Tahoe Chase (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (36 page)

The jacket burst into flame, a huge torch throwing yellow light back at Dwight who was reloading his flare gun.

Simone seemed paralyzed.

“RUN, SIMONE! SKI TOWARD ME!” I kept trudging down the slope toward her as fast as I could, high-stepping my legs in the deep powder. Spot was leaping through the deep powder, getting closer to Dwight, but still many seconds away.

Simone reached down and grabbed her poles. She planted one, made a single stride, and fell over in the snow.

Dwight skied toward Simone. He stopped above her, held the flare gun out, and pointed it down at her.

“DWIGHT!” I yelled, my voice impotent in the huge landscape that was filled with sound-muffling snowflakes.

Dwight didn’t respond. He brought his other hand up for support, as if making certain that his aim at the writhing woman was perfect.

As I watched, horrified, I sensed a dark movement at my side. I turned.

Joe flew by me, racing down the slope on my skis. His knees were bent, his upper body straight. His boots didn’t fit into my ski bindings. He was merely perching on the skis, held on by nothing more than amazing balance. He held his arms out to the side for balance like when he did the earthquake walk.

Joe shot past me and then past Spot in the dark. When he came to the bottom of the slope, he had a lot of speed to keep him planing on the powder. He aimed straight for Dwight.

Dwight didn’t see him, so focused was he on aiming the flare gun.

Joe was still several yards away, silently racing up behind Dwight when he let forth with a booming yell.

It was a deep alien sound, a resonant, thrusting presence as physical as it was audible. It shook my chest even though I was far away and behind Joe.

Joe’s yell rose in volume, a sound like a lion’s roar but more powerful for its surprise.

Joe had told me that it was a yell of fear. But its effect on Dwight was as if someone had taken a ship’s foghorn and blasted it behind Dwight’s head.

 He jerked up into the air. The hand holding the flare gun flew sideways. The gun arced through the air as it went off, its little pop inaudible against the bellowing thunder from the old man. The flare traced a shallow arc into the snow.

Spot finally got to Dwight and leaped toward him. But his legs sunk in, and his rise was slow. Dwight saw him and twisted away with athletic speed.

Spot turned his head but was unable to grab Dwight. Spot’s shoulder hit Dwight a glancing blow. Dwight went down and crawled for the flare gun. He reached his hand down into the snow, feeling, searching. Spot jumped over, opened his giant mouth, and, like a mountain lion, put his jaws around the back of Dwight’s neck.

Dwight froze.

Spot held Dwight immobile.

Simone’s jacket was still burning a bright yellow, its light illuminating her face as I reached out for her hand and pulled her up.

She clutched at my jacket, and I hugged her. She cried hard for a few minutes, but then slowed, her violent jerking shivers calming from the effects of exhaustion more than anything else.

Eventually, she pushed her face away from my chest. Her cheeks were red and wet and reflected the yellow light of her burning jacket.

“He held the gun up,” she said in a tiny voice, her French accent more pronounced. “He was aiming right at my face. I could see into the gun barrel. But something happened. Like an earthquake. What was that?” Simone’s eyes searched mine. Confusion mixed with the shock of almost being murdered.

I turned and pointed through the dark toward Joe, who was bent over, hands on his knees, catching his breath.

“That was the Rorvik Roar,” I said.

EPILOGUE

Late in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve, we sat on Street’s deck as the sun dropped behind the West Shore mountains and the temperature started to plunge.

“I wonder,” Diamond said as he sipped his coffee, “were Ned and Dwight in contact?”

“Dwight hasn’t said a word since they put him in jail, but I doubt it,” I said. “I think he’s been observing Ned from a distance.”

Street said, “If Ned had known that his brother Peter had moved to town and was living as Dwight Frankman, he wouldn’t have been able to keep quiet about it. Simone would have known.”

“Dwight was conflicted about Ned,” I said. “On one hand, he worshiped his stepbrother, and he killed his mother in retribution for beating on Ned. He probably wanted to be near Ned. He helped Ned enter Joe’s origami contest. But Dwight also knew that Ned was a loser, always in trouble, always broke. If Ned had known of his brother’s proximity and success, he would’ve hounded Dwight for money. He might have even preyed on Dwight to get money. Ned must have been as overbearing on his brother as he was on everyone else.”

“Dwight probably changed his name from Peter just to help ensure that Ned couldn’t track him down,” Street said.

