by Todd Borg
“Katie’s giant hamsteak?” I guessed.
“You got it. Noon-thirty or so?”
“I’ll be there.”
I called Diamond back.
“One more thing,” I said when he answered. I explained that I’d been thinking about Heat, the mystery horse that roamed through the Tahoe forest. And I remembered that Maria, Diamond’s new girlfriend, ran a horse-boarding ranch.
“You nearby?” I asked.
“Up at the top of the grade.”
“Meet me for a question?”
“Sure. I’ll turn into the pull-over at middle-Kingsbury near the Chart House.”
I drove up Kingsbury Grade and spotted Diamond’s Explorer half way up. I pulled in next to him, facing the other way, cop-style, so our windows lined up.
“A question about Maria,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“She boards horses, which means she knows a lot about them.”
“Pretty much of an expert,” Diamond said.
“I keep wondering how the wild Mustang named Heat got on the wrong side of the mountains. You think Maria would know about Mustangs?”
“She has a Mustang. Probably knows more about Mustangs than the people who thin the Mustang herds. Lotta brains behind her curves.”
“You still tight with her?”
“I am but a moth to Maria’s flame.” His voice was a touch breathy.
“Love the way you roll the R in her name,” I said. I attempted the roll. “Maria.” A clear failure. “Maria,” I tried again, opening my mouth wide and keeping it wide. It sounded like an infection had swollen my tongue and pushed it back into my throat. “We only just met her that one brief time,” I said. “And it’s been, what, two months since you disappeared into her charms?”
“You noticed,” he said.
“Street did, too.”
“Imagine you just met Street,” he said.
“So?” I said.
“She was like a flower, like an exotic orchid. You must have felt that. Am I right?”
“Right. I still feel it.”
“And when she touched you, it was like electricity on your skin. Like hot salsa on your palette.”
“An orchid with electricity and salsa?”
Diamond flicked his hand in the air, dismissing my comment.
“I appreciate the romantic impulse,” I said, “but it sounds a little rough, not like something from a guy who reads Shakespeare.”
“Actually, I’ve been reading Byron’s Don Juan. Not like I’m any Don Juan. But it makes you think.”
“Maria is something, no doubt about it.”
He ignored me. “So I imagine spending more time with this woman who seemed to walk out of a dream, and I think that if I could spend just one more day with her, my world would be complete. So then I get the chance. Do I show up alone, with flowers and wine and tall candles and the special hot chili sauce I cooked up especially for this occasion and a CD with her favorite mariachi band?”
“I might be getting the picture…”
“Or,” Diamond interrupted, “do I bring along my two best friends and settle for a touch of the toes under the table during dinner, a wink and a blown kiss when other faces happen to look away, a…”
“Please tell me this description will terminate before you get to the color of her bras,” I said.
“Peach like the sunset on the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán, magenta like the bougainvillea on my favorite church wall in Guadalajara, turquoise like the waters of Isla Mujeres off the Yucatán Peninsula.”
“Got it. So how ’bout you and Maria come to my cabin, and I’ll wait on you. Barbecued ribs, spuds, Caesar salad, and I’ve got a DK Cellars Petite Sirah that will make you consider bagging your job and going into the winery business.”
“Part of your fixation on the new Fair Play appellation?”
“Yeah. Took a few decades for the foothills to become the sudden vino hotspot, but it was worth the wait.”
“Let me call Maria and see.”
Diamond pulled out his cell, dialed, talked in low tones and murmurs, rolling his Rs, making me feel like I was bereft of romance and feeling and poetry. Maybe I should read Byron.
Diamond hung up, shook his head. “Maria has to be at her place to meet a woman who is coming to pick up her horse. A Tennessee Walker called Captain. Maria says she will probably come tomorrow. But she might come tonight. So we will eat there. And she will serve her most famous dinner.”
I waited, did the pantomime give-me-a-little-clue hand motion.
“Maria’s Numero Uno Hot Chili Swedish Meatball Tortilla Explosion.”
“It sounded like you said Swedish.”
“Maria jokes about going to Stockholm and waking up those pasty-faced northerners with her gourmet meals.”
“Swedish culinary standards done Mexican-style. Probably be a killer business model,” I said.
“Bring Street and his largeness,” Diamond said. “Eight o’clock.”
I drove the rest of the way up Kingsbury Grade and was up and over Daggett Pass and down into the little farm town of Minden a little before 12:30.
My lunch date walked in a few minutes after me, a smallish woman with short sandy hair but looking imposing in her Douglas County Sheriff’s uniform.
“Tallest guy in the room probably means Owen McKenna,” she said.
“Captain,” I said, nodding.
“Call me Robyn.”
We shook hands, found a table, got our food, chatted about Diamond, then got to business.
“We do our basic investigation,” she said, “and find nothing particularly unusual except for a young, healthy guy who, according to people who were familiar with his climbing skills, shouldn’t have fallen off Cave Rock. We add up all of our information, and it still spells accident. Then you call and ask after him and seriously upset the status quo. What gives?”
“Eli was a partner of Ryan Lear, a guy who is being harassed by unknown persons.”
