Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (41 page)

I opened the cabinet doors. There were some old quart cans of paint, a partial gallon can, a roller and pan, some blue masking tape, a plastic coffee can with brushes in it. I pulled open the drawers and found a rusted utility knife with a broken blade, a bottle opener, a crescent wrench that was missing its lower jaw and was mostly covered with paint as if its primary use was to hammer shut paint lids, a plastic Ziplock bag filled with yellow electrical wire nuts, a glass jar with finishing nails, and some molly bolts.

On the wall nearby was some pegboard with hooks. There was a small coil of thin, braided nylon line, a hack saw with an old blade that was so obviously dull it probably wouldn’t cut butter, six six-foot, brown extension cords still wrapped in their display cardboard.

Leaning nearby were some miscellaneous chunks of lumber left over from a building project. A couple of eight-foot 2 X 4s, a six-foot 2 X 2, some three-quarter-inch dowels, a short chunk of Glulam that someone had maybe saved to turn into a butcher block.

What was notable was what I didn’t find. There were no hammers, no cold chisels, no bolt cutters, no large cross-cut saws, no large screw drivers. There was nothing that would make a good weapon. After Spot, who was on guard duty, my broken broom handle was still the only weapon I had. Worse, I found nothing that I could use to break the handcuffs that held Street and Gertie.

At least, the vehicles would have tire irons, which would be useful weapons. I turned toward the cars. Behind both windshields were little blinking red lights. Despite being in a locked castle garage, their alarms were on. Assuming they belonged to Lassitor, he didn’t trust that they would be safe even inside his garage. If I bumped the cars and set off the alarms, the men would hear it if they happened to be coming back.

I went back into the house, back into the entertainment room and through the hidden door to the room where Lassitor was chained.

“Where are your car keys?” I asked.

“The men have them. I tried to resist telling them where they were, but they beat it out of me.”

I nodded, then trotted back down into the cellar. “The men are gone,” I said to Street and Gertie. “I’m looking for some way to cut your handcuffs.”

Street made a nod that was mostly grimace. Gertie cried softly. Spot looked concerned.

“I’ll be back,” I said.

I ran back through the secret rooms and into the living room. I looked for the other hidden door that opened into the tunnel that led to the landscape garage. The door was like the others, hidden in a section of built-in storage cabinets. I found the release catch. The door opened.

I trotted down the tunnel, and came out into a garage that had nothing more to offer than what Lassitor had already told me about. There was a riding mower and a Cushman utility vehicle. I looked for tools but found nothing. I couldn’t even remove the mower blade to use as a weapon.

Back in the house, my throat constricted as I realized that the simple act of pulling out the floor bolt that held Street and Gertie was defeating me. Panic welled up, making it hard to breathe. But I focused on my rage. I was determined to take down these murderous men, not the other way around. I stopped and looked around the house. Tried to see it anew. Even a stripped-down castle with no tools or weapons would hold formidable resources if only I was smart enough to see them.

I scanned the cavernous living room that was lit only by my penlight and the dim kitchen-counter lights. I didn’t know what I was looking for. I just needed a weapon, an advantage of some kind. But nothing seemed any more useful than the broken broomstick that I already had. It was as if the men had carefully gone through the house and removed any possible tool.

I leaned the broken broomstick against the kitchen counter and went through the drawers. There was nothing sharper than a fork and butter knife.

 I looked again at the room. Next to the fireplace, nearly hidden in the shadow below the mantle, was a fireplace set, a poker, ash shovel, and log gripper. I picked up the gripper. It was not designed to grip small items like the bolt that held Street and Gertie. The shovel was bendy and weak. And the poker wasn’t pointed enough to wedge under the edge of anything.

It was something I could swing. Hefting it, I walked over to the side of the secret door, imagining how I could use it on anyone who came through the door.

But a poker wasn’t much use against guns.

Was it possible to set some kind of trap by the hidden door? Something that would incapacitate them as they walked in?

