Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (34 page)

“C’mon, Gertie, let’s go get that breakfast.”

She jumped off the boat, and we walked down the pier.

A man came running and shouted at us.

“Hey, you can’t leave your boat there!”

“Sorry, it’s not my boat.”

“But I saw you come in and tie it up.”

“That was an emergency landing. You’ll be hearing from the police in about twenty minutes.”

“You still can’t leave it there. It’s blocking our operations.”

“I’m just the guy who managed to land the plane when the pilot couldn’t be found. Pure luck. I wouldn’t even know how to sail it away.”

I led Gertie out the access road, past the marina, and across Lake Tahoe Boulevard. While Gertie talked, I looked at all the nearby vehicles.

Nothing stood out until we walked into the parking lot of the Red Hut Café. Gertie gasped.

“What?”

She pointed. There was a white cargo van near the restaurant door.

FORTY-SEVEN

I pulled Gertie to the side of the café, out of sight from the van. We stepped behind some bushes.

“Stay here,” I said.

I crept around the side of the building.

The cargo van was just pulling away. It was a painting contractor with a large logo painted on the side panel.

“All clear,” I said when I came back to Gertie.

We went inside the restaurant.

“Hi, Mr. McKenna,” a young woman I recognized said. “Table for two?”

“Yes, please. Also, I lost my cell. May I borrow your phone for two short calls?”

“Sure.” She pointed to one. “I’ll get you your table as soon as you’re done.”

“Thanks.”

Gertie stayed near me while I dialed Sergeant Santiago. He answered.

“Owen McKenna calling,” I said.

“The same McKenna who apparently abandoned his dog in his Jeep halfway up the mountain above Rubicon Bay?”

“You found Spot,” I said.

“Cold and hungry, but okay. Of course, he’s no longer cold and hungry.”

“Where is he?”

“First, he was in the back of my patrol unit. I thought about calling animal control but decided he’d rather hang out at the sheriff’s office in Tahoe City. So we fed him and last I looked he was... Hold on while I check again. Yep, he’s still sound asleep in front of the heat vent.”

“What did you feed him?”

“One of our deputies was making a run to McDonald’s in Truckee, so he brought back some extra Big Macs.” Santiago paused. “That’s okay, right? He sure seemed to like them.”

“He was probably just being polite. How many did you give him?”

“Three, I think. Except Lance didn’t eat all of his second one, so your hound maybe had that, too. Oh, and there were some extra orders of fries that were for a sales rep who was showing us new radios. But he had to go, so I’m pretty sure your dog ate those, too.”

“He probably really misses me, huh?”

“Um, well, if eating and sleeping is the way he shows how much he misses you, then yeah, he really misses you.”

“What about my Jeep?”

“Your keys were in the ignition, so two of the guys pushed it out of the snowbank, and we drove it here to the office.”

“Is it okay if I pick up my dog and my Jeep later? Maybe this afternoon?”

“Sure. Any word on the kidnapped girl?”

“I found her. That’s why I had to leave the Jeep and Spot. We were in a bit of a hurry to get off that mountain.” I gave him the basics of where we’d been and how we stole the boat to escape. “We left it at the Ski Run Marina. I’m not sure the best way to return it.”

“I’ll work on it,” Santiago said.

“I also have one of the bad guy’s cell phones. I’ll give it to you when I pick up my hound.”

“Great. Hey, McKenna, I should probably tell you that someone shot up your wheels. We saw two bullet holes, and we weren’t even looking for them.”

“At least it didn’t get blown up.” I thanked him and hung up.

I called Street.

“Hey, sweetheart, I just came in with Gertie, and we’re okay.”

“You rescued Gertie! Thank God! I was so worried. And Diamond told me what happened to you, those men who dragged you out on the lake and dropped you in. I would’ve died if I’d seen them haul you off. I’m so glad you survived, I can’t say...” Street broke off. I heard sniffling, her breath catch. She blew her nose, then was back.

“Is Gertie, you know, okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. She’s strong. I’m impressed with her.”

“I kept telling myself that you must be in an area with no cell coverage. But I’ve been so worried. It’s been two days.”

I glanced at Gertie before I spoke.

“I couldn’t call because they took my cell when they gave me the little boat ride.”

“What about his largeness?”

“Sergeant Santiago has been taking care of him at the Placer County office in Tahoe City. Can you give me a ride up there to fetch him and my Jeep?”

“Of course.”

“Then we’ll be over after we eat and I make some calls. You can meet Gertie, and we’ll tell you all about our adventure.”

“Okay. I’m so glad you’re okay. Love you.”

“Love you,” I said, and hung up.

“Our adventure?” Gertie said.

“Just spinning it a little with a euphemistic phrase.”

“What’s euphemistic?” she asked.

