Tahoe Payback (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 15)

by Todd Borg

  I walked out of the tea house and looked toward that corner.

  The building was built so that its east wall was at the edge of a precipice that dropped almost straight down to the island’s east shore. The obvious question was how the killer managed to hoist his victim up above a slope that was so steep as to be like a cliff. As I looked up at the rocks that formed the top of the tea house wall, it was unclear how it was done. The only possibility seemed to be that the killer had positioned his victim outside the tea house and down below it, then run the paracord rope from the victim’s ankles up and over the wall at a point where the rock and mortar were relatively smooth so that the rope wouldn’t abraid. Then the killer must have stood on the inside of the tea house and pulled down on the line, hand over hand. But to overcome the friction of the line going over the wall would take someone very strong or a pulley system to produce leverage. It would also take someone substantially heavier than the victim who’d been hoisted up.

  As I looked up at the stone wall, I was startled by Street’s voice.

  “You’re figuring out how the victim was hoisted up?”

  I turned and saw her framed in the tea house window. She had her hands on the sill, her arms braced straight, and was leaning out of the opening.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Not an easy thing to haul someone up by rope. But it appears that whoever did the deed, tied the rope to the victim, tossed the rope over the top of the wall, and pulled from the inside. Bains said that the rope was tied off on the window frame.”

  I called out toward the trees. “Hey, Spot! I need you to do a search. Earn your keep. Earn some jerky.”

  I heard nothing.

  “Yo, Largeness. Follow my voice. Want a treat? Come and get it.”

  Still no response.

  “Do you see the dogs?” I said to Street.

  “They were here a minute ago. I saw them just down the trail to… Oh, there he is.”

  She pointed.

  I looked. Spot stood about 30 yards away. He was facing us, but he held his head low, and his ears were back.

  Just at that moment, Blondie appeared, trotting up the trail past him. She went into the tea house. “What’s wrong with Spot?” Street asked.

  I walked toward my dog. “He smells human death. It’s happened too many times, so he’s sensitized to it and doesn’t want to come near.”

  “Even though the body has been gone for over a day?”

  “Yeah. Without a strong rainfall, the scents last a long time.”

  I got to Spot. “Sorry, boy. I read you loud and clear. Here, have a treat.” I pulled out a piece of jerky and gave it to him.

  He chomped on it a couple of times and ate it without enthusiasm.

  I pulled out another piece of jerky and showed it to him. He looked interested. I put the jerky back in my pocket. “Here’s what I need,” I said. I pulled the food storage bag out of my pocket, unzipped it, and removed Isadore’s pajama top. I put it on Spot’s nose. “Smell it, boy. Do you have the scent? Take a good whiff. Now find the scent.” I shook his chest for emphasis, then made a pointing motion with my hand at the side of his head. “Find the scent!” I gave him a pat on his rear.

  Spot didn’t move.

  “C’mon boy, find the scent!” I once again put the pajama top on his nose, holding it there for a moment. Then I put it back in the bag.

  I took Spot by his collar and walked him toward the tea house. He didn’t resist, but he wasn’t eager.

  “Good boy,” I said. “Look for the scent. Find the scent. You want more jerky? Sure you do. Find the scent.” I walked Spot over near the corner of the building where the woman had presumably died. I pointed at the ground with one hand and directed him with my other hand on his collar.

  “Find the scent, Spot.” I took him toward the nearest tree and then over to the closest group of boulders. Spot showed no interest.

  Street spoke up. “What do you think he might find?”

  “I have no idea. Probably there is nothing connected to her scent but the smell of death. The entire process focuses him on something innately depressing. Dogs have evolved to be focused on people. It wouldn’t be out of line to say that dogs worship people. We are their source of food and shelter and a portion of their fun and even meaning, if such a word applies to a dog’s perception of the world. So when people die, it is very difficult for them to face. Especially if, like Spot, they’ve dealt with human death many times.”

