Tahoe Payback (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 15)

by Todd Borg

  She held it up, gave it a shake. “An archive of Carson Valley insect history is stored in these spider webs,” she said, wiping at the gossamer threads. She plucked something very small from the detritus, held it up to the sunlight and looked at it. “An intact pupa case. Something prevented this poor guy from emerging from his post-larval nap and transformation. Now his remains are desiccated within the case.”

  “Where I see sticky dead bug stuff, you see a science lesson.”

  “Science lessons are life lessons,” she said. She put on the vest, which was a couple of sizes too big.

  I put on mine, which was too small.

  “You know these won’t save our lives if we go into the drink,” she said. “Tahoe’s too cold.”

  “Right. Flotation vests just make it so they can find our hypothermic bodies. But don’t worry, we’ll stay close to shore for the bulk of our trip. By the time we have to cross the open water of Emerald Bay to get to Fannette Island, we’ll have our technique down. We won’t overturn.”

  Street held my eyes. “You’re sure about that?”

  “Yeah. Totally confident.”

  “Totally,” she repeated slowly as if experimenting with the sound of the word. “Why am I not totally convinced?”

  “I totally have no idea.”

  Street looked up at the trees. “The wind in the branches is strong. It’ll be much stronger out on the water.”

  “The wind is from the west. So if we stay near the west shore, we’ll be in the lee. It shouldn’t be too bad.”

  Street lifted the cooler out of the back seat. “I hope you’re right.”

  I untied the canoe from the roof of the Jeep. I lifted it up by the gunwales, turned it upside down, and held it above my head. I carried it out to the beach and across the sand to the water. I set it down on the beach, the bow floating in the water, the stern on the sand.

  “This canoe seems smaller than normal,” Street said.

  “It is. Fourteen feet compared to seventeen for most canoes. But a small canoe is bigger than nearly any kayak.” I took the cooler from Street and set it in front of the stern seat where it would sit between my legs. Then I put the cushions in the center compartment and got Spot to lie down on them. Blondie nervously ran back and forth, whimpering.

  “I wonder if she’s ever been in a boat,” Street said. “That’s a question that always arises with a rescue dog. What is their past experience?”

  “Let’s have you sit on the bow seat and we’ll try to coax her to sit in front of you, between your knees.”

  “She certainly seems nervous. But I suppose the worst that could happen is she jumps into the water. And as we all know, Yellow Labs are as at home in the water as sea otters.”

  Street got into the bow seat. I spread out my jacket on the hull in front of Street for a bit of padding. Together we urged Blondie into the small space. Street got Blondie to sit, and she squeezed the dog between her knees. I handed Street a paddle, put one foot into the stern, and pushed off into the ice cold, choppy water.

  As I took my first paddle stroke, I noticed that to the west, dark clouds were swirling over the mountains of the Sierra Crest.

  TWELVE

  W e paddled at a brisk pace, fighting a medium chop. The wind wanted to push us parallel to the waves, a dangerous orientation. We had to make strong strokes to keep at an angle to the waves, quartering them. Street took steady pulls through the water, and I matched my strokes to hers. As with most boats, a canoe is steered from the stern. I kept us as near to the shore as I dared, trying to see through the waves in case the top of any boulder was just beneath the surface.

  After ten minutes of quiet paddling, Street said, “What’s Fairbanks like?”

  “Awkward in every way. Uncomfortable in his own skin. Unsure of how to act or talk. Probably got severely picked on when he was a kid. But smart. Quotes poets.”

  “Like me when I was young,” Street said.

  “You’re kidding, right? It’s hard to see you as awkward.”

  “Oh, yes. I was the geeky tomboy who was good at science. Kids made relentless fun of me. They called me the pimple science stick because I was so skinny and had such bad acne. I hated school and all of its cliques with their focus on gossip. But I had no refuge at home, either. So I spent all of my time by myself, plotting my escape from town. After my father’s conviction, it was a relief to decide that I was old enough and smart enough to run away and take care of myself.”

