Tahoe Blue Fire (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 13)

by Todd Borg

  Spot was excited to have me arrive, sniffing and wagging, no doubt smelling Blondie.

  “What’s the big deal, Largeness? A few minutes without me and you decide to love me once again?”

  He stuck his nose on my ear, and made a single swipe at my neck with the other-worldly tongue. I would have been fine if I’d brought a bath towel to dry off. Instead, I wiped my sleeve over the slobber, reached behind my head, and rubbed him.

  I pulled out, drove off opposite the direction that Adam was going, and turned at the corner. I went around the block and pulled over at a spot where I could see the city yard.

  I waited, peering through branches back toward the yard.

  A pickup, black and shiny, shot out of the yard and turned hard. It looked like Crosen was driving. He went down the road the way that Adam had driven. I pulled out and followed at a distance.

  The black pickup went through town. In the far distance, I glimpsed Adam’s pickup once. Crosen stayed back so that Adam wouldn’t know he was being followed. I stayed back from Crosen for the same reason.

  Before we got to Al Tahoe Boulevard, the turnoff to the college, I saw a red pickup come out onto the road in front of me. It slalomed around several cars, then drew even with Crosen’s pickup. The drivers give each other the thumbs-up sign.

  Crosen turned right on Al Tahoe, and his comrade followed. I remained at a distance. They turned into the college. A third pickup, this one white, came from the other direction. It too turned in behind the procession. In the distance ahead of them, I saw Adam’s pickup. Four pickups, all late-model, all freshly washed and coddled, one the prey, three the predators. I was the distant fifth vehicle, a dirty, bullet-shot, used Jeep.

  I saw Crosen turn into one of the parking lots. The two pickups behind him followed. As I approached, I saw Adam pull into a space at the far end of the lot and stop.

  I passed the turn and continued on to the next lot. I sped up, and pulled into a space between two other vehicles so that I’d have a bit of cover. I jumped out and let Spot out. I took his collar so he couldn’t run. We trotted to the end of the lot and stepped between some trees toward the lot where the three pickups had pulled in behind Adam’s pickup, blocking him in.

  A young kid of maybe twelve was leaning against one of the trees near me, playing some kind of game on his phone.

  “Hey, you want to make a quick forty bucks?” I said to him.

  He looked at Spot with fear and me with suspicion.

  “Don’t worry about the dog,” I said. “He’s friendly. I’m a detective. I could use help on official business,” I said.

  “You mean, like cop business?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  I pulled out my phone. “I don’t know how to use this very well. Can you tell me, does it shoot video?”

  “Of course,” the kid said.

  “How many minutes does it go?”

  “Depends on how much memory you’ve got left.” He reached for my phone, tapped multiple times. “Looks like you don’t even use this thing. You could take a couple hours of video.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “I’m guessing I’ll only need maybe five minutes.” I pointed over to the next lot. “See those guys?”

  He looked, nodded.

  “The three smaller guys are chasing the bigger guy.”

  “The big black guy,” the kid said.

  “Yeah. I’m worried they’re going to fight. If they do, I need you to record it all on video.”

  The kid looked worried.

  “The most important part will be the very beginning. So if it looks like someone is about to throw a punch, start shooting. Or, if I make a sign to you with my finger, that means start.”

  “Got it,” he said.

  “Stay here near these trees.”

  “I can zoom from here,” he said.

  “Good.”

  I pulled on Spot’s collar and trotted toward the men.

  All four of them were out of their vehicles. Adam was standing alone, the other three made a shallow triangle with Crosen at the tip. His legs were slightly bent, his arms in a martial arts position. He was shouting at Adam.

  “You called me a liar. No one calls me a liar.”

  “You lied,” Adam said.

  Crosen screamed, “No one calls me a liar!” Crosen shook with anger.

  I raised my hand behind me so the kid with my phone could see. I held out my index finger and dropped it as if to say, ‘go.’

  Crosen shouted, “I don’t care that you were a football player a million years ago. I’m gonna kick your ass.”

