Tahoe Deathfall

by Todd Borg

I reached across my desk and handed the check back.

  “I’m sorry, Jennifer, but even if I put the same stock in your convictions as you do, I could not work for you. Your grandmother, maybe, but not you.”

  Jennifer looked profoundly disappointed.

  “But,” I said, “you and I are friends almost. Lots of times I’ve done some detecting on the side for friends.”

  Jennifer gave me a huge gap-toothed grin that showed the hardware of extensive orthodontia. “If you won’t work for me, I should at least pay you for such favors.”

  “Kids who are fourteen don’t pay for favors. They rely on wise, mature and altruistic adults to guide them and protect them from harm.”

  “Wisdom and maturity and altruism your special­ties, no doubt,” she said.

  “No doubt,” I said.

  “When I turn eighteen and gain access to my money, maybe then I could make your activity on my behalf remunerative.”

  “Remunerative. Sounds exciting.”

  “Four hundred million is very exciting,” she said.

  After Jennifer left I stood up and looked out the window to see what kind of transportation she was using to skip school and visit her friendly local detective. Stretch limo? Helicopter? Harrier jet?

  Jennifer appeared down below. She looped her purse around her neck and climbed onto a dirty green mountain bike. She pedaled fast across Kingsbury Grade, dodging between a U-Haul truck and a red Lexus. At the opposite shoulder, she bounced up the bank and disap­peared into the pine trees carrying the biggest check I’d seen in a long time.

  Another cyclist appeared, went up the bank and into the trees in the same direction as Jennifer. Maybe there was a trail I’d never seen before. Maybe I should look.

  In my peripheral vision I saw a silver BMW with smoked windows pull out from a tree shadow up the hill and drive to where Jennifer and the other cyclist had gone into the forest. The driver’s door opened and a man in white pants and white T-shirt got out. His T-shirt was stretched tight by muscles. The man ran around his car, up the bank and into the woods.

  Popular spot, these woods suddenly were.

  “Hey, Spot?” I said. “Wanna see what the body-builder is doing in the woods?”

  He jumped to his feet. His friend Treasure, the toy poodle who lives down the street, tried to teach him to do a handstand and stick his butt and hind legs in the air when he’s excited, but Spot would have none of it. When he’s excited he just rises to his feet and starts sweeping tables clean with his tail.

  I glanced at the woman in the Hopper painting and left the office.

  Spot ran down the stairs, put a paw against the glass door and pushed outside. I clicked my fingers and walked to the road. He trotted over to my side and waited with me for a break in traffic. When it came, we ran across the road and up the bank where everyone else had gone.

  The tire tracks from the mountain bikes mean­dered into the pines. They were marred here and there by widely-spaced footprints. Spot was at my side waiting for permission to run around when the bodybuilder reap­peared in the trees.

  His heavy panting was audible as he walked toward us. He was in his late thirties with thick black hair set in such a perfect wave that he must have used a spray-on plastic coating. He was a half foot shorter than my six, six, but he had 240 pounds of hard beef on his frame. Even his jaw muscles bulged.

  I touched Spot’s neck, a gesture that meant stay at heel. The hair on his back was up and stiff.

  “Interesting place, these woods,” I said. Friendly. Just walking the dog.

  The man glared at me as he approached. He had feral eyes, dark little obsidian beads that were close set and made his nose look pinched.

  “You looking for one of those bicyclers?” I asked.

  He gave Spot a careful appraising once-over, one animal to another. “What bicyclers?” he said at last.

  “Two guys,” I lied, watching for a reaction.

  He shook his head. “Never saw them.” He was wired tight as a piano and his eyes flicked from me to Spot. The man knew I was messing with him and he looked ready to spring. Neither my size nor my dog seemed to intimidate him as common sense would suggest. But then men don’t build muscles like that because it makes sense.

  I casually shifted toward what we used to call our “ready” stance on the San Francisco Police Department. “You ran into the woods right after the bicyclers and you didn’t see them?”

