by Todd Borg
“Opinions about what?”
“What did you think about Lassitor’s death?”
“How do you mean?”
Santiago seemed to hesitate. “In trying to figure out how Lassitor drowned during a winter storm, the facts don’t seem to help us at all. Whereas your thoughts about Lassitor could give us an indication of what to look for.”
Gower frowned. “I’m not sure what you want from me.”
“I’d like your personal opinion of the man. For example, do you think he was the kind of man who could get mixed up in something that would lead to his murder?”
“Oh, whoa. I didn’t see that question coming. You think it could have been murder? Let me think.” Gower’s frown deepened. “Well, the simplest way to describe Lassitor is that he had bad judgment. Long ago I had the thought that he would probably die as a result of a stupid decision. He liked to live hard and fast and dangerous. I saw him drive drunk and also drive like a wild man. I saw him go hiking just to climb mountain peaks in cold weather with no extra clothes or food or water or even sunglasses. He called it speed climbing, and he said that having extra water or clothes took the excitement out of it. And he was a base-jumper, that crazy sport where you leap off buildings or bridges or cliffs with a parachute. Another thing he told me – and this will make you think he was truly nuts – was that he occasionally played a game called Ten Little Pills where he would pour a bunch of different prescription pills into a bowl and mix them up. He’d also pour himself a tall glass of Scotch, straight up. Then he’d put on gloves and close his eyes and pick ten pills out of the bowl. Because of the gloves, he couldn’t tell by feel which pills he was getting. Then he’d down the ten pills with Scotch.”
“That’s insane,” Santiago said.
Gower nodded. “But then look at me. Here I am being judgmental about Lassitor, and I’m paralyzed because I veered over the center line in a car. So forget everything I just said.”
Santiago stared at Gower as if shocked at what he heard.
I noticed that Gower didn’t mention losing his wife and daughter in the accident. Probably that was too painful for him to even think about.
After a silence, Santiago said, “Did Lassitor ever say he was going to take his little boat out in a winter storm?”
“Not specifically. But like I said the last time you came here, it’s the only thing that made sense. He’d try any idea that came to him, regardless of whether it was crazy. He had no impulse control. He probably was going too fast, hit a wave and swamped his little woodie, breaking it in two.”
“Which would explain his injuries,” Santiago said.
Gower nodded. “Or someone didn’t see him and plowed into him in another boat. Although, leaving him there to drown is beyond comprehension. But if he was murdered, then I have no idea how someone would know when and where he would be out in his boat.”
“Did he have a friend he liked to visit across the lake?”
“He never said anything about knowing someone across the lake. Frankly, I’d be surprised if he had any friends.” Gower drank some beer and stared into the fire.
I spoke up, “You have seen Lassitor go out in his woodie in the past, right?”
“Sure. Several times. And I’m gone half the time or more attending to my business. So I have to assume that he went out quite often.”
“Did he always wear a flotation vest?”
Gower looked up at the ceiling. “I never thought about it, but as I think back, no, I don’t think I ever saw him put one on. I can see him standing up at the wheel, sometimes even standing up on the seat, whooping and hollering as he raced across the waves. But I can’t remember any life jacket.”
“Yet, he had one on,” Santiago said. “Going out on a nice summer day isn’t like heading into a winter storm.”
“What kind of business are you in?” I asked Gower.
“I have a small thermostat manufacturing company. Down in Minden. That’s why I live down in Carson Valley for a good part of the year, although I love to be up here in the winter when there is solitude. I have twenty-nine employees. I started it forty-three years ago after I bought a thermostat that didn’t work properly. I’ve done quite well with it, although there is new competition from all over the world. My company has some modern, programmable thermostats, but any tech device more than six months old is in danger of obsolescence. We’re not good at keeping up. I would like to sell the business, but to tell the truth, I would never recommend that anyone buy it. So I’ll probably just give it to my employees and let them try to find a way to make it relevant to the new world.”
Santiago turned to me. “Just to be thorough, we should take a look inside Lassitor’s house. Lassitor’s wife is probably technically in charge of his lease rights on the castle. Do you think that she would allow us to look at his house?”
“Yes. Implicit in our relationship is that I look into all aspects of Lassitor’s life and death. However, she did not give me a key or alarm code.”
“I can show you the house, if you like,” Gower said.
“You have a key?”
“Sure. Ian has mine as well. We don’t share opinions about politics or religion or business or maybe anything else, but we both try to be good neighbors. If something happens like you get a frozen pipe and your house floods or something when you’re not around, you want your neighbor to be able to go in to turn off the water. I’ll go get it.”
Gower wheeled himself away.
“I don’t imagine there is anything to find,” Santiago said. “But it can’t hurt to look.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“Would you like to drive over there?” I said when Gower came back.
“No, no, not at all. You may have seen the path between our properties. It’s a broad sidewalk in the summer. The paths and our driveways allow me a little circuit I can roll for the exercise and fresh air. I have the snow service keep it clear in the winter.”
