Tahoe Deathfall

by Todd Borg

Spot came to my office with me the next morning. He looked out the window and I looked at the Hopper painting while I hit the play button on the answering machine.

  Jennifer’s messages from the previous nights came on. They were bracing to hear. Her frightened voice whis­pered frantically, her fear very real. I tried to imagine that the late-night intruder was merely the product of a para­noid imagination. Who knows how the mind works? But I couldn’t make myself believe it.

  I had gotten Salazar’s unlisted phone number from Jennifer. I dialed and Helga picked it up after three rings.

  “May I speak to Jennifer, please?”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Owen McKenna.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. McKenna. Mrs. Salazar has requested that you do not speak to Jennifer again. I must say goodbye.” She hung up.

  I thought about driving over there and breaking down the door. Then I remembered that it was Thursday morning and Jennifer would probably be in school. I could catch her later.

  In the meantime, I could check up on the other story in the paper from 9 years earlier, the one about Penelope Smithson, the woman who fell to her death from Mount Rose a day after Melissa’s death. The obitu­ary said she was survived by her husband John.

  I paged through my phone books looking for John Smithson. No luck.

  I picked up the phone and dialed Diamond Mar­tinez.

  “Do people ever call you Di?” I asked him when he answered.

  “If you ever see this brown boy in spike heels, you address me Senorita Di. Until that happens it’s Officer Martinez.”

  “You guys get so feisty when you get your green card.”

  “Remember, California used to be ours. We might take it back.”

  “We’re in Nevada,” I said.

  “Picky, picky. Suburb of California. We’ll take Nevada while we’re at it.”

  “Got a question for the conquering army. Shortly after Melissa Salazar died on the rock slide nine years ago, a woman named Penelope Smithson was found on Mt. Rose. She’d also apparently died in a hiking accident. Kind of rare for two hikers to slip and fall at the same time, don’t you think? Her husband was John Smithson. Ring any bells?”

  “Before my time. You want me to see what I got?”

  “Buy you a case of Carta Blanca if it’s good,” I said.

  “You at your office?”

  “With my feet on the desk and my eyes on the lovely sad woman in Hopper’s New York Movie.”

  “Inscrutable gringos don’t impress me.” There was a click on the line. “Hold on.” Diamond put me on hold and came back in a moment. “I took your lady out to the crime scene yesterday. She took samples and put them in vials. Quite a job she has.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now she’s calling in with a prelim on the body. I’ll call you back.”

  I was hanging up the phone when Jennifer walked in. She set a book bag on my desk and went straight to the window and hugged Spot. “Street said you can ride him. Is it really true?” Her eyes sparkled.

  “He’s not quite like Secretariat in the Belmont Stakes, but, yes, it’s true.”

  “How? Will he let me? What do I do?” Jennifer’s sudden youthful enthusiasm was like fresh-cut freesias in my stale office.

  Spot was sitting. He leaned his head against Jenni­fer’s stomach. His eyes were closed. Bliss.

  “Maybe sometime when we’re outside I’ll show you.”

  “Deal.” Jennifer turned and sat on the corner of my desk.

  “You ride your bicycle again?”

  “Yes. Sam Sometimes still hasn’t returned. Gramma filed a missing persons report. Neither Gramma nor Helga drive anymore, so you can imagine the chaos around our house. Gramma is looking for a new care­taker. She says Sam is fired no matter what his excuse. So, yes, the bike and me are inseparable.” Jennifer held up two crossed fingers.

  “Anybody following you?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “I don’t like it,” I said.

  “What can I do? I have to get to school. I have to go on errands.”

  “I can give you rides. Street, too. Maybe some of that Salazar money could be turned loose on a full-time car and driver until you find another caretaker.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jennifer said. “Gramma is really stingy. And even if she did hire a temporary car, she for­bade me to see you. So I’d still have to ride my bike to your office.”

  “My instincts tell me you shouldn’t be alone.”

  “You think I’m in danger?”

  I glanced at the woman in the New York Movie painting. “Yes,” I said.

  Jennifer saw me. “You think the woman in that painting is in danger, too, don’t you?”

  I turned toward Jennifer and looked at her for a moment. “Yes,” I said.

  “That’s a Hopper, isn’t it?”

  “Not too many fourteen-year-olds would know that. They teach art history at the Tahoe Academy?”

  “Are you kidding?” Jennifer stifled a laugh. “No. But he’s only one of the greatest American painters, right? Anybody would know him.” She turned to look at another framed print on the adjacent wall. “That must be a Hopper, too. Same style.”

  “It’s called Lighthouse Hill,” I said.

  “Tell me about the danger,” she said.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t know that much about art.”

  “Maybe you’re not erudite,” Jennifer said. “But you know. Tell me. Besides, if I’m going to have to learn about maggots in bodies, I might as well learn about art.” Jennifer was still sitting on the corner of my desk, her arm out petting Spot.

  I thought a moment. “I suppose that the woman standing by herself in a crowded movie house and the lighthouse on the hill are two ways of showing our isola­tion, that ultimately we all are alone. The lighthouse is able to weather the solitude. But the woman is in danger of losing her strength. She might give in to decisions that would be bad for her even though they would lessen her loneliness.”

