Tahoe Chase (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (3 page)

Ten grand was also enough to attract dirtballs looking for easy money. “How did people send you their entries?” I asked.

“Mail. UPS. FedEx.”

“Did the contest publicity information have your home address?”

Joe gave me a worried look. “My home address is the only one I have.”

FIVE
 

“No one would think that ten grand in prize money means I have ten grand in cash sitting around,” Joe said.

“Probably not. But it does suggest that you have resources, resources that might show up in other ways that someone could steal. You also said that you had five hundred in a money clip.”

“That they didn’t take,” Joe added.

I nodded. “Did you know or have you met any of the winners?”

“No.” Joe shook his head. “At least I don’t think so. I handled the judging and Rell mailed off the money. She would know the names. But I guess that means they’re lost unless I can find them in her notes.”

“We could find the canceled checks and get the names that way.”

Joe frowned. “She got money orders from the Post Office. I forget why, but she had a reason.” Joe paused, and looked off at nothing specific, his face sad. “I wasn’t a good listener. She took care of so much. I didn’t pay enough attention.”

Joe’s face went vacant for a bit. “Do you have a girl, Owen?”

“Yes. A good one. Her name is Street Casey. Maybe you’ll meet her.”

“Do you pay attention to her?”

It was a personal question that I wouldn’t have liked from most clients, but I didn’t mind it coming from Joe.

“Probably not enough,” I said.

I turned back to the trash can full of origami sculptures. “Do you remember anything about the winners?” I asked. “Where they lived, for example?”

“Rell talked about it. Let me think. All over. I believe the winner was from Chicago. She might have mentioned Boston, too. I forget the others.”

“You said you sent the winning entries to MIT. Any chance you took pictures of them?”

“Yeah.” Joe walked into the kitchen, pulled out a drawer and brought me some photos. “I printed them on copy paper, so they are hard to see. But you get the idea.”

They were worse than hard to see. I could tell that they were complex geometric shapes, but that was about it.

I took one of the sculptures out of the can. It was a type of ball made of many similar sides.

“That’s a dodecahedron,” Joe said.

“Sure, I knew that,” I joked.

Another was a type of fan that expanded and contracted, snapping into each position.

“Not too many animals,” I said.

“A few. But my instructions for the contest explained that we were looking for anything that could have an application in science. So there is a preponderance of entries that reveal controlled motion or geometric shapes that might be considered hard or even impossible to fold out of paper. Each entrant also had to include a short explanation of why they thought their creation had scientific merit. And of course they had to include folding instructions.”

“Did the entry fee cover the prize money?”

Joe frowned. “There was no entry fee. The prize money was my contribution to art and science. A small price to pay in hopes of finding something of scientific value.” Joe pointed at the can full of sculptures. “Also, I very much enjoy thinking about the thousands of hours away from the TV that these sculptures represent.”

“Are you going to do it again next year?”

Joe smiled and shook his head. “No. I may be naïve, but I’m not stupid. I had no life for many months while I fielded questions and wrote emails and judged sculptures all day long, seven days a week. And when I found a piece that I didn’t understand but could see that maybe it had merit, then I had to take photos from all angles and email them to origami mathematicians who were kind enough to give me an opinion. At one point, the project began to feel like I was living a nightmare that wouldn’t go away. I also made Rell pretty miserable during those months.”

Joe stood up as if even the memory of the contest made him weary.

I hadn’t seen any more movement outside by the time we moved back into the living room. Joe’s mood seemed better, so I pointed to the sliding glass door that led out to the deck.

“Is this the deck that Rell fell from?” I asked.

“Yes.” Joe pulled open the door and walked out. Spot followed him. I trailed behind, casually looking around, my eyes turning farther as I tried to scour the forest without being noticed. Although Spot would struggle in the deep snow, I could send him on a search mission to “Find The Suspect.” But even if a person was in the woods, that didn’t make them guilty of anything. There was no cause to have Spot take them down.

The sun suddenly poked out and was surprisingly hot despite the cold air of December. Joe pointed over the railing.

“This is the spot,” he said.

Hearing his name, Spot looked at Joe, anticipation on his face. He wagged a quick one, two.

I walked over, rubbed Spot’s head. “He means place, your largeness, place.”

My dog didn’t understand, but he liked the attention. People were saying his name. He knew that was a good thing. Maybe it would lead to food. He kept wagging.

I looked over the railing where Joe indicated. It was a long way down. The snow-covered ground was lumpy, probably granite boulders. The area was shaded, protecting the snow from the sun’s heat. The snow was tramped down and covered with footprints.

From nearby in a tree came the chick-a-dee call of a Mountain Chickadee. Over and over. I looked out but could not see any bird.

“That’s Molly,” Joe said.

I turned and looked at him.

“One of Rell’s birds. The bird eats out of Rell’s hand. But no more. I hear Molly every day. At least, I think it’s Molly. She sounds lonely. I put out seed for her, but she doesn’t come to eat.”

I nodded. I didn’t know what to say.

The railing was solid. It had balusters spaced every six inches. Rell couldn’t have gone between them. She had to go over. I stepped back and tried to visualize a 5-foot 2-inch woman coming at the railing, striking it, and the inertia flipping her over.

Just as Joe had said, it didn’t seem likely.

I turned to Joe. “Where were you when Rell fell?”

“I was in Reno at the doctor’s office.”

“When did you get back?”

“I got home just as it was starting to get dark. Maybe five o’clock. I spoke to her by phone right before I left Reno. That would have been about three-fifteen or three-thirty.”

“You found Rell below the deck?”

