Tahoe Chase (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (4 page)

“Like a ski racer,” I said.

“Yes,” Joe said. “Fit and strong. Charming, too, in spite of the tattoos.” Joe made a little smile. “Not that I was ever charming, although Rell seemed to think so when we were young.”

“Does Rell know Michael or any other neighbors?”

“No more than I know them.”

I about-faced and leaned my back against the deck railing, my elbows on the rail. I could see to both sides of the house. Nothing moved.

“I’m wondering if you’ve been able to think of anyone who may have had a disagreement with Rell?” I asked.

“No. I was serious when I said that everybody seems to love her. I’m not blind to what people think. I can see that they don’t all love me. In fact, few do. But Rell is one of those people, kind to all.”

A bird feeder hung from a pole that projected out from the deck. I pointed to it.

“It looks like Rell keeps the local bird population well fed.”

“She did,” Joe said. “A few days after her fall, I realized that it was empty. So I found a seed bag in the garage and filled the feeder. But the birds have left.” Joe’s voice was imbued with sadness.

“Is there a squirrel or something chasing them away?”

“I don’t know. I probably filled the feeder wrong. We went from being a bird oasis to a bird desert. Maybe you can look at it. Does it look like I filled it correctly?”

“I don’t know anything about bird feeders,” I said. “I can see that there’s seed inside and it comes out the bottom, so it looks good to me.”

“Then the birds just left because Rell disappeared on them.”

I walked across the deck, looked along the side of the house toward the gate. “Is that gate ever locked?”

“No,” Rorvik said. “We always keep the deck slider locked so the gate need not be locked. That way the snow service can get in to shovel the deck.” He looked off toward the forest. “Maybe that was a terrible mistake.”

I walked along the house, opened the gate, and stepped through. There was a sudden sound of running footsteps, softened a bit by snow and ice, receding up the street. A car door slammed. A big, throaty engine started and revved.

I sprinted across Rorvik’s driveway as tires made the rising, grinding pitch of spinning tread on ice. Then came a small squeak of rubber gripping asphalt as a vehicle raced away, not what you’d expect in an upscale neighborhood of mostly empty vacation homes.

Spot shot past me, excited by my sudden action. I got out to the street as another vague hint of movement – this time colored yellow – came from down at the far street corner. The engine sound continued to rise, then quieted as the vehicle turned another corner.

Up where I guessed the vehicle may have been parked, I saw short, darkish lines burned into the snow and ice on the street. It was one of the only locations with a sight line to both the front door and rear deck of the Rorvik house. There was also easy access to the forest at the side of Rorvik’s house.

I yelled out toward the deck side of the house.

“Joe! I’ll be back in a few minutes!”

SIX
 

I opened the rear door to let Spot jump into the Jeep. Then I backed out and raced after a vehicle the make of which I didn’t know, but which may have been yellow.

There is one main road out of the Angora Highlands neighborhood and it was the route I’d driven up, Tahoe Mountain Road. There is also a narrow seasonal road that leads down to Fallen Leaf Lake, but it has no snow removal in winter. In the middle of December, the road to Fallen Leaf was already covered with two feet of packed snow. The only vehicles that could navigate it were snowmobiles.

I headed for the main road. There were two sharp corners I had to negotiate. I didn’t want to spin out, so I took the corners at moderate speed. Then I sped up as I shot down Tahoe Mountain Road.

There are several places where you can see the road down below. I figured I’d get a glimpse of a speeding vehicle, but I saw none.

I pushed my speed fast enough to catch all but professional drivers and crazy drivers, but I appeared to be the only one on the road. When I got to Lake Tahoe Blvd at the bottom of the mountain, I saw no vehicle in either direction and no fresh tire marks, either.

Had the other vehicle pulled into a driveway to hide? Into a garage? Had I driven right past the person I thought I was chasing? Either that, or the person had driven down the mountain at insane speed and outrun me.

I drove back up the mountain and found Joe inside the house. I explained what had happened.