  “At fourteen years of age,” I said.

  “Some kids are forced to grow up early,” Street said. “Maybe Fairbanks had a similar youth. Maybe he was the kid who wore the wrong clothes, literally and metaphorically.”

  “That’s more accurate than you might imagine,” I said.

  We canoed along the west part of Baldwin Beach, came to a row of houses, then came to forest. We followed the shore north toward Emerald Bay. The hardening breeze above the icy water was crispy cold. Now and then a moist pocket of air washed over us carrying scents of verdant spring wildflowers and wet earthy soils where one would find mushrooms.

  The shore was made up of rocks ranging in size from small cobbles up to boulders large enough that a party of four could spread out a picnic on top of them. The breeze was shifting. When I stayed very close to the shore, we were still largely in the lee of the wind, protected by the towering trees on the shore. If the waves had been gentle as they lapped against the rocks, it would have been an idyllic setting. As it was, the waves were uneven and, though not large, they sounded angry against the shore.

  The forest was foreboding in its depth and breadth. From where we paddled, one could set ashore, walk through the woods to the highway, and, once across the pavement, hike through mountains and over the Sierra Crest for 40 miles without seeing another road or person or sign of human habitation. It was a wilderness landscape mostly unchanged from the last ten thousand years when the Washoe lived in the Tahoe Basin in the summer and hiked down to Carson Valley when the snows set in.

  The forest was so close to the shore that it was almost as if we were paddling through it. The trees had frequent dark areas, shadowed by the canopy above. There was a vague sense of threat in those shadowed cavities. If we got out of the canoe and wandered those recesses, we’d probably discover that the wilderness was benign. But with the wind, the woods seemed to be filled with hints of danger. It wasn’t the threat one senses with a mama bear and her cubs, nor a pack of hungry coyotes, nor even a mountain lion. It was the imagined potential conflict in coming upon that most dangerous animal of all, an angry man motivated by perceived slights and armed with a deadly weapon, be it gun or axe or a length of paracord.

  As if reading my mind, Street said, “The landscape is beautiful. Too bad the subject of our outing is so dark.”

  “Oh, that,” I said as if I hadn’t been thinking that very thought.

  “You’ve told me a little about this case you’re working on,” she said. “But it isn’t clear.”

  So I gave her a more thorough account, beginning with Fairbanks looking for his missing girlfriend and ending with the body that had been found hanging from the ankles, upside down. “It sounds like some kind of punishment killing. In the victim’s mouth were three red roses, taped in place with duct tape.”

  “Oh, my God. That is twisted.” Street sounded horrified.

  “Bains said they found no ID. The only notable mark on the body was a tattoo of three red roses on her ankle. That was my first indication that the dead woman was Douglas Fairbanks’s girlfriend, because he’d mentioned the tattoo.”

  Street didn’t respond. No doubt she was grappling with vivid images in her mind. I didn’t know if I should let her process or try to change the subject. I kept paddling in silence.

  It was about two miles from Kiva Beach to Eagle Point at the southern side of the entrance to Emerald Bay. At our leisurely pace, we came to the point less than an hour after we’d left Kiva Beach.

  As we rounded Ea
gle Point and headed through the narrow entrance, the full length of the bay came into view, stretching back southwest for two miles. The mountain backdrop that surrounds the bay rises 3000 feet directly above the water, higher for more distant peaks.

  “Fannette Island straight ahead,” Street announced.

  “The tea house is on the head of the island, so to speak. The trees and rock on the side of the island that we’re looking at go from the water up at a steep angle and rise directly to where Lora Knight had the tea house built. I remember it as a square building of rock with no roof above.”

  “That’s exactly what I see,” Street said. She seemed to paddle harder. “Lora Knight built the Vikingsholm Castle, which was, I suppose, very self-indulgent even if it became a great example of Scandinavian architecture. But she did good stuff for people, right?”

