Tahoe Dark (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 14) (7 page)

I called Mallory.

“Mallory,” he said in a loud voice when my call was transferred through.

“McKenna calling to report a potential kidnapping in your fair city.”

“Does this have something to do with the action in Incline? I heard that you were a person of interest in a murder. What a kick.”

I ignored Mallory’s enthusiasm. “The murder victim, David Montrop, was a con artist and defendant in a manslaughter case when I was on the SFPD. That could be why he had written a note that mentioned me. Anyway, I came to inform his son Jonas Montrop, who lives on Tahoe Keys Boulevard. I’m there now. I found the door broken in. The kid is missing. There are signs of a struggle in the bedroom. Sergeant Lori Lanzen of Washoe County just found out that David Montrop withdrew twenty-five thousand in cash from his bank this morning.”

“Someone nabbed the kid, nicked the dad for ransom, then killed the dad when he paid the money?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“I heard something about how he died, but it didn’t make sense. Something about a paddle board?”

“It appears that someone hit him with a paddle board. Or maybe threw it at him. Blunt force trauma to the head and chest.”

“There’s an unusual murder weapon. So we have to assume that it’s connected to the kid’s disappearance. What’s the kid’s address? I’ll send a team over.”

I gave Mallory the number on Tahoe Keys Boulevard.

“You calling Ramos?” he said.

“Kidnapping is FBI territory,” I said.

We said goodbye.

I had the number of the FBI’s Tahoe office. I dialed.

“Owen McKenna calling for Agent Ramos, please,” I said when the phone was answered. “I need to report a kidnapping.” I figured that mentioning a federal crime would make it less likely that Ramos would be out of the office.

“Please hold.”

“Mr. McKenna, it is good to talk to you,” Ramos said when he picked up, his speech showing his trademark careful diction and precise enunciation. I could picture him at his desk in his sport jacket and pressed trousers and his meticulously-barbered moustache. “You have a kidnapping? We haven’t heard.”

“I just discovered it. I’m not even certain of it. Tahoe Keys Boulevard. A kid named Jonas Montrop, son of David Montrop who died this morning from a blow by a paddle board in Incline Village.”

“I heard of that. Are the death and kidnapping connected?”

“I don’t know, but it seems logical. I just got word from Sergeant Lori Lanzen, Washoe County, that Montrop withdrew twenty-five thousand in cash from the bank this morning.”

“Ransom?”

“Maybe,” I said. “He’s a booking agent for bands. He told the bank manager it was a payment to a band. There’s no sign of the money.”

“You’ve called Mallory?”

“Yeah. Then you. I’ll also let Sergeant Diamond Martinez know. Do you want in on any of this?” I said.

“You know we’re here to support all official law enforcement agencies.”

I took that as a slam on my non-official, private investigator status.

“But you and I go back a ways,” he continued. “So I imagine that you will be working with the officers you mentioned. May I ask who your client is?”

“I don’t have a client.”

There was a pause. “I see,” Ramos said, not sounding happy. “What is the address of the victim?”

I gave it to him.

“Okay, we’ll get on it. Let me know if we can help in any other way.”

“Thanks,” I said. I hung up.

I continued my no-touch search. After the South Lake Tahoe cops got a warrant, they could start opening drawers and be more thorough in gathering evidence.

I walked through the house, looking at everything in sight. Then I went back outside and took note of the layout of the street and drive and the front door. I considered Jonas’s bedroom windows on the front, right corner of the house, visible to all, easy to watch from a distance. When he turned off his lights and went to bed, it would be obvious to anyone nearby. I went back to the front door and looked at the damage. Like the cabin, the door was old. It was made of thin wood, and the deadbolt lock, while itself strong, projected into a jamb made of lightweight pine. It would splinter and break with any heavy impact of shoulder against door.

Back in the bedroom, something caught my attention. Near the spilled water was a bit of paper. I reached down and set one of my cards next to it, aligned edge-to-edge to mark its position, then slipped another card under the piece and lifted it up without touching it. The piece of paper was torn, triangular in shape. It was straight cut on two sides at right angles to each other. The hypotenuse of the triangular piece was torn. There was an area with some writing and a portion of a photo. The paper was wavy from the water, and the writing and photo were a bit smudged.

The paper had originally been glossy, as if from a magazine. The photo portion showed the rear half of a runabout speeding across a body of water, its wake a long, low wedge of spreading waves. The adjacent writing had just two words beginning at the torn edge. It said, ‘cury sterndrives.’ I realized that it had probably said, ‘Mercury sterndrives’ before it was torn. The reverse side of the paper was white with no printing. Nothing about it offered any clue to the man or men who yanked Jonas out of bed in the night.

I lowered my card so that the torn paper slid off onto the carpet in the exact same position that I’d found it. I picked up the card I’d used as a marker and pocketed it.

I walked back through the little house. It was neat like his dad’s house in Incline. But instead of fancy furniture and art, Jonas’s living room had only the table with the computer. Jonas had no desk. The only paperwork I found was some mail in a cardboard box next to the desktop computer. Using my pen, I flipped through the envelopes. They were bills addressed to Jonas Montrop.

When I stopped moving the mail in the box, I heard the soft whir of a fan and realized that the desktop computer was on, the cooling fan barely perceptible. But the screen was dark.

I bumped the mouse.

The screen lit up. On it was a note.