I looked at the piano. It was a big, old upright design, and very heavy. It would be hard to move. I wondered if it would make a useful barricade. I tried to imagine how it would work.

The men would come through the tunnel from the landscape garage and open the secret door. They’d see a piano in the way. It would merely slow them down. I looked back at the piano. What else could I do with it?

I thought about Diamond’s explanation of how the Paiute Deadfall trap worked.

Could it be done in a very large version? Instead of a four-pound rock, could the weight be a five hundred-pound piano?

It seemed a ludicrous notion.

But Street and Gertie and Lassitor were all held prisoner. And two men, presumably heavily armed, were going to return shortly.

Anything I could do was worth a try.

SIXTY

I went back into the garage and got the coil of line still in its package. Back in the living room, I stretched the line out and made several measurements, tying knots to mark lengths. As I made my plans, it again seemed ridiculous to think that I could trap one or more men with some cord and sticks. But as Diamond had said, the Paiute had used traps for survival for thousands of years. No reason I shouldn’t take my turn.

With the line as my measuring tape, I put the 2 X 4s on the garage workbench and used the hacksaw to cut into the wood. It was slow going. Even though the blade was very dull, it gradually cut the wood. Several times I stopped to listen, wondering if the men had returned.

 After much sawing, I had the basic lengths I needed, one with its end shaved to a chisel edge, and the other with a notch cut out into which the chisel edge would rest. I also cut three pieces of dowel. I carried my wood pieces into the house and set them up near the piano, checking my measurements. The notch I’d cut needed an adjustment, but I seemed to be on track.

One 2 X 4 was to be the vertical fulcrum piece, the other the seesaw that would hold up the piano, held in place by a trigger cord.

When I had everything in position, I lifted up on one end of the piano. It was very heavy, over two hundred pounds on just one end. As the end raised higher, more of the weight was supported by the side that was still on the floor. When I had the piano tipped up very high and it almost reached the balance point, I was holding very little weight.

By getting my body under the piano, I was able to balance the piano with my back and hips and let go with my hands so I could reach my wooden pieces. I held the vertical fulcrum piece with one hand, and positioned the seesaw piece with my other hand so that the short end came just under the raised end of the piano, propping it up. The long end of the seesaw and its attached piece of line angled back down toward the floor. I pulled the line over, and tied a short piece of dowel to its end.

Then I took the longer piece of dowel – my trigger twig – and gently wedged it between the angled bottom of the piano and the short dowel. I had to shift things a little here and there, but eventually I let go of the pieces and eased my way out from under the piano.

It shimmied, but stayed in place.

I now had a 500-pound Paiute Deadfall. If anything bumped the longer trigger dowel, the short dowel with its string would come loose, the seesaw would give, and the piano would come crashing down.

Of course, no one would be under the piano when it fell. But as Diamond had pointed out, the falling weight could trigger a snare.

I tied another little piece of dowel to the end of a line and tossed it up and through one of the big timber frame trusses that supported the roof. The weight of the dowel pulled the line over and back down. It stopped about twelve feet above the floor, out of my reach. I shook the line, sending waves of motion through it. Gradually, the dowel dropped farther, and I was able to reach up and grab it. I removed the little piece of dowel and pulled the line through the truss until I had enough to make a snare.

Using a slip knot, I made a loop about fifteen inches in diameter and worked it into the carpet nap in front of the hidden door. Then I pulled the back end of the line down from the truss to take the slack out of it. When it was in position, I cut off the line and tied its end to the frame at the bottom of the piano, choosing the part that was tipped highest in the air so that it would pull the line the greatest distance when the piano fell.

Now all I needed was a cord that would run to the trigger dowel and a way to stretch it in front of the door to the tunnel.

Over by one of the living room windows was a pedestal and on it an abstract bronze sculpture. It weighed about thirty pounds. I carried it over and set it on the floor to the side of the cabinet that contained the hidden door. I took another piece of line, tied it around the sculpture, and stretched it over to the Paiute Deadfall trap.

