Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (7 page)

I waved my hand to try to let her know that she’d made her point, but she kept going.

“Cary Grant, Cuba Gooding Jr., Catherine Zeta Jones, Heath Ledger, Sophia Loren, Clark Gable, Cher, Peter O’Toole, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Anthony Quinn, Frank Sinatra, Charlize Theron, Robert De Niro, Sean Connery, Humphrey Bogart, Gene Hackman.” She paused to take a breath before continuing.

I put my hand palm-out like a stop sign in front of her face.

“I can keep going,” she said.

“I’m sure you can. Probably, those actors became educated in other ways, don’t you think? They didn’t just quit school to hang out and smoke. They studied acting or something.”

“God, you are such a predictable adult,” Gertie said. “Anyway, that’s what I’m gonna do.”

“Study acting?”

Gertie made a guffaw. “Look at me. You think this mug belongs in front of a camera? I belong behind the camera. Directing.”

“Mug,” I said.

“Ratty hair, cleft lip scar that drives my mother nuts, body like a discarded inner-tube. I’m not exactly starlet material. Anyway, I learned the word mug from Noir movies. Do you know what noir means?”

“What?”

“It’s French for dark. Or maybe it’s black. But Noir movies aren’t just dark in the lighting style, they’re also dark in mood and subject. So noir is a metaphor. Get it? That’s another word I had to learn after I heard the Tarantino interview.”

“Sounds like you’re learning a lot when you’re not in school.”

“No way. I’ve learned this all during school. I have a Blue Tooth earpiece for my phone. You can’t even see it in my ear, especially if I turn to the right a little and pull my hair over it. I heard the Tarantino interview in Mr. Torres’ class. What’s it gonna be, Pulp Fiction or Pythagoras?”

“I bet Tarantino won that contest,” I said. “Have you worked on – what was it – formulating your debut?”

“Yup. I’m going to run away to Hollywood and be a director.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out a card, and handed it to me. It said,

Gertie O’Leary

Screenwriter, Director, Film Mogul

Below it was her phone number.

“Mogul?” I said. “You’ve got big plans. Here, we’ll trade,” I said. “You can put me on your list to notify when you have your premier.” I handed her my card.

She tucked it into her pocket.

“When will all this happen?” I asked.

“Going to Hollywood? Could be any time. I’m almost there. Maybe I just need to take a road trip. Like Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon in “Thelma and Louise.” That could give me my final inspiration. I could leave this afternoon. Running away would give me a new life, a life with purpose.”

“Gertie, at the risk of sounding like a boring adult, running away isn’t the best way to handle disaffection with your current life. You might want to think about alternatives.”

As soon as I said the words, I regretted it. A little fire grew in Gertie’s eyes. She squinted at me.

“There’s no risk of you sounding like a boring adult. You are a boring adult. You have no vision. I bet you’ve never even had a dream of a new life.” Her eyes moistened. “A dream that you could really do something. That you could be somebody. Am I right?” Her voice wavered.

“I’m sorry, Gertie. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“Did you ever see Brando in “On The Waterfront?” Where he says he coulda been somebody? Well, I’m not going to wait while boring adults force me to go through all these boring classes all so I can get a boring job. I’m going to be what Brando wanted to be. A contender. Maybe I’m only fifteen, but that’s an advantage. I’ll still be a teenager when my debut has its premier. And boring adults like you will be thinking, ‘Wow, I didn’t believe that girl could do it.’”

She took a last drag on her cigarette, her cheeks shiny with tears, tossed the butt onto the sidewalk at my feet, turned and went inside the house. She shut the door behind her.

It was as good an exit as I had seen in any movie.

EIGHT

I drove east and found the building I was looking for just south of the freeway and 50 yards from a nice restaurant that looked out of place – and hence, hip – among several warehouses. I bypassed the front office and walked around the side of the building. There was a lot of asphalt and a wide area where trucks could pull to one side and back up to loading docks.

At every fourth dock there was a ramp where drivers could walk up. It was shortly after 3 p.m. when I trotted up to the loading dock. Several of the big overhead doors were open. Inside were aisles of heavy steel shelving units that were two stories high, accessible only by forklifts, scissor lifts, or monkeys. The shelves were loaded with big cardboard boxes.