  He feinted a one-two punch, then spun, his upper body dropping, his leg rising as he rotated. His foot struck Adam a powerful blow on his shoulder. The kick drove Adam a foot to the side. Adam reached up and rubbed his shoulder. Crosen came in again, did a front snap kick to Adam’s thigh. Adam pulled his leg back as the kick landed, reducing the blow a bit. Adam seemed surprised. He was big, but he obviously wasn’t a fighter.

  Crosen shouted at him. “Fight, you coward!”

  I was approaching from behind and to the side of the three men, trying to decide how to intervene. The man closest to me was almost my height, much heavier, and fifteen years younger. I touched Spot’s neck to prep him, then put a light foot tap at the back of the man’s knee. He started to collapse to the ground, then caught his fall. He spun around, ready to dismember me.

  “Growl, Spot,” I said.

  The man hesitated a moment as Crosen and his other pal looked over.

  “Watch him!” I said to Spot as I pointed to the man I’d knee-tapped.

  Spot growled. It wasn’t much, but the man’s eyes went wide.

  “C’mon, Spot. Don’t be shy. Show him your stuff.” I tapped Spot again on his throat.

  Spot upped the growl. Deeper and louder.

  “Show him,” I said again.

  Spot cranked the volume. The man started backing up.

  I said to the man. “You try anything, you run away, you make a little bird peep, he rips your throat out.”

  I touched Spot’s throat again. He lowered his head, lowered his stance, lifted his lips so that all of his fangs showed, and he started walking toward the man, his growl loud enough to rattle the man’s chest. The man stepped backward, tripped, landed on his butt. Spot took another step, his bared teeth a foot from the man’s face, which was pale with primal fear.

  I turned to the other men.

  Crosen shouted at me. “You think you’re gonna save this guy? I’ll show you what’s coming to him.”

  Crosen punched Adam again. Adam had his hands up in defense. It was luck that Adam’s hand took the blow, which slapped his hand back against his chest.

  Crosen followed it up with another punch. Adam’s hand was still up, blocking, and he caught Crosen’s second punch. Adam grabbed Crosen’s fist, reached out with his other hand, and grabbed Crosen’s wrist.

  Adam apparently squeezed down, for Crosen cried out, half yell, half scream.

  Maybe Adam broke Crosen’s hand, I couldn’t tell. But Adam took Crosen’s hand and arm and made a throwing motion as if hurtling a ball to the ground.

  Crosen was jerked to the parking lot pavement as if pulled by his own hand and arm. He landed on elbows and knees, screaming with pain.

  He shouted to his friend who was still standing, “Get him!”

  The man advanced on Adam. I thought of leaping on him from behind when he exploded in a flurry of punches and kicks, mixed martial arts style.

  Adam put his arms up, trying to block them. But many blows landed on him. His abdomen, his chest, his arms. He kept his arms up, forearms vertical, which prevented most blows from reaching his face. Like the man who was terrorized by Spot, the man doing the punching was bigger than Crosen.

  The assault drove Adam back. He bent from the blows. With his head down, he took a punch to the face, another to his forehead. Then a kick grazed his ear.

  Crose
n, behind his man, was getting up from the ground, preparing to launch another attack.

  Adam was lower now, taking more blows from Crosen’s man. Maybe it was his lowered stance that triggered a kind of muscle memory. He lowered farther, elbows near his knees, then exploded forward.

  It was as if he’d transported himself back thirty years to his time as a Nose Tackle. He hit Crosen’s man low. His arms were out in a blocking position, and he was moving at sprinting speed. As he made contact, he lifted up, a classic move to get under the offensive guard. The man went into the air as Adam went through. As the man fell to the parking lot, Adam hit Crosen hard in the middle, his right arm around Crosen’s body. He continued forward as if sacking the quarterback. Crosen and Adam went down, Adam pulling his arm out so it wouldn’t get abraded as Crosen hit the asphalt. Adam landed on top of Crosen. Crosen’s head bounced off the pavement, and he went still.

  Adam scrambled up and turned around, still in his football position, bent down, ready to explode forward again.