I bent down under the raised piano and, moving as carefully as a cardiac surgeon at work, gently ran the end of the line around the trigger dowel and tied a knot. My breath was short as I backed away on hands and knees. When I was clear of the piano, I stood up.

There was no way to predict if the Paiute Deadfall snare would work. But my hope was that the men would come through the tunnel and the hidden doorway and push open the cabinet door. One would step out into the snare, simultaneously hitting the trigger cord. The cord would pull the trigger dowel free, the seesaw would give way, and the piano would crash down, pulling the snare line. If it worked perfectly, the snare would close around the man’s leg and lift him several feet up into the air.

With my trap in place, I made another search of the house, looking for some way to cut off Street and Gertie’s handcuffs. The only tool I could find was a small scissors that would never be strong enough.

Then I saw the log rack to the side of the hearth. It held split pine. Many Tahoe residents buy their firewood split and delivered. But some like to split wood themselves.

I ran back through the entertainment room and into the room where Lassitor was chained.

“Do you split any of your own wood?”

“Huh?” he seemed startled. “Some, yes. Why?”

“How do you split it? A hydraulic splitter or what?”

“I use a splitting maul, the old-fashioned way.”

“Where is it?”

“Let me think. The last I used it was probably over a year ago. But it should still be in the same place. Outside the slider near the fireplace. The far left end of the deck. There’s a woodpile under the eave. In front of that is a giant slab of fir I use as a splitting base. I think the maul is just leaning up against it. It’s probably all covered in snow, but it should still be there.”

I nodded as I ran out.

The woodpile was as described under the eave. Where the roofline stopped, the snow rose sharply up to six feet of depth. I kicked around in the heavy snow, to the left, then to the right. I moved deeper into the snow, chopping it with my arms, knocking it down. Poked my boot in deeper. Hit something solid.

I dropped down on my knees, the snow up to my neck. Reached in and found the slab, dove in deeper, arms probing, waving. There. Something to the far side. I pushed in farther, my head under the snow. Wrapped my fingers around a handle. I had to jerk it back and forth multiple times to free the head of the maul from its frozen home. Then it came out.

The wooden handle was slippery with ice and snow, so I held on tight as I ran back inside and shut the slider behind me. I was turning toward the entertainment room when I heard a deep tone.

Men’s voices.

SIXTY-ONE

I heard movement, a whoosh of weather stripping. The cabinet in front of the hidden door in the living room opened. A leg and foot stepped out. The man never had a chance.

His ankle brushed the trigger cord. The Paiute Deadfall seesawed, and the piano crashed to the floor with a tremendous gong from all of the strings. The snare jerked up, closing on the man’s leg. It went tight at his knee and jerked him into the air. He fell back against the man behind him. He was suspended from his knee, which was four feet off the ground. His body draped down. He grasped at the floor and cabinet. His other leg pushed him in wild gyrations.

The man behind him saw me. He looked a bit like the Dock Artist from Carson City, but he was in the shadows of the cabinet and hidden doorway. I saw his gun as he raised it above the other man. He leaned forward to take aim. As I threw the splitting maul, light caught his face.

He was huge, but he wasn’t the Dock Artist.

The man fired as I dove sideways. The shot missed me. The gun sounded like a cannon in the enclosed space.

The maul was very heavy, and the handle twirled about the maul’s head as it arced through the air. The maul head hit the top of the cabinet above the second man’s head. It fell down and struck the man on the shoulder. I dropped to the floor and rolled toward the hearth. The fireplace poker I’d picked up earlier was just out of reach.

The man fired again. The edge of the hearth exploded, stone chips stinging my face. I crawled over, grabbed the fireplace poker, and threw it like a javelin. It struck the man who was dangling by his knee, the dull point hitting his free leg hard enough to puncture his thigh. He screamed and flailed, his arms windmilling into the man behind him.

The second man fired again, hitting the glass front to the fireplace. The tempered glass exploded into a million diamonds. Once again, the man took aim, but this time his gun was pushed sideways by the injured man who still rotated as he hung from one knee and tried to right himself with his other foot.