Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller)

by Todd Borg

  “Hey, Mr. McKenna,” Cory Denell said. “Sergeant wants us to hang here for the night.” He gestured toward his partner. “This is Joe Galant.”

  “Owen McKenna,” I said, shaking Galant’s hand. “Thanks for coming. Come on in.”

  They came into Street’s, and I introduced them all.

  Spot sniffed Denell and Galant. Galant was clearly uneasy but he made a hard grin and spoke through gritted teeth, “Sergeant Martinez told me that you had a big dog. But this guy is really big.” He gave Spot a pet. I took Spot’s collar and pulled him away.

  Gertie looked scared.

  “Gertie, Street, Officers Denell and Galant are going to park outside this door tonight, just to keep an eye on things.”

  Gertie looked at the officers, then back at me, then at Street. For most fifteen-year-olds who haven’t grown up with cops in their families, having an armed, uniformed officer in the room was unsettling.

  “It’s okay, Gertie,” Street said. She reached over and put her hand on Gertie’s shoulder. “It’s just precautionary. If you’d rather, we can go and stay at one of the big hotels.”

  Gertie shook her head. “It’s easier for bad men to move around hotels. If they come here, at least they’ll stand out and be obvious.”

  Gertie turned to Denell. “Where will you be?”

  “We’ll be in the patrol unit.” He pointed toward the door. “We’re parked in the closest space. No one could get to this door without brushing up against our vehicle.”

  “Okay,” Gertie finally said.

  “You want me to leave Spot here?” I said to Street.

  “No. I love him, but he snores worse than you.”

  I gave Street a kiss goodbye and said I’d be back by two a.m. I tried to make it seem casual to put Gertie at ease.

  Denell and Galant and I went back outside. Spot came with, hesitating for a moment at the door, considering, no doubt, that the likelihood of treats would be greater if he stayed. I waited until I heard Street turn the deadbolt. I thanked the officers. Then Spot and I got in the Jeep to drive up the mountain to my cabin.

  FIFTY-ONE

  A thousand vertical feet later, the air was noticeably colder, and there was a sense of ice mist on the breeze. I took Spot for a short walk. When we were inside with the door locked, I opened a beer. The phone rang. I picked it up.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Santiago here. I can’t remember if you’ve met our deputy Rudy Marceau? Our dive enthusiast?”

  “Haven’t had the pleasure,” I said.

  “After talking to you this afternoon, I mentioned the boat that almost hit you and then collided with the moored boat. Rudy is one of the eager divers. So he popped his gear into his little skiff, and he putt-putted down to the area you described. He’s got this glass thing he holds over the side so he can see the bottom. Kind of like a glass-bottom boat. Sure enough, he spotted the wreckage of boats on the bottom, and he saw some debris floating there, too. It looked too deep for his anchor line, so he went closer to shore, then dropped anchor. He pulled on his dry dive suit, put on his air tank, and went overboard.”

  “Alone?” I said.

  “I know, going alone is a big no-no. But he had his diver flag on the float just like regulations. Anyway, he got down to just above the wreckage. It was about as far as the dive tables allow. I can’t remember what. Seventy feet or something because the high altitude makes diving more risky. All he saw was a bent, charred, aluminum hull, upside down. He didn’t have time to inspect it for clues as to what happened, because he could only stay down there a minute. Otherwise, he’d get the bends and all that. So I just wanted you to know that it’ll be awhile, if ever, before we learn much about that collision.”

  “Wait. The boat that got struck was moored to a buoy. The anchor for the buoy wouldn’t be in water anywhere near that deep.”

  “Right. The thing is, there are valleys and ravines and all kinds of uneven territory down there where the bottom plunges off to the abyss below. It goes from twenty or thirty feet right near shore to a thousand feet or more in a short distance. Rudy said that as the wreckage went down through the water, it must’ve angled like a piece of cardboard falling through air. So it hit a deeper part of the bottom. Rudy said the area also looks steep, so the wreckage slid a lot deeper after it hit. It’s no wonder that those treasure hunters can’t find the Lucky Gold.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “The Lucky Gold? Haven’t you heard about that? Everybody’s talking about it. It’s just another fad, if you ask me. Sunken treasure. It’s like one of those urban legends. Except, it’s a rural legend. A mountain legend. But if you want to know more about it, call Rudy.”