  I tossed the bag with the pajama top to Street. “Why don’t you do the same routine with Blondie. She could be as good at this as Spot. Maybe even a lot better. Retrievers make great search dogs. If you put her through the motions, she’ll soon figure out what we’re doing.”

  Street opened up the bag, went over to Blondie, and started scenting her on the pajama top.

  I noticed that Spot had his head at normal height, but his nostrils were flexing in the same way they do when he has his nose to the ground.

  He was air scenting. Left nostril, then right nostril, taking the deep inhalations.

  “What do you smell, Spot?” I let go of his collar. I gave him a little smack on his rear. “Find the scent, boy! Find it!”

  Spot walked forward toward the edge of the drop-off. He turned his head left, then right, moving slow, sniffing hard. Then he lowered his head as if to sniff the ground. I knew he was zeroing in on the breeze that was coming up over the rocks. Because of the prevailing southwest wind, there would be turbulence, bringing him bursts of scents, and then nothing, and then more.

  “What is it, boy? Find the scent!”

  Spot looked down over the rocks. Then he moved sideways and found an angled path that wasn’t vertical but still very steep. Like most dogs, he had a pretty good awareness of his own ability. I tensed as he picked his way down a split in the rock, a natural depression where water would run when it rained. Twenty feet down, he turned and moved sideways a few feet. To either side the rock dropped away to the lake. His nose was still up, air scenting, picking up possible concentrations of scent. Then he lowered his nose to the ground, moved farther down, paused to sniff a rock, a tiny bit of brush, a patch of dirt.

  By the lay of the land, it seemed that anything that had Isadore’s scent would have fallen over the cliff. It would be unlikely that something had gotten lodged near where he stood. But I knew never to question a dog’s nose.

  Blondie came down the steep slope, then turned around and went back up to Street. She knew there was a game of some kind going on, and she seemed eager to get in on the process.

  Spot pawed at the dirt, sniffed, then pawed again.

  It was an alert. Nothing definite. But it looked like he had found something with Isadore’s scent.

  I couldn’t see how to get next to him. I took a different approach, climbing down using hands and feet. Then I moved sideways toward him.

  “What did you find, boy? Did you find the scent?”

  I looked where he dug at the ground. All I saw was dirt. Using the side of my hand, I gently brushed at the dirt, sweeping away the top-most layer. There was nothing. I reached toward the little mound of dirt that Spot had scraped up and brushed it back to where it had originally lay. Again there was nothing. “Where is the scent, Spot?”

  His nostrils were flexing. He lowered his nose, bringing it close to my hand. Whatever he smelled, it was close. Maybe it was the dirt. Perhaps Isadore had touched dirt and tossed it here. I scraped some more. Maybe I should grab the soil and bag it for later inspection. I swept my hand again. This time I saw a glint of light. A sparkle. Off to the side. Where Spot had reached with his paw but hadn’t quite connected. I moved more duff, decomposed pine needles and the fine granitic gravel called grus. My fingertip touched something smooth. I got a grip on it and pulled it out.

  It was a silver necklace. White showed here and there. A white plastic necklace coated to look like silver. Costume jewelry. I lifted it up to the light. It had a little pendant, dark with dirt.

  “
Spot found something!” Street said. “What is it?”

  “It’s a necklace with a little pendant that has an unusual shape.” I rubbed it. “The pendant looks like miniature roses. Three of them.”

  FOURTEEN

  I showed the necklace to Street. She showed it to Blondie, putting it in front of Blondie’s nose. “See Blondie. Smell this. This has the pajama scent on it.” She pulled out the pajama top and had Blondie sniff it and the necklace again.

  “I can see that she has the focus,” I said. “Once she realizes what we’re after, she’ll be great.”

  I put the necklace into one of the baggies that I always carry to crime scenes.

  We searched for another hour, but found nothing else.

  When we were all back in the canoe, I steered us around toward the shore of the island that was directly below the tea house.

