Tahoe Dark (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 14)

by Todd Borg

  “Yeah. He talked about it now and then. Something about his bones, I think. He never mentioned the details, but he was frank about it. I think that when he lost his hair because of the chemo, he decided there was no point in pretending. He said it had advanced too far, and that he was preparing for his end.”

  “Did he have close friends?” Lanzen asked.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Did he go out paddle boarding with other people?” I asked.

  “Not that I ever sensed. I think he was pretty much a loner.”

  There was a sound from the next room. The door opened. A woman came out. She was small of frame but still larger than Evan. She rubbed her eyes as she took a few steps into the living room. Then she saw Lanzen and me. She looked worried and brought both of her hands to her mouth. Her right hand came off her wrist at an angle, and her forearm was bent in an unusual way.

  Evan jumped up. “Hey, baby, it’s okay, these are my friends Lori and Owen.” Evan hurried to the woman’s side and put her arm around the woman’s shoulders. With her other hand, she reached up and touched the woman’s face as gently as if she were touching a newborn kitten. “Come meet Lori and Owen. Guys, this is my sister Mia. Mia is my partner and pal, right, Mia? And she’s also an expert on afternoon TV. Anything you want to know, and I mean anything, you just ask Mia. Mia, say hi to Lori and Owen.”

  Mia pulled one hand from her mouth and made a little wave. “Hi.” Then she wrapped her arms around Evan and hugged her.

  When they stopped hugging, Mia looked at Evan’s face, frowned, and touched a fingertip to Evan’s cheek just below her red eyes. Mia looked worried, then looked over at Sergeant Lanzen and me.

  It seemed a good time to leave. The sergeant told Evan that she’d be in touch about her car. We said goodbye and left.

  Lanzen walked over to my Jeep. I introduced her to Spot. She pet him, and he looked rapturous.

  I told Lanzen I’d try to find Montrop’s son Jonas, and I’d be in touch.

  Once again, she looked hesitant. “You’re okay with helping me? This isn’t your case.”

  “But it could be.”

  She nodded.

  SEVEN

  I drove back down the East Shore. I was hungry, and I knew Spot would be dreaming of lunch, but I decided we could first look in on Montrop’s son Jonas.

  It was easy to find Jonas’s house on Tahoe Keys Boulevard in South Lake Tahoe, the opposite end of the lake from where Evan Rosen lived. Jonas’s place was a small, well-kept cabin with brown siding and dark green trim. It sat close to the street, and the house number was displayed with white, metallic numbers nailed to the siding. There was no garage. An ancient, orange VW Microbus was in the middle of the small asphalt parking pad. In front of the house were two fir trees with dense foliage that blocked the view of the front door. I told Spot to be good, got out, and walked along a row of paving stones that curved behind the trees to the door.

  There was no doorbell, so I knocked on the door. The tap of my knuckles swung the door in. The doorjamb was splintered. Bits of wood littered the floor.

  I could call Mallory and have him send out a patrol unit, but someone could be in trouble, and I didn’t want to wait.

  I didn’t know if I’d find a traumatized victim or a burglar. So I quietly stepped back outside, tiptoed back to the Jeep, and let Spot out of the back seat. I brought him to the house.

  As soon as I let go of his collar, he wandered into the living room, his tail high, friendly, inquisitive. He raised his nose toward the dining and kitchen area, turned and sniffed a folding card table with a desktop computer. Then Spot immediately swung his head to the side, pointing toward the little square hallway with three doors that would lead to the bathroom and two bedrooms. Spot’s nostrils flexed. He raised his head, still air-scenting, not trail scenting. He walked with purpose to the little hallway as if he knew exactly where he was going and walked into the bedroom on the right. I was directly behind him.

  I’ve learned Spot’s body language. I could tell that he wasn’t telegraphing that a person was in the room. It was more like he was following a scent that indicated recent human activity.