We waited as Gower put on his jacket and gloves. He telegraphed a strong sense of independence. I thought it best not to go out of my way to hold the door for him. When Gower rolled to the front door, I followed him outside.
Gower rolled down the ramp. He showed a bit of caution as he used his hands on the push rings to brake. He was focused and cautious on the icy surfaces, never noticing Spot in the Jeep as he went across the driveway and over to the walkway that headed toward Lassitor’s house. I followed.
The winding path was like a narrow canal with snow walls five feet tall. I could see over, but Gower couldn’t. As we approached the Lassitor house, I could see why everyone referred to it as a castle. It didn’t seem like someplace that people would call home. While it was impressive, nothing about it was inviting.
The pathway went close to the castle, then curved around to the drive, which had also been cleared of the recent snowfall. Like most castles, the place had few windows, mostly small. One large section of stone wall had no windows at all. Near the top of the roof was a line of clerestory windows, the kind that were designed only to let light in. Looking out from the inside, one would probably only see sky and trees. On the lake side, the sloped roof gave way to a horizontal section fronted with crenelations just like something out of King Arthur’s time.
Gower continued past the garage with its four individual doors designed to look like castle gates, and he headed up the walk to the front door. The door was recessed beneath a large overhang. There were light cans in the ceiling and heavy iron-framed sconces on the walls, but with them off, the area was very dark even in the middle of the day.
Gower slipped the key in the deadbolt and opened the door. A soft beeping signaled an alarm warning as he bump-rolled over the threshold inside. He stopped at a numeric panel, pushed five buttons, and the alarm stopped.
“Very trusting for neighbors to give each other their alarm codes,” I said.
Gower looked at me, frowning. “How else could a neighbor help with a problem? We both set our alarms to the same co
de for that reason.” He said it with the tone of a rebuke.
“Good idea,” I said.
“So this is it,” Gower said, gesturing at the cavernous space before us. “An unusual building that, like most unusual buildings, sacrifices the normal comforts for a big statement.”
The huge main room had walls made of stone. One wall had an out-sized fireplace with windows on either side looking out at a large deck and the spectacular lake view in the distance. Opposite the window wall was a built-in entertainment area with TV and shelving for speakers and multiple glass bowls filled with different kinds of pine cones, Jeffrey, Lodgepole, Ponderosa, California Red Fir, and, in two of them, huge Sugar Pine cones. To one side of the entertainment center was a big upright piano. On the other side was a built-in cabinet.
The kitchen was a galley design with a long counter and appliances along the outer wall. There was a parallel island, just as long, with a large gas stove top and a grill.
Gower waited by the lakeside windows while we looked around.
There was a stairway near the kitchen and a large arched opening in the wall next to it. I walked through the arch into an entertainment room. In the ceiling above were the clerestory windows I’d seen from the outside. On the outer wall were substantial built-in bookshelves maybe twelve feet high and thirty feet long. There was a top rail which supported a rolling ladder for access to the upper shelves. The shelves held a wide range of books, hardcover and softcover, along with vases with silk flowers and small, bronze figure sculptures that were tall and skinny like those of Giacometti, but without the rough surfaces. The bookshelves and their contents showed more of the owner’s personality than anything I’d seen in the living room, but nevertheless, nothing was notable. There was no TV as in the living room, but there were stereo components stacked in the shelving.
Back in the main room, I trotted up the stairs, a wide, grand design that rose a flight to a landing, turned ninety degrees, and then rose another flight. All but the last portion of the stairs looked out over the living room.
The castle’s second level was all bedroom suites, each with a sitting area and a bath. All the beds were made and unruffled. All of the bathroom sinks were polished and had no water stains. The towels appeared untouched.
At the far end of the hallway was a spiral staircase. I went up and saw that it opened onto a rooftop deck. The deck perimeter was the crenelated castle wall I’d seen as we approached. Stepping out onto the deck and looking past the crenelations to the stone boathouse and the lake beyond, it almost felt like I was back in the Middle Ages, in the smallish castle of a minor feudal lord.
I went back inside.
“Nice place,” I said as I came back down the stairway.
Gower nodded. His chair faced the dark front door instead of the view windows. He seemed depressed.
“You okay?” I said.
“Yeah. Lassitor wasn’t what I’d call a friend, but it’s hard to come back into this place and realize he’s gone.”
I took another look around. “The garage is this way?” I pointed to a door by the entrance.
“Yeah. Have a look.”
I walked in. The four-car space had extra depth, extra width and extra height. It contained a Mercedes sports sedan and a Porsche Cayenne, and the remaining space was almost twice the size of my cabin.
Nowhere in the house was anything that spoke of Ian Lassitor or his life. It was like a sterile vacation home, set up with all of the expected comforts but no personal effects.
“What about the boathouse?” I said to Gower when I came back into the living room.
“I’ll show you when we head back. The lock uses the same key as this front door.”
Santiago walked back in from the entertainment room. “Seen enough?” he said.
I nodded. “Want to stop in the boathouse?”
