Tahoe Deep, page 11
part #17 of An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Series
“’I don’t know. But I could tell it was about a sunken ship because I can detect stuff. I’m like those TV detectives.”
I couldn’t tell if Brand was putting me on or not. But if he wasn’t sincere, he did a good job of acting.
“Did Colin mention the names of his aunt? Or her aunt?”
Brand shook his head.
“You said some relative shipped Colin a footlocker that had the letters inside. Did Colin keep the letters in the footlocker?”
“No. Colin kept them in his little briefcase. It’s made of cloth. He called it his purse. Far as I can tell, he slept with it under his pillow. So there must have been some kind of treasure in those letters. Or maybe a treasure map!”
“What about the names of any people in the letters? Did Colin mention their names?”
The man shook his head in an exaggerated motion. “Nope. No names. Wait. He did say the aunt’s aunt had a boyfriend named Frank. So how would he know that? It would have to be in one of the letters, right?”
“Makes sense,” I said. “Was there anything else Colin said that you can remember?”
Brand screwed up his face, trying, apparently, to think.
“Bakersfield,” he said.
“What about it?”
“Colin said something about Bakersfield.”
“You don’t remember what it was about?” I asked.
“No. But maybe Bakersfield was where the aunt’s aunt lived. Or maybe her boyfriend Frank lived there.”
“Can I see the footlocker?”
Brand stepped back and regarded me carefully. “What’s your name again?”
“Owen McKenna. I’m a private investigator.”
Brand’s eyes got wide. “Like a TV detective?”
“Sort of.”
“On TV, they have to have a warrant to look at stuff. A warrant signed by a judge.”
“I don’t need a warrant if you show me the trunk.”
“Why?”
“Because a warrant isn’t necessary when you give consent to my search. And if you give me your consent, I’ll tell you where the treasure is.”
Brand frowned. “That sounds like a bribe.”
“It is a bribe. You let me look at the footlocker, I tell you where the treasure is.”
“So there really is treasure?”
“From what we can tell. We don’t know what it is. And we haven’t gotten to it, yet. It’s in a hard-to-reach place.”
“I don’t get it. It’s hard to reach? How could that be? A locked safe?”
“Sort of.”
He looked puzzled, like a little kid trying to do long division in his head.
“I’ll tell you,” I said again. “But it’s a trade. You show me the footlocker first.”
Brand frowned, thinking hard. “Okay. But you gotta promise.”
“I promise.” I was trying to think of reasons why Brand would agree to show me the footlocker. Did he really want to know what I might tell him? Or was he just an eager provider of privileged information, showing off to whatever audience he could find, no matter if it was just a stranger?
Brand turned and walked through the living room, down a short hallway. The muscles of his back rippled as he walked. They weren’t bulky steroid muscles, but the kind that only come from exercise.
We went past one bedroom with an open door. “That’s Tom’s room. He gets his own room because he pays an extra hundred bucks a month. Easy for him because of his carpenter pay.”
Brand continued to the next bedroom.
This room had two twin beds. One was unmade, sheets and blanket twisted and hanging onto the floor. The blanket on the other bed was taut as a trampoline.
“Which bed is Colin’s?” I asked.
Brand pointed to the bed that was made. “That’s Colin’s.” He swung his arm around to the messy bed. “That’s Jordan’s. The beds look like the guys. Jorden doesn’t tuck in his shirt. His hair is like an old mop. But Colin doesn’t go out without taking a shower and dressing nice. And he always combs his hair.”
I thought of the way Daniel Callahan combed his hair, even though he couldn’t see it.
At the end of Colin’s bed was a small, low rectangular object covered with a cloth. The cloth was printed with sailing ships. Square riggers. Brand pulled off the cloth and tossed it on the bed.
The footlocker was an old, military-green metal box of the kind that soldiers put at the foot of their bunk.
“The footlocker ain’t locked ’cuz there’s nothing valuable in it.”
“You say that with confidence as if you’ve personally looked through Colin’s things.”
Brand gave me a severe look. “I’m the manager. I have to make sure my renters are safe from meth and drugs and ninja knives and stuff like that. And no ammo. If you wanna rent from me, you can’t have ammo.”
“Just ammo? What about guns?”
He paused. “Guns, too.”
I got down on my knees in front of the footlocker and opened it. Inside was a variety of items, some hand-embroidered linen towels, a lap blanket with an elaborate monogram, a jewelry box.
I opened the box. There were a handful of war-time, 1943 steel pennies, some necklaces and bracelets that would be nothing more than cheap costume jewelry except that some of the items were engraved with the name Elsie Callahan. There was a little velvet bag that contained a woman’s high school class ring. In an envelope were several wallet-sized black-and-white photos of girls and one of a boy, all of whom looked like high school kids.