  “Do you have his number?”

  “Sure.” Santiago read it off.

  We said goodbye, and I dialed Rudy.

  He answered with a six-pack slur in his speech.

  “Hey, Rudy, Owen McKenna here. I talked to Sergeant Santiago about your dive today. I really appreciate your efforts. And I wanted to ask you a question if you have a sec.”

  “Right on, man. Let ’er rip.”

  “Santiago said something about the Lucky Gold,” I said. “I hadn’t heard about that. But after someone tried to run me over last night, I wondered if there might be a connection.”

  “I dunno, man. I’m a diver. Trade secrets are a diver’s trade, ha, ha.”

  “Do you think maybe I trespassed in someone’s territory? Is there something going on up by Rubicon Bay that I should know about?”

  “Sounds like I should be asking you the questions. The sergeant said you were involved in some kind of child nap, but I didn’t get the details. What were you doing in Rubicon Bay late last night?”

  “Saving a girl. They were planning to shoot her and toss her off the mountainside.”

  “A drop and dump with a girl? Christ, that’s rude enough on a bad-ass methhead, but a girl? That’s outrageous.”

  He sounded genuinely mad. Maybe I could use it to my advantage.

  “You’d like her, Rudy. A sweet high-school kid from Sacramento, and really smart. These guys yanked her out of her house in Sacramento and brought her to Tahoe. I found out that they had a four-wheel-drive cargo van, so I put out notices around the lake. I got a tip, found the van, and pulled her out just as they were about to execute her. They chased us, and I stuck my Jeep into a snow wall. But we got down to the lake and paddled away on a kayak. Next thing, someone tried to run us over out on the lake. The only reason we got away is the jerk hit another boat, and the wreckage you saw was from that collision. So if you know something that might connect to the motive of these guys, that girl is depending on your honor.”

  It was a good speech, all true. If anything could open him up, I thought that had a chance.

  “Please,” I added.

  I heard drinking sounds. Deep breathing.

  “Well, it probably won’t matter what you know,” Rudy said. “Not like it isn’t all over the place, anyway. I always say that skill is what separates the real pros from the wannabes. Anybody can know about treasure. But only the smartest and the best can find it.”

  “That’s the Lucky Gold?” I said.

  “Yeah. Have you heard of Lucky Baldwin?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Wasn’t he the nineteenth century guy who struck it big investing in one of those Comstock Lode mines underneath Virgina City?”

  “You got it. The Ophir Mine. Turned some pennies into millions of dollars back when a million really meant something. He’s the guy who created the towns of Arcadia and Baldwin Park in SoCal, built the Santa Anita Racetrack, and a bunch of other stuff. In his day, he was the largest employer and the largest tax payer in Los Angeles County. He also built the Tallac Hotel and illegal casino at the turn of the century on what we now call the Tallac Historic Site by Baldwin Beach.”

  “That’s the hotel that burned down,” I said.

  “Right. So here’s another history question for you. You know
about the Tahoe Steamer?”

  “Sort of. Turn-of-the-century boat that cruised Tahoe for years. Brought people all around the lake and delivered the mail?”

  “Right,” Rudy said. “It was a magnificent boat. A hundred sixty-nine feet long. As far as I know, that’s still the longest boat that ever cruised our lake. It was built in eighteen ninety-six by D.L. Bliss, the guy who basically cut down all the trees in Tahoe to reinforce the hundreds of miles of mining tunnels under Virginia City.”

  “D.L. Bliss the lumber baron? The state park?” I said.

  “That’s it,” Rudy said. “The park that is just north of Emerald Bay and encompasses Rubicon Point. His Tahoe Steamer was something. Leather upholstery. Twelve hundred horsepower steam engine. Electric lights, which was a big deal back then. It carried two hundred passengers in the finest accommodations of the day. And like you said, it carried the mail. But when they built the first decent road around the lake in nineteen thirty-five, that baby was no longer needed, and it lost the mail contract. The steamer’s traffic dried up. D.L. Bliss’s grandson scuttled it off Glenbrook back in nineteen forty.