“A description that makes something seem not so bad as it really is.”

She thought about it. “Like when someone gets their head bashed in and their brains squish out, and the doctors say the person died from blunt force trauma?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“I heard that in the Tarantino interview.”

“I bet you did.”

“So you use euphemistic phrasing when you talk to your girlfriend.”

“Sometimes,” I said.

“She can’t face the truth?”

“No, she can face anything,” I said. “I just try to soften the blows a little.”

Gertie seemed to think about it.

The waitress brought Gertie and me to a table.

Gertie asked what was good, and I said the Owen’s Omelet.

“Wow, what a coincidence that they serve an omelet with your name,” she said.

“Yeah.” I didn’t tell her it was because I eat it all the time.

We didn’t speak until we were done.

“Where will we go now?” Gertie asked.

I thought about where the men would look for us. “I’ll call a cop friend and see if he can give us some cover.”

Because the men took my wallet, the restaurant said I could pay the bill on my next visit. I borrowed the house phone one more time, and called Diamond. I got his voicemail, left a message, and was turning to go when the phone rang.

I answered it, “Red Hut.”

“Got you on call back,” Diamond said.

“Thanks.” I gave him a brief explanation of where Gertie and I had been. “I’m wondering if you or one of your deputies is nearby. We could probably use a sheriff’s escort for the next day or so until I get a plan.”

Diamond said he’d pick us up in fifteen minutes.

Gertie and I waited near the restaurant door.

“I was thinking that I should probably call your mother and father first,” I said.

“Why?”

“To tell them you are free and safe. They’ll be worried. And they’ll want to see you.”

“But I don’t want to see them. I’d rather be with you. I’m safe with you. Besides, you’re nicer. They’re selfish, and they’ve never cared about me. Let them worry. The only thing I miss is Scruff Boy. I just hope Emily took him to her house.”

“Maybe I can put off arranging a visit with your parents,” I said. “But I still have to call them.”

“Is that, like, a law or something?”

“Probably. You’re a minor. You’re with a man who isn’t a relative. That’s fine in the short term. Very short term. If I go too long before turning you over to your legal guardian, then I become a kidnapper.”

“That’s totally lame. I’m here because I want to be.”

“Sorry, Gertie. The world doesn’t put much stock in a kid’s desires.”

“That’s a law that adults made,” she said.

“Right. Adults think they know what’s best for kids.”

“It’s adults that kidnapped me.” It looked like there were flames in Gertie’s eyes.

“Yeah, we adults are a stellar group.”

“Can you put off calling my parents for a bit? Please. Just give me some time to think?”

I thought about it. “I did lose my cell. And the bad guy’s phone in my pocket is locked. Maybe it will take me a day to find another phone.”

Gertie grinned.

“Those men...” she said.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Could they have followed us across the lake?”

“Only if they knew we were on that boat and had perfect timing and a lot of luck. They’d have to be watching the shoreline just as we rigged the boat and sailed away. Then they’d have to have access to a motorboat to follow us from a long distance, watching us through binoculars. A sailboat wouldn’t do because I would have seen its sail. I watched as we sailed. I never saw any boats behind us or near us.”

“What about following us by driving?” she asked. “They could see where we were going, then drive here.”

“Again, it would be possible, but it would take luck. Once they saw us heading across the lake, they would have to make a guess that we were going to the South Shore and not about to turn east or even northeast. The road to the South Shore has many places where you can’t see the lake. And even if they could see us getting closer to where we docked, they’d have to make a guess about whether we were going to dock at the Timber Cove pier, the Ski Run Marina pier, or any of several private docks. When they made that guess, they’d have to drive toward the lake on the closest neighborhood roads, park, and run out toward the water to try and see where we’d gone. There would also be time pressure. We got to the South Shore in less than an hour. The highway around Emerald Bay is closed. It takes almost two hours to drive from where we were on the West Shore clockwise around the lake to the South Shore, and that’s if the weather is good, and you’re driving fast. The bottom line is that it’s hard to chase boats from shore.”

Gertie seemed to relax a bit.

A horn beeped. I looked out and saw Diamond in his Douglas County vehicle. We walked out. Gertie seemed nervous, so I took the front seat, and she got in back. I introduced Diamond to Gertie, and she made a little wave from the back seat.

“You’ve had some excitement,” Diamond said.

“Yeah.” I told him all about the last couple of days, the old woman’s story about the ghost boat, and how we escaped the men who chased us.

“The beefcake leader of the gang,” he said. “He Mikhailo? The man Agent Ramos told us about?”

“I think so. We had the pleasure of meeting his two pals. I also think someone else is involved. When they were chasing us, one of them shouted to one of the others, something about sending in the coordinates.”

“A person who might be behind the ghost boat.” Diamond sound intrigued.

