Tahoe Deathfall

by Todd Borg

Jennifer called at six in the evening.

  Her voice was a whisper. “Auntie Ethel’s driver just pulled up. Gramma and Helga will be leaving in a minute. Come as soon as you can.”

  “Where shall I leave my car?”

  “The park south of us. Walk up the beach. You’ll go past several homes before you come to our fence. Which reminds me, you’ll have to go into the water to get around our fence, so maybe wear shorts and bring long pants.”

  “I’ll leave now.” I said goodbye and hung up, thinking that I was probably making the dumbest decision of my professional life.

  I left Spot on the braided rug in a deep sleep.

  The park and hike up the beach were as Jennifer described. When I got to the fence I worried that I’d be seen because it was still broad daylight. But only one of the nearby mansions had a clear view of me and I did not see anyone around. That left fifty or so windows from which anyone could be watching. The world’s a stage.

  I splashed into thigh-deep water, went around the fence and back onto dry land. I took off my shorts, pulled on my long pants and continued to the Salazar mansion.

  Jennifer was on the pier waving to me as I approached. “Hi,” she said, trying to sound casual, but with obvious excitement in her voice. That we were bor­rowing a boat without approval was one thing. That we were taking it all the way across Lake Tahoe and back at night was another order of magnitude. She’d probably never done anything so rash in her entire life. But she wasn’t going to let me know that if she could help it.

  She opened the boathouse doors. “Come on in. We’ll take the powerboat.”

  “You know how to run it?”

  Jennifer looked at me with disdain.

  “Just checking,” I said.

  Jennifer got in the boat and put the key in the igni­tion. She turned on the bilge pump, then opened a side locker and started pulling out life jackets. I was pleased that she knew the routine. Inboards can accumulate fumes in the engine compartment and bilge. If the boat is turned on without first exhausting them, they can blow up.

  Jennifer handed me a large life jacket. “This should fit you.” We each pulled them on. She turned to the gauges. “That’s funny. It seems someone else has used this boat recently.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The gas is down almost a quarter tank. Sam always had a rule. Anyone using the boat had to fill it up when they brought it back.” Jennifer pointed to the large storage tank at the side of the boathouse. It had a hose and nozzle on it similar to a gas station. “This boathouse was like the auto garage. Sam controlled both and woe to any­one who broke his rules.”

  “You all obeyed?”

  Jennifer grinned. “Like I said, Sam was a good care­taker. We didn’t want to irritate him. So, yes, we, I, always filled the tank when we brought the boats back.”

  “Who could have used the boat?”

  “That’s just it. Besides me and Gramma and Sam, no one knows the code to unlock the boathouse. I haven’t used the boat since last fall. Gramma hasn’t been near the boathouse in years as far as I can tell. The water scares her so bad, she doesn’t even walk down the beach.”

  “What about Helga?” I said.

  “Oh, I forgot. Helga knows the code. She some­times cleans down here. But she’s never driven the boat. She wouldn’t know how.”

  “So it must have been Sam.”

  Jennifer frowned. “I suppose he maybe used it before he ran off.” Her eyes widened. “Unless he’s sneaked back and used it since.” She climbed out of the boat and unhooked the hose from the storage tank. “There is Dr. Hauptmann, the one other person who has driven the boat that I know of, but I can’t imagine that he would have the alarm code to open the boathouse.”

  “He’s a friend of the family?”

  “Yes. A doctor in Las Vegas. Gramma knew him from way back when Grandpa Abe was alive. Dr. Haupt­mann has continued to look after Gramma’s health. He prescribes her pills. He comes up and stays once or twice a year. Sometimes he takes the boats out, fishing and such.”

  I steadied the boat while Jennifer filled the gas tank. Jennifer got back in and started the motor. It had the deep, throaty gargle of a powerful engine. Jennifer idled it awhile. Exhaust drifted into the air inside the boathouse. She pushed a radio transmitter and the boathouse door rose up.

  I unhooked the lines and Jennifer eased the big powerboat out into the lake. She pushed the transmitter again and the boathouse garage door closed behind us.

  I felt as if the whole world were watching us from shore and picking up their phones to report to Gramma Salazar. Too late now.

  “What’s the plan?” Jennifer asked as we cruised slowly into deep water.

  “I want to time how long it would take to make a boat trip from Smithson’s house to Emerald Bay and back. Then I’ll add in the time for the hikes he would have made while carrying his wife’s body. If the total time is less than the length of a single night then that will suggest he could be the killer of both his wife and your sister.

