Tahoe Chase (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (16 page)

She nodded. “But on the steepest ones, you have to take off your skis and pack them up and down.”

“Kind of dangerous,” I said.

“The participants prefer to think of it as challenging instead of dangerous.”

“Is it a race?”

“No. It’s enough simply to complete the challenge. The way it works is you hold your phone out and take a picture of yourself at the top of every peak. Then, when you finish the route, you upload the photos to this website. It’s still new. Not many people have done it. I want to be one of the first women to do it.”

“From Donner to Carson must be forty miles. Several days what with climbing the mountains. Plus, you would have to bring a full range of winter camping gear and all your food.”

She nodded. “We can stay at the Benson Hut or the Bradley Hut on the north end of the expedition. And there’s the Ludlow Hut about midway. But the rest is all camping.”

“Are those the huts the Sierra Club maintains?”

“Yeah.”

“The rest of the time you’re sleeping in a tent in the snow.”

She nodded.

“Putting up with whatever storms come through.”

Maybe I sounded doubtful because she said, “You don’t think I could do it?”

“No, didn’t mean that at all. I was just cataloging the challenges. I’m sure you could do it.”

“Don’t say that.” Simone gave me a stern look. “Almost for sure I couldn’t do it. But I want to try. It would be the most amazing experience of my life.”

“You go on the buddy system?”

“They recommend it for safety. But I want to do it solo.”

“Because then it would be a greater achievement.”

“Right,” she said.

“Have you been training for this?”

“Trying to. But it’s hard to find the time.”

“Does Ned know you want to do this?”

“Of course not. He would forbid it. That’s why it’s hard to train. If I go out too much, he gets suspicious.”

“Why would he forbid it?”

“Because he thinks I’m his property. Anything that I do on my own is something where he is not in control of me. And he needs to control me at all times.” She spooned two quick spoonfuls of coffee into her mouth.

“Simone, let me ask you another question about the earlier subject.”

Her face went from excited to dark.

“The man who visits Ned every other week and pays Ned to spy,” I said. “What does he look like?”

“Just...I don’t know. He’s a regular guy. His hair is long and brown, and his eyes are brown. He’s a big guy, not as tall as you but bigger around. A bit like Ned but without so many muscles.”

“His clothes?”

She shook her head. “Nothing noticeable. Not nice, not grubby. Decent pants. A flannel shirt. Except he wears a sweatshirt from a bar. What kind of guy would want to advertise that? Everything is solid colors. High ankle shoes for snow. A brown ski jacket. He looks nice like he’s at work.”

“What about him is different from everyone else? Something he says, some way that he moves?”

Another head shake. “The only thing that comes to mind isn’t something he did but something Ned said about him.”

“What’s that?”

“One day, after the guy left, Ned left too. Later that night, when Ned came home he mentioned something about a boat. He kind of mumbled it and then shut up on the subject. But I got the sense that Ned followed the guy. That would be just like Ned.”

“Ned mumbles a lot.”

“Yeah. It’s how he processes.”

“And he mentioned a boat,” I said.

“Yeah. Nothing specific, but I got the feeling that the guy got on a boat. Or lives on a boat. I don’t know if you can even do that in Tahoe. But it was something about a boat.”

“When did this visitor last stop by?”

“Let me think. I was watching my favorite show when he came. I remember because after Ned turned up the music, I had to sit right next to the TV to hear the sound. But I’ve seen the show once since then, so it had to be the week before. That would make it twelve days ago.”

“Thanks, Simone. Can I drop you at your car?”

“No.” She looked alarmed. “I can’t break my pattern. When I come home later than normal, I always say it’s because I had to work late to clean the kitchen after my shift. But sometimes he’s watching when I leave. There’s a way I can walk there from here where he won’t see me until it looks like I’m leaving the restaurant.”

“Got it,” I said.

TWENTY-FIVE

I called Street and asked if she would join me for dinner. She said yes. My heart made some extra beats.

“Any news on the Rell Rorvik situation?” she asked when we were eating. The little candles on the vinyl fold-up table in my kitchen nook made her eyes sparkle. It was hard to concentrate on what she was saying.

“A bit,” I finally said. I told her about Joe’s neighbor Dwight Frankman, and his car crash, and how he thought it wasn’t an accident.

Street said, “Joe thinks that both Rell’s fall and Manuel Romero’s crash weren’t accidents, either. And Lucy Romero agrees with him about Manuel. Add in Dwight, and you’ve got quite the accident pattern. What do you think?”

“I tracked down Simone, Ned’s live-in punching bag. She says that Ned is being paid to spy on Joe.”

“Are you going to ask him about it?”

“I’d like to, but Simone says that Ned won’t be forthcoming. He’s angry at me for rejecting his advances in the casino parking lot.” I decided not to tell Street that Ned wanted to kill me.

“Maybe you could find the guy who is paying Ned,” Street said.

“My thought, too. He’s supposed to come around again in a day or three. I was thinking about staking out the house and intercepting the visitor.”