Under the linen towels was a small leather chapbook with handwritten poems. Inside the front cover was a loose slip of paper that said, ‘Auntie Nora’s poems.’ Also tucked under the chapbook cover was a newspaper clipping about barnstorming pilots. The grainy picture showed a pilot wearing a leather helmet and goggles and standing in front of his plane. As a pilot myself, I recognized the plane as a Curtiss JN-4 biplane, known as a “Jenny,” a famous World War I plane that had been produced in large numbers. The Jenny was later used by barnstorming pilots because they could take off and land from dirt runways. I recalled that Charles Lindbergh learned to fly in a Jenny before he made the first solo flight across the Atlantic, a mission partly financed by Tahoe’s Vikingsholm Castle owner Lora Knight.
Under the blanket was an old picture frame with a high school diploma. The glass had a single crack that ran diagonally from corner to corner. The name on the diploma was Elsie Callahan. The date was 1957.
There was a cloth bag and in it a small silver cup of a ceremonial design used for awards and such. The cup was engraved with a floral script.
Elsie Callahan
Valedictorian
Class of 1957
Valley High School
Bakersfield, CA
As I expected, there was nothing of value in the footlocker. Had there been - like treasure information in letters - Colin would have taken it out. As Brand looked on, I continued to recheck the items in the footlocker while I pondered the barnstorming article about Jenny airplanes.
“How long was it from the time he got the footlocker until you last saw him?”
Brand screwed up his face, apparently thinking. “The freight company delivered the footlocker on a Friday. I knew because that’s the day Jordan gets off early from his yard maintenance, and he was here to sign for it. The next three nights, the footlocker was all Colin talked about. I know because we watched TV on Sunday, and Colin was like a space case. Like he didn’t even see the TV. The next morning, he was gone. I haven’t seen him since.”
“You said Colin was studying to be an actor?” I said.
“Oh, that’s just…” Brand stopped. “Yeah. He was all about, you know, doing accents and - what’s it called - impressions and stuff.”
“What about you? Are you an actor?”
Brand frowned. “That’s funny. Someone told me that I look like an actor. But I know a guy, he acted in a car dealer commercial. And he does stand-up. You know what they pay him? Nothing. That’s how much he makes. He said the commercial was an intern thing. I think that’s the word when you don’t get paid. So I’m going to act? I don’t think so. Even if I look like an actor, it’s a no brainer. I’ll be a real estate manager. That way I can make real money.”
“Taking care of this apartment,” I said.
“And the one next door. My ma calls it a skill set. I’m like, who cares about a skill set. It’s what you know how to do that counts. But she’s pro’bly right. Pretty soon, I can get big bucks with a big company.”
“Where did Colin hang out?”
Brand shook his head. “He doesn’t hang out. Not his style. He just looks stuff up on his computer. All the time. Buried treasure. Lost treasure.”
“Did he travel?”
“I don’t know about travel. But he was pretty much always gone. I guess that means travel, right?”
“Does he have family? Brothers, sisters? Parents?”
“Naw. I think he said he was an only kid. Or it could be he was an orphan kid.”
“Do you think that’s true? Or was he just estranged from his family?”
“Strange from his family? What’s that?”
“Forget it. Tell me this,” I said. “Did Colin live here last Christmas?”
Brand nodded.
“Where did he go for Christmas?”
“No place. He said he didn’t have a place to go. So me and him went to my ma’s and then the Sacto improv. Oh, I get it. If he had a family, he’d go to their place.”
My turn to nod. “Did you watch comedians at the improv?”
Brand nodded.
“Comedians are pretty much like actors, right?”
Brand shrugged. “If you say so.” He paused. “So where is it?”
“What?”
“The treasure.”
“Oh,” I said. “It’s a sunken treasure.”
“Really? Just like Colin is always talking about! Where is it sunk?”
“There’s a steamship at the bottom of Lake Tahoe. The treasure is on the ship.”
“What kind of treasure is it? Gold or somethin’?”
“I don’t know what it is.”
“Then how’re you gonna get it if you don’t even know what you’re looking for?”
“I’m not.”
“Oh, I see. You’re not after the loot, you’re just after his killer.”
“Who said anything about a killer? I just said Colin died.”
Brand was very good at his reaction. “I jus’ figured that if Colin was after treasure and people like you come asking about him and treasure and then it turns out he died, that would pro’bly mean he got aced. Am I wrong?”
I regarded him for any “tells” that would suggest prevarication. His face was blank.
“No, you’re not wrong. Colin was killed.”
Brand made a small nod. “Figures.”
I slipped the newspaper article on barnstorming back into the chapbook of Nora’s poems and was replacing the stuff in the footlocker when I dropped the framed diploma.
“Oh, sorry,” I said.
Brand reached down and picked it up.
As Brand’s attention was diverted, I slipped the chapbook and article into my pocket.
Brand straightened, holding the diploma.
“The glass was already cracked,” I said.
Brand looked at it, then looked at me as if wondering if I’d told the truth.
“I know,” he finally said.
We closed the footlocker, I thanked Brand for his time, and left.
Spot was standing, head out the window, wagging. Thankfully, he was still in the shade.
“Sorry for the wait, Largeness. That’s what gumshoes do. We mostly just wait.”
I got in the Jeep and headed back to Tahoe.
My conversation with Brand was one of those inconclusive ones. Lots of inputs, but not necessarily reliable.