  “Of course,” I continued, “he could have brought his wife’s body across the lake one night, stashed it in his house and then brought it up Mount Rose the next night. But I doubt he’d do that. His house was so neat and clean that I can’t picture him having a body around for twenty-four hours.” I glanced at Jennifer to see if this talk was bothering her. She seemed fine. I continued. “Smithson has close neighbors, so I don’t think he would dare bring a body back to his dock. Instead, he’d go to a deserted beach where he would have previously parked his car. He’d be able to get the body into the trunk unseen. That would suggest he’d have to do it all in one night.”

  We were about one hundred yards out when Jenni­fer eased the throttle halfway forward. The engine roared and the prow lifted up at a steep angle as the boat picked up speed. Then the boat lev­eled off and planed out.

  “How fast does this crate go?” I yelled over the roar of engine and wind. We were both standing, our hands gripping the top of the windshield.

  “I don’t know,” Jennifer yelled back. “I’ve never run it full out. Probably fifty knots.” Her long hair flowed out behind her, snapping in the wind like brown stream­ers. She pointed to the north. “You want to go to Incline Village first?”

  I nodded.

  Jennifer put the boat into a big sweeping curve and we cruised north up the east shore. Twenty-five minutes later I pointed toward the shore. Jennifer pulled back on the throttle and the boat slowed and settled down into the water.

  “Let’s not go any closer,” I said, “just in case he decides to look out with binoculars. He’d recognize us.”

  “Speaking of which, there are a pair of binoculars in the compartment under your seat. Which house is it?”

  “The pointy glass one with the big cigarette boat in front.” Now that I was looking at the boat, I was amazed I hadn’t noticed it before. It was huge and menacing, with a shiny blue hull and a red and white cockpit. “Let’s turn here. I can estimate the additional time it would take from his house.” I lifted up my seat, got out the binoculars and focused them on Smithson’s house.

  There was movement on the left. Smithson was bouncing lightly on his toes. He lifted his arms up chest-high and pulled his elbows back several times as if stretch­ing his chest muscles. He walked over to a weight bench and lay down on it. The barbell had four 45s on each side. With the bar it was 405 pounds. Smithson pressed it six times. Then he stood up and bounced around on his toes. His enthusiasm was like that of an athlete getting pumped up for a big game.

  “See anything?” Jennifer asked.

  “Just Smithson exercising.” I put down the binocu­lars.

  “Do you want a straight course across to Emerald Bay or one that follows the shoreline?”

  “As you’ve said before, the weather at the time was calm. So I think he would have gone straight across the lake to save as much time as possible.”

  “That boat of his would be substantially faster than
this one,” Jennifer said. “Assuming that was the boat he had nine years ago.”

  “Right,” I said. “But if we run this one at full speed, we’ll still get a good idea of the time for the trip.”

  “You want me to open it up all the way?”

  “Sure. Let ’er rip.”

  Jennifer eased the throttle forward. The boat almost jumped out of the water. I had to keep a tight grip on the edge of the windshield. The wind in our faces grew so strong we both sat down in the seats to get out of the wind stream.

  “There’s your answer,” Jennifer yelled, a big grin on her face. She pointed at the speedometer. It showed 56 knots. She held tight to the steering wheel as the boat rocketed across the water, bouncing on the relatively calm surface.

  We conferred in shouts now and then about the exact bearing for Emerald Bay. We eventually agreed on the rocky tip of Rubicon Peak as a west-shore landmark to shoot for, knowing that Emerald Bay would be a few miles to the south of it.

  The powerboat was obviously made for speed. Its strong hull successfully transmitted every jarring blow from the waves directly into us. After five minutes, Jenni­fer stood up and drove from a standing position, her legs flexing with the bumps. Apparently, she preferred the stress of the wind when standing to the bounce of the boat that jolted so severely when sitting.

  Soon, we were in the center of the lake, five miles from the closest point of land. The sun was setting and the water turned to a black liquid with touches of silver at the crests of the waves. Realizing that the bottom was over 1,600 feet below us was vaguely unsettling. I concentrated on the mountains ahead.

  At a mile a minute, it took twenty minutes to get close to the entrance to Emerald Bay. Jennifer brought the boat in fast toward the first warning buoy and then pulled the throttle back. She glanced up at the darkening sky and switched on the boat’s running lights. I could tell she’d spent many hours driving the powerful craft.

  “The entrance to the bay is a narrow bottleneck,” she said as the boat slowed to the speed of a swimmer. “It’s a no-wake zone. Although Smithson might have run it at high speed. If he’s crazy enough to murder, he’d be crazy enough to chance it.”