“You’re wondering if someone killed your client’s partner as a way to harass him? That’s some pretty serious harassment, even for a big metropolis like Douglas County, Nevada.” She drank coffee. “What kind of place do you think we run?” She cut off a big corner of ham and ate it.
“Just asking,” I said. “You got a technical cause of death?”
“The final decision was cardiac arrest caused by brain damage caused by blunt-force trauma. Typical for a fall like that.”
“Any interesting details?”
“I knew you’d ask that. So I took another look at the file before I came here. A whole lot of broken bones, lots of road rash from both the rock he hit just above the tunnel and also from the grill of the truck. The guy was pretty banged up.”
“You find anything?”
“Nothing to a casual observer. But for you, I might point out that there was an unusual cut on his right ankle.”
“Easy to do falling from the cliff,” I said.
“Maybe. Maybe not. This cut went halfway around his ankle. Like he hit a sharp rock as he quickly rotated.”
“So maybe it’s not easy to do,” I said.
“We interviewed several people who saw the fall, including his girlfriend. They all said it was a clean fall until he hit the rock above the tunnel. No spinning.”
“What did the cut look like?”
“A relatively clean laceration. Something sharp sliced through the skin to the bone.”
“The wound was fresh?”
She nodded.
“Any foreign material in the wound?”
“I’ll say. Grit and dirt and grime and some tiny pebble-type rocks. We even found motor oil in the cut. Turns out the truck had a little leak and its fan belt was spraying a fine oil mist as the truck drove. Don’t they know that’s against the keep-the-lake-blue rules?”
“Got a hypothesis?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I’d guess that he got all the way to the top of the cliff, out of sight from the onlook
ers. Then he stepped against something sharp. Maybe he was turning as he bumped it. Or maybe it was a scruffy little plant with barbed branches, and he jerked away, and it kind of wrapped around his ankle, and the cut startled him enough that he fell back and off the cliff.”
“You looked around at the top of Cave Rock?”
“The next morning, yes. Sergeant Martinez led the crusade. But even his illustriousness couldn’t find anything that would make that cut.”
We talked about it for another five minutes, and then Captain Bridbury had to go.
“One more quick question,” I said. “Anything yet on the remains that Diamond brought back from Genoa Peak?”
“Not much. A fresh fracture of the left humerus.”
“Upper arm bone,” I said.
“Correct.”
“No sign of heeling.”
“At the micro level, yes. But nothing to speak of. So the person died within hours of sustaining the injury.”
I thanked her and drove back up to Tahoe.
SEVENTEEN
After talking to Captain Bridbury, I drove back up and over Kingsbury Grade. My cell rang as I got to the lake and turned north on 50.
“Owen McKenna,” I said.
“Owen! Herman is dead!” Ryan said, panicked.
“Your neighbor, the piano tuner?”
“Yes! I went to his cabin, and he didn’t answer, so I looked in the window, and he was lying on the floor under his piano! I went inside - the door was unlocked - and he was dead!”
“Are you sure he’s dead? Maybe it’s another stroke.”
“He’s dead. I could tell. But I called nine-one-one, anyway. Then I called you. What should I do now?”
“Nothing. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
I pulled into Ryan’s road a few minutes later. Two sheriff’s vehicles, a fire truck, and an ambulance were already there.
I got out of the Jeep and walked over to where Diamond was pacing near Herman’s cabin.
He saw me and started talking as if under steam pressure. “I got here first. I told the young EMS guys that Herman was already cold and flexible, past his rigor. But they pulled out their bags of gear and a defibrillator, anyway. I tried to stop them, but they said they’re only following orders, that they have a duty to act.”
He continued. “Worst insult in this new world is you die - not from electrical shock or something that temporarily stops your heart - but from something final like disease or old age, and someone makes the mistake of calling nine-one-one, and the boys with the uniforms come and start pumping your dead body full of stimulant drugs, and they put the paddles on your chest and the oxygen mask on your face, and they make like they’re going to bring you back to life. Of course they can’t do that, but what they can do is cost the county or the family of the deceased a huge amount of money for failing at an unachievable goal.
“The public thinks it’s not possible or even right to die anymore without being accompanied by red and blue lights flashing, and sirens ripping out the neighbors’ ears, and a dozen so-called authorities making decisions about the most private experience you’ll ever have. Is this how ordinary people finally get their fifteen minutes of fame? Gimme back the nineteenth century when a guy could die in peace.” Diamond was breathing hard.
“Sorry,” I said. “Any idea about the cause of death?”
Diamond shook his head. “No physical trauma that I could see. Could be another stroke. Could be a fall.”
“Could be someone came in and pushed him down,” I said. “Or scared him and his heart gave out.”
Diamond nodded. “Either way, every other hour we get another situation at the Lear household. That kid’s the black hole of trouble. No problem can escape his gravity.”
“You’re right,” I said. “But it’s not his fault. I’ll go see how he’s doing. Let me know if I can help. Otherwise, see you tonight at Maria’s.”
Diamond nodded and turned as the two paramedics came back out of the cabin wearing somber faces. They walked past him and out to the ambulance.