“Maybe,” I said. “What do you know about stuff like that?”

“Ghost boats? What’s there to know?”

“That’s just it,” I said. “I have no idea. But a worldly guy like you, I thought maybe you’d know something. How do you suppose it would work?”

“Lots of possibilities. Sending a robot boat after a moving target would be easiest if the target gave out a signal, like what you thought was the case with Gertie’s sweatshirt. Could be any kind of signal as long as a receiver could pick it up.”

“But how would the pursuing boat follow the signal?”

Diamond paused. “I don’t think it would be hard. The receiving device would essentially operate as a negative feedback loop.”

“What’s that?”

“A device that monitors a directional input and adjusts in the opposite direction.”

“So whatever the monitor is designed to watch, it adjusts in the opposite direction to keep the condition more or less the same,” I said.

“Sí. Negative feedback leads to stasis. Positive feedback leads to a runaway condition, ever-increasing the condition you are monitoring. Look around and you’ll see negative feedback loops everywhere. Cruise control on your car. Hormone levels in your body. Missile guidance systems. In this case, the receiver would be installed in the ghost boat and it would read the signal direction. The receiver would also have a control unit that can tell a boat to turn left or right. Any decent mechanic could figure out how to set up the steering mechanics. The receiver would be programmed to keep that signal at twelve o’clock so that the boat will drive toward the signal. Now let’s say the receiver notices that the boat is going too far to the right in relation to the signal. It will steer to the left to bring the boat back in line with the signal it’s chasing.”

“So maybe Ian Lassitor was the only human skipper in his boat collision, and the other boat was a ghost boat, huh?”

“Yeah, just like you two,” Diamond said as he glanced in the rearview mirror at Gertie.

Diamond dropped us at my office. “How long do you think?” he asked.

“An hour?”

“Okay. I’ll stay here for now. If I have to leave, I’ll make sure that I get a replacement.”

“Thanks very much.”

 Gertie and I got out and walked up to my office. Once inside, Gertie walked around looking at my spare effects, running her finger along my desk, lifting the pot from the coffeemaker, and looking into the fridge.

I sat at my desk, dialed the SLTPD and waited to get Mallory on the line.

“McKenna,” he said in my ear.

“Commander,” I said. “You may have heard of a young woman named Gertie O’Leary who was kidnapped. I found her on the West Shore.”

“That’s great,” Mallory said. “Congrats. But it’s all out of my territory.”

“Right. But now I’m on the South Shore, and we got here by stealing a sailboat, which we moored at the Ski Run Marina dock. Just thought you’d want to know when substantial stolen property is dumped in your jurisdiction.”

“Are you planning to remove the boat soon?”

“Not real soon. Sergeant Santiago may take care of it.”

Mallory thanked me for the information, and we hung up.

FORTY-EIGHT

I made another courtesy call, this one to Sergeant Bains of El Dorado County.

When I was through telling him what happened, I added, “Santiago is looking into returning the sailboat we stole. But it might be that we took it from south of the county line, in your territory.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Bains said. “Maybe you should give all this to Glenda Gorman at the Herald. She could publish descriptions of the suspects. Never know who might recognize these jerks.”

“Maybe. I’ll have to ponder the downside potential, first. You still sweet on her?”

“We’re on again, off again. As you know, she’s real attractive, both mental and physical and all that. But she’s kind of a powerhouse personality. I have to have high energy just to talk to her. All those questions and opinions. Do you and Street ever just sit in front of the fire and listen to music?”

“Yeah. Music and other stuff.”

“Other stuff that doesn’t require a big discussion. Like... Never mind. Don’t answer that. It’ll just make me feel bad.”

I thanked him for his time and said goodbye.

I next called FBI Special Agent Ramos, told him what happened, and said that the man in charge seemed like Mikhailo the Monster. “Except, I think he’s just an employee,” I said. “At one point, the man I think is Mikhailo shouted about sending in the coordinates. Maybe that was just a catch phrase. But it might indicate a fourth person.”

“That fits with what I just heard,” Ramos said.

I waited.

“Remember when you first told me about Gertie O’Leary going missing and being possibly kidnapped?”

“Yeah?” I said.

“You said the girl’s uncle Ellison O’Leary had admitted selling information about the girl’s whereabouts right before she was kidnapped?”

“Right,” I said, aware that Gertie was listening to my side of the converstation. I pressed the phone against my ear to minimize the chance that Gertie would hear Ramos revealing the true side of her uncle.

“So you handed him over to the Sacramento police,” Ramos said. “Yesterday, one of our Sacramento informants told us about a guy he knew who was pulling down a big scam and said that the guy had originally wanted to recruit him for help.”

I said, “And the guy running the scam was...”