  When I came through the door, I saw Spot sniffing a pillow that lay on the floor. The bed covers were pulled most of the way off the bed. A water glass lay on its side on the floor near the night table. The carpet had a large dark spot curving away from the glass. I bent over and touched it. There was a hint of moisture, but it had mostly dried. There was a chair tipped over. Partially draped over the tipped chair was a pair of jeans and shirt. Two socks lay nearby. A table lamp was lying on the floor a good distance away, the carpet sparkling with bits of glass from the broken bulb.

  I took Spot by his collar. “Good boy,” I said as I pulled him back out of the room. “Let’s not contaminate a crime scene.”

  After a quick check showed that the other bedroom, the bathroom, and the kitchen were all undisturbed, I pulled out my cell phone. Before I could dial, it rang.

  “Owen McKenna,” I said.

  “Lori Lanzen. Word of Montrop’s death travels fast around our Incline Village. I just got a call from the manager of one of our banks, the bank where David Montrop has his checking account. This morning, he withdrew twenty-five thousand dollars and asked for it in cash.”

  “Did he say what it was for?”

  “Yes. He told the teller that he needed the cash to make a payment for a band. His business is booking bands into concert venues across northern Nevada and northern California.”

  I asked, “Did they say whether or not he often makes cash withdrawals?”

  “The manager did say he often makes cash deposits. But cash withdrawals are unusual. Apparently, he usually gets a cashier’s check.”

  “I may have found the real reason for the cash withdrawal,” I said. “I just got to Jonas’s house. No one’s here. The door was broken in. There are signs of a struggle. If I had to guess, I’d say that someone pulled Jonas out of bed while he was sleeping.”

  Lanzen immediately said, “Someone kidnapped Jonas and demanded ransom from the father?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “So after Montrop delivered the money, they killed him?” Lanzen sounded disbelieving. “Do you think that’s what they did with Jonas?”

  “I don’t know. Often, kidnappers keep the victim alive just long enough to get the money. Then they kill the victim to cover their tracks. So Jonas may be dead as well.”

  “This all seems unusual,” Lanzen said. “Even though kidnappers sometimes kill the kidnap victim, they don’t usually kill the person making the ransom payment.”

  “That’s been my experience. Most of the time, they arrange for a payment drop that keeps them physically removed from the person making the payment. It seems strange that the kidnappers would kill Montrop in his driveway. Going to his house would create a substantial risk for them.”

  “But Montrop’s dead, and the cash is gone. It may be a stupid MO, but that could help us.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Stupid killers are the easiest to catch. I need to call in Jonas’s disappearance to Commander Mallory of the SLTPD and Agent Ramos.”

  “The South Shore FBI office,” she said.

  “Right.”

  We hung up. I put Spot in the Jeep and came back with a pair of latex gloves, and, careful not to smear any potential prints, went through the pockets of Jonas’s jeans.

  He had a key ring with two keys, one for a VW – probably the orange microbus – and another that looked like it would fit the front door. He had a wallet with 17 dollars in it, his California driver’s license, a Safeway Club Card, and a Bank of America debit card. I made a note of the license number and date of birth.

  I called Mallory.

  “Mallory,” he said in a loud voice when my call was transferred through.

  “McKenna calling to report a potential kidnapping in your fair city.”

  “Does this have something to do with the act
ion in Incline? I heard that you were a person of interest in a murder. What a kick.”

  I ignored Mallory’s enthusiasm. “The murder victim, David Montrop, was a con artist and defendant in a manslaughter case when I was on the SFPD. That could be why he had written a note that mentioned me. Anyway, I came to inform his son Jonas Montrop, who lives on Tahoe Keys Boulevard. I’m there now. I found the door broken in. The kid is missing. There are signs of a struggle in the bedroom. Sergeant Lori Lanzen of Washoe County just found out that David Montrop withdrew twenty-five thousand in cash from his bank this morning.”

  “Someone nabbed the kid, nicked the dad for ransom, then killed the dad when he paid the money?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “I heard something about how he died, but it didn’t make sense. Something about a paddle board?”

  “It appears that someone hit him with a paddle board. Or maybe threw it at him. Blunt force trauma to the head and chest.”