“Do you ever see anyone in the neighborhood who makes a habit of spinning their tires and driving very fast?” I asked.

Joe shook his head. “Everyone here seems to drive sensibly. Even Michael. Which surprised me if you want to know the truth.”

“Because of all his vehicles? Or his tattoos?”

Joe made a small embarrassed nod. “Both. I guess I’m old. Other than Michael and Dwight, most of the people you see in this neighborhood are somewhat mature. So the young computer men stand out. Michael especially. I would have guessed that he drove fast, but I’ve seen him driving several times. He’s very reasonable.”

“Are there any vacation rentals in this neighborhood? Where college kids might come up to Tahoe to party?”

“There is a vacation rental half a block down that way.” He pointed the opposite direction from where the person I chased had done a quick start.

“None the other direction?”

Joe shook his head. “You think someone was watching my house?”

“Based on the position of the tire marks and the driver’s behavior, it looks likely. Earlier, I thought I saw movement out in the trees. But I couldn’t tell for certain. Now it would seem that the driver of the vehicle was watching us from the forest to the side of your house.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Joe said. “The person who tried to murder Rell would know from the news that she was in a hospital, about to die. So there wouldn’t be any point in watching me or this house, right?”

“Not that I can think of,” I said.

Joe squinted his eyes as if thinking hard.

“Joe, what was your business after you retired from racing?” I asked.

Joe looked at me with a bit of a start, as if he’d forgotten that Spot and I were in the room.

“I had two different jobs working as a marketing executive for ski companies. Then I started my own company called Graphite Speed Sports. We started by designing and selling downhill skis, then expanded into cross-country skis, skates, bicycles, tennis rackets, golf clubs, you name it.”

“All things you can make with graphite fiber,” I said.

“Stronger, lighter, graphite speed,” he said, repeating an ad phrase that sounded familiar to me. “We even showed how graphite snowshoes can make you go faster.”

“Do you still have the company?”

“At my age? Oh, no. I sold it twenty years ago to an Austrian conglomerate. I’m pleased to say that they’ve done well with it.”

“What was Rell’s career?”

“She was an editor for a succession of magazines years ago in San Francisco. Then we moved from The City to the East Bay. She quit the last job and became a freelance editor when we moved up here. Kind of unusual considering that her training and education were in psychology.”

“I know about freelance writing,” I said, “but I didn’t know about freelance editing.”

“Most of her business was from her previous job. They’d email her projects for editing, and she’d email them back. She quit for good on her seventy-fifth birthday.”

“How’d she get from psychology to editing?” I asked.

“I think she majored in psychology because she had a natural understanding of what makes people the way they are. She was good at psychology, and people always tell Rell the most amazing things. Her manner is so comforting and reassuring that having her around is like a truth serum. She would have done really well if she’d done clinical work in psychology.”

“Then why editing?”

“You may think this a bit strange, but Rell didn’t really like psychology that much. It was a case of being good at something that she wasn’t fond of. Whereas editing was the area she loved.”

I kept hoping that Joe was going to say something about Rell that would lead me in a promising direction regarding a would-be murderer. But Rell’s life didn’t seem to contain much useful material.

“Has Rell stayed in contact with her friends from work?”

“Rell isn’t what you’d call chummy. She likes to spend time alone and with her birds, so she never made many friends at work. Her closest friend was Tanya Rodriquez from Walnut Creek. They met at a book club and got to know each other well. When Tanya died, that was a hard blow.”

Joe paused. “An additional problem for her was me being older than she is. Our friends were mostly older than Rell. Several were even older than me. If you don’t have kids, and your only friends are older, by the time you get to be eighty-five or so, your social contacts are gone.”

“What about book clubs here in Tahoe?”

Joe shook his head. “Rell tried two different clubs, but the members were much younger. She felt like the token old lady.”

“Do you or Rell belong to any other groups? Charity groups? Service clubs?”