  The man ignored me. His eyes were on Spot, no doubt wondering what the dog would do if the man were to teach me a lesson for being flip. “That dog’s the size of a donkey,” he mumbled. “A polka dot donkey.” He laughed with gusto, a reaction I thought strange.

  Spot must have agreed with me. He growled, deep and loud, his lips lifting.

  The man moved to our side and hustled away in the direction of his car.

  “Enough, Spot,” I said.

  Spot stopped growling. He held his tail high.

  “You study that at the Actor’s Studio?” I said.

  He wagged.

  I turned and saw the man running for his car. I ran after, intent on getting his license number. We came out of the woods and slid down the bank. The silver BMW was a flash of light down the road.

  When the traffic eased we walked back across Kingsbury Grade.

  I let Spot in the rear door of my Jeep. He sat his butt on the passenger seat and his feet on the floor. I rolled down the glass and he stuck his head out and became Tahoe’s number one traffic distraction.

  We drove down Kingsbury and across Stateline to the California side of Tahoe. It was another typical spring day with hot sun and cerulean skies. The mountains were white with snow that would last through July. Three or four cotton-puff clouds competed for the best reflection in the deep blue mirror of the lake. If I could take the woman in Hopper’s painting out of the movie theater and bring her to Tahoe on a day like this, it would go a long way toward mitigating her anguish. For a moment I won­dered about myself that I was playing make-believe knight to a fictional maiden, but I let the thought go as I pulled into the lot at the Tahoe Herald building and parked.

  “Don’t howl with loneliness if I leave you for a moment, okay?” I said to Spot. I grabbed his muzzle and shook it, but he was ignoring me, turning his head to watch a cop on horseback over by the beach.

  I went inside the Herald building. “I’d like to review a story you printed some years ago,” I said to a woman at the front counter.

  “Do you know the date?”

  “I’m sorry, no. But it would have been in the month of August. Nine years ago this coming August”

  She picked up the phone and pressed three but­tons. “Glenda? I’m sending a man back to look at the microfiche. Could you please pull August of nine years ago? What? Years. Thanks.” She looked up at me. “Just go down that aisle, sir, to the second door past the drinking fountain.”

  I entered the darkened room. It had two micro­fiche machines on modular tables. “Just a minute,” a woman’s voice called out. She appeared from between rows of floor-to-ceiling shelving.

  “Owen!”

  “Hi, Glennie.”

  She gave me a fierce hug. She was wearing navy blue stretch pants, a white turtle neck and over it a light blue Norwegian cardigan with metal buttons. In the dim light I could see under her blonde curls the tan that comes from spring skiing. She was all curves and all of them still firm. She looked up at me, bending her neck back. “Owen, honey, you ready to try a new woman, yet?”

  “Thanks, but I’m reserved until further notice.”

  “Street still hasn’t given you a commitment.”

  “No.” It was a sore spot.

  Her arms were still around my waist. “I cook the best stir fry at the lake, you know. And my house is off limits to all bugs.”

  “An entomologist needs bugs around the way an astronomer needs stars.”

  “Sure, but maggots?” Glennie stepped away from me. “Come on, Owen. One time in h
er kitchen I saw jars with white things in them. I thought they were little noo­dles. But Street said they were maggots. How can you eat food made in a kitchen with maggots on the counter?”

  “She does forensic consulting. The maggots they find on the body can tell when a person died.”

  “That is disgusting.” Glennie screwed up her nose, then gave me a sad little smile. “Anyway, if you ever want dinner, I’m available.”

  I nodded. I was thinking that most men would think Glennie was a prize, not a compromise. Most men would take her in a second rather than wait for Street, a too thin, too edgy, too fragile woman with eyes that could see my soul and a voice that could melt it.

  “I get it. All business. What is it this time? Casino espionage? Jealous spouse? Oh, that’s right. Privileged information.”

  I smiled.

  “Okay, you’re not talking. But remember me if that girl ever skis off with someone else.”

  “Promise.”

  “Here’s your August from nine years ago.” Glen­nie handed me a roll of film. She left me alone while I perused the tape. I zoomed around on fast forward and fast rewind until I found the story on August 17th. The headline was bold.