Tahoe Deathfall

“Let’s bring the boat in. I’ll check the house.”

  “No!” Jennifer said. “I won’t wait outside alone.”

  “You can come in the house with me.”

  “No.” She shook her head.

  “Okay. We’ll dock the boat and go down the beach to my Jeep. We can drive to Street’s.”

  “Can we get Spot first? And bring him to Street’s?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  She pushed the throttle forward and we cruised at a slow pace toward shore.

  The boathouse was hard to see as we approached the black shoreline. Jennifer pushed the transmitter for the door, turned the boat and slowly backed into the boat­house. Jennifer turned off the ignition. I jumped out before we stopped and walked through the French doors out on the pier. The night was quiet and the Salazar man­sion was dark. I ran around to the pier on the other side of the boathouse. The dock was bare. I came back in the other door. I didn’t turn on the light. Better to work in the dark. Jennifer was running a line from the bow to the pier. I stepped onto the rear seat of the runabout. It rocked precariously under me as I reached for another line from the powerboat and ran it to the other pier.

  When we had the boat secure and the door low­ered, we locked the door and left.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to check the house?” I asked.

  “No. Absolutely not. I don’t care if I never set foot in that mausoleum again.” She pulled on my jacket, lead­ing me down the beach away from the mansion.

  “Okay, we’ll go to Street’s,” I said.

  “First we get Spot,” she reminded me.

  When we got to where the fence went into the water Jennifer muttered about her shoes getting wet. I walked into the water first. “It’s not too bad,” I said. “Your shoes will dry soon enough.”

  Jennifer gasped at the cold temperature when she walked in, but plunged on without complaining. We got to the Jeep without incident. I turned the heater on high as we drove up the highway and then up the mountain to my cabin. I heard Jennifer’s teeth clattering from shiver­ing at one point, but I didn’t say anything. When I opened the door to my cabin, Spot ran out.

  “Ooh, Spot,” Jennifer said. She hugged him furi­ously. “I love you, Spot. Will you stay with me? Will you stay at Street’s tonight?”

  Spot nuzzled her neck.

  We loaded back into the Jeep and drove down to Street’s.

  Street didn’t answer the doorbell, so I used my key to open the door. This was getting to be a habit. Jennifer kept her hand on Spot’s back and followed him as he walked into the living room and sprawled on his favorite throw rug. I dialed Street’s lab and then her cell phone and got her voice mail. “Hey, doll, wanted to let you know that Jennifer and Spot are spending the night with you, so don’t bring home any strange men. You know how jeal­ous Spot gets.”

  I told Jennifer that she should consider calling Gramma and that I didn’t know when Street would get home and that I didn’t know when I’d be back. Jennifer barely heard me so entranced was she by his largeness. As for Spot, he appeared to be sound asleep under the influ­ence of her pets.

  I left and drove fast up to Incline Village. I wanted to see if John-the-body was home.

  He was. Lights were on and I could see him through the expansive glass as I slowly cruised down the street. He was carrying a lowball glass with a dark golden drink in it. He stopped and looked at himself in a mirror. He took a sip. Being a man of class he probably drank scotch. Single malt, maybe.

  The question was, had he been home exercising all evening? Or did he just come back from the Salazar man­sion?

  I’d know part of the answer if I could feel the engine of his BMW. Trouble was, it was in the garage. I parked down the street, put on my gloves, grabbed the tire iron and walked back.

  His garage was attached to the left side of the house. Smithson was in the opposite side and there were no lights showing in windows near the garage.

  I tried each of the garage doors. Locked. There was a human-sized door around the side. It was also locked. I wondered if the garage was wired to an alarm. Probably.

  The easiest way to wire a garage was a motion detector up on the garage ceiling. The harder but more effective way was to wire every door and window and still put a motion detector on the ceiling. A guy like Smithson would probably go all the way to protect the Beamer, being that it was a psychological extension of himself, compact, tough, full of muscle.

  The side door to the garage was made of fir and had a fir doorjamb. When will people learn about oak or metal? Rarely do I commit felonies. But I suspected Smith­son of murder so I jammed the tire iron in, twisted and popped the door open with less effort than it takes to get hard-frozen ice cream out of the container.

  The alarm didn’t go off. I pushed the door open a few inches and stuck my head in. The alarm still didn’t go off. There was a window at the back of the garage and a yard light just beyond. Visible in the dim light were the silver BMW, a red Lotus race car and a powder blue Shelby Cobra. The guy had taste if not social panache. The Lotus and the Cobra were toys, so that left the BMW for a utility vehicle of the type to haul dead bodies and such. It was the BMW engine I was after. I walked in to feel the engine and got no more than four feet before the alarm went off. WONK, WONK, WONK!

  The shriek of the hidden loudspeaker was loud enough to warn London that the Luftwaffe was coming. I trotted to the BMW, pulled off a glove and felt the hood. Warm. The alarm horn hurt my ears. WONK, WONK! I got down on the floor and pulled myself under the bumper. Reaching up, I snaked my hand past the oil pan, and laid my palm on the engine block. It was hot enough to raise welts. I jerked my hand back and rang my elbow on the concrete floor. I grunted, but couldn’t hear myself over the alarm. WONK, WONK, WONK! Between the wonks I heard a door slam. I slid out from underneath the bumper.

  I stood up and almost jumped over the hood of the Beamer on my way to the door. WONK, WONK, WONK!

  “Freeze, asshole!” Smithson yelled over the alarm. The light flipped on.

  But I was out the door. The deep crack of a big handgun echoed off nearby houses. I ran the opposite direction from my Jeep, staying in plain view long enough for Smithson to get out the door and see me. Then I went between some houses and doubled back through back­yards, vaulting over fences and running around a variety of swimming pools. I was in my Jeep and cruising slowly down Lakeshore Drive when the first of Incline Village’s finest flew by, blue lights flashing.

  TWENTY