There were no workers around that I could see. I walked down one aisle, turned, then came back another. At an intersection, I saw a group of men off to the side, clustered around some long tables. Most had cans of soda. Some had thermoses of coffee. Several smoked.

As I approached, one of the men jumped up and intercepted me before I got close.

“You can’t be in here.”

“I need to talk with Merrill O’Leary.”

“You’ll have to wait. He’s on break.”

“I thought his break would be a good time to talk, keep from interrupting his work. It’s urgent.”

“So’s our break. Union rules.”

“What if I said his daughter’s in trouble?”

“She in the hospital or something? An emergency?”

“No.”

He pointed back toward the loading dock. “You’ll have to wait on the dock.”

“How long’s your break?”

He looked at his watch. “Another fifteen minutes.”

Twenty minutes later, a big, rotund guy marched out onto the loading dock. He was red of face, hair, and suspenders, and blue of eyes, jeans, and shirt. A toothpick barely poked out the left side of his mouth. He frowned, his eyes narrowed, and his lips scrunched up. His hair was a messy, crumpled bunch of thin wire. If he was half as mean as he looked, he would have been in prison, not out driving a forklift. I could not imagine him ever being married to Nadia.

“Looking for me?” he said. Deep voice, half growl.

“If you’re Merrill O’Leary.”

Maybe he made a partial nod, but not that I could notice.

I reached out my hand. “Owen McKenna,” I said.

He looked at my hand but didn’t reach out his.

“I’m a private investigator from Lake Tahoe. Your ex, Nadia Lassitor, just lost her husband to drowning.” I watched to gauge his reaction, but there was none.

“So?” he said. “Maybe now she’ll finally get the money she’s been wanting all her life.”

“Yes, except she’s being blackmailed for that money.”

The toothpick twitched, then went still. “What’s that got to do with me?”

“Maybe nothing. But I’m worried about your daughter.”

“Not your business,” he said. I noticed that it was the same phrase Amanda Horner had used when I questioned her about following Nadia.

“If the blackmailer wants leverage with Nadia,” I said, “he might threaten Gertie.”

“That wouldn’t matter to Nadia. She don’t care ’bout Gertie. And anyway, nothing’s gonna happen to Gertie as long as I’m in charge.”

“How do you know? Is it because you are so close to her?” I asked.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” His eyebrows tipped inward, the outer tips rising up in pronounced arches.

“Gertie told me about your loving parental attention. Half the time, she eats dinner alone. And when you finally come home, you have more of a relationship with your beer than you do with her. Or was that just a story she made up for the movie she’s writing?”

Merrill reddened further. He made fists at his side and his arms came out a couple of inches. “I broke the nose of the last guy who insulted me.”

“I believe it.”

“She never said nothing about writing a movie.”

“I believe that, too,” I said. “Has she talked to you about directing? Has she told you about the interview with Quentin Tarantino? Did she ask you about movie parodies?”

He frowned. “Never heard about ‘parrot eats.’”

“That’s all I need to know. Let me leave you with this. I came down from Tahoe to warn you and Gertie to be careful. Until we catch this blackmailer, I don’t think she should be left in your house alone. Especially with the doors unlocked.”

The man looked like he was about to attack me. “What happens with my daughter and my door locks is my business. It’s time for you to split, bub.”

“Bub? I see where your daughter gets her flair for description.”

The man lunged for me, his arms out like he’d seen NFL football players do it.

I feinted, stepped the other way, grabbed one of his arms and swung him around in a circle like the end person on a crack-the-whip game. He floundered as he sped up, windmilling his other arm and flailing his feet in an effort not to lose his balance. As he was about to spin out, I shifted and jerked him the other way, back over his feet. Twisting his hand and wrist so that he yelped, I walked him backward over to a forklift. I reached out a single finger and pushed on his chest. He tried to take a little step back. But the metal arms of the forklift were about knee level. One of his calves hit the metal, and he went down, arms windmilling, his giant butt jamming between the forks. Merrill sat with his arms out like he was lounging in an easy chair. He panted so hard, I thought he might be having a heart attack.