  “Anyway, a university researcher down at UC Davis was going through the archives about the Tahoe Steamer and the Tallac Hotel two months ago, and he found some correspondence between Lucky Baldwin and D.L. Bliss.”

  “They probably knew each other,” I said. “Maybe Bliss sold lumber to Baldwin’s mine.

  “Yeah. Anyway, the information in those documents has created a tidal wave of lust and greed.” Rudy paused. It sounded like he was drinking beer. “Can you tell I’m into this stuff? I get excited every time I talk about it. I got a copy of the main document on this, and I’ve studied these guys a lot, so I’m practically an expert, now.”

  “I can tell,” I said.

  I waited.

  “Turns out Lucky Baldwin wrote D.L. Bliss with a proposition. Baldwin wanted a meeting with Bliss out on Bliss’s Tahoe Steamer. Now Baldwin and Bliss weren’t close buddies, to say the least. In fact, it’s safe to say that Baldwin never had a close buddy. He was one ornery jerk and a womanizer who so angered the women he pursued that two of them shot him nearly killing him, and four separate women sued him for breach of promise of marriage. Nevertheless, Bliss agreed to a meeting out on the Steamer on September thirteenth, nineteen-oh-one, which just happened to be a Friday, in case you believe in superstitions.

  “Apparently, Baldwin was putting together a land development deal and Bliss owned a small parcel that Baldwin needed to complete his package. Baldwin suspected that Bliss wouldn’t like the idea of him cleaning up on the deal and as such would refuse to sell his parcel to Baldwin for any reasonable price. But Baldwin knew that it would be worth it to acquire the parcel even if he had to pay an enormous sum to Bliss.

  “So Baldwin decided to ambush Bliss with a take-it-or-leave-it deal. His idea was that if he brought a small chest full of gold out on the boat along with papers that Bliss could sign, Bliss wouldn’t have time to learn about the actual value of Baldwin’s land development. The hope was that Bliss, while realizing that Baldwin was up to no good, would nevertheless be blinded by the gold. He would know that his parcel was worth almost nothing to anyone else, so what could be the harm in taking a fortune in gold for it?

  “Well, the meeting happened as Baldwin planned it. According to an account written by a Tahoe Steamer crew member, Baldwin and Bliss sat in the saloon of the Tahoe Steamer as it steamed from Tahoe City down the West Shore. They were drinking the finest forty-year-old Scotch from the Laphroaig distillery and looking out at the most gorgeous scenery in the world. Because it was a Friday in September, the tourists were largely gone, and Bliss and Baldwin had the saloon to themselves. Baldwin made his little speech, and Bliss hesitated a strategic amount. Baldwin said, ‘Well, Duane, as your good friend and fellow businessman, I understand your hesitation at selling me your little spit of land without careful research and thought. It is only through your brilliance and determination that you’ve accumulated such vast holdings around Lake Tahoe. But as I said, the piece I want, while a pretty lakefront lot, is but the size for an outhouse. You will also imagine, of course, that it is the final piece of a puzzle that means a great deal to me, and your speculation about that would be correct. As such, it makes sense that I would pay a great deal for it. I’m happy to admit that I own all of the adjacent land, a sizable investment for which I’m willing to pay a great deal to protect.’”

  Rudy paused. “‘Thus, here is my offer, simplified,’ Baldwin said. ‘I’m going to have my assistant wheel out a chest full of gold coins. Never mind the exact value as the rates fluctuate daily. Suffice to say it is so far in excess of the value of the land I wish to purchase that I expect you to give in to greed as well as common sense and sign these papers to make your land mine. I will give you enough time to sift through the coins, which I promise are genuine. And as you know my reputation, you know that what I’m saying is the truth. After one minute of time for inspection, my assistant will seal up the chest. You will have five minutes from that point to finish the deed and put your signature on the bill of sale. If you do not, I will never give you the opportunity again, and you will go to your grave thinking that you missed the chance of a lifetime. Realizing that you are but five years younger than me, I can state with assurance that your remaining years are few, a period of time in which, no matter what happens, no one will ever offer you even one percent of this for that land again.’”