“No. Rell prefers to spend her time with her birds, feeding her chickadees. In the old days, I used to have breakfast with some guys every other week. But you already know what happened to that group.”

“Do you and Rell go to church?”

Joe shook his head again. “We actually talked about joining a church just for the community. Rell was more for it than I was, to tell the truth.” He looked off into the forest. “I’m not much of a joiner. And religion for me is a private affair between me and my maker.”

“Is there anyone else who Rell talks to? A person at a local business?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does she have a regular hairdresser? Does she have any regular acquaintances at the grocery store? The post office?”

“No, nothing like that. She goes to a hair salon, but she often tells me that they talk celebrity gossip, and she doesn’t join in. The only other people she talks to are some fellow hikers who she goes hiking with once or twice a month.”

“Does she consider them friends?”

Joe thought about it. “She speaks of them nicely. I think the only connection they have with each other is hiking.”

“Maybe you could give me a list of names, and I’ll give them a call.”

Joe looked embarrassed and a little sad. “I’m sorry to say that I don’t know their names. I suppose that reveals me as a real cad, indifferent to my wife’s activities.” He pondered some more. “Let me think about it. Maybe something will come to me.” He paused. “The typical routine is that we’ll be having dinner, and we talk about what we’re doing the next day. I’ll say what I’m doing – judging more of those blasted origami sculptures or something – and she’ll say that she’s going out with her hiking group. I’ll ask where, and she’ll tell me what trail they’re taking and where they’re meeting. But she doesn’t mention their names.”

“Where do they usually go?”

Joe spread his arms wide. “Everywhere. I don’t think there’s a mountain near Tahoe that she hasn’t climbed. She takes pictures of the mountains with her phone and shows them to me. Beautiful places.”

“Did you ever go along?”

Joe shook his head. “I used to do a lot of skiing, downhill and back-country. But I’ve got a bum knee, and it started getting worse thirty years ago. It dates back to my racing days. I can still walk just fine as long as I don’t go over a half mile or so or go up or down a lot.”

“The pictures Rell takes,” I said, “do they show her fellow hikers?”

“No. She’s interested in landscapes, in the natural world. For some reason, she never wants to document people, whether herself or others.” He pointed at the couch. “We sit there, and she scrolls through the pictures on her phone. We have a little joke about it. When we’re done with dinner after she’s been out hiking, she’ll say, ‘Do you have a little time for some ooohs and aaahs?’ Then she shows me her pictures from the hike that day.”

“Does Rell see these people at other times?”

Joe shook his head. “I guess the reality is that she didn’t see her fellow hikers as friends to socialize with, but more as healthy, able-bodied people with whom to hike up the mountains. It’s also practical. When you take trails up into the wilderness, you never want to go alone. Too dangerous. If you twist an ankle, you could be in big trouble.”

“How do the hiking people coordinate their meetings? Do they call on the phone?”

Joe frowned. “I don’t know.” He walked over to the kitchen, unplugged a charging cord from a phone, and handed the phone to me.

“This is Rell’s phone,” he said. “There’s a way to look at the call history, right?”

I nodded. I turned it on and pulled up Rell’s recent calls. There was only one number listed. I read it off to Joe.

“That’s my number,” he said. “That must be my last call to her. When she was lying on the rocks below the deck.” He looked away.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “She must delete her calls when she’s done with them. What about email?”

Joe’s frown grew. “I think she uses Gmail, but I don’t know her password. She’s probably told me, but I don’t remember.”

“If one of Rell’s hiking companions calls, please get their name and number, okay?”

“Absolutely.”

It was beginning to get dark outside. I stood up, walked over to the big windows, and looked out at Mt. Tallac, its snow-crusted hulk looming in the darkening sky, a deep gray-blue triangle that looked forbidding in the twilight.

“Do you ever have anyone over to visit?” I asked.

“No. We don’t socialize. We don’t have friends like that. I can’t...” he stopped.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“I just remembered that there was one person. Not what you’d expect. And yes, she did come over to visit Rell.”