Jennifer was sitting on the floor in front of my wood stove. I’d built a fire in the stove to ward off the cold of the spring snowstorms that were blowing through Lake Tahoe. Spot sprawled next to Jennifer, his head on her lap. She rubbed his head and ears. Spot’s eyes were shut. Bliss. Alicia sat in the big leather chair next to Jennifer. I was opposite her on the rocker. Street sat on the floor in front of me, her arms draped over my knees.
“Gramma tried to murder Jennifer,” Alicia said, her voice still shaky. “Did she murder my other daughter?” she asked.
“I can’t prove it,” I said, “but it makes sense that she pushed Melissa off the rock slide.”
“Why?” Jennifer asked.
“Unless she tells us, we’ll never know. But Gramma had several secrets. My guess is that Melissa learned one of those secrets and threatened to tell. Gramma killed Melissa to keep the secret.”
“How could a woman murder her own granddaughter?” Jennifer said.
“She didn’t,” I said.
“But you just said she did.”
“No, I said Gramma murdered Melissa. I didn’t use the word granddaughter.”
The room went silent.
“Helga had been a quiet and loyal servant,” I said. “And she became a quiet and loyal surrogate mother for Abraham and Gramma. She gave birth to both Joseph and Sam the caretaker.”
“What?!” Jennifer said. “Helga is my real grandmother?!”
“Yes.”
The only sound was the crackle of the fire.
“How did you figure this out?” Alicia asked at last.
“I didn’t until you told me that Joseph was very close to Helga and felt even more sympathetic about her when he saw the papers in Abraham’s safe.
“Remember the Hopper painting we were talking about when we were in the airplane? I was thinking about the woman in the painting when I had a sudden vision of Gramma when she was quite young, similar in age to the young woman in the painting. I’d thought of Gramma as having everything, money, happy marriage, good son, beautiful houses. Yet from the time I met her, Gramma seemed to be essentially lonely. As lonely as the woman in the painting. How, I asked myself, could a woman with everything feel so alone?
“I thought about the Hopper painting as we flew through the night. Like Gramma, the woman in the painting also appears to have everything. Intelligence, beauty, a place to belong. But that is not enough. Appearances deceive. As an outside viewer, I could only guess that she didn’t really have everything which I’d ascribed to her. Something essential to the woman in the painting, something that I cannot see, is missing.
“So I figured the same was true of Gramma. Something that she appeared to have was not really hers. And there was where I found the answer. Joseph belonged to Helga, not Gramma. The papers transferring Joseph from the surrogate mother to Gramma were what Joseph saw in Abraham’s safe.”
“Was Abraham my real grandfather?” Jennifer asked.
“Yes. I suspect that Gramma couldn’t have children, yet wanted them very much. It was a common solution that people have turned to throughout history. What they didn’t anticipate was that once Abraham had performed his duty of impregnating the attractive Helga, he kept coming back for more. Helga resisted because she was in love with Gramma.”
“What do you mean?” Jennifer asked.
“Physical love?” Street said.
“Yes,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“Tell them, Alicia.”
Alicia looked down at the floor. She spoke in a nervous voice. “I found them together. It was why Gramma colluded with Dr. Hauptmann and had me committed. So I couldn’t spill the secret. Even if I had tried, I would have had no credibility.”
Jennifer put her hand on Alicia’s leg. “Sorry to say something so harsh, mom, but why didn’t Gramma kill you? If she killed Melissa to keep her secrets, why go to the trouble of committing you to get you out of the way?”
“Because,” I said, “everyone else was the product of Abraham and Helga. Alicia wasn’t a blood relation to Helga. So, in a twisted way, committing Alicia was a kind of mercy from Gramma’s perspective.”
“Gramma wanted Helga’s love for her own,” Street said. “Was she crazy enough that she killed everyone else dear to Helga?”
“Yes,” I said. “Abraham and Joseph were already dead. Helga’s son Sam and Helga’s granddaughters were all that were left.”
“Did Gramma somehow make the plane crash that killed my father and Grandpa Abe?” Jennifer was incredulous.
“We’ll probably never know,” I said. “It would be unlikely that she could put a bomb on board herself. But with her money, she could have hired it done. She had the motive what with her husband’s affair with her lover and the fact that her son wasn’t really her son at all.”
“What I don’t get,” Street said, “is why Helga didn’t freak. Didn’t she know that Gramma was doing this?”
“No. She thought they were terrible accidents. And because no one knew she was the real matriarch of the brood, she had to grieve in silence.”
Jennifer spoke, her voice thick with irony. “Helga had only Gramma to go to for comfort.”
Street spoke up. “Did Dr. Hauptmann confirm all of this?”
“Yes. He gave it all to Diamond. They videotaped it. Hauptmann was the doctor who delivered both Joseph and Sam. He gave Gramma her pills, the same pills she used on you, Jennifer, before she hauled you out on the boat. I only guessed that she would use the boat because Diamond said he’d left a man on the front gate. Gramma also paid Hauptmann to keep Alicia confined. According to Diamond, both Hauptmann and Gramma have decided to plead guilty. By doing so Gramma might avoid the death penalty.”
Jennifer shifted her position on the floor. Spot moaned. “Did you ever find any evidence that Gramma was Melissa’s and Sam’s killer?” Jennifer asked. “Anything besides what you got out of Hopper’s painting?”
“Well, gosh,” I said. “I got pretty suspicious of her after that incident a few nights ago where we pulled you out of the water.” I grinned at Jennifer.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, embarrassed. “I forgot that little detail.” She pet Spot. “Besides that, was there anything else?”