I’d heard about a kind of acting practice where the actor puts on a fictional persona and carries it to extreme. The goal is to spin a tale and create a world that is completely false yet convincing to others. The idea is that if you’re employing good acting techniques, other people believe your tale.
In Brand’s case, I believed some of what he told me about Colin’s letters and tattoo and treasure hunting. But I didn’t believe Brand was who he said he was.
As I drove, I went over what I’d learned.
Colin and Daniel Callahan both had a relative named Elsie Callahan. She was Colin’s aunt, and she was Nora and Daniel’s niece. Thus Daniel’s sister Nora was twice removed from Colin, his aunt’s aunt. However, Daniel had said Nora was his only sibling and he and Nora had no kids. So Elsie’s relationship must have been another step removed. She was probably the daughter of one of Daniel’s cousins. Close enough to think of the mysterious, prematurely deceased Nora as her aunt.
Elsie had kept some mementos.
Among them were the letters that had eventually come to her from Aunt Nora after Nora died. Perhaps they were handed down by one of Elsie’s parents, a cousin of Nora’s. Those letters suggested intrigue and possible treasure to Colin, and they probably remained hidden in Colin’s purse, wherever he’d left it before he was murdered.
The chapbook of Nora’s poems might contain intrigue. But it was likely they were valuable only for sentimental reasons.
I didn’t feel bad about stealing the mementos from Jay Brandon Morse, the actor/landlord who went by Brand.
Daniel had more right to them than anyone else.
The most fascinating item was the newspaper article about barnstorming pilots, an article that showed a pilot in front of a Jenny plane.
Daniel had also told us that he felt that Frank was two-timing her with another girl. A girl named Jenny. Was Frank’s other love a girl named Jenny? Or was it an airplane named Jenny?
The notable thing I knew about Jenny planes wasn’t about the plane itself, but about an unusual postage stamp I’d read about some years before. Back in 1918, the Post Office had produced a 24-cent stamp with a picture of the airplane. But the printer had mistakenly printed a sheet of 100 with the image turned upside down. Because of their rarity, the Inverted Jenny, as the stamp is called, is very valuable.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I drove back to Tahoe. Spot and Blondie raced around in the woods behind Street’s condo while I talked to Street. She was at the kitchen counter, working on food prep as we spoke.
“How did your lunch with Mae go?”
“It was good. We’re alike in several ways, spending much of our lives alone, pursuing non-typical goals. And while library science seems a long way from insect science, there is common ground, a science undercurrent that operates on research and principles of knowledge and the pursuit of non-material value. Mae is, of course, much more robust than I am in physical ways, what with her freediving and such. But intellectually, we share a lot. I think we both enjoyed our lunch and will likely do it again.”
I was grinning.
“What?”
“Just that when most people get together for lunch, they chat about people they know and their favorite entertainment and topical news and, dare I say, sometimes even gossip. But you and Mae find ‘common ground in science that operates on research and principles of knowledge.’”
“I agree, it was not your typical lunch gossip,” Street said. “I think Mae is a little like me, not very good at social skills. But we had silly fun, too.”
“What was that?” Street was not given to silly fun.
“Mae told me about a phrase that is sort of the equivalent of saying ‘Break a leg’ to an actor before they go out on stage. When she goes freediving, and she’s done her prep breathing, she shouts, ‘May the devil drown!’ just before she jumps in. So we riffed on that at lunch, dreaming up other scenarios for ‘May the devil drown!’”
“Like dealing with a difficult boss or client?”
“Yeah.” Street grinned like a young girl who’s confessed to mischief. “And pretty soon, other diners were staring at us, wondering what strange people we were, shouting, ‘May the devil drown!’”
“I’ll remember that. It’s a good banishment of evil.”
“What about your day?” Street said.
I told Street about Brand and how he came across as a dumb guy who was movie-star handsome. In this case, it may have been a movie-star act. I explained about finding a book on acting in his condo, which had no other books.
“I love the concept,” Street said as she worked in her kitchen, chopping vegetables for dinner. “The secret actor. Maybe he’s part of a group. Maybe there are several of them doing the same thing, carrying their craft to the limit, which would include murder!”
“You have a twisted imagination.”
“I know. I could be a novelist.”
I showed her the chapbook of Nora’s poems and the article on barnstorming pilots.
Street studied them. “When I had lunch with Mae, she told me about Daniel and how his sister Nora had a boyfriend named Frank,” Street said. “Frank was a barnstorming pilot. Could this guy in the helmet and goggles be Frank?”
“That’s my thought. Otherwise, it would be too much of a coincidence.”
“If so, the plot has just gotten very viscous.”
“Science speak for thick?”
She grinned.
I was sitting on one of the two barstools at the short counter that divided Street’s kitchen from her dining nook. She was on the kitchen side, stir-frying onions. She cut up three kinds of peppers and set them next to the pan.
“While you’re cooking, I could make an exploratory mission looking for wine,” I said.
Street said, “I’m pleased to report that this bug scientist recently acquired a bottle of top-drawer syrah.”
“Yeah?”
“Windwalker. One of those foothill wineries in the Fair Play appellation. Supposed to be very good. I’ve been saving it in my wine cellar.”