  “Do you think there will be something else to discover?” Street asked.

  “No. But why not take a look?”

  When we got to the eastern tip of the island, Spot suddenly lifted his head. He appeared to be sniffing the breeze.

  Because Street was paddling in front, she didn’t notice.

  “I think my hound just alerted again.”

  Street stopped paddling and turned around. “What do you think he’s smelling?”

  “I have no idea. In a perfect world, he’d be picking up on another scent of Isadore. But it could also be an unusual animal, or some bit of food that picnickers dropped overboard and it washed up on the island.”

  I turned the canoe to point where Spot’s nose was pointing. I paddled toward the shore.

  “Watch your dog and see if she notices any scent. We’ve both seen how she loves to track critters in the forest.”

  “Why don’t they use retrievers for police dogs, finding suspects and such?” Street asked.

  “Because they aren’t aggressive. They could find the suspect as easily as any dog, maybe better, but then they would just bark at him or maybe want to play with him.”

  “What about Great Danes? Are they aggressive enough for police work?”

  “They aren’t as naturally aggressive as German Shepherds or Rottweilers. But their size gives them the advantage of serious intimidation. If a suspect saw a Great Dane running full speed to take him down, he would rather face a mountain lion, which would, at least, be smaller.”

  Spot had shifted his nose to the left as we moved toward the shore. I turned the canoe a bit to follow, trying to anticipate any dramatic dog movements that could overturn the canoe.

  “Then why don’t they use Great Danes as police dogs?”

  “Too big. And not enough work ethic. Danes would rather snooze with their head in your lap than chase bad guys.”

  Spot was now focused on a big boulder near the shore. He didn’t seem especially interested. But his nose was pointed that way. I made little rudder actions as I paddled.

  “We’re almost directly below the tea house,” Street said.

  “And we’re pointed upwind. A dog can find a scent plume the same way you and I could see a smoke signal trailing out from the island. As we drift toward the edge of the scent plume, Spot will point toward where the scent is stronger. So I can kind of follow his motions. Look at Blondie. She seems to be sniffing with a particular focus as well. Watch her nostrils. Dogs can smell in stereo. They get a three-D smell picture of the landscape.”

  Street looked down at Blondie.

  Spot held his head up a bit higher. I piloted the canoe toward the place where Spot’s nose seemed to point. As we got to the rock, I used the paddle to slow our motion.

  When the bow of the canoe touched the rock, Street said, “Do you think I should hop out and look for some foreign object? Or should we get the boat sideways to the shore and let Spot out?”

  “The shore is too steep here.”

  Spot shifted his focus a bit.

  “Look over near the root that comes down from that fir tree,” I said. “Spot’s focused on it. I see a little white object.”

  “It looks like a cigarette,” Street said.

  I said, “Douglas Fairbanks said that his girlfriend disappeared from the restaurant when she went out to the parking lot for a smoke.”

  “If you can shift the canoe to the left a bit, I can maybe get it with my paddle.”

  I did as Street suggested, and she tried a few times with her paddle and eventually got it on the blade. She carefully pulled her paddle back and grabbed the soggy cigarette off the blade. She held it up toward Spot. “Is this what you were smelling?”

  Spot gave it a sniff.

  “What do you think this means? Was the victim smoking this… Wait, it’s not a cigarette. It’s more like a little roll of paper. I can unroll it.” She slowly moved it along the paddle blade. “Owen! There’s something written on it!” She got it unrolled on the paddle and turned it around.

  “What’s it say?”

  “It’s a little poem. It says,

  ‘Red roses of hope

  Provided by false promise

  Spread wicked deceit’”

  “A haiku,” I said. “Five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second, and five syllables in the third.”

  Street looked up at me. “This is about roses. The necklace had roses on it. And the victim had roses taped in her mouth. And didn’t you say the victim had a rose tattoo?”

  “Yeah. So we have a rose motif. I wonder if the victim wrote it.”