I nodded. “In his closet shrine, the photos showed that when he was still Peter, he was an athlete. When he became Dwight, he adopted a geeky look. When I first met him at Joe’s, he wouldn’t face the street and he acted furtive. I think that was because he’d spotted Ned in the neighborhood, and he didn’t want Ned to recognize him. Later, he told me about how he was careful about keeping his blinds drawn.”

Diamond said, “Dwight probably suspected that Ned followed Simone when she went hiking. If Ned saw his brother in the Cameron disguise with the wig, he probably wouldn’t recognize him.”

 Street’s phone rang. She answered it, spoke a few words, and hung up.

“They’re ready,” she said.

Diamond finished his coffee. “I’ll meet you there,” he said.

An hour later, we drove the Jeep toward El Dorado Beach in the center of South Lake Tahoe. I had a small box in my lap. Joe sat in the front passenger seat. He held a large box that filled the space between his chest and the dashboard.

 Street and Simone sat in back, Street behind Joe and Simone behind me. We squeezed Spot into the little space behind the back seat. Spot sat sideways, his chest jammed between the rear door and the back of the back seat. He cranked his head sideways and hung it over Simone’s shoulder. He put on his sad eyes and immediately got continuous pets from her.

We all listened as Joe explained what we mostly already knew, that he’d been to the hospital and had his talk with Rell, and then he’d told the doctors that they could pull the plug. But before they could take her off the life support machines, Rell’s heart beat once more and went still.

In my peripheral vision, I saw Street lean forward from the back seat and rub Joe’s shoulders.

There was a steady flow of traffic in town, rolling softly through the fresh snow, a hundred thousand ski and snowboard tourists heading to condos and hotels and restaurants after a day on the various mountains.

After a long silence, Joe spoke again. “Simone hasn’t been able to find a good place to live. So I said she could live with me if she wanted. It’s not like I don’t have extra rooms. Of course, sharing a fridge with an old man is not an easy sell. But I think she was eventually swayed by having her own bathroom for the first time in her life. So she’s decided to grace this old man’s house with her youthful energy. She moved in yesterday. It was a big project, of course, because of all her possessions. You’ll be interested to learn that in addition to her small suitcase, Simone also owns a tiny purse.”

I glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw Simone smiling.

Street said, “Simone, that’s fantastic. I think Joe’s house is great. There are quiet woods out every window.”

“And you know what happened yesterday after Simone moved in?” Joe continued. He sounded like a kid.

“What?” Street said.

“Molly came back. The other birds, too.”

Simone spoke. Her voice, and her alluring French accent, was so small that we all had to hold our breaths to hear it. “Joe said that Rell fed the chickadees,” she said. “But when I looked at the feeder, he’d put in dried lentils. Little birds like Mountain chickadees don’t eat dried lentils. They’re hard as concrete. But then I found Rell’s black oil sunflower seeds in the same garage cabinet where she stored her lentils for making soup. As soon as I put the sunflower seeds in the feeder, the chickadees arrived. They were so excited.”

“And she met Molly,” Joe said.

“Yes. The cutest little bird ever. She only has one leg, but she doesn’t let it slow her down.”

“Simone,” I said, “I think living at Joe’s house is a good idea, but that means you’ll have to put up with him,” I joked. I looked over at Joe. In the glow from the dashboard lights, his face looked stern, but I saw a little tug at the corner of his mouth.

 “I know!” Simone said. “He’s a strange man, this Monsieur Rorvik. He does things backward. Like wiping his mouth before he eats. And he chews his beer.”

“She eats her coffee with a spoon,” Joe said. “But I have to add that I’ve always thought I was a good judge of character, and I thought Simone didn’t have any strength, any personal constitution. I was wrong. She’s one tough girl. It was her amazing endurance that saved her life.”

“And then,” Street said with obvious admiration in her voice, “she went back out to Lake Aloha just two days later and did the rest of the Randonnée Extreme challenge. That’s impressive.”

“Yeah, she’s a good skier,” Joe said. “But she won’t be able to ski at the Steven’s Peak Resort because I’m voting against it.”

 We arrived at El Dorado Beach. I pulled in and parked. Diamond was waiting. He came up, lifted the big box off Joe’s lap, and we walked down the steps, away from the sound of traffic.