  Rudy paused.

  “A great story,” I said. “What was the result?”

  “Bliss thought about it for a minute, then nodded. Baldwin’s assistant came down the outer promenade deck of the Tahoe Steamer pushing a cart on which was a tiny chest. By the effort required to roll the cart, the chest was obviously very heavy. The man writing the account estimated the chest to be twelve inches long by eight inches deep and six inches high.

  “Baldwin’s assistant opened the door to the lounge and rolled the cart in, used his foot to push down a brake lever to lock the cart in place, then opened the top of the chest.

  “Baldwin’s assistant, his secretary, Bliss’s two personal assistants, and three Tahoe Steamer employees made a collective gasp that could fill the car tires of twelve decades of future Tahoe residents. The chest was overflowing with gold coins. The account shows that as Bliss raked his hands through the coins, he picked up many of them for a closer look. At least one was revealed to be an eighteen-seventy Double Eagle, struck at the Carson City Mint. Have you heard about those, McKenna?”

  “I have. Real valuable, I recall.” I’d worked on an avalanche case the year before that hinged on that very coin.

  “One in just fair condition recently sold at auction for three hundred thousand dollars.” Rudy went silent for a moment, no doubt to let me grapple with the concept. “Even adjusting for its value over a hundred years ago, it was still an indication of the astonishing value of that chestful of gold.

  “Of course, that very value reinforced Bliss’s suspicion that the land deal would hold unforeseen advantages for Baldwin. Nevertheless, Bliss couldn’t resist. He closed the chest and shut its latch, then picked up the papers to sign the bill of sale.

  “According to the crew member’s written account, what happened next is a bit confusing. I suppose that’s because it shocked the writer so thoroughly that he lost all clarity of thought. But the essence is that, after Baldwin had the signed papers in hand, and Bliss and Baldwin had shaken hands, Bliss turned to his chest of gold. He used his foot to unlock the brake lever on the cart so he could wheel it away to his private office on the Tahoe Steamer. At that very moment, the Steamer’s skipper blew the whistle and swung the wheel to starboard to avoid some kind of floating hazard in the water.

  “The cart with its heavy chest of gold shifted, and Bliss lost his grip on it. The cart rolled to port, perfectly aimed at the doorway on the side of the lounge. It hit the door, which burst open. Without even slowing, the cart rolled across
the promenade deck and struck the outside railing.

  “Of course, the steamer had been built from the finest quality wood and iron, and it was maintained as if it were President Theodore Roosevelt’s personal boat. But while the steamer’s railing was strong enough to stop the cart in its tracks, the chest of gold slid off the cart, over the railing, and dropped into the deep waters of Lake Tahoe.”

  “That certainly is a story,” I said, thinking about the men who kidnapped Gertie, the eccentric lady’s claim that ghost boats patrolled the West Shore, and the boat that nearly killed Gertie and me the night before.

  “I realize that this might be pure speculation,” I said, “but has anyone connected to this story made a guess as to what the current value of that gold might be?”

  “Indeed,” Rudy said. “The UC Davis researcher called a numismatics expert and told him the size of the chest and asked him to produce an estimate based on the description of the coins. That man came up with a figure, but it is pure speculation as you say. Even so, are you sitting down?” Rudy was clearly something of a showman, even over the phone.

  I’d been pacing my cabin. I sat down on the rocker. “Yes,” I said.

  “Somewhere between fifteen and twenty million. Although that includes collector value on a range of coins, which is more than their simple value as plain gold. But if the chest contained many eighteen-seventy Double Eagles, the value could be twice that.”

  “Enough to motivate a lot of divers,” I said.

  “Oui, c’est moi,” Rudy said.

  I recognized it as French for ‘Yes, ’tis I.’ “Does the account the researcher found make any estimation of the gold’s location?”

  “Only to say that the Steamer was going down the West Shore.”

  “Which gives you twenty-some miles to search,” I said.

  “Yeah. And most of it is at depths far beyond the reach of divers.”