I walked over to Ryan’s house, waved at Praeger who was back on duty. The door was unlocked, no chains, security overlooked in the commotion. Ryan was pacing the great room. Lily was sitting next to Spot, petting him, sobbing. I picked her up.
“It’s a very sad day for Herman,” I said.
She nodded, her face swollen and red, her tears voluminous. She touched my face.
“Why did grandpa Herman die? I asked Ryan, but he doesn’t know.”
“I don’t know either, Lily, but we all eventually die. Maybe it was his turn.”
“Life was too short for Herman,” she said, sounding three times her age.
“Yes, it was.”
She looked at me, her large, black eyes young and innocent. “I don’t like it,” she said.
“Me neither,” I said.
“I don’t have any ideas about this,” she said, crying harder.
“Me neither.”
It was two hours before the officials were through officiating and Herman’s body had been taken away. Ryan and Lily had calmed a bit. At one point, both of them sat next to Spot on the rug in the great room.
After a time, Ryan took me aside.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “Lily has never had this experience. When dad died, she was very young. But now she understands, and she’s devastated.”
“Lily will be okay if you keep her active. Talk to her about Herman. Let her grieve. But take her out and show her that the world is alive. Death is part of life. But you can be alive for her.”
“You think it’s okay for me to leave with her?”
“Yes. You’re in a car, moving, probably unknown to the kidnapper. If you stay in public places where there are lots of people, I think you’ll be okay. But if you want, you can take your hired off-duty police guard with you.”
“Like a chaperone,” Ryan said, his eyes squinting.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said.
Ryan looked at me, his jaw muscles bulging. He made a single nod and turned away.
EIGHTEEN
An hour later, at my insistence, Ryan, Lily, Spot and I walked down their drive and up their road to the highway. We crossed Highway 50 toward the mountains, what Hawaiians call the mauka side of the highway. After walking back through the forest, we came to one of the many trails and wandered along toward the south. I showed Lily and Ryan some of the wildflowers that grew in late summer. I made them stop and stick their noses into the furrowed bark of the Jeffrey pine to smell the butterscotch. I pointed out the ubiquitous birds of Tahoe, Mountain chickadees and Steller’s jays and crows.
We’d gone maybe half a mile when we saw the man with the red knit cap and the camera, the guy who Street and I had met on horseback, the man who was focused on Heat, the man who, based on being hairless, I’d thought had been undergoing chemo. I felt a greater empathy, now that I knew about Lily.
“Travis Rundell,” I said, remembering at the last moment.
He looked at me, frowning, trying to remember.
“Owen McKenna,” I said. “My girlfriend and I were on horseback. You were after pictures of the wild Mustang.”
“Yes. Of course. Good to see you again. I remember now, because I’d just run into those tourist fellows who were drinking. As luck would have it, I saw the same two guys about a half-hour ago. Drinking as before. Really quite unpleasant.”
“Yeah, we saw them that other day, too. Making wisecracks and throwing their empties into the woods.”
“Oh, I hate that,” Rundell said.
“Get any pictures of the horse since we saw you?”
“Yes!” He was effervescent with excitement. “Yesterday, a person posted on my site about seeing Heat quite a ways south of here, not far from the Round Hill Shopping Center. She said that Heat was running north on one of the trails. So today I went out to hike the area where he might’ve ended up. And about two hours ago, I saw him about a mile south of here!
”
Lily looked up at me, a questioning look on her face.
“This is the man who runs the website about Heat,” I told her. I looked at Rundell. “Lily, here, is quite taken with Heat.”
He held up his camera. “I got some more pictures. He was quite a distance away, so I won’t know if any of them turned out until I download them. But if they’re good, I’ll put them on the website. They should be up by tomorrow if you want to check.”
“You’ll do that, won’t you?” I said to Lily.
She nodded.
“There’s one image I’m excited about,” he said. “Just as Heat turned to run, he swiveled and kind of reared up. I have this camera set on triple-shot when I push the shutter button, so I’m hoping one of them will show it. That would be cool.”
“Good luck,” I said, as we moved on.
He nodded. “Not to be a pain,” he said, “but if you go south of here very far, don’t take that fork to the east. That’s where I saw those guys again. They’re quite drunk and aggressive. Looking for a fight, I think. I don’t understand why they keep hanging around here. It’s like they’ve taken over the forest and made it very unpleasant for the rest of us.”
“Good to know,” I said.
We said goodbye, and Rundell continued north.
After a moment, Ryan said, “That guy reminds me of someone. Like I’ve seen his brother. Maybe we shouldn’t go toward those guys he was referring to.” His voice had a waver in it, and I realized that he had a visceral reaction that traced back to the bullies of his youth.
“We won’t,” I said. “There’s a place where we can take another trail back.”
It was a long route, but no doubt good for both Ryan and Lily. As we came over a rise near the highway, there was a small clearing down below. Two small cars and a large pickup were parked off the highway. A group of five people were clustered around the back of the pickup, drinking beers from a case in the pickup’s bed. The pickup was white and looked familiar. I paused.
“Ryan, isn’t that Hannah sitting on the tailgate of the pickup? The nanny you fired?”