“Yes.” Joe swallowed. “I pulled into the garage and called for her when I walked into the kitchen. There was no answer. I opened the slider and called outside. Again, there was no answer. So I dialed her cell phone and heard the ring. I followed the sound and looked over the deck. I saw her lying on the rocks below.” He made a little hiccup, turned away, and cleared his throat.

I gestured at the closest houses. “Do you know these neighbors?” I asked, as I shifted position to get a view of a different part of the forest.

“We’ve met and spoken, but no, we don’t really know them well.”

“Were they home?”

Joe pointed to the big tan house on the north side. “At first, I thought the neighbors on this side were home because I thought I saw him driving his car. After I found Rell and called nine-one-one, I knocked on his door. But the lights were off, and no one was home.”

Spot turned his head and lifted his nose high, nostrils twitching. But he made no other motions that would indicate a person out in the forest. The wind was blowing toward us from Mt. Tallac. So any scent on the breeze probably came from a long distance. The scent of a nearby person would be moving away from Spot.

“What are their names?” I gestured toward the house that Joe had pointed to.

 “The Howsers,” Joe said. “They live in L.A. He’s an entertainment attorney. They come up to ski during the holidays and spend the glory days here.”

“Glory days?”

“The best of Tahoe summer. July Fourth through Labor Day.”

“Have the Howsers been here recently?”

“No. It’ll be hard to tell them about Rell. They like her.”

“What about the other side?”

Joe gestured toward the stone and timber-frame house on the other side. “Melanie Schumann. She’s a composer. Classical stuff for symphonies. I asked her if she was related to the famous Schumann. She said no. She said he did romantic stuff, whereas she writes postmodernist something or other. I forget her words. Something like ironic oratorio. She said it is like opera but without acting. Anyway, she’s only here in the summer now and then. Lives in the Bay Area. I always thought that composers just wrote music. But apparently, that’s just a part of it. They spend a lot of time working with orchestras and such.”

“Is there anyone else in the neighborhood that you know well?”

“No. Dwight Frankman is the closest to a friend that we’ve got. A couple times a year, he hauls our bottles and cans to the recycle center. We have a service do the snow removal, but sometimes Dwight stops by with his shovel to do the walk when there isn’t enough snow to send the service out. When you get older, these things make a big difference.”

“Can you remember the names of any other homeowners?”

“Just a guy named Michael Paul. As you know, most houses in Tahoe are vacation homes. Empty most of the year. This neighborhood more than most. One of our vacation-home neighbors had a party one summer. He wanted all the neighbors to get to know each other. As far as we could tell, the only other person besides Dwight who lives in this end of the neighborhood full time is Michael Paul. Paul is almost as young as Dwight but much more mature. He started a tech company in Silicon Valley. I think he sold the company to one of the big banks a few years ago. Now he’s a retired playboy. I think he still has a house in Mountain View, but he spends most of his time up here.”

“How old is Michael?” I asked.

“I’d guess late twenties.”

“Is Michael married? Does he have a family?”

Joe shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve seen him driving with different young women in his car. I should say cars, plural. He drives a Ferrari in the summer and a Porsche SUV in the winter and a BMW spring and fall.”

“Not your average vehicles,” I said.

“Not your average girls, either. Expensive-looking girls. Paul even has a fourth vehicle for snowboarding, if you can believe that. It’s a big black Range Rover with a snowboard rack, spare tire, and a gas can on the roof. He goes into the back-country to ski. Or I guess I should say ride.”

“What about Frankman? What’s he do?”

“Well, as you saw, Dwight’s practically a kid. He does computer work. One of those telecommuting guys we hear about. Even though he’s a computer guy like Paul, he’s kind of the opposite in personality. Very quiet. Polite.”

“Who does he work for?”

“He’s self-employed. He writes software. He obviously does well because he bought a nice place down the street.”

“Came here to snowboard like Paul?” I said.

Joe shook his head. “As far as I know, he doesn’t do any sports. We’ve seen him walking on the local trails. But, as you could see, he’s a skinny kid. It doesn’t look like he gets any exercise. I think he just moved up here from the Bay Area for the peace and quiet. Tahoe’s probably a great place to write computer stuff.”

Joe paused. “At least Dwight isn’t into tattoos.”

“Michael Paul got himself tatted up, huh?”

“Is that the lingo, these days?” Joe shook his head. “Paul’s got ’em all over his body. His friends have tattoos, too. They all wear shorts and sleeveless shirts to show them off. Although Paul’s tattoos start below his neck and aren’t on his hands. So if he wears long sleeves and pants, you might think he’s normal.”

“You don’t like tattoos?” I said.

“No,” Joe said. “But I’m a libertarian. You leave me alone to do my thing and I’ll leave you alone to do your thing.”

“Do you know if Dwight is married or has any family or relationships?”

“He’s not married. Rell said that she asked him if he had parents or siblings, and he said not really, just a couple of aunts back east. I asked Rell, how can you ‘not really’ have siblings? Either you do, or you don’t. But she thought maybe he did but was estranged from them. She didn’t want to pry. Either way, Rell thought that was why Dwight’s been nice to us, because he doesn’t have others to turn to.”

“So both Dwight Frankman and Michael Paul are well-off.”

Joe nodded. “In my day, the guys with slide rules in their pockets were critical in manufacturing, but they didn’t make that much money. Now the modern software engineer rules the world with binary numbers, and they can make a lot more money than the version from seventy years ago.”

“Which helps in attracting expensive companions,” I said. “Any idea if Dwight and Michael know each other?”

Joe seemed startled at the thought. “I don’t know if they know each other well, but I often see them talking in the street. I never think about them in the same context, though, because they are so different other than their computer backgrounds. Michael’s real athletic, the opposite of Dwight, who’s kind of a wimp. Michael’s got muscles. Not all bulk like a football player, but more like a...” he paused, looking for the word.