Tahoe Blue Fire (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 13) (24 page)

THIRTY-SEVEN

The hot spring sun popped out and quickly began melting what snow was left on the highways after the plows had done their nighttime work. By the time we climbed up from Carson Valley and crested Daggett Pass at the top of Kingsbury Grade, the roads were free of snow and ice, and, as the sun cooked their surfaces, they steamed billowing clouds in the air. But under the trees, away from the sun, the snowpack was even deeper than before.

Because we were still very tired, we skipped stopping at my office or Street’s bug lab and drove up the East Shore toward home. The high sun was blinding on the snowfields of the West Shore mountains across the lake. I dropped Street off at her condo, and Spot and I drove up the mountain to my cabin.

There was another piece of paper stuck in my cabin door.

Like the first, it had the upside down pentagram symbol of evil Black Magic.

The message was once again written with a template, the block letters revealing nothing of the writer.

LAST CHANCE TO QUIT, MCKENNA. HOW MANY DEATHS CAN YOU TAKE?

I ushered Spot inside, away from any sightline from up on the mountain behind my cabin. The note may have been there for a few days, so it was unlikely a shooter was currently up on the mountain training his rifle’s sights on me.

After considering the risk and danger, I had a little internal debate about the merits and demerits of a late-morning barbecued hotdog on the deck. I won the debate, so I lit the charcoal and shoveled two and a half feet of snow off the deck as the coals warmed up. I mostly stayed back near the cabin wall so a shooter couldn’t hit me without running up on the deck, something I didn’t think fit his style.

Because hotdogs burn easily, I put four of them on the side with the fewest coals and arranged half a bag of French fries crosswise to the grill wires on the side with the most coals. I set buns and ketchup out on the little deck table and sat down to wait and turn the hotdogs and fries. Spot came over, his nose held high. He inched closer and closer to the barbecue, wet nostrils flexing.

“Carbon monoxide, dude,” I said, pushing him back. He swung his head and looked at me for a fraction of a second, his ear stud flashing, then turned back and stared at the hotdogs.

When the hotdogs and fries were done, I put half in Spot’s bowl to cool, broke them into pieces, doused them with Ketchup, and let him dive in.

When I eat hotdogs and fries, I savor the taste as the upside of eating unhealthy food. When Spot eats hotdogs, he savors the speed at which he can ingest them. We think of dogs as salivating over taste and smell. But Spot proves over and over that the big concern dogs have about meals isn’t how great they taste but how they can be a huge waste of time. Spot’s speed suggested that his time was extremely valuable and he didn’t have a second to spare. I’d almost finished chewing my first bite when he was done with his lunch. He licked the last drop of Ketchup out of his bowl, then lay down on the deck boards to enjoy the sunshine. The sun’s heat was so intense that the boards that I’d shoveled just minutes before were now snowless and steaming. Spot flopped over onto his side on the warming boards, gave a big sigh, and began snoozing.

After I ate, I pulled my reclining deck chair back up against the cabin so that I was out of sight. It was only one in the afternoon, but that was ten in the evening in Italy. I tipped my broad-brimmed hat over my face and snoozed along with Spot.

When I woke, my transition to the non-dream world was predictably slow. I brewed some coffee and drank it as I thought about how, despite what I’d learned about the Blue Fire Diamond, I was still no closer to finding the killer.

I turned on the laptop and started composing an email to send to [email protected]. I didn’t know for certain that the account holder was connected to the murders, so I wanted wording that would be suggestive but not accusatory.

I settled on, ‘I know your identity, and I know you want the Blue Fire. Contact me, and we’ll discuss terms. Owen McKenna.’ I hit send.

Next, I did some research on Sinatra, his associates, his songs, and his Cal Neva Hotel.

I learned that while Sinatra had been wildly successful at singing for his supper, he also made real money as a businessman who started Reprise Records in 1960, and then sold it for big bucks a few years later to Warner Brothers Music. It was his ownership of Reprise Records that gave him the nickname Chairman of the Board.

Sinatra also bought the Cal Neva Hotel and Casino in 1960. It was a period of intense activity at the Cal Neva involving many famous people. They were able to escape the paparazzi and move about the Cal Neva grounds incognito by utilizing secret tunnels that connected the various buildings.

Rat Pack members Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. performed there along with Sinatra. Will Rogers, Peter Lawford, Joe DiMaggio, and Marilyn Monroe vacationed there. Monroe came frequently enough that she had her own cabin near the lake.

In 1960, Monroe was filming in the nearby Nevada desert with Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift in what became the John Huston masterpiece, The Misfits. Sinatra invited the cast of The Misfits up to the Cal Neva, and he sang for them.

Monroe’s marriage to playwright Arthur Miller was collapsing during the filming of The Misfits, a movie for which Miller had written the screenplay.