‘Flynn,

Let me put this in writing so my meaning is perfectly clear. I didn’t know about the leak. I swear it. Even though things can be fixed, I’ll give you the money back. We didn’t transfer title yet, anyway, so it’s not like you’re stuck with it. You said I was trying to kill you. That’s simply not true. I can prove that if you’

The note ended as if he’d been interrupted or had simply stopped writing until he thought of the best words. The police would probably be able to pull prints off the keyboard or see if the keys had been wiped. Every indication  in the house suggested that Jonas lived alone. A single toothbrush, one towel in the bathroom, a single glass and plate in the dish rack, one pair of hiking boots by the front door, just a few clothes in the closet.

I saw nothing else revealing, so I went outside to wait for the police.

A South Lake Tahoe black-and-white drove up a moment later. Two men got out.

“Hey, McKenna,” one of them said. The other one nodded at me. I’d met both, but I didn’t remember their names. “Commander says you’ve got an abduction.”

I took them into the house and showed them what I’d found, then left them to their work.

Back in the Jeep, I dialed the Incline Village Sergeant.

“Lori Lanzen,” she answered.

“Owen McKenna. I’ve got a more thorough report on Jonas.”

“Shoot.”

So I gave it all to her, the spilled water, stuff knocked over, the computer, the unfinished letter, the little scrap of torn paper.

“Any conclusions?” she said.

“No.”

“Let me know what you learn,” she said, “and I’ll do the same.”

We said goodbye.

EIGHT

I called Street. She was at her lab.

“Blondie and I were just about to head home,” she said.

“Then perhaps I could interest you in a dinner date?” I said. “Something nice?”

I could almost hear her thinking through her schedule, contemplating whether or not she could meet all of her obligations with the sudden insertion into her schedule of an evening off.

“I’d even take a shower and switch out my hiking boots for shoes,” I said to sweeten the deal.

“You really know how to make a girl feel special,” she said. “How about picking me up at seven?”

“Will do.”

At the appointed hour, Spot and I drove down to Street’s condo. When Street opened the door, he trotted inside, greeted Blondie, then made a circuit of Street’s kitchen, his nose pausing at the microwave and the toaster oven and then lingering at the stove top, nostrils flexing, divining the details of Street’s previous half-dozen meals. Blondie followed him, looking up with a question in her eyes as if to wonder what it was like to be tall enough to reach over counter tops. When it seemed that there was nothing especially vulnerable to a Great Dane’s inspection – no defrosting filet mignon on top of the fridge – I turned to Street.

She’d recently had her hair tinted to a very dark auburn and cut in a boyish, asymmetrical bob that curled around her face on both sides. It was parted on the left and combed while still wet so that the coarse comb left faint grooves in her hair, a look that was more casual than what a brush would do. Maybe she sported a hint of auburn eye shadow. Maybe her lip gloss had a touch of matching color. I’ve never understood the alchemy of makeup, and I’ve always thought that her attractiveness was intrinsic to her personality and unaffected by the shallower effects of color and hair shape. Street was a scientist, not an actress, and her lack of movie star beauty in no way lessened her appeal to me.

And tonight, Street’s allure was riveting. She was wearing a satin black top that ended an inch above the waistband of her thin, skin-tight, black pants. On her feet were black shoes that looked like ballet slippers, revealing ankles so perfect that Michelangelo would have struggled to get them right. Artfully draped across her shoulders was a filmy tie-dyed scarf in purple and magenta with hints of orange. It must have been ten feet long.

“If a breeze comes up and you do a pirouette,” I said, “that scarf will flow like an apparition.”

“Really?” She held up one end of the scarf, took two fast, long steps across the living room and turned, her hand sweeping the fabric above her head in a large arc. The scarf lofted and traced wave patterns through the air. Street’s elegance and grace were mesmerizing. When the scarf had settled, she saw me looking at her legs.

“Do you think these leggings are okay?” She looked down as if to see what I saw.

“Yes, they’re definitely okay,” I said.

“But you have a look on your face that I can’t place.”

“I’m just reminded of a Lamborghini we saw in Italy last month. Very sleek but with lots of curves.”

“I remind you of a car.” Street’s eyes narrowed.

I shrugged. “It looked fast. No doubt, it was fast.”

“You think I’m a fast girl.” She made a little frown.

“Fast with me, anyway,” I said.

“And the leggings suggest that? Maybe I should wear harem pants instead.”

“No. When someone is as hot as you, leggings make sense.”

“That’s nice. But I don’t want other men to think I’m hot. Only you.”

“Not something you have control over. Other men would think you’re hot even if you wore a four-man, REI expedition tent.”

Street bit the side of her bottom lip. “I’ve never even tried one on. Is that a new fashion?”

“It will be if you start wearing one.”

Street put on her long, black, summer-weight coat. We left Spot and Blondie in her condo and walked outside.

“Like boarding the emperor’s chariot,” Street said as she got into my dented, bullet hole-ventilated Jeep.

“My thought exactly,” I said.

She continued, “Only it’s missing the velvet cushions and the silk window coverings and the cello accompanist and the four white stallions rushing us off into the night.”

“Is not my Jeep the modern, romantic equivalent?”

She frowned and shook her head.

“Oh,” I said.

We drove south, turned up Kingsbury Grade, went past her lab and my office, and climbed up the winding drive to the Chart House Restaurant. They gave us a table by the big windows, and we looked across Lake Tahoe as the sun lowered behind the Sierra Crest. Street had shrimp, and I had salmon, and the Russian River Valley pinot noir was perfect with both.

Of course, Street declined sharing the chocolate lava cake, so I had to eat it all myself.

Through it all, she was my dream date, charming and smart and engaging. And while she always protests my attentions to her beauty, putting an unconscious fingertip to the acne scars, she was gorgeous in every way that I care about.