Down at the lake, the major sound was the gentle waves lapping at the snowy beach. The sun had set, and big white flakes drifted down out of the gray-black sky. The cold air of the winter evening rolled off the mountains, which lurked like giant ghosts, unseen in the dark, snowy night.

Although the main lake never freezes, there were thin ice sheets at the edge where water had pushed in among the snow-covered beach pebbles. As the humid lake air flowed over the shore, long hoar frost crystals grew on the shore bushes. Spot didn’t run, but just walked with us, his head turning left and right, nostrils flexing. The falling snow tickled his ears, and when he twitched them, his faux diamond ear stud sparkled in the dark.

When Joe found the spot he wanted, he nodded at Diamond. Diamond held the box while Joe opened the box flaps and pulled out an elaborate origami sailboat made from his big roll of white paper. The boat was a deep-keel design, about twenty inches long with a twenty-four-inch mast and a sail that curved out at a 30-degree angle from the center line of the boat. Joe paused and looked at the sky, sensing, I thought, the breeze. He adjusted the position of the paper sail and the tiller, making some folds to fix their angle.

As with Joe’s other creations, it was impossible to see the elaborate boat as a mere sheet of folded paper. The result was much more than one might expect from the components that went into it.

It was like Joe. His life was a grand journey with his wife at its core. No matter how carefully one parsed out the parts, it was impossible to see Joe and Rell as a mere collection of hopes and dreams and plans and efforts and the experiences that arose from them. From hearing Joe’s stories, the whole of Joe and Rell seemed grander than any couple I’d ever known, even though I’d never met Rell outside of the comatose woman in the hospital room.

My own life seemed shallow by comparison. My personal boat raced along here and there and provided a few thrills, and, best of all, carried Street along for the ride when our schedules permitted. But it seemed that I spent too much of my time moored at a lonely buoy, listing to starboard, too much water in the bilge, sails luffing or even gathering cobwebs, brightwork getting tarnished.

The man beside me was bent and weak with age, the Rorvik Roar softened. But he was still powerful in his way, a blend of wisdom and glamour and determination and persistence. Despite his claim that he didn’t pay Rell enough attention, it seemed that he’d focused much of his life on Rell. He’d put aside many of the Me activities that most men indulge in and replaced them with We activities to do with Rell. Six decades later, the We activities were now done.

Holding the origami boat, Joe used his foot to move some cobbles together next to a piece of driftwood. He set the boat down so that the cobbles and driftwood supported the boat’s hull, and the paper keel was suspended, undamaged, a few inches above the ground.

Joe turned toward me and reached his arms out. I lifted the lid off the small box. Joe pulled the plastic bag out, bent over, and carefully poured the ashes into the cabin space on the paper sailboat. I realized that he had planned it so that the ashes would serve as ballast in the keel.

“Simone,” Joe said, his voice strong. “The candles, please?”

Simone nodded and pulled two votive candles out of her pocket.

Joe took them and set one in the bow of the boat and one at the stern. They fit precisely into compartments that he’d constructed just for that purpose.

He pulled out a wooden match, and, like an agile young man, lifted his knee to stretch his jeans tight, and struck the match along the taut denim at the back of his thigh. He lit both candles.

Joe picked up the boat, careful not to jar the candles, and waded into the lake. He didn’t hesitate even though the water was nearly the temperature of ice. When the water was halfway up his calves, deeper than the boat’s keel, Joe set the boat in the water.

He turned his head, sensing the air once again, then carefully pointed the boat and gave it a little push. The boat coasted a couple of feet.

A tiny breeze came up. The candles flickered. The boat leaned a bit, its sail inclined toward the water. It began to move forward under its own power.

Joe walked out of the water. He turned back to face the lake, his hand resting on Spot’s neck.

“Okay, Street, we’re ready for the poem, if you’d be so kind,” Joe said.

Street pulled a small book out of her inside jacket pocket and opened it. She flipped on a tiny penlight and held it against the page.

“This is Emily Dickinson’s poem called ‘The Humming-Bird.’”

She read the evocative lines.

We watched as the boat moved out into the darkness, its flickering candles illuminating its sail. The boat grew distant and harder to see. After a couple of minutes, we could only see the two points of light. Soon, the lights blended into one distant flicker. After another minute, the single light disappeared.

“Rell and me, we had a deal,” Joe said. “We kept it for sixty years.” He raised his hand, kissed his palm, blew the kiss toward the lake where the boat had disappeared and said, “I love you, Rell.”