spend one more night with her. We didn’t talk about the man who’d been watching my cabin from the clearing in the woods, but it probably played a part in her decision. I was grateful either way.

  The next morning I took Spot home to feed him. When I let him out of the Jeep, he ran toward the cabin, but stopped short of the door and stuck his nose into wind-blown snow. He sniffed, pushing snow around with his snout. Then he moved a couple feet away and did the same. His tail was held high. Like a search dog, he was alerting to a scent. He moved another couple feet, plunged his nose back into the snow. He was obviously smelling a recent visitor, but any footprints were obscured by snow. It wasn’t blowing now, but I remembered wind when I woke up. My visitor had come prior to that.

  I looked for a card or note shoved into the crack of the door. There was none.

  Spot didn’t come to the door. He moved sideways toward the bedroom window. His movements became agitated, and he started panting. I followed him as he frantically sniffed the ground below the window. Next, he ran around the far side of the cabin and inspected the ground near the kitchen window.

  “What is it, Spot? What do you smell?”

  Spot jumped up, front paws on the kitchen windowsill, and sniffed the perimeter of the glass.

  “Where else, Spot?” I walked down the back side of the cabin toward the deck. “Do you smell him on the deck?”

  Spot came toward me, sniffing the air and the snow. Then he turned back and once again zeroed in on the kitchen window.

  After a minute, I took Spot around the cabin and then through the four small rooms inside. He alerted to nothing else. That meant my visitor had not walked up to either the front door or the deck door and instead had only inspected the windows.

  I fed Spot, then dialed Diamond Martinez. While I listened to the ringing on the other end, I gave a tap to my Calder mobile. Diamond didn’t answer, so I dialed his pager and entered my number. The mobile still danced. A striking blend of art and engineering. Balance. Nearby, Rodin’s lovers were still reaching for each other. Passion.

  Diamond answered my page by showing up at the door to my little cabin fifteen minutes later.

  Spot gave a single, deep woof at the knock. He pushed his snout out the door as I opened it. When Spot saw that it was Diamond calling, he shouldered me aside and stepped out to greet the sheriff’s deputy, his tail beating the doorjamb like a Z
ydeco percussionist.

  Diamond held out his hand for Spot to sniff. I often thought that one whiff of a hand told a dog a chronology going back several days.

  “You learn anything about the Kahale murder, yet?” Diamond asked.

  “I was going to ask you that,” I said, “you being an official law enforcement officer.”

  “Naw. Douglas County has its hands full watching the sage brush grow. Besides, we Nevada types like to keep our distance from California. Lotta crazies over there.” He bent his head toward the west side of the lake. Spot nosed Diamond’s hand around until Diamond gave in and gave him an aggressive head rub with both hands. Spot leaned into it and Diamond had to move a foot back to brace himself.

  “In Mexico we’d put a sheriff’s badge on this dog and have him sit at the entrance to town. Scare off the riffraff.”

  “I was thinking you could test-drive that very idea this coming week. Take his largeness down to Douglas County headquarters and teach him to play good cop to your bad cop. What do you think?”

  Diamond looked up at me. “I think you sound like another gringo who can’t be trusted. You’re looking for a dog sitter. Why not come right out and say it? The least you could do is entice me with a bottle of scotch.”

  “Sorry, I forgot that bribing an officer of the law is de rigueur in Nevada. But what happened to tequila?”

  Diamond shrugged. “Scotch is better. When you gonna be leaving?”

  I turned and looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. “In about twenty minutes.”

  “And you’ll be back in...?”

  “I don’t know. A few days to a week, maybe.”

  “You and Street eloping?”

  I glanced at the Rodin sculpture. “I would if she would. I’d even put up with a real wedding.”

  “Me too, girl like that,” Diamond said. “You got a location picked out for this impromptu vacation, or are you just going to go to the airport and see where the next flight is going?”

  “Kauai,” I said.

  “One of the Hawaiian Islands.”

  I nodded. “You know my cell number,” I said. “And you remember where I keep the spare house key.”