Sinatra had reportedly been seduced by Monroe back when he was married to Ava Gardner. So when Monroe divorced Arthur Miller, Sinatra began focusing on Monroe, possibly hoping for a more permanent relationship with her.

Unfortunately, Sinatra’s misfortunes grew. He played too fast and loose with some Mob boys, especially Sam Giancana. And while the Nevada gaming bureaucrats had tried to give their most famous licensee a lot of wiggle room, Sinatra hadn’t been appropriately respectful of them. So they yanked his permits, which forced him out of the casino business.

It was a tough period for Sinatra, and he had emotional altercations with a range of people. Maybe his celebrity was a magnet for people problems. But it could also be that he was predisposed to such issues, because he referred to himself as an 18-karat manic depressive.

I’d met several manic depressives over the years - a great colorful term now lost to the temperate, boring, and politically correct term bi-polar disorder, and I always thought that they were less crazy than our culture commonly presents them. Nevertheless, it seemed perfect that an 18-karat mania might help someone low on their meds justify purchasing a mega diamond to give to a girl.

Especially if that girl was Marilyn Monroe.

I called my friend Glennie Gorman, ace reporter for the Tahoe Herald.

“Owen, you bad boy,” she exclaimed when I identified myself.

“Bad for what?”

“For not having called me in forever. What are you doing, where are you, and how is Street? Wait, never mind all that. Just tell me, how is His Largeness?”

I looked at him, sprawled on the rug in front of the wood stove. “He’s sleeping off a barbecued hotdog/French fry lunch as we speak.”

“This is how you augment the sawdust chunks? Where’s the broccoli for vitamins? And what’s this I hear about a quick trip to Italy?”

“The reason for my call. The Cal Neva Hotel on the North Shore,” I said. “What do you know about it?”

“What’s there to know? Nice place on the North Shore. Sits on the state line with half the lobby in California and half in Nevada. The swimming pool is split down the middle, too. Used to be owned by Frank Sinatra. Currently closed for renovation.”

“Zero in on the Sinatra part.”

“Oooh, now my antenna is vibrating. What are you working on?”

“The truth is that I don’t know,” I said.

“But it has something to do with Frank,” Glennie said. “Thus the Italian connection.”

“Maybe.”

“Okay. So this reporter could quote the book on his gaming license debacle and his fist fight with the Mob boss and his trysts with Monroe and his Rat Pack friends. But the most interesting thing about Sinatra wasn’t about him.”

“You lost me,” I said.

“Sinatra is the guy who introduced Marilyn Monroe to his friends the Kennedy Brothers, who also frequented his Cal Neva. The evidence suggests that both John and Bobby had flings with her. Which was probably hard for Sinatra. He wanted to impress her with the mighty and powerful men he knew. But he didn’t anticipate that she’d wander off into the presidential forest.”

“But isn’t that what sex goddesses do?”

“Like many women who hate to credit her with serious acting chops, I want to think that. But way, way back I remember doing a story on the famous acting coach Lee Strasberg. He said that of the hundreds of actors he worked with, it was Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe who stood above all the rest. And when I saw her last movie, The Misfits, I had to acknowledge that she was an amazing actor. Anyway, JFK was running for president at the time, and JFK’s charisma trumped even Sinatra’s. JFK and Marilyn Monroe embarked on a long affair that continued even after he moved into the White House.”

Glennie’s comment presented me with more reason for Sinatra to acquire the Blue Fire of Florence. With Marilyn Monroe succumbing to future President John Kennedy’s allure, Sinatra might think that acquiring one of the most famous gems in the world would woo her back.

“You went silent on me,” Glennie said.

“Sorry, you just got me thinking. Tell me, have you ever heard of the Blue Fire of Florence?”

“No. What’s that?”

I gave her the basics of the BFF and how Sinatra acquired it.

For a cynical reporter who can’t be surprised by anything, Glennie oohed and aahed at a pretty high amplitude. “What do you want from me?” she asked.

“I’m wondering if you can find out what the Blue Fire of Florence might be worth.”

It was a moment before Glennie spoke. “This is a diamond that might not exist, and even if it does, we don’t really have any information about it.”

“Correct.”

“Yet you want a value,” she said.

I thought about it. “Tell you what. Let’s just get a current value on the Hope Diamond, about which we know everything.”

“Because you think the Blue Fire of Florence would have the same value?”

“No. Substantially less, because it has no provenance. But the Hope value would give us a ballpark indication.”

“And how would I learn this?”

“You’re the investigative reporter.”

“Okay. I’ll call you when I know something.” She hung up.

THIRTY-EIGHT

The next morning, I decided to visit the safe house to check in on Adam Simms. On the way up Kingsbury Grade, I saw two rotary plows and a grader parked on a vacant lot. Maybe that’s where the Douglas County snow removal contractor stored them. But they were probably too far from the South Lake Tahoe snow dump to be considered in connection to the murders.