“Sure.”
“Come with me,” Gower said. Then he paused. “I should probably set the alarm, right?”
“Yeah,” Santiago said. “This place belongs to some company. Until they come around and take over, they’d probably appreciate it if you kept it closed up tight.”
Gower punched the buttons, then rolled out the front door. After we passed through, he turned and locked the door. Then he rolled down the walkway that we had followed to the castle. Halfway to his own driveway, there was an intersecting path that was cleared of snow. He turned down it and rolled another winding path to the boathouse. He unlocked the door and let us in.
The boathouse was built with its rear half on land and its front half projecting out over the water. At the water end was a roll-up door that allowed someone to come and go in a boat just like driving a car into a garage. At the rear of the boathouse were racks that held three kayaks, red, green, and yellow. There was also a built-in case not unlike the bookshelves in the entertainment room. Instead of bookshelves, it had a closet in which hung wetsuits, rain jackets, and flotation vests. There was a vertical rack with four water skis and five kayak paddles.
Like the main house, there was nothing notable.
TWENTY-FIVE
We followed Gower as he rolled back to his house. Santiago thanked him for his time and help.
When we drove down to the end of Gower’s drive, I beeped the horn. Santiago stopped. I got out and walked up to his patrol unit.
“The other neighbor you mentioned?”
“The crazy lady?” he said.
“Where does she live? I thought I’d go talk to her.”
He reached his arm out the window and pointed. “Go down the highway a block, then turn up the next street. Her cabin is closest to the highway. You can almost see it from here.”
“Thanks.”
“Let me know if she actually talks to you and has any information?”
“Will do.” I made a little tap on Santiago’s roof and walked back to my Jeep.
Santiago turned north on 89 back toward Tahoe City. I drove south a bit, then turned in on the next street, which led to a small neighborhood of old cabins with a few nice vacation homes mixed in. I pulled over next to the snow wall and parked.
“Be good,” I said to Spot as I once again left him in the Jeep.
I walked down the slippery road to the cabin that was closest to the highway. From the way it was positioned above the street, it had a good view of the trees around the Lassitor castle. It’s possible one could even see the castle from the cabin’s front windows. As I approached, I sensed movement near the house. I stopped.
The backyard had a six-foot fence around its perimeter. There was a porch on the back of the cabin with a gabled roof. A substantial snow drift curled down from the roof and hung in a cornice off the eave of the gable. My view from the street was very limited. But I could see over the top of the fence and under the edge of the hanging snow cornice. A woman was moving around on the porch. I could only see her head and shoulders. From her movements, it looked like she was sweeping. Probably, snow blew off the roof and swirled around under the gable overhang.
She was humming a little tune, the notes disorganized as if she made it up as she went along. There was a refrain where she sang words. The first time she sang it, the words were too garbled to make any sense of them. The second time, it still sounded like gibberish, but I could imagine what words they might be. It sounded like she was saying, “He thinks he’s king, hums and crows, true the crown.”
I walked up her short driveway, which looked like it hadn’t been plowed since the last two snowfalls. There was no car in her drive, no garage, and no footprints either. How did she get her groceries and other supplies? Did someone shop for her? Did someone plow intermittently just so she could walk out?
I trudged through foot-deep snow up to her door and knocked.
There was no answer.
After a minute, I knocked louder. Still no answer.
After another minute, I called out, “Hello? Anybody home? My name is Owen McKenna. I’d like to talk to you, please.” Then I knocked aga
in.
There was no loud music or TV on inside, so I knew she could hear me from anywhere in the cabin or even from out on her back porch.
But she wouldn’t come to the door. I listened carefully for the sound of running water in case she had decided to wash the dishes. But all was silent.
I walked back out to the street. The woman was no longer on the back porch. For whatever reason, she didn’t want to talk to me.
When I got back home, I had a message from Agent Ramos. I called him back.
“I’m thinking you haven’t checked the widow to see if she had a record,” he said.
“Correct. I probably should have.”
“I saved you the trouble,” Ramos said. “Her sheet shows an arrest for shoplifting when she was eighteen. She pled guilty, and her mama paid a large fine. Less than a year later, she had gotten a job working in accounts payable at a perfume distributor and after only a half-year on the job she was fired and convicted on a misdemeanor embezzling charge. She served four months and paid a thousand-dollar fine.”
“I obviously have a top-drawer client.”
“Good luck,” Ramos said and hung up.
Then I called Nadia’s cell number.
“Are you okay?” I asked when she answered.
“I think so. I just got another email from the blackmailer.”
“What did it say?”
“It had a bank account number. It said something like, ‘You have twenty seconds to read this email and write down this number. If you tell anyone the number, we’ll kill your daughter. When you get your insurance payment, you will have twenty-four hours to make a bank transfer to this account.’”
The news hit me hard. We now knew for certain that Gertie had been kidnapped.
I heard Nadia take a deep breath. “So I wrote down the number,” she said, “and then the email vanished.”
“There was no other information about the bank account?”