  The man Adam had blocked got up and ran once again at Adam, listing a bit with pain, making a sort of crazed war cry as he tried to launch some kind of leaping kick. It was an amazing strategic mistake.

  Adam charged toward him. He hit the man with his shoulder. The impact barely slowed Adam down. But the blow took the other man in the middle of his abdomen. There was a whoosh of air as Adam lifted up. The man bounced off Adam on an upward arc. It was like a bull catching a lion with his horns and tossing it into the air. The man traveled eight or ten feet before he landed on the pavement. He struck the asphalt with an audible thump and lay there motionless.

  Adam continued to run, arcing around in a semi-circle even though the two men who’d attacked him lay unconscious and the third man was lying under Spot’s guard, frozen with terror.

  I walked over.

  Adam’s eyes were wild. He looked around as if counting all three men on the ground. Adam pointed at Crosen. “He lied to me. He was the liar, but he attacked me.”

  “Yes, he did.” I turned sideways next to him and put my arm around his massive shoulders. It was like hugging an elephant. “You defended yourself,” I said. “You did what you had to, and you did it well.”

  “I never wanted to hurt anyone on the field,” he said, his voice thick with sadness and distress. “I just did my job. But I wanted to hurt these guys.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  The kid I’d given my phone to approached.

  “Did you get it on video?”

  He nodded. His eyes showed wariness but also amazement. He stared at Adam. “Are you Adam Simms?”

  Adam nodded.

  “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  I took the phone and dialed Mallory.

  While it rang, I noticed that Adam was holding his arm.

  “Hurt bad?” I said.

  He shook his head. “It hurts. But nothing like being hit by Mike Munchak,” he said.

  “From the Houston Oilers,” I said.

  Adam nodded.

  Mallory answered the phone.

  I said, “I’ve got some dirtballs for your men to pick up, one of whom will give you some satisfaction to charge with assault.”

  “You got witnesses?”

  “Yeah. Video, too.”

  Fifteen minutes later, they were hauling the three men away in handcuffs. Crosen had regained consciousness. As they carried him past me, he silently mouthed the words, “You’re a dead man, McKenna.”

  FORTY-ONE

  When Adam was back at the safe house and I was home, the phone rang. It was Glennie.

  “That was easy,” she said.

  “What’s the Hope Diamond’s value?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t work like that. There is no standard for establishing value on a one-of-a-kind gemstone. It depends on a thousand variables. And some of the most important variables don’t even have to do with the diamond itself.”

  “You’re not making sense,” I said.

  “I spoke to representatives of the world’s biggest diamond sellers. I found out that much of a diamond’s value comes from factors such as the current investment climate and how other investment vehicles are doing. For example, when investors start to think that the stock market is overvalued, they will bid up the price of other investments such as art. And when the art market seems over-heated, they will put more money into stocks. When it comes to diamonds, there is an arcane…”

  “Glennie,” I interrupted.

  “What?”

  “I appreciate all of your hard-won information. But let’s skip it for now. Just give me a figure. How much is the Hope Diamond worth?”

  “You really know how to celebrate a girl’s hard work.”

  “Sorry. I’m aware that you work hard and that your skills are top-notch. That’s why I called you in the first place.”

  The phone line was silent for a long time. I was about to speak when she said, “Three hundred fifty million.”

  I was shocked. “The Hope Diamond is worth three hundred fifty million?” I couldn’t even imagine that kind of money.

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “I know, but I can’t believe it.”

  “I was trying to give you the background information that supports the number, but you cut me off.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “You’re right. Okay, I believe you. I’m still shocked. That’s a lot of money.”

  “There’s an understatement,” Glennie said. “So you can assume that your Blue Fire of Florence is worth a lot. How much less than the Hope Diamond, I have no idea. If I had to just throw out a figure, I’d guess two hundred million.”

  I was trying to visualize $200 million. That kind of money would buy anything.

  “Are you still there?” Glennie said.

  “Yeah. Thanks, Glennie. That’s a big help. A giant help.”

