We sat in my living room in front of the wood stove. I built a fire and got us drinks. Tea for Jennifer, a beer for myself. Jennifer tentatively pet Spot who sat next to her. “What about the alarm panel you mentioned?” I asked. “Aren’t the windows tied into the system?”
“The entire house is wired. But the only thing we use the system for is unlocking the boathouse and operating the front gate. We never turn on the alarm because it always goes off. The sensors are too sensitive. Every time the house creaks, the system fires. Because it’s connected to the police, they were always coming out on false alarms.”
“But tonight and last night weren’t like any of the times you had false alarms?”
Jennifer looked startled. “The last two nights weren’t like any night in my whole life.”
“The noises you heard couldn’t have been the groans of an old house?”
“Not a chance. I’ve lived there all my life. I know that house.”
I sipped my beer and looked at the fire through the glass door of the stove. I wondered if she could be lying.
Jennifer shifted to the edge of her chair. Spot leaned his body toward her, the better for her to hug him. She ran her hands over his head and chest, then laid her head on his neck. His eyes were half-closed and his ears were relaxed. Dog heaven wasn’t any better.
“Ever since I ran the ad in the paper,” Jennifer said, “things have happened. The phone rings, but there’s no one there. I feel like someone is following me on my bike. Now someone’s been in the house.”
“What ad?”
“A few weeks ago I put an ad in the personals. In the Herald. I offered a reward for any information about the accident on the rock slide that took the life of a girl nine years ago. I thought that might loosen something.”
“Jennifer, why didn’t you tell me about this when you came to my office?”
“I didn’t think it germane to your investigation. I’d run the ad and gotten no response. I don’t even know if I remembered it yesterday when I went to see you.” She gazed into the fire. “The murder happened nine years ago so I didn’t really expect a response. And I suppose I didn’t want the lack of response to discourage you.”
“Anything connected to Melissa’s death is germane to my investigation. Including your previous efforts to gain information about it. Especially when your efforts have been followed by strange events.” I was thinking about the bicyclist who took the same path into the woods that Jennifer did, followed by the belligerent bodybuilder.
Jennifer took a drink of her tea. “Those events seem important now. They didn’t then. It’s easy to give credence to small things after their possible significance has been established. Prior to that, well, I just didn’t think of it. Maybe part of me worried that you’d think I was wacko. As if I don’t have enough of that in my family what with mom.”
“You said Alicia was schizophrenic?”
“Yes. We see her once, maybe twice a year in that prison they call a hospital. She’s so out of it, I can’t even imagine she’s my mother.”
“When does your grandmother get home?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. The people she’s visiting in Salt Lake are family friends. Stockholders in Salazar West, too. They have a private jet. They’ll fly her into the airport in South Lake Tahoe.”
“She’ll take a cab from there?”
Jennifer closed her eyes a moment and sighed. “That’s right. Sam is supposed to pick her up. But who knows where he is.” Jennifer’s eyes opened wide. “My God, I just thought of something. A couple weeks ago Sam said something unusual. I was leaving on my mountain bike and he asked me which way I ride to school. I told him about my path through the woods. Then he asked if I met friends or if I rode the whole way alone. At the time it seemed like benign curiosity. Now I wonder.”
“Does he do this often? Disappear without advance notice?”
“Often enough that behind his back we don’t call him Samuel Sommers, we call him Samuel Sometimes.”
“Why keep him on?”
“Because even though he has these lapses, according to Gramma he’s the best we’ve ever had. He’s kind, polite, puts in extra hours, doesn’t drink, doesn’t crack up the cars. He just disappears here and there.”
“Any idea where he goes?”
Jennifer shrugged her shoulders. “This time it was his vacation. He went down to Cabo for a week on the beach. But other times we don’t know where he goes. He has his own car. Probably goes to the Showgirls Ranch and spends his money on hookers.”
“How long is he usually gone?”