Later, I sat in the big chair in front of the woodstove. Street sat scrunched in at my side, half on my lap.

“Warm fire,” Street said.

“You could take off your clothes to cool off.”

“Not that warm,” she said.

“I think I should go back and hit the slopes, track down some Stevies, and see what I can learn from them. Want to come along?”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Let me look at my calendar.” Street picked up her phone, moved her finger around and said, “I have to make a call in the morning, but that’s my only commitment. So if we don’t leave too early, I can join you.”

“Perfect,” I said.

Street moved her finger some more, then set the phone down.

“Seems like your whole life is in that thing,” I said. “What if you lost it?”

“Then I’d be in big trouble. I wouldn’t even know where to start or what to do.”

“We’d have lots more time to get exercise,” I said.

“Skiing?”

“Well, that too.”

Street turned, sat on my lap face-to-face, her knees straddling my thighs.

“If all I did was exercise,” she said, “I’d really develop my technique.”

“If you develop your technique any more, I’ll have to be hospitalized for exhaustion.”

The next morning, I slept in. Street and I had decided on a half day of skiing, and the weather was supposed to be less breezy and warmer than the day before. They were also forecasting sunshine, so I brought Spot along. The solar heat would keep him comfortable inside the Jeep.

We picked up Street and her gear at noon. She was wearing her silver stretch pants with her silver jacket. The jacket was unzipped, and I got a glimpse of her snug black sweater underneath. No wonder so many men are slow at learning to ski. There are too many distractions on the slopes.

“We never decided where to go skiing,” I said as I backed out of her condo parking lot.

“Wherever the Stevies are, I guess,” Street said.

“Jillian said they’re at all the areas.”

Street thought about it as I turned onto the drive and pulled up to the Highway 50 stop sign. I waited.

“Let’s do Alpine,” Street said. “I love that place, and I haven’t been there in a couple of years.”

I turned right and we headed north around the lake, past the turnoffs to Diamond Peak and Mt. Rose ski areas, past the Kings Beach turnoff to Northstar, and headed on to Tahoe City.

In Tahoe City, we went straight through the stoplight near the dam. The water was flowing well, making strong eddy currents. The top six feet of Tahoe’s water is used like a reservoir, storing an enormous amount of water and letting it out as needed. We drove out of town on 89, heading down the valley alongside the Truckee River where Tahoe’s water coursed with gentle rapids on its way to Truckee and then down the big canyon to Reno. A few miles down the road, before we got to the Olympic Rings of Squaw Valley, we turned at the River Ranch restaurant and headed up the steep road into Alpine Meadows. It is a spectacular valley with a ring of mountains at its end.

There were some clouds when we parked, but we cracked the windows for Spot in case the sun came out for any length of time. The main base lodge was a bit of a hike from our distant parking lot, but we had our half-day tickets and were in line at the Summit Six-pack chairlift in a few minutes.

“How do we know when we see the Stevies?” Street asked.

“Based on what I saw and heard at Northstar, we just look for blue and gold ski suits, expert skiers who also happen to be young and beautiful.”

“Is that all,” Street said. “And what is your plan when we find them?”

“Chat them up. Pick their brains. Learn the secrets to the Steven’s Peak Resort universe.”

The lift line was long, crowded with skiers heading back up the mountain after lunch. We shuffled ahead as we talked.

“All of this focus is because of the Steven’s Peak Resort commission that Joe serves on,” Street said.

“Yeah. If Manuel’s death and Rell’s assault and Dwight’s crash aren’t accidents, then I need to look at some connection between them. Joe might be the connection. So I’m looking at all aspects of Joe. The part of his life that is connected to the most controversy is the Steven’s Peak Resort Commission. Joe said that he was inclined to vote in favor. Manuel and Rell and Dwight were all against it.”

“You think someone may be trying to influence the outcome of Joe’s vote?” Street asked.

“It’s worth looking at. Joe respected both Rell’s and Manuel’s opinions. Maybe Dwight’s opinion, too. With them out of the picture, someone might think that Joe would be more likely to vote for the development. Then again, if Joe thinks someone is doing something so outrageous as trying to influence his vote, he would likely vote the opposite way to spite them.”

“In other words,” Street said, “if these deaths are actually murders, the perpetrator could be trying to prevent the development.”

“Right,” I said.

“You think the Stevies might know something about any of this?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “But they are probably smart people. Never know what I might learn.”

“That’s curious.”

“What?” I said.

“That you categorize them as smart without having met even one of them. Why?”

“Well,” I said, “I once read about a survey of professional ski instructors. It said that a quarter of them had graduate degrees and ten percent of them had written screenplays and were shopping them in Hollywood.”

“You think writing screenplays indicates smarts?” Street joked.

“Good point,” I said.

The lift line had moved us over to the left. The four other skiers next to us all came together in a kind of slow compression as we approached the loading ramp and sat on the chair six abreast. In moments, we were riding up the ramp, and we lifted off into the air as the chair locked onto the high-speed cable.