  We said goodbye and hung up as there was a simultaneous knock on the door.

  Spot was wagging as I pulled it open. Street stood on my front step. She glanced at me, then turned and looked up at the mountain behind my cabin.

  I kissed her and ushered her inside.

  “I called your cell an hour ago, and the line was busy,” she said. “I called your cabin a few minutes ago, and the line was busy. I was heading home from the lab and thought I might as well drive up the mountain and see what all the phone commotion is about.”

  “Sorry. I’d asked Glennie if she could learn how much the Hope Diamond is worth, and she called back to say three hundred fifty million dollars. She guessed that, without provenance, the Blue Fire might be worth two hundred million.”

  “You’re kidding,” Street said. “That raises the stakes an order of magnitude beyond what I was thinking.”

  “Does that kind of money make any sense to you,” I said, “assuming that Bruno Valenti was telling the truth when he said that Sinatra paid two million for the diamond fifty-some years ago? Could something go up in value a hundred times in fifty-some years?”

  Street sat on the edge of the rocker, her arm out and over Spot’s back. “That’s impressive appreciation, but many investments have done that. From the nineteen sixties, I’m sure that some Tahoe real estate has gone up a hundred times. Lots on the lake that once sold for twenty thousand probably sell for two million now. I remember reading that stock in Warren Buffet’s company Berkshire Hathaway has gone up something like ten thousand times. So a hundred times is not hard to believe.”

  I thought about it.

  “I suppose that no provenance is the major downside,” Street added. “But the upside for a thief is that no provenance also means that it would be very difficult for someone to prove that they ever owned it and claim that it was stolen from them. Possession becomes the greatest claim to ownership.”

  “And if experts say it is real and it fluoresces red and such, whoever has it could be looking at an amazing payday,” I said.

  “Enough to make someone murder?” S
treet trailed off.

  “Certainly. Let’s say it sold at wholesale or on the black market for only a hundred million or a measly fifty million.”

  “Measly,” Street repeated.

  “In my career, I’ve met dirtballs who would kill for five thousand dollars. Bump the payout to many millions, and that would be enough to push any number of people over the edge.”

  “So where do you look now?”

  “I’ve been reading about Sinatra, but there’s no mention of any diamond. What I need is people who knew him or studied him, people who aren’t historians. The historians write what they know, and that shows up in a Google search. I want to talk to people who might know something but never thought to write about it online.”

  “How would you find those people?” Street said.

  “Fall back on the old gumshoe standby, pound the pavement and ask questions.”

  Street nodded, got up to leave, then noticed the pentagram note on my kitchen counter.

  “You got another warning?!”

  “Yeah. I’m being real careful,” I said. “As should you.”

  “Because the killer might target me to get at you.”

  “I hate to think it, but yeah,” I said.

  Street moved in slow motion as she picked up the note and stared at it. “What can you do?” she finally said.

  “Catch the killer,” I said.

  FORTY-TWO

  “C’mon, Largeness,” I said after Street left.

  Spot jumped up, always eager for a ride.

  I drove down the mountain on the private road, turned north on the highway, crawled up Spooner Summit, then turned north again to wind my way up the East Shore to Incline Village and around to Crystal Bay.

  Once again, I saw a black pickup three or four vehicles back. With the sighting came the vague sense that it had been there some time. As I got to Crystal Bay, I turned off the highway, went around a block at speed, and pulled back out onto the highway. I was hoping to get behind the pickup, but as I sped forward, it was nowhere to be seen. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not.

  I pulled into the Cal Neva and saw that it was still closed for renovation. I parked, reached under my seat, and pulled out my clipboard with the pad of pre-printed forms on it. The form had lots of illegible fine print and little boxes in a vertical row. I used a red pen and wrote “Cal Neva” at the top of the pad and put bold check marks in several of the boxes. From the glove box, I got the plastic clip-on sleeve with the photo ID and clipped it to my shirt pocket. The picture of me was fuzzy and the writing underneath even fuzzier. I told Spot to be good and got out of the Jeep.