Tahoe Ice Grave

by Todd Borg

  “But I’ve always been an introvert. My interests were weaving and reading and, of course, my children. Never did Jasper and I ever sit together quietly and have a conversation of any substance. A marriage like that was enough for him, but not for me. I still don’t think he understands why I divorced him. He thinks everyone would naturally want as many people around them as possible and he simply cannot understand that a person could be different from him that way.”

  Janeen sipped her coffee. “I spoke to him about Thos just yesterday. He said he still loves me and it made me very sad. He is quite a bit older than I am, and I think his mind is just beginning to go. I now realize that he will go to his grave without understanding our basic differences.”

  Janeen looked at me, her soft face frowning. “Have you ever met another person like me, Owen? A person who divorced a perfectly sweet spouse? A spouse who was never abusive or rude or adulterous, a spouse who gave nice presents and made breakfast every morning? A spouse whose only crime was to be happy and gregarious when I wanted peace and quiet and a meaningful conversation now and then?” Janeen Kahale didn’t wait for an answer, perhaps afraid of what it might be. “It makes me feel worthless,” she said. “Look at all the intervening years. It’s not like I’ve been able to replace him with anything better.”

  I thought it best to change the subject. “You said that your grandson Phillip was Thos’s nephew. Who are your other children?”

  “My daughter Shelcie. She is Thos’s little sister. She was addicted to methamphetamines and almost died of an overdose six years ago. Since then, she has been in a rehab program in L.A. I’ve been raising Phillip.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “But I’m grateful for having Phillip in my life. He is the best grandson a person could have. Of course, he should have a mother in his life, but Shelcie...” she stopped talking.

  “Why do you think your daughter got hooked on drugs?”

  “When Jasper and I got divorced, Thos was ten, Shelcie six. Thos stayed with his father in Kauai while I moved with Shelcie back to Gardnerville. My mother had died and my father had softened considerably in his stance toward me. He was a good grandfather to Shelcie. But Shelcie never adjusted to the move. She had no respect for Washoe customs. She said they were dumb.

  “I suppose it was too much to expect her to assimilate. She seemed to hate everything about her new life and cried endlessly. She hated me for divorcing her father. She got in with some bad kids and ran away the first time when she was twelve. It nearly broke my heart. She was in and out of my life after that. When Phillip was born she claimed not to even know who the father was.” Janeen’s face reddened at the thought.

  She continued, “When Shelcie finally entered a drug rehab program, I thought that maybe our lives were back on track. Phillip has adjusted very well to living with me. But now with Thos...” Janeen bowed her head and cried. Her sobs were silent, her head nodding with each spasm, her hands motionless on the kitchen table.

  I pulled my chair over next to her and put my hand over hers. “Do you have anyone else who can help you? Another relative?”

  “No,” she said, keeping her head bowed. “My father is too old now. I don’t get along well with my other relatives, a hangover from the problems with Shelcie.” Tears dropped to her lap.

  “A neighbor?”

  She shook her head. “My neighbor Jerry is nice enough. He wants to be helpful, but he doesn’t really understand us and our situation. And he’s gone a lot.”

  “What about your friends?”

  “I don’t really have any close friends. Lyla Purdue lives nearby, but I don’t think I’d burden her with these problems. Most of my tribe live down in the valleys to the east of Tahoe.” She lifted her head and looked at me. “I don’t mean to be rude, Mr. McKenna, but your people do not mingle much with the Washoe. Many whites are nice to us, but it is often with a kind of sympathy. It’s hard to be friends with someone who feels sorry for you. Native people need to feel pride about their heritage. Instead, we often feel that others look at our ethnicity as a handicap. I suppose I should have stayed down in the valley with my people. But there are less than two thousand people in the tribe and it seems that everybody knows all about Shelcie’s problems. I thought it would be better for Phillip to join me in Tahoe.”

  “Could Shelcie come up from L.A. to be with you?”

  “I asked her,” Janeen said. “But she is so upset over Thos’s death that she says she can’t face it all just yet. She’s going to stay in L.A. for the time being. She’s never really matured emotionally. I love Phillip more than I can say, but Shelcie never should have had that child. Is that bad of me to say?”

  “No, Janeen, I don’t think so.”

  “Of course, look at me and Jasper. We got married without really being in love. Then we had children without thinking about the long term. Now we’ve been divorced for twenty years and we split Thos and Shelcie up all that time. What kind of terrible thing is that? I have to wonder if Jasper and I don’t deserve the blame for Shelcie’s problems and Thos’s death.” Janeen let go of my hand, pulled some Kleenex out of a nearby box, dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose. “Let’s go sit in the living room.” We both stood up, picked up our coffee mugs and sat side by side on the living room couch.

  “Tell me about Thos,” I said. “What kind of a boy was he?”

  “As I’ve said, he was a very determined child. Quite stubborn, actually. But not willful like his sister. Much less self-focused. Better behaved. He was a medium student, not because he didn’t have the intellect to get better grades, but because he was always thinking about surfing.