“The woman you skied with, Jillian, what is her connection to the Stevies?” Street asked.

“She invented them. She’s a public relations consultant and event planner. She formulated the concept, set up the hiring, and is still directing the Stevies. The other day when I skied with her, she was scoping out the best places for them to put on their show.”

“Sounds like you could get whatever info you need from her.”

“Maybe. But unlike Jillian, who is working as an independent contractor, the Stevies are employees of RKS Properties. They might have a different, insider’s view of things.”

“How do we find them?”

“I don’t know. Ski around the mountain and look.”

“Do they ski the blues or the black diamonds or what?” Street asked.

“Probably all, but we have to stay with the blue runs. We can scan the black diamonds from the chairlifts.”

“Why do we have to stick with the blues? I like black diamonds.”

“I know you do. But my legs are still beat from the other day. You have to go easy on me.”

“Skied too many bumps?”

“Too many bumps, too many steeps, and did it all too fast and for too long.”

“We could have gone to Squaw. They’ve got that great huge bunny area at the top of the cable car.”

“I think I can do more than green circle bunny slopes. Blue squares would probably be okay.”

Street had pulled a trail map out of the dispenser box when we were in line. She spread it out on her thighs as we lofted our way through the trees.

“Okay, here’s a plan that even you will love.” She pointed to the map. “When we get to the top, we’ll head down Sun Spot, then take that down to Rock Garden.”

“Quite the name for a ski trail,” I said.

“No doubt the rocks are covered with six feet of snow. From there, we’ll head over to Firing Line.” Street turned and grinned at me.

“Don’t my legs just love the sound of that run,” I said.

Street bumped her elbow against my side. “Easy, boy. Stay with me until you understand my concept.”

“I should have brought a wineskin to fortify myself.”

“For a high enough fee,” Street said, “you could maybe get the Ski Patrol to take you down on their toboggan. Anyway, Firing Line drops us down to the Roundhouse quad chair. Once we take that up, we work our way over to the Alpine Bowl chair. See the pattern? Gradually, we’ll work our way across the mountain. Once we’ve sampled the front side, we head over to the back side. If we ski fast and hard, we’ll cover bits and pieces of the entire resort before they close.”

“It’s the fast and hard part that has me worried.”

“But you must agree that this gives us a good chance of seeing the Stevies, wherever they are.”

“Agreed,” I said.

The offload ramp at the top of the chair was approaching. We lifted our ski tips and touched down onto the snow as the chair disconnected from the high-speed cable. In a moment, the chair crested the top of the ramp’s arc, and we pushed off and skied away.

“I’ll follow you,” I said, “if you keep your speed under the sound barrier.”

Street grinned. She pulled her goggles on and did an accelerating skate toward the Sun Spot run, pushing hard with her poles. As she approached the lip at the top, she did a pole plant, and, just for show, lifted her ski tails into the air a few inches, then carved a long, hard turn as she dropped out of my view, her silver outfit describing a silver streak.

I skated and poled and did my best to follow, but she was like Jillian. In the interest of keeping my body intact, I kept my speed down and made a controlled descent. At one point, I realized I was approaching a mogul field, so I made a hard carve to the side and found a line without too many bumps.

Street was waiting down below, just as Jillian had two days before.

“No Stevies,” she said as I did a skidding stop next to her.

“Not that I would know,” I said. “It took all of my focus just to stay upright and keep you in view.”

“Too fast for an old guy?” she said.

“Next time you wonder about those guys who take up with the ski bunnies who can’t even walk their skis across the flats, it’s because those ski bunnies make us feel competent.”

“False modesty!” Street hit me with a light slug to my shoulder. “You ski as well as most anyone on the mountain.”

“Hard to know when my first and second days on the slopes are with Jillian and you.”

A woman in a puffy pink suit skied by doing a shaky snowplow, her speed about half the rate I use shuffling from my bedroom to the coffee maker in the morning.

Street leaned sideways and whispered, “There’s your girl! Go get her! She’ll make you feel like a mountain stud!”

I looked at the woman, then turned and looked back at Street. My eyes went down to her stretch pants, tight around her hips.

“But I’ll learn more watching you,” I said.

“Not watching me there,” she said.

“I wasn’t talking about learning skiing,” I said.

Street pushed off and skied away. She had classic ski posture, knees bent, butt low, back nearly straight, arms reaching forward as she picked her pole plants, made quick precision turns, her boots and skis going up and down over the bumps like she had shock absorbers in her legs. As the terrain varied, her upper body traced smooth arcs, left and right, up and down.

It was the kind of show that thrills onlookers as much as the skiers themselves, a captivating, enthralling dance.

Street came to a junction and carved off to the left. I understood that she was heading down Firing Line. I pushed off to follow.

We continued the pattern of moving across the mountain until we rode over to the back side. The Sherwood Express took us to the top of the back side. As we were getting off the chair, Street said, “There they are.”