  “Could be,” I said. “But he doesn’t want to get caught. There aren’t many patrol boats out now in early May. But there are in August. He wouldn’t have wanted to attract attention. My guess is his time for the run won’t be that much different than ours. And even though his boat would go faster, he probably wouldn’t go full speed on the return trip for fear of the body bouncing out of his boat.”

  Jennifer brought the boat into the channel, going slowly, expertly adapting to the lag between inputs at the steering wheel and actual changes in direction. The water grew very shallow, and even in the twilight I could see the bottom which was sandy white but for large boulders that looked like they would rip out our prop.

  Jennifer read my mind. “At the shallowest point the big tourist sternwheelers still clear the rocks so we’ll be okay. We only run three feet of draft at no wake.”

  I nodded. It was clear I was in good hands. I’d been on many boats over the years, but probably none were piloted by someone more capable than Jennifer.

  Once we were through the channel, Jennifer throt­tled up slightly to 15 knots. That was below planing speed, so the boat labored at a steep angle, its prow so high we could barely see over it.

  The mountains around Emerald Bay were omi­nous in the gathering dark. We plowed up the bay past Fannette Island until we were nearly on the beach below Eagle Falls. Jennifer slowed the boat and eased it forward. At the last moment she activated the power lift on the prop. The boat drifted forward until the hull ground to a stop on the sandy beach.

  “My time-keeping needs to take into account beaching and securing the boat,” I said. “What would Smithson likely do?”

  “He’d run an anchor and line up the beach and set it in the sand. Or if he had a long line he might go all the way to one of the trees, but that is less likely.”

  My sneakers were still wet from when I went into the water around the Salazar fence, so I jumped out of the boat into the shallow water. I walked up the sand as if I were setting an anchor. The Vikingsholm castle loomed in the dark forest, its black windows like eyes.

  I walked back to the boat. “I can time his climb from land.” I pushed against the prow of the boat. It did not want to budge out of the sand.

  “Wait,” Jennifer said. “Let me move to the back and shift the weight.” She walked back. I heaved and the boat slid back into the water. I ran out and boosted myself in.

  “Our total time from Smithson’s house to this point is forty minutes,” I said. “Double that and you’ve got an hour and twenty minutes round trip. So there’s no need to head back north toward his house. We can go straight east across the lake to your house. Hiking and driving will tell me the rest.”

  Jennifer nodded. We’d drifted far enough back for her to lower the prop. She started the engine and gently pulled the throttle back into reverse. The water slapped the stern as we backed up. Then Jennifer cranked the wheel, moved the throttle forward and we started up in a sharp turn.

  Soon, we were back in the tiny channel at the bay’s entrance. We cruised out into the black open water. As we cleared the last buoy, Jennifer opened up the throt­tle and we roared east across the lake.

  I looked at my watch. “If Gramma doesn’t get back until ten, we’ve got plenty of time. We’ll have the boat back in its bed and you inside the house long before she returns.”

  Jennifer nodded. “She always returns from bridge between ten and ten-fifteen. Like clockwork. I’ll have the house to myself.”

  As she said it, I detected a sudden tension. This was the first time Gramma had gone to play bridge since Jenni­fer’s scare earlier in the week. “We’ll put the boat away and then I’ll wait with you inside until the driver brings them home. I can slip out the back before they come in. Then I’ll backtrack to my car same as we planned. You won’t be left alone.”

  Jennifer said nothing. She was standing in the breeze as she drove. Her hands were tight on the wheel. I stayed silent as we raced east. The east shore grew larger. I was searching the trees for a glimpse of the Salazar man­sion when Jennifer suddenly pulled the throttle back. The boat lurched and coasted to a halt. Jennifer remained standing. Her eyes were fixed on the shoreline. Her body was rigid.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  She lifted her arm up and pointed toward the shore. Her finger vibrated. Small sobs emanated from her throat.

  “Jennifer, tell me.”

  “Our house,” she said. Her voice was weak. “Gramma and Helga are both gone. No one is supposed to be there.” Her voice choked off.

  “Not for another hour or more, like you said.” I strained my eyes to try to see whatever she was pointing at.

  “Over there,” she said, her voice a whimper that reminded me she was a kid. “See that light?”

  “Yes,” I said. “What about it?”

  “No one is supposed to be in the house, but that light is in my bedroom window!”

  As she said it, the light turned off.

  NINETEEN