  “There’s an unusual murder weapon. So we have to assume that it’s connected to the kid’s disappearance. What’s the kid’s address? I’ll send a team over.”

  I gave Mallory the number on Tahoe Keys Boulevard.

  “You calling Ramos?” he said.

  “Kidnapping is FBI territory,” I said.

  We said goodbye.

  I had the number of the FBI’s Tahoe office. I dialed.

  “Owen McKenna calling for Agent Ramos, please,” I said when the phone was answered. “I need to report a kidnapping.” I figured that mentioning a federal crime would make it less likely that Ramos would be out of the office.

  “Please hold.”

  “Mr. McKenna, it is good to talk to you,” Ramos said when he picked up, his speech showing his trademark careful diction and precise enunciation. I could picture him at his desk in his sport jacket and pressed trousers and his meticulously-barbered moustache. “You have a kidnapping? We haven’t heard.”

  “I just discovered it. I’m not even certain of it. Tahoe Keys Boulevard. A kid named Jonas Montrop, son of David Montrop who died this morning from a blow by a paddle board in Incline Village.”

  “I heard of that. Are the death and kidnapping connected?”

  “I don’t know, but it seems logical. I just got word from Sergeant Lori Lanzen, Washoe County, that Montrop withdrew twenty-five thousand in cash from the bank this morning.”

  “Ransom?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “He’s a booking agent for bands. He told the bank manager it was a payment to a band. There’s no sign of the money.”

  “You’ve called Mallory?”

  “Yeah. Then you. I’ll also let Sergeant Diamond Martinez know. Do you want in on any of this?” I said.

  “You know we’re here to support all official law enforcement agencies.”

  I took that as a slam on my non-official, private investigator status.

  “But you and I go back a ways,” he continued. “So I imagine that you will be working with the officers you mentioned. May I ask who your client is?”

  “I don’t have a client.”

  There was a pause. “I see,” Ramos said, not sounding happy. “What is the address of the victim?”

  I gave it to him.

  “Okay, we’ll get on it. Let me know if we can help in any other way.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I hung up.

  I continued my no-touch search. After the South Lake Tahoe cops got a warrant, they could start opening drawers and be more thorough in gathering evidence.

  I walked through the house, looking at everything in sight. Then I went back outside and took note of the layout of the street and drive and the front door. I considered Jonas’s bedroom windows on the front, right corner of the house, visible to all, easy to watch from a distance. When he turned off his lights and went to bed, it would be obvious to anyone nearby. I went back to the front door and looked at the damage. Like the cabin, the door was old. It was made of thin wood, and the deadbolt lock, while itself strong, projected into a jamb made of lightweight pine. It would splinter and break with any heavy impact of shoulder against door.

  Back in the bedroom, something caught my attention. Near the spilled water was a bit of paper. I reached down and set one of my cards next to it, aligned edge-to-edge to mark its position, then slipped another card under the piece and lifted it up without touching it. The piece of paper was torn, triangular in shape. It was straight cut on two sides at right angles to each other. The hypotenuse of the triangular piece was torn. There was an area with some writing and a portion of a photo. The paper was wavy from the water, and the writing and photo were a bit smudged.

  The paper had originally been glossy, as if from a magazine. The photo portion showed the rear half of a runabout speeding across a body of water, its wake a long, low wedge of spreading waves. The adjacent writing had just two words beginning at the torn edge. It said, ‘cury sterndrives.’ I realized that it had probably said, ‘Mercury sterndrives’ before it was torn. The reverse side of the paper was white with no printing. Nothing about it offered any clue to the man or men who yanked Jonas out of bed in the night.

  I lowered my card so that the torn paper slid off onto the carpet in the exact same position that I’d found it. I picked up the card I’d used as a marker and pocketed it.

  I walked back through the little house. It was neat like his dad’s house in Incline. But instead of fancy furniture and art, Jonas’s living room had only the table with the computer. Jonas had no desk. The only paperwork I found was some mail in a cardboard box next to the desktop computer. Using my pen, I flipped through the envelopes. They were bills addressed to Jonas Montrop.