  “Yeah. She supported youth groups and donated to schools and other educational organizations. She and her second husband also provided much of the financial backing of Charles Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic. That certainly was significant as it proved that air travel could cover great distances.”

  I steered us along the shore until we got close to the island.

  “Time to head across open water,” I said. “Feeling stable?”

  “As long as we don’t tip, yes.”

  I dug my paddle into the water, did a J-stroke, and steered us out into the deep water.

  The wind rose as we headed into the waves. With each stroke, I brought my paddle down deep enough that my hand dipped into the cold water. I pulled hard, and it seemed that Street instinctively did the same. Our canoe sped up.

  I saw Street occasionally glance out at the deep water, scanning as if looking for other watercraft.

  I sensed her tension. “Worried?”

  “Not a lot,” she said. “But it would be easy to kill canoers by driving a bigger boat into them and swamping the canoe. If the shore was far enough away, the cold water would ensure that the paddlers never made it back to land.”

  I realized she was thinking that her father could kill us by ramming our canoe with another boat. My hope was that Street wouldn’t worry, but I didn’t want to sound dismissive. “I don’t see anyone except that boat way out by the entrance to the bay.”

  “Can you see who’s on the boat? I would especially wonder about any boat with a single man.”

  “No, I can’t see.”

  She nodded and kept paddling.

  Despite the waves and wind, we got to Fannette Island in about ten minutes.

  “We’re about to make landfall,” Street said, her voice sounding as if she was experimenting with the nautical word. Or maybe the inflection was just relief that we made it.

  I slowed my paddle strokes as we approached the rocky shore, steering us to the left, parallel to the shore in a clockwise direction. I looked for a good place to land and pull up the canoe.

  Blondie was staring intently at the shore, as is always the case when dogs are in a boat as it approaches land.

  Spot realized he was pointing more toward the lake than the island. He swung his head around to the island side, shifting his weight and causing the canoe to make a dramatic tilt.

  Street gasped as we tipped. She grabbed for the canoe’s gunwale to stabilize herself. I jammed my paddle into the water, the blade broadside, thrusting it down and in to counteract Spot’s movement. As the canoe tipped, the gunwale lowered to the water level. Icy water sloshed into the canoe. Street and I managed to shift our positions so that the canoe stopped tipping and rocked back to its proper position.

  “Whoa!” Street exclaimed. “That was a close call.” She looked around at the dogs and me. The dogs had instinctively stayed low but were very alert. “What happened?” Street said.

  “One of our passengers wanted to get a better look at the island. So he moved his head, which shifted his body, all of which weighs a lot. Blondie almost got her swim.”

  At the sound of her name, she looked back at me from where she sat between Street’s legs.

  “It’s okay,” Street said, giving her a pet.

  Spot was placid, ignoring us and watching the island. He had no clue that he could have caused a disaster if we’d been far out on open water.

  Street said, “So if we turn again such that the closest land is on the other side…”

  “I’ll give advance notice, and we’ll be prepared. A good lesson.”

  We resumed paddling.

  I steered us along the shore, about 30 feet out.

  Fannette Island is a rocky, forested mound about the size of a football field. As Street paddled, she stared up through the trees toward the top of the island.

  “How high is the tea house above the water?”

  “I remember reading that the island rises one hundred fifty feet above the water. The island must be made of a very tough mound of granite to have resisted the glacier that carved out Emerald Bay during the ice ages.”

  We came around the far end of the island where the slope was most gradual. There appeared to be no other boats. We were alone in the relative wilderness. There was an indent in the rocks that looked like a good place to land the canoe, so I steered us in.

  As we neared the rocks, I back-paddled to slow us. Street stood up. Just as the bow of the canoe touched the rock, she stepped out onto dry land. With her weight out of the bow of the canoe, it rose higher, and she was able to pull it farther onto land.