“Yes. Once I realized that Helga was the mother of both Joseph and Sam, I had a motive of sorts for Gramma to murder them all. Then I thought back to my visit with Immanuel Salazar. He had a picture from many years ago on his dresser. It showed the entire family standing in a boat in Lake Tahoe. Among others on the boat was Gramma. I remembered that you said that Gramma was so afraid of the water, she wouldn’t even go near the shore.
“So I had the inconsistency I was after. And then there was Sam. Street figured out that the body we’d initially thought was Sam’s girlfriend Maria had only been dead eleven days. The timing was perfect for Sam’s disappearance.
Jennifer looked startled. “Gramma said she’d gotten a call from him while he was on vacation. She made that up?”
I nodded. “The DNA results suggest a ninety-nine percent likelihood that it is actually Sam’s body. Sam was small, hence the bones looked like they were a woman’s. And he was wearing the bracelet his girlfriend Maria had returned to him. The holes in the skull weren’t bullet holes. They precisely match the iron point on Gramma Salazar’s walking stick, which is why we found no bullets in the skull.”
Everyone took the news silently.
Jennifer spoke up, “So Samuel Sometimes was my uncle. Why, if both my father Joseph and uncle Sam were Helga and Grandpa Abe’s children, weren’t they raised as brothers?”
“Because everyone had gotten to know Grandpa Abe and Gramma Salazar when they were already raising Joseph as their son. They couldn’t have repeated the illusion when Sam came along because it was clear that Gramma Salazar hadn’t been pregnant.”
“What about Smithson?” Jennifer said.
“He’s the smart one,” I said. “According to Diamond, he
walks. He knew indirectly about Gramma’s evil deeds and she says he took her money to keep silent. He’ll be disbarred, but since he retired with the death of his last wife, he won’t care. As far as we know he still might have killed both of his wives, probably getting the courage to do so from watching Gramma at work.”
“Was he the one breaking into the house at night?” Jennifer asked.
“I don’t think so. I called Gramma’s friends in Salt Lake City and they said she left for a night during her visit with them. She could have hired a plane to fly back so she could sneak into the mansion and kill you. The same for when she was playing bridge when you and I were out on the boat. Her bridge partners said she had taken ill and their driver took her back home for a time. She told him she was going inside to rest awhile and get her pills. Later he took her back to her bridge partners in order to bring Helga home. Almost for certain, it was Gramma looking for you when we were out on the water and saw the light in your bedroom.”
“So Smithson wasn’t after me at all?” Jennifer sounded disbelieving.
“Actually, I think he has been keeping tabs on you your entire life. He, with his father, drafted the documents that Dr. Hauptmann used to get Alicia committed. He knew or suspected that Melissa learned secrets that got her killed. And he knew that if you stirred up the whole matter to which he was tangentially connected, it could cause him a great deal of trouble. Especially if - and we’ll probably never know - especially if he murdered his wives.
“When he watched you ride into the woods by my office, he probably just wanted to see what you were up to. But now that Gramma and Dr. Hauptmann are in jail, Smithson knows you pose no more threat. Furthermore, the police aren’t looking at Smithson anymore. When they wanted to know about his relationship to the family he hid behind attorney-client privilege. Knowing that they might not be able to crack him on either his relationship to Gramma or the deaths of his ex-wives, they probably won’t try. Either way, you can stop worrying. He gains nothing from interfering in your life.”
Alicia had kept her head low. She was tired, maybe distraught and frightened about her reunion with Jennifer. She raised her face toward me. “We all want to thank you, Owen.”
“I just followed the trail. It was your daughter who hired me. It was Jennifer who believed that Melissa was murdered even when everyone else doubted her. My trail was cold until Street figured out that the body could have been in a warmer place and hence her forensics suggested it was only dead from the time that Sam left on vacation.”
“What about the plane you stole?” Street asked.
“I can answer that,” Jennifer said. “I called up the police in Hollybrook and they got me in touch with the plane’s owner. He said it was a used Piper Tomahawk. So I told him to pick out something similar only a new model and I’d pay for it. Diamond fixed things up. He explained to the Hollybrook police what had happened and I paid all their expenses. So the police dropped all charges against Owen.”
“I think it’s time for a beer,” Street said suddenly. “Care to join me?”
“Of course,” I said. I stood up and went to the kitchen.
“Make it a whole one,” Street said. “We’re celebrating.”
“A whole one?” I said. “Wow. How about you, Alicia? Would you like a beer?”
Alicia’s face showed shock. “Uh, well, I haven’t had any beverage besides apple juice, milk and water in thirteen years.” Then she grinned for the first time since I broke her out of the hospital. Her smile was huge in her gaunt face, her teeth straight and white. “Yes, Mr. McKenna, I’ll have a beer.”
“I’m going to pass on Spot because he’d drink us dry. What about you, Jennifer?”
“Well,” she said. “I’m almost fifteen.” She looked at Alicia. “Is it okay, mom?”
Alicia’s eyes immediately filled with tears. But her smile was undiminished. She reached over and hugged her daughter, nodding and crying.
“Owen,” Jennifer said over Alicia’s shoulder. “We’re celebrating. Make it a whole one for me, too.”
About the Author
Todd Borg and his wife live in Lake Tahoe, where they write and paint. To contact Todd or learn more about the Owen McKenna mysteries, please visit toddborg.com
PRAISE FOR TAHOE BLUE FIRE
“A GRIPPING NARRATIVE...A HERO WHO WALKS CONFIDENTLY IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SAM SPADE, PHILIP MARLOWE, AND LEW ARCHER” - Kirkus Reviews
“A THRILLING MYSTERY THAT IS DIFFICULT TO PUT DOWN ...EDGE OF YOUR SEAT ACTION”- Elizabeth, Silver’s Reviews