When I got to the safe house, I left Spot in the Jeep. Adam remembered me, but he was slow and had about him a general air of confusion. Blondie seemed ecstatic to have me reappear into her life. She jumped on me, raced around, jumped again, her tail a blur.

Adam and I talked for some time. I told him about our trip to Italy. When I explained what the Blue Fire of Florence was, he didn’t seem to have much interest.

After we talked, I asked, “May I look at the photos on your phone?”

Adam’s face changed from resignation to worry. “Why?”

“Maybe I’ll see something or someone that would give me useful information.”

“So you suspect me of murder?”

“It’s routine investigation procedure. It’s my job to look for information.”

“What if I don’t show you?” Adam didn’t look defiant. He looked confused.

“Then we’ll get a search warrant.”

“I could lose my phone before then. I could delete all my photos.”

“True, but how would that look?”

“I could call a lawyer.”

I wondered about the best response. “Yes, you could,” I said.

Adam thought about it. His eyes went back and forth like those of a guilty criminal.

Adam reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He leaned forward and handed it to me.

I turned it on and opened his camera roll.

There were 1814 photos. I couldn’t give them all proper attention without a great deal of time. But I wanted to get a feel for them, so I started with the most recent one and scrolled back through them.

They were a strange collection. Faces up close, full figures at a distance. There were pictures of food, asparagus and onions in a refrigerator drawer, milk and orange juice, canned beans, a jar of spaghetti sauce, toothpaste, deodorant, a box of Kleenex. There was a picture of a road sign, a picture of car keys, a picture of a door with letters that spelled a doctor’s name. There were pictures of all manner of prosaic objects. But there were no pretty pictures of scenery, no pictures similar to what other people had in their phones.

I clicked fast through all of the ones that were obvious memory helps or grocery lists and slowed for a close look at all of the ones of people’s faces. Most of the people meant nothing to me. Eventually, I came to a picture of myself. Later, I came to a picture of Diamond and a closeup picture of his sheriff’s name tag that he pins to his shirt.

Adam sat patiently while I continued to click through his photos.

Quite often, there was a picture of people that included a shot of Adam. I showed him one.

“This shot of you with these men, what was that about?”

He looked at it and frowned. “I don’t know. I try to have people use my phone to take pictures of me with other people. It’s supposed to help me remember what I did, where I went. Doctor’s suggestion.”

I kept scrolling through his photos. “Here’s another one with you in a group of people.” I held the phone out so he could see it. “Ring a bell?”

He shook his head. “I guess photos don’t really help my memory.”

After a couple of minutes, I came to a photo that stopped me.

It was a picture of a rotary, the big kind with two engines. On the door was the South Lake Tahoe city logo. The rotary was chewing its way down a snow berm, shooting a giant arc of snow into the forest.

“Do you know when you took this photo?” I held out the phone.

Adam grinned. “That one I do remember. I saw that rotary when I was going to the doctor. I was walking into the office as it came down the street. It was blowing the berm. It was amazing and louder than a full-speed freight train engine.”

“And you took the photo just because you liked it.”

He nodded, his eyes crinkling with excitement. “I’ve seen them with engines running, but I’ve never seen them up close while they were blowing snow.”

I’d never seen Adam look excited.

“I once worked at the yard where they store them,” he said. “I got to look inside the auger and impeller and the discharge chute. And one time, one of the drivers let me climb up into the cab, and he showed me how it worked. But I never got to actually drive one.”

That gave me pause. “Where was this yard where you worked?”

“The City of South Lake Tahoe. After I moved up to Tahoe to stay at Felicite’s house, she thought I should try to get a job. She said it would be good for my brain. The doctor agreed. So I applied around town. I tried for a bagging job at the supermarket, a valet park at the hotels, a general grunt job at a construction company. It was the city that took me on. They put me out at one of their equipment yards in the industrial area. The place where they store and work on the rotaries. I liked it. Those machines are awesome.”

“But you didn’t keep the job?”

Adam’s face lost its cheer. “I kept forgetting where I put stuff. Some of those tools are real expensive. After I lost a wrench set, I decided to quit.”

“Do you remember the name of the guy in charge of the yard?”

Adam shook his head.

“Does Brann Crosen sound familiar?”

Adam frowned. “I don’t remember.”

“About five-eight. Bodybuilder.”

“Oh, yeah. I didn’t like him.”

“Why not?”

Adam shrugged. “I didn’t think he could be trusted.”

“You might be right.” I gestured with the phone. “Mind if I email some of these photos to myself?”

“Help yourself,” he said.

When I was done, I handed Adam’s phone back to him.