  When I stopped moving the mail in the box, I heard the soft whir of a fan and realized that the desktop computer was on, the cooling fan barely perceptible. But the screen was dark.

  I bumped the mouse.

  The screen lit up. On it was a note.

  ‘Flynn,

  Let me put this in writing so my meaning is perfectly clear. I didn’t know about the leak. I swear it. Even though things can be fixed, I’ll give you the money back. We didn’t transfer title yet, anyway, so it’s not like you’re stuck with it. You said I was trying to kill you. That’s simply not true. I can prove that if you’

  The note ended as if he’d been interrupted or had simply stopped writing until he thought of the best words. The police would probably be able to pull prints off the keyboard or see if the keys had been wiped. Every indication in the house suggested that Jonas lived alone. A single toothbrush, one towel in the bathroom, a single glass and plate in the dish rack, one pair of hiking boots by the front door, just a few clothes in the closet.

  I saw nothing else revealing, so I went outside to wait for the police.

  A South Lake Tahoe black-and-white drove up a moment later. Two men got out.

  “Hey, McKenna,” one of them said. The other one nodded at me. I’d met both, but I didn’t remember their names. “Commander says you’ve got an abduction.”

  I took them into the house and showed them what I’d found, then left them to their work.

  Back in the Jeep, I dialed the Incline Village Sergeant.

  “Lori Lanzen,” she answered.

  “Owen McKenna. I’ve got a more thorough report on Jonas.”

  “Shoot.”

  So I gave it all to her, the spilled water, stuff knocked over, the computer, the unfinished letter, the little scrap of torn paper.

  “Any conclusions?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Let me know what you learn,” she said, “and I’ll do the same.”

  We said goodbye.

  EIGHT

  I called Street. She was at her lab.

  “Blondie and I were just about to head home,” she said.

  “Then perhaps I could interest you in a dinner date?” I said. “Something nice?”

  I could almost hear her thinking through her schedule, contemplating whether or not she could meet all o
f her obligations with the sudden insertion into her schedule of an evening off.

  “I’d even take a shower and switch out my hiking boots for shoes,” I said to sweeten the deal.

  “You really know how to make a girl feel special,” she said. “How about picking me up at seven?”

  “Will do.”

  At the appointed hour, Spot and I drove down to Street’s condo. When Street opened the door, he trotted inside, greeted Blondie, then made a circuit of Street’s kitchen, his nose pausing at the microwave and the toaster oven and then lingering at the stove top, nostrils flexing, divining the details of Street’s previous half-dozen meals. Blondie followed him, looking up with a question in her eyes as if to wonder what it was like to be tall enough to reach over counter tops. When it seemed that there was nothing especially vulnerable to a Great Dane’s inspection – no defrosting filet mignon on top of the fridge – I turned to Street.

  She’d recently had her hair tinted to a very dark auburn and cut in a boyish, asymmetrical bob that curled around her face on both sides. It was parted on the left and combed while still wet so that the coarse comb left faint grooves in her hair, a look that was more casual than what a brush would do. Maybe she sported a hint of auburn eye shadow. Maybe her lip gloss had a touch of matching color. I’ve never understood the alchemy of makeup, and I’ve always thought that her attractiveness was intrinsic to her personality and unaffected by the shallower effects of color and hair shape. Street was a scientist, not an actress, and her lack of movie star beauty in no way lessened her appeal to me.

  And tonight, Street’s allure was riveting. She was wearing a satin black top that ended an inch above the waistband of her thin, skin-tight, black pants. On her feet were black shoes that looked like ballet slippers, revealing ankles so perfect that Michelangelo would have struggled to get them right. Artfully draped across her shoulders was a filmy tie-dyed scarf in purple and magenta with hints of orange. It must have been ten feet long.

  “If a breeze comes up and you do a pirouette,” I said, “that scarf will flow like an apparition.”