“A day or two. Never longer. So I suppose he’ll be back tomorrow. If he’s not back in time, I’ll have to send a cab to pick up Gramma and Helga. Although she despises cabs. Maybe I can pull some strings and get one of the hotels to send a limo.”
“Helga is...”
“Helga is our housekeeper. At least that’s her title. But she’s actually more like Gramma’s personal attendant. Helga practically raised us. Gramma never did like kids much, not even my father Joseph, if I can believe Helga’s off-hand comments. You remember the room just down the hall from Gramma’s? Helga has lived in that room for forty years. Gramma brought her over from the old country, as they call Germany. Helga was only twenty. She was studying to be a nun. Gramma knew her parents. They introduced Gramma to their daughter hoping Gramma could take her to America and talk her out of serving her religion so monastically. So Gramma met Helga and convinced her that she could serve God in America just as well as in Bavaria. Gramma was thirty-six when she brought Helga to Lake Tahoe. Ever since my father and Grandpa Abe died, Gramma never goes anywhere without Helga.”
“They leave you without a sitter? Just Sam?”
“This was the first time. I had to talk Gramma into it. When I was young they’d leave me with some friends of Gramma who live in Glenbrook.”
“Tell you what,” I said. “If Sam doesn’t get back in time I’ll pick you up and you and I will go get them at the airport together.”
“Pick me up? Where? I’m not going back home. No way. I’ll sleep on your couch.” She glanced around my tiny cabin and saw that I didn’t have one. “I’ll sleep right here in this chair. With Spot.”
“My friend Street lives just down the mountain, nine hundred feet below us. She has a pull-out couch. It’s more comfortable. You’ll be better off there.”
“Street?” She sounded suspicious. “I won’t sleep at a stranger’s. What kind of a name is Street, anyway?”
“Street Casey is my girlfriend. Her parents named her Street because they didn’t make it to the hospital in time. She was born in the street.”
Jennifer started to grin, then abruptly stopped. “I’d rather sleep here. I know you. You’re safe.”
“Jennifer, you just met me yesterday. I’m a grown man, as they say, and you are a kid of the female variety. People would be uncomfortable. Grandmothers especially.” I looked at the clock. One in the morning. Street would be home from her conference. I went into the bedroom and brought the phone out so that Jennifer wouldn’t think I was talking behind her back. I dialed. “Street? Hi, sweetheart. Sorry if I woke you.”
“Not to worry,” Street said. “I was up revising some notes.” Her voice had a husky fatigue in it. “Trying to get it all out of my system.” While I listened to Street I saw Jennifer mouthing the word sweetheart to herself.
“Was it a bad conference?”
“No. But after I gave my paper, two bug guys from D.C. tried to put the make on me. Real cockroaches. They kept asking me to come to their condo in the Oakland Hills when the conference was over,” Street said. “Said their hot tub had a great view of the Bay. Then, get this, one of them said that there was an inverse relationship between cup size and leg quality. He looked at me and said I must have great legs.”
“Well, at least they’re right on that account. What’d you do?”
“I told them that I was a great judge of character, hence I
’d rather spend my time with maggots. Too bad, being that these guys have done a lot of consulting for the FBI. I might have gotten forensic referrals.”
“Street, what am I gonna do with you?” I said. Jennifer was watching me carefully.
“Come and check my cup size.”
“I already have. There’s enough to keep me busy. But I have something else to ask.” I explained about Jennifer and her situation.
Street was predictably gracious. “Of course she should stay here! Hey, I rented a great classic. Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder with Grace Kelly. Bet she hasn’t seen it. I’ll start making popcorn. It’ll be done by the time you two get down the mountain. And tell her I have pizza in the freeze. We’ll cut up some extra cheese and some bell peppers and pineapple and make like it came from the Lake Tahoe Pizza Company.”
I thanked her and hung up. Jennifer looked at me like I was turning her out into the cold. “Trust me,” I said. “You’ll like Street.”
EIGHT