  “You mean taking up with the wrong man,” Jenni­fer said.

  “That would be one of the dangers.”

  “The woman in the painting is young,” Jennifer said. “Not much older than me. How is someone that young going to know who the right man is? It’s not how smart you are. I’m pretty smart. But it takes life experi­ence to learn those things, right?”

  “There’s a difference between intelligence and wis­dom,” I said. “But you got a measure of both.”

  The door opened and in walked Street carrying two large coffees in foam cups and a bag of donuts. “Jen­nie!” She set the coffee and donuts on my desk and hugged Jennifer. “What a nice surprise!” Then she hugged Spot. I was last.

  I didn’t mind. I was too busy noticing the fit of her jeans.

  “Why the smile?” she said to me.

  “The, uh, order of your greetings,” I lied.

  “Best for last?” Street sat in my lap. She pushed at the desk with her feet and sent us spinning around on the chair.

  “Whoa,” I said, stopping us.

  Street twisted in my lap and looked over her shoul­der at me. “What’sa matter? Spinning make you dizzy?”

  “You make me dizzy.”

  “Old guys get dizzy easily,” Street said to Jennifer.

  “Who’s saying I’m old?”

  Street spun us around again. I reached out a leg to stop us.

  “You don’t like to spin,” she said. “That’s practi­cally a definition of old.”

  “Can’t argue with you there,” I said.

  Street took a chocolate-covered donut out of the bag and held the bag out to Jennifer.

  Street’s back was against my chest. I leaned my chin on her shoulder. She reached the donut up over her shoulder and fed it to me. Chocolate glaze smeared my lips.

  “Don’t get that stuff on my new sweatshirt,” Street said.

  Jennifer was watching us carefully as she pulled a cinnamon twist out of the bag.


  The phone rang and I picked it up.

  “Got an address on John Smithson,” Diamond said. “And something else you’ll want to know, too.”

  “Hold on a sec,” I said. I put my hand over the phone. “Jennifer wants to learn to ride Spot,” I said to Street. “Maybe you could show her down in the parking lot?”

  Street understood that I wanted to be alone and they all made a fast exit.

  I took my hand off the phone. “Ready, officer.”

  “Your boy is an attorney, no longer practicing. Lives on Lakeshore Drive up in Incline Village. Tony spot. Must have some bucks.”

  “Tony,” I said.

  “Gringos got some funny words. I’m learning most of them.”

  “Address?”

  He gave it to me. “Now for the something else,” Diamond said. “Mr. John Smithson, well-to-do widower of the late Penelope Smithson, has been around the block before. Wanna guess?”

  I swiveled in my chair and looked out the window. Jennifer was draped across Spot’s back as he trotted around the parking lot. Street was flapping her arms with excitement. “Penelope was the second wife to die on him?”

  “Yeah. Get this. His first wife also died an acciden­tal death. Five years before Penelope. Her name was Alex­andra.”

  “How she die?”

  “Drowning,” Diamond said. “In Lake Tahoe.”

  “Happens,” I said.

  “Sure. Trains collide, too, and people die in the wrecks. But consider which kinds of accidental deaths are easiest to fake. Not train collisions.”

  “True,” I said. “Someone goes swimming and you hold them under awhile. Someone goes hiking and you give them a shove at the edge of a drop-off. Guess I better pay a visit to Mr. Smithson.”

  “Wait, I ain’t done,” Diamond said. “This John Smithson inherited from both wives. Alexandra had oil money from some Oklahoma wells. And Penelope’s fam­ily owns a Wall Street investment company.”

  “Maybe he’s a good lay?” I said.

  “Good lay. Good killer. Who knows, maybe both.”

  I thanked Diamond and hung up. Street and Jenni­fer were still running around down below. I could tell they were near hysterics. The remaining coffee was cold so I left it on the desk. All I needed was Jennifer’s book bag and the donuts. I locked the door and went down­stairs.

  When I pushed out the glass door Spot ran up to me. Street and Jennifer were sitting on the landscape tim­bers panting and laughing. Spot pawed my pants leg.

  “Sorry to interrupt the rodeo,” I said. “Investiga­tion calls. You cowgirls want to come along?”

  “Where?” Street asked.

  “A John Smithson up in Incline.”

  Jennifer said, “He’s the one whose wife fell up on Mount Rose the day after Melissa died. What could you possibly learn from him?”

  “Don’t know. But she was the second wife of his to make an accidental exit from his life. Thought I should at least ask him some questions. Can’t hurt.”

  “I can’t go,” Jennifer said, disappointed. “I’d love to see how you do your work.” She looked at her watch. “I have to tutor one of the boys in my trigonometry class in less than an hour.”

  “You won’t be missing much,” Street said. “Watch­ing detection in action is a little like watching insects molting their old skin. You wait a long time for action. And when something new finally emerges it looks just like what you had before.”

  “That’s where piercing insight comes in,” I said, tapping my forefinger on my temple.

  Street stood on her tiptoes, pulled my head down and put one eye to my ear. “Pierced all right. I can see right through.”

  I looked at Jennifer. “No respect,” I said.

  Jennifer giggled.

  I picked up Jennifer’s bike and went to put it up on the bike rack on top of the Jeep. “We’ll drop you at school.”

  TWELVE