“Cost me a day and several bucks to drive down here just to let you know about the threat,” I said. “In return for my efforts, you attack me. Next time I’ll send you off the end of the loading dock and see how well you fly.”

Merrill was still gasping. He probably hadn’t moved that fast in his life.

I turned away from him, taking care not to let my own heavy breathing show. It was a stupid move, letting him out of my sight, directly behind me. I hadn’t even frisked him. But I was mad, and like an adolescent boy, I wanted him to try me one more time.

“Try it, Merrill,” I said over my shoulder. “See if you can get your ass out of that chair and come after me.” All I heard behind me was his breathing.

As I walked away, I reached into my wallet, pulled out a card, and dropped it onto the concrete floor.

“If you change your mind and decide to care about Gertie’s welfare, there’s my card.”

I walked away without looking back.

It was getting dark as I went through Placerville and headed up the ridge toward Pollock Pines. I pulled over when I got to 4000 feet of elevation and before I dropped down into the American River Canyon and lost cell reception. I called Street.

“I’m coming up from Sac and was wondering if you could break away from your bees and have dinner with me at my cabin?”

“Hmmm. Their honey is sweet. What’s the competition?”

“Barbecued steelhead trout, a Central Coast Pinot, and whatever else you’d like me to pick up when I get up to Tahoe.”

“How about serving it on a bed of kale and garlic mashed potatoes, the little red ones with the skins still on them?”

“Always the healthy choices,” I said.

“Tasty choices,” she said.

So Street came up to my cabin for dinner, and we feasted. Over dinner I told her about Gertie O’Leary, the unwanted child of Nadia and Merrill.

“A kid who wants to be a director, not an actor,” Street said. “That is so cool.”

We stayed up late, and before she left, we stepped out onto my deck for a brace of the cold air at 7200 feet and a look at the world’s greatest view across the lake to the Sierra Nevada crest.

There was just enough light to show thin clouds racing from southwest to northeast. Here and there were openings to the sky, moving black patches with hundreds of stars. Across the lake to the northwest, fifteen miles distant, were bright flickering lights crawling high across the mountains of Squaw Valley. It took me a moment to realize that they were the groomers driving the big snowcats, no doubt rocking out to their headset music while they laid down corduroy tracks for the next day’s skiers.

I stood behind Street at the deck railing, my arms around her, feeling shapes which, despite her slender build, were the stuff to generate hormone surges.

“Romantic isn’t it,” she said as she leaned her head back against my chest, “snow-covered mountains lit by stars. And as the earth rotates, the stars trace slow curves through the sky.”

“Those aren’t the curves I was thinking about. But yes, it’s very romantic.”

NINE

I slept in the next day, and called Nadia after I’d had my second cup of coffee. She came to my office that afternoon. Her first words were to ask if I’d seen Gertie and Merrill. I nodded.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The idea of me seeing Merrill made her tense and worried.

“Did it, you know, go okay?”

“Yeah, great. Merrill is a loving, caring dad, and he’s rearranging his schedule to be sure that Gertie isn’t at risk.”

“Gertie? Not Trudy?”

“Nadia, Gertie made it very clear that she prefers to be called Gertie and that everyone in the world but you calls her by the name she prefers.”

Nadia hesitated. “I... I like the name Trudy.”

“Yes. I can see that. At every step, you care more about your likes than your daughter’s.”

Nadia colored. Her jaw muscles bulged. Her eyes moistened. She blinked multiple times. But no tears spilled over the dam.

“Did Ian have substantial assets?” I asked.

She blinked some more, then focused on the new subject.

“I didn’t know that at the time I married him. But later, I learned that his company was a much bigger deal than he’d led me to believe. I also found out that his vacation home here in Tahoe is practically a castle. It’s this big stone place with a matching stone boathouse. Much bigger than the house in Santa Clara. I learned that he collects expensive toys like that fancy old wood boat that he died in. He used them for employee perks and for entertaining clients. Of course, they all were lost when Symphony TechNation went out of business.”

“How did that happen?”

“Another lawsuit. Or maybe it was mostly a prosecution thing. Anyway, this time Ian was on the receiving end. He had to liquidate everything. Even the Tahoe castle was sold. Although he got the new owners to lease it back to him for six months. The only thing left was the house in Santa Clara.”