  Spot and Blondie both stood up, ears up, tails wagging, excited about exploring new territory. The canoe was very tippy, balanced between the bow on the rocks and the stern in the water. I turned my paddle upside down and held it by the blade to keep from damaging the blade’s thin edge. I pushed the paddle handle down into the water so that it jammed on the bottom and stabilized us.

  Spot looked at the uneven rocks, then looked back at me.

  “It’s okay, boy,” I said.

  He stepped out carefully, walked over big rocks to smoother land, then trotted away, nose to the ground, eagerly investigating the new landscape.

  Blondie hopped out and ran after him.

  Street reached in and lifted out the jacket and seat cushions that the dogs had been lying on. They were soaked from that water we took on during our tipping adventure. Now that the canoe was partially on land, the water that had sloshed into the canoe had run rearward and collected at the stern.

  I lifted the canoe, tipped it over to drain the water, and set it upside down between some trees so it could continue to drain. Street set the paddles under the canoe. We took off our flotation vests and hung them and the cushions from tree branches to dry.

  Looking around revealed a postcard landscape. We were surrounded by water. The end of Emerald Bay was across from us, and the Vikingsholm castle sat nestled in the tall pines about 1000 feet across the water. Mountains rose up around three sides of the bay, a slope that was steep enough that we had to crank our necks back to see the peaks. A bit farther to the left of the bay’s end was Mt. Tallac, its cross and northeast bowl white with large snowfields.

  “After the dogs?” Street said as the dogs ran by and then raced in the direction of the ridgeline to the top of the island.

  “Yeah.”

  The island looked like it had been lifted from a fairytale and put into place by Disney. There were boulders and Manzanita bushes positioned as if by design, and pines with branches spaced to provide perfect views of the castle and mountains on the mainland. Here and there were overlooks that allowed a view down to the brilliant viridian water close to shore and, a little farther out, the deep indigo water that dropped down to great depths.

  Street looked around, peering at the trees, checking behind her.

  “You okay?” I said.

  She nodded. “In another couple of weeks, when tourist season hits and this island is swarming with kayakers and boaters, it will seem benign. But now, when we are the only people on the island, and we’re investigating a murder at the tea house, it seems
a bit sinister.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You’re probably thinking that my worries about my dad affect my perception.”

  I made a little smile. “Let’s hike up to the tea house.”

  “Where the body was found. I don’t think I like this.”

  THIRTEEN

  T o the east, the island rose above us in a gradual climb. We found a path through the bushes and discovered granite rocks that rose in steps that seemed natural. Lora Knight must have demanded that her stone workers build a staircase that appeared to have always existed. The steps were perfectly comfortable to climb yet sufficiently uneven and irregular that they didn’t appear constructed by anyone other than the glacial gods who originally designed Lake Tahoe and its singular bay and island.

  The natural staircase turned this way and that. When it seemed the trail was a dead end, one need only turn and look a different direction and see a new approach, a jumble of rocks that, on closer examination, revealed another nearly perfect flight of steps, climbing up the island’s backbone. After a short hike, we arrived at Lora Knight’s tea house at the summit of the island.

  The small square building, maybe 15 feet on a side, still had solid walls, though the roof had long since disappeared in the 90 years since it was built. The rock walls stood about 12 feet high. The stone masons had constructed the top row of rocks to have points facing up, which gave the tea house walls a sense of crenelations as if on a castle. Each wall had a single window opening that, despite the long absence of glass, framed gorgeous views of mountain and lake. In the northwest corner of the structure was the original fireplace. It was easy to imagine Mrs. Knight’s guests taking tea in front of the fire while they celebrated the views after their hike to the island’s top.

  It was hard to imagine the tea house as a murder scene.

  Sergeant Bains had said that the body was hung on the outside of the building, on the southeast corner, opposite the fireplace. They’d found the victim strung up by her ankles.