“Ellison O’Leary,” Ramos said. “We don’t have any evidence as yet. And this informant has not demonstrated the greatest reliability in the past. But if Ellison isn’t involved, that’s quite a coincidence that this informant mentions Ellison’s name in connection with a big scam, and then Ellison’s niece is kidnapped, and the niece’s mother is due to collect a large insurance payout.”

“Have you talked to him about it, yet?”

“No. He posted bail and has disappeared.”

The news put heat in my face and heart. The only reason I didn’t immediately drive down to Sacramento and shake Merrill for information about his brother was that I had Gertie safe.

“One more thing,” Ramos said.

“What’s that?”

“The kickboxing Dock Artist who you thought might be Mikhailo?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s disappeared. His shop is locked, his fence gate is locked, his white cargo van is gone, and the workers at the convenience store haven’t seen him.”

I thanked Ramos and hung up.

The phone rang. It was Santiago.

“So you don’t know where the girl was being held,” he said.

 “No. They blindfolded her each time they moved her.” Gertie turned and looked at me.

“The sailboat you took. Do you know where the mooring buoy was?”

“No. It was dark when we paddled up from the house where the men found us. We paddled a fair distance north of that. So I’m guessing the sailboat was moored near Meeks Bay. Come to think of it, when we sailed away this morning, I noticed the increase in wind as we got out beyond a point of land. That was probably the point just south of Meeks Bay. If you send someone out there, tell them to look for a green scarf. I tied it to the buoy.”

“Okay, I’ll ask around,” Santiago said. “There can’t be too many boats that get left in the lake over the winter. Someone will know about it. Maybe it’s already been reported stolen. And I’ll see if I can track down the owners of the cabin and the house. I’ll explain what happened. It was a law enforcement operation just like when an officer borrows a civilian’s car to pursue a criminal or to prevent a crime from happening. Do you have a plan to handle repair costs to the cabin and rental or whatever on the house and the boat?”

“I’ll get my client to pay for it,” I said.

“The girl’s mother?”

“Yeah. She’ll be rolling in cake in a day or three.”

“And now you have the girl with you,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Try to hang onto her, huh?”

“No kidding,” I said.

After I hung up, Gertie said, “What does that mean when you said, ‘My client will be rolling in cake?’”

I wondered what the repercussions would be if I told Gertie. But I’d always thought that kids have the right to know about those things that affect them.

“Your stepdad, Ian Lassitor, had a life insurance policy that names Nadia as the beneficiary.”

“Mom is getting money from his death?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Gertie’s eyes went wide, then narrow. She frowned and radiated suspicion like fire radiates heat.

“How much money?” she said.

“A fair amount,” I said, thinking that the actual amount might not be within Gertie’s right to know. And it would ratchet up her frustration.

I called Street and told her that we were on our way over to her lab.

Gertie and I walked down and out of my office building. Diamond was still there, sitting in his county vehicle.

We climbed in.

“Almost done,” he said. He was slowly pecking his phone screen with his forefinger.

“Wow, your thumbs are a blur, just like texting kids.”

“You forgot to mention my ESL status.”

“And you’re accomplishing this speed record in your second language,” I said, noting that Gertie was frowning in the back seat.

“I could go places,” Diamond said. “Meantime, I’m a chauffeur. Where to?”

“Street’s lab.”

“Long trip.”

He pulled out of the lot, drove down Kingsbury Grade a block, turned into Street’s lot, and parked.

“I’m hoping you or a colleague can continue to stay with us?”

Diamond nodded. “Me or a colleague.”

I thanked him and we got out.

“What is this lab your girlfriend has?” Gertie asked as we walked up to Street’s door.

“Street is an entomologist.”

“What’s that?”

“She studies bugs.”

Gertie frowned. “She studies bugs for her job? That sounds really gross.”

FORTY-NINE

“Sometimes I think bugs are gross. But Street finds it fascinating. And she’s done some groundbreaking research that shows how pheromones work.”

“What’re those?”

“They’re chemicals that bugs use to communicate. And it turns out that other animals and even plants use them as well.”

“What, they squirt out chemicals? Like a skunk?”

“Not really. I’m not sure how it works. You could ask her.”

We got to Street’s door. I knocked.

The door opened. Street grinned. She lifted up on pointed toes to kiss me.

“Gertie, I want you to meet my girlfriend Street Casey. Street, this is Gertie O’Leary, an aspiring movie director.”

“You want to direct movies!” Street said as they shook hands. “That’s so cool. I’m a total movie nut. Come on in.” Street ushered Gertie inside and shut the door behind her.

I moved over to look at Street’s honey bee tank, giving Gertie and Street some space.

“I’d love to hear about your favorite movies,” Street said. “I’ve never met anyone from the other side of the camera. I’m just a fan and a not-very-discriminating fan at that. But as a director, you must look for stuff in movies that I would never think of.”