  “He was a strong child and grew into a strapping young man. Lots of muscles. I think that must be his Polynesian ancestry. Jasper is certainly a good-sized man. Not tall. But wide.

  “Anyway, when Thos started attending the community college in Honolulu, he talked about possibly transferring someday to U.C. Davis to study winemaking. But then he became a surfing champion and he focused on that for years until he broke his leg. The break was bad enough that it put him out of competition.”

  “It must have been hard to have a successful surfing career evaporate just like that,” I said.

  “Worse than hard. It was devastating. For years he’d been world-famous in surfing circles. He was on the covers of magazines, and kids were always wanting his autograph wherever he went. The next minute it was all gone and someone else was the champion.”

  “What did he do then?”

  “He tried doing some coaching and instruction, but it didn’t work out. A TV station in Honolulu even tried him as a sports commentator, but he didn’t have the style they were looking for. So he took a variety of jobs. Nothing clicked for him until recently when he went back to the idea of wine, something he’s always had a taste for. He felt he was too old to go back to college, so he set up a little company that would bring California wines to Hawaii.”

  “A wine distributorship. Sounds like something I’d enjoy.”

  “You like wine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, that’s nice,” Janeen said. She seemed inordinately pleased. I liked something that Thos liked.

  “Thos did some research,” she said, “and found all the small wineries in Sonoma and Napa that weren’t being distributed in Hawaii. He approached them and managed to set up accounts with several of them. Then he called on outlets all over Hawaii, especially restaurants. Last I spoke to him about it, it was quite a growing business. He had several employees and was always flying between California and Hawaii.”

  “What was he doing in Tahoe?”

  “Just a family visit. He hadn’t seen me in awhile, and of course he adored Phillip.”

  “How long was he going to be here for?”

  “Just the weekend. He came up last Friday night and said he was going to be leaving Monday morning.” Janeen’s face suddenly darkened. “But then he wrote the suicide note. So maybe
he’d already planned this whole thing when he told me his schedule. Oh, Lord.” Janeen started shaking. Her lip quivered, but no tears fell this time.

  “Janeen, do you have any idea why someone would want to kill him?”

  “No. He may not have been the chummiest young man, but he didn’t make enemies. Not even as a child.”

  “What about other businessmen? A wine competitor?”

  “I wondered that, too,” she said. “But just this last visit he was saying that the beauty of his business was that he had no competitors to speak of. Every account he set up was a winery or a restaurant that hadn’t been approached by a Hawaiian distributor. It doesn’t seem that he took business away from anyone, he just created business where there wasn’t any before.”

  “What about his friends?”

  “He didn’t have many. He was always something of a loner. I think it went back to his surfing days. His intense focus on the competitions precluded any time for friends. He would mention going fishing with someone now and then, but I don’t remember who.”

  “I take it he wasn’t married.”

  “No. He dated, but I never heard that he got serious about any girl. He seemed content to be a bachelor.”

  “Where did he live?”

  “A couple of years ago he bought a townhouse in Princeville, a resort area on the north shore of Kauai. Princeville has several championship golf courses that Thos liked to play on. He also sold a lot of wine to the Princeville restaurants.”

  “Any roommates?”

  “No. As I’ve said, Thos liked to be alone. I guess he got that from me.”

  We sat in silence for awhile. Without asking, Janeen got up and refilled my coffee cup and I said thanks.

  “Janeen,” I said. “You’ve given me the picture of a typical young man who was bright and ambitious. But nowhere do I see a place to start looking for a murderer. I need something else. A problem. A fight he had. A dilemma that he was desperate to get out of. Someone who hated him or saw him as the obstacle to everything they wanted. Is there anything you can think of?”

  Janeen looked inward and thought. “No. I’m sorry, but I don’t know of anything like that.”

  “Did Shelcie’s drug problem ever touch Thos? Or did he get involved in it in any way?”

  Janeen shook her head.

  “Did he ever owe any money to anyone?

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “There must be something. Some incident that caused someone else pain. Some ongoing struggle between Thos and an acquaintance.”

  Janeen shook her head.

  I continued, “A disagreement with one of his business accounts. An argument over a traffic accident.”

  Janeen kept shaking her head.

  “Some trouble with the law. A family secret. A...” I saw that she stopped shaking her head. “What is it, Janeen?”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “It’s not even a secret in the sense of something that would get Thos in trouble. It has nothing to do with anybody doing something wrong.”

  “Tell me, Janeen.”

  “I feel silly talking about it,” she said. “It’s just that in my ex-husband’s family there is a tradition dating back many generations. It has to do with where they put a person’s most precious possessions when they die. Sort of an offering to the gods.”

  “Who decides what possessions?”

  “The person dying does. Usually when they are younger and healthier. You know, like when I’ve told Shelcie I want her to have my loom. And Phillip gets all my baskets. Only, in this situation, the person designates what goes to the family shrine. It’s a cave in a cliff.”

  “The place is secret?”

  “Yes.”

  EIGHT

  “Is this family shrine a Hawaiian tradition or just a Kahale family tradition?”