  “Or the murderer,” Street said.

  “But Spot was sniffing for scents that match the pajama top, right? So that would suggest the victim wrote it.”

  “Or at least held it in her hand.” I pulled out another baggie, opened it, and leaned forward. Street put the little roll into it.

  As we paddled back toward the main lake, Street said, “I was thinking about the haiku on the note. That is a great clue. We should be on the lookout for any potential suspect who’s into poetry.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Like Douglas Fairbanks.”

  FIFTEEN

  “ I have an idea,” Street said. “Maybe I’m crazy, but the little necklace with roses reminds me of something. And the haiku reinforces my thought.”

  “Which is?” I said.

  “Can you paddle alone for a minute? I want to look something up on my phone.”

  So I paddled, and Street got out her phone and started tapping.

  We’d come through the entrance of Emerald Bay and turned toward the South Shore when she spoke.

  “I just found something amazing,” she said.

  “What?”

  “In your last case, there were people who were murdered in different ways. Because the murders were unusual, you thought they were probably connected. So I was wondering what else, besides this woman’s murder, is unusual right now. I Googled ‘Tahoe moutain bike festival’ and ‘Red roses.’”

  “You find something?”

  “Get this,” Street said. “On the festival website, there’s a list of sponsors. One of the sponsors of the Tahoe Mountain Bike for Charity is the Red Roses of Hope Charity for Children. “The first line in the haiku is ‘Red roses of hope.’

  “Now that’s interesting,” I said. “And the haiku talks about false promise and spreading deceit.”

  “Do you know if Fairbanks’s girlfriend was involved in the mountain bike event?” Street asked.

  “Yes, she was. Fairbanks told me that Isadore was up in Tahoe to attend the festival and participate in some of the races.”

  Street turned to look directly at me. Her eyes looked aflame. “You said that Douglas Fairbanks didn’t know much about her, didn’t know what she did for a living, didn’t even know where she lived.”

  “Correct.”

  Street said, “And now we find two pieces of evidence connecting her and her murder to red roses and maybe the Red Roses of Hope charity. If you count her red rose tattoo and the roses in her mouth, that’s four bits of evidence.”


  “And it gives us a motive of sorts,” I said. “Maybe it was her murderer who left the necklace and the haiku. It could be that the killer had the necklace and haiku and used them to accuse Isadore of bad faith or fraud or something, but then accidentally dropped them. The writer of the haiku appears angry about some kind of deceit. Like maybe Isadore was raising money for the charity, and the murderer was somehow burned.”

  “You think the murder was punishment?” Street said.

  “Could be. Most murders are about financial greed or crimes of passion, often driven by sex and jealousy. But anger is sometimes a motive.” I paddled for a bit. “Is there contact info for the Red Roses of Hope charity?”

  “Yes. A Gmail account and a snail mail address.”

  “The gmail account is impossible to hack,” I said. “But one can always visit a mailing address.”

  “It’s on Market Street in San Francisco. With that address, this charity could be a big deal.”

  “Yeah. Market Street is one of the more expensive locations in The City. Can you do reverse address search on your phone? Put the address into Google and see if an owner pops up?”

  “Already on it. Nothing pops up. There is no phone number connected to the address either. So the charity is not advertising its ownership.”

  “If you want to talk to them, you can’t call. You have to send an email or a letter.”

  “Or go visit their office on Market Street,” Street said.

  “Yeah.” I kept paddling as Street worked her phone. “Does the charity have a website?” I asked.

  “Yes, and a fancy one, too. Pictures of poor kids. Stories of children whose lives were turned around by the financial support of loving, caring, supportive Americans. There are three different pictures of the American flag. Here’s a photo of a little girl and a reproduction of a letter she wrote. The handwriting is very shaky. ‘Dear Red Roses Mom, Thanks for the food and the clothes. Now we are warm at night. Our new apartment has its own fridge. We love you forever.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I said.