Free Tahoe Chase (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) by Todd Borg

to the door, undoing the chain and deadbolt. “If someone did push Rell off their deck,” he said, “I’d do anything to catch him. If not, I’d still do anything to help ease Joe’s pain. I know it is hell for him to have her in the hospital like this. I can see it on his face.”
    I nodded. “I’m curious about one thing.”
    “What’s that?”
    I pointed over toward the kitchen counter where the t-ball bat lay. “What’s the bat for?”
    Dwight looked embarrassed. “I told you that I was a bit paranoid. The bat’s for protection. I used to live in a bad neighborhood. Things happened. So when I hear a knock at the door, I get scared.”
    “Is there anything in particular that gives you reason to worry about your safety?”
    “Just me and my neuroses,” he said.
    I thanked Dwight and left. I heard the deadbolt and the chain slide behind me.
     

 
    NINE  

     
    Spot and I headed back through the dark town of South Lake Tahoe as the intermittent snow showers grouped together into a comprehensive blanket of steady, silent snowfall. The flakes got bigger over a short period of time, and soon the air was filled with huge light flakes, drifting down so slowly it was as if they were weightless.
    I turned off Lake Tahoe Blvd onto Sierra Blvd and drove through the Sierra Tract subdivision. Although Sierra Tract has its share of vacation homes, it’s a working class neighborhood, with many year-round residents who teach at the schools, work for the Forest Service, or run South Shore businesses.
    Except for the perimeter streets, most of the streets are laid out on a grid pattern. I cruised the up-and-down streets first, looking for a bright yellow pickup. Then I toured the back-and-forth streets.
    I saw two pickups that qualified as yellow, but they were old, darkened yellows. Joe had said that Simone’s boyfriend’s truck was bright yellow and very tall, and nothing I’d seen fit that description.
    As the snow increased, the traffic diminished. By the time I’d driven all of the neighborhood roads, some of the streets were swaths of untracked powder four or five inches deep, glowing white in my headlights. Snow is the ultimate sound absorber, and all noises other than the Jeep’s defroster fan and the windshield wipers disappeared as I glided on the hush-soft carpet of white back out to Lake Tahoe Blvd. I turned right, drove through the quiet town that would be inundated with holiday traffic in a little over two weeks, and headed up the East Shore.
    I hadn’t noticed how much the snowfall had increased until we entered the Cave Rock tunnel and were plunged into sudden, snow-free darkness. Immediately, I was aware of the tires on wet asphalt, the splashy noise reflecting off the tunnel walls. A few moments later, we popped back into the world of white silence. A couple of minutes later, I turned off the highway and drove up the private drive that I share with my vacation-home neighbors. With all four tires churning under four-wheel-drive, we ground up one thousand vertical feet, and I pulled onto the parking pad in front of my little log cabin.
    As I got out of the Jeep, I heard from up the street the shrill, eerie voice of Mrs. Duchamp floating through the quiet snow, falling so thick that I couldn’t even see the lights of her house, the closest house to mine.
    “Treasure! Oh, Treasure! Come to mama right now!”
    I let Spot out, and he galloped toward Duchamp’s, looking for his Toy Poodle friend. As he disappeared into the whiteout of giant flakes that filled the sky, I could imagine Mrs. Duchamp – the only woman in Tahoe who apparently wore a housecoat and strapless heels 24 hours a day – quivering on her front doorstep, petrified that her precious little dog had run into the snowy night and been consumed by a waiting pack of coyotes.
    Then came, “Oh Treasure! Don’t you let that big dog hurt you! Treasure, I can’t see you in the dark! Treasure, I’m afraid.” I knew that with Spot