  “I’ve always thought it was a family tradition. But then, the Washoe Tribe has always had our own sacred cliffs. Like Cave Rock. So maybe some other Hawaiians do, too.”

  “Do you know where the Kahale place is?”

  “No. Only that it is somewhere up on the Na Pali cliffs in Kauai.”

  “Who knows the location?” I asked.

  “Only two people ever know at any one time. The grandfather and his eldest son. When the grandfather dies, then the son tells his eldest son. And so on.”

  “You said that your ex-husband Jasper is still alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “But his father died a month ago from lung cancer?”

  “Right.”

  “So Jasper recently passed on the location to Thos.”

  “Correct.”

  I pondered that for a moment. “How is Jasper’s health?”

  “Fine, as far as I know. Do you think this could have something to do with Thos’s death?”

  “I have no idea. You say that this place has been used by the Kahale family for generations?”

  “Yes. Always, as far as anyone knows.”

  “And the most valuable possessions of family members have been placed there? Valuables from dozens or even hundreds of family members over the years?”

  “That’s right.” Janeen’s eyes grew intense. “I’ve never thought of it like that before. But I don’t think it would be any kind of a treasure trove. Most people just designate sentimental objects. Gifts from loved ones and such.”

  “But there could be valuables that anyone would treasure, correct?”

  “You mean, like gold jewelry or something? Yes, I suppose so. Even so, nothing there could possibly be worth killing someone over.”

  “That’s probably true. But that wouldn’t matter.”

  “What do you mean?” Janeen asked.

  “Because it is secret, what is actually there might not count. What may matter is what someone imagines is hidden in this cliff cave.”

  Janeen Kahale was scowling at what I said when Phillip appeared from the hallway. He stopped at the entrance to the living room. He carried a small pair of snowshoes made of aluminum frames with nylon webbing.

  “Are you going to go snowshoeing, Phillip?” Janeen said with as much enthusiasm as possible. “It is a perfect day for it!”

  Phillip whispered something in Janeen’s ear and went into the kitchen. I heard the rustle of his anorak as he pulled it on.

  “Remember, Phillip,” Janeen called out. “Stay in the level woods and away from the open slope.”

  There was the sound of the door opening along with a blast of cool air. In a moment we saw Phillip going by the window, a baseball cap facing backward on his head. His pace was brisk as he headed over the deep snow toward the woods. Phillip’s snowshoes sunk only eight or ten inches into snow that would otherwise engulf him up to his shoulders. Janeen and I watched him through the window. I saw that he’d put on gators over his boots and calves so that the snow would not get into the top of his boots.

  Phillip strode on by, then stopped abruptly when he saw Spot. They stared at each other, Spot’s head hanging out the car window, Phillip just standing still. Spot gave a woof. I couldn’t see it behind the Jeep’s windows, but I knew that his tail was wagging.

  “Oh, Lord,” Janeen said as she watched out the window.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing. He’s smiling. That’s the first time he’s smiled since...” she broke off.

  “Do you think he’d like to play with my dog? Spot is good with kids.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “I’ll go ask him.” I stood up.

  “I’m not sure if...” Janeen’s words trailed off again.

  She seemed a sweet but overly protective grandmother. She’d be happy to see the boy romp with Spot. I opened the door and stepped outside. Phillip was still standing on the snow bank at the side of the drive looking out and down at Spot in the Jeep. Spot swung his head around toward me for a second, then back toward Phillip. He knew who would be more fun.

&
nbsp; “Hey, Phillip,” I called out. “Would you like to play with my dog? His name is Spot and he likes to run in the snow.”

  “Phillip jerked around to face me across the drive. His eyes were wide with alarm.

  “Spot won’t hurt you,” I said. “He loves kids.”

  Phillip turned toward the forest and ran, his snowshoes kicking up puffs of powder snow behind him as he disappeared into the woods.

  I stepped back inside the little house where Janeen stood with a worried face. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I seemed to succeed only in frightening Phillip.”

  “He’ll be okay,” she said, sounding more like she was trying to convince herself than me.

  “Janeen, you told Phillip to stay in the woods and away from the open slope?” I said. “Is that because of the avalanches?”

  “Yes. Trees aren’t able to grow where there are frequent avalanches. So I’ve taught Phillip that mature woods are a decent indication of avalanche-free zones. Of course, every year there are exceptions which is why I always remind him to stay off the steep areas. When you live backed up to a steep mountain that gets forty feet of snow every winter, you have to be careful. With mountains so beautiful it’s hard to remember that they can kill you.”

  “I’m glad you’re teaching Phillip to be respectful of them.” I drank more coffee.

  “He’s out there so often that it’s essential. Like Thos and me, Phillip likes to spend time by himself. I think he feels his own company is better than that of most other kids. Or adults, for that matter.” She smiled at me.

  “These days, it’s nice to see a kid spend any time out of doors.”

  Janeen nodded. “Maybe you and I should. Would you like to walk a bit?”

  “Certainly. Do you have snowshoes? I have a pair in my Jeep.”

  “I was thinking we could stroll down the drive.”

  “Of course.”

  In a minute we were walking toward Jerry’s house.