What I assumed would be a short wait turned into nearly an hour. A steady procession of customers came and went, most of them young and laughing, eager to hit the slopes the next day. As the sun went down, I found myself growing increasingly antsy, unable to sit still—shpilkes in my toches, Mrs. Schmulowitz called it — needles in my butt. Customers or not, I’d decided I couldn’t wait any longer when my phone rang. Caller ID showed a number in Lake Tahoe’s 530 area code.
“This is Logan.”
“Yeah, you, like, came by and showed me a picture this morning. Some lady you’re looking for?”
The voice was young, male. It took me a second: the high school kid who’d paused from shoveling snow out of his parents’ driveway as I approached him.
“I remember. What’s up?”
“Yeah, well, like, I can’t be a hundred percent sure, OK? But I’m, like, pretty sure I saw her this afternoon.”
ELEVEN
The kid said his name was Billy. He told me he hoped to be either a firefighter and help people, or a downhill racer on the Pro Ski Tour and get laid a lot. He said he’d ditched his last period chemistry class when he stopped off for a fish taco and saw Savannah try to get out of a van behind the Los Mexicanos restaurant on Herbert Avenue. A man, he said, forced her back inside the van.
“When was this?”
“I dunno. Three hours ago.”
“Why didn’t you call me then?”
“Had a trumpet lesson I had to go to. Plus, I didn’t even think about it until just a couple of minutes ago.”
“Did you get the license plate?”
“Um, no.”
“What kind of van was it? The make?”
“I dunno. A van.”
“What did it look like? How old? What color?”
“I dunno. Green, sorta, I guess — it didn’t have any windows, I remember that. Except for, like, you know, the ones on front. What was the other question?”
“How old was it?”
“I dunno. It didn’t look new or anything, but not real old.”
“A panel van, though?”
“What’s a panel van?”
“They don’t have windows except for the ones in front.”
“Yeah. I guess. Whatever.”
Panel vans are popular among small businesses. I asked him if he’d noticed the name of any company advertised on the side.
“Not really.”
“ ‘Not really’ meaning you did see a name but can’t remember, or you didn’t see anything?”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“What about the driver? What did he look like?”
“A guy. I dunno. Regular, kind of.”
“A regular guy. Young? Old?”
“In the middle, I’d say. Sort of.”
I asked him to call me back if he thought of anything else relevant.
“Is there, like, a reward or something?” he wanted to know.
“The reward is in the doing, Billy. The journey is the reward.”
“Oh…. Cool.”
He was in high school. He had no clue what I was talking about.
A green van that wasn’t new and wasn’t old. A regular-looking guy who wasn’t young and wasn’t old. A woman who may or may not have been Savannah. Not much to go on, but still, I decided, worthy enough to let Deputy Streeter know, even at the risk of Crocodile Dundee finding out. Dundee had threatened Savannah’s life if I went to the police, but it’s been my experience that kidnappers and other miscreants rarely keep their word about anything. I called Streeter and left a detailed message on his voice mail.
I doubted the sheriff’s department, based on so thin a tip, would flood the area surrounding Los Mexicanos restaurant, hoping to scare up potential witnesses on the thin hope that somebody might’ve seen something. I knew I’d have to do that myself. For the moment, though, I was focused on Australian import Liam McMahon.
A little bell over the door tinkled as I entered. McMahon was hunched over a workbench, flirting with a twenty-something snow bunny while fitting her rental boots to her rental skis.
“Be with you in a jiff, mate,” he said, adjusting the bindings with a wrench and flat-bladed screwdriver. “Just finishing up with this sweet young thing.”
The voice was low, like Crocodile Dundee’s, but I hadn’t heard enough of it yet to persuade me that Dundee and McMahon were the same man.
“Take your time.” I looked around the shop, pretending to be interested in skis.
He chatted up the girl for another few minutes, rang her up at the cash register, and even managed to get her telephone number.
“Dinner tomorrow night, love,” he said. “I’ll call you, deal?”
“OK.”
“Have fun out there. Ski safe now.”
She gathered up her gear and smiled at me on the way out. McMahon strode from behind the cash register and watched her go, focused on her butt. A fat shark’s tooth hung from a gold chain around his neck.
“God help me, I do love the sheilas,” he said. “Now, mate, how can I help you?”
“I’m Cordell Logan.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Cordell Logan.” He had a firm grip and friendly blue eyes. “Liam McMahon’s the name. Don’t wear it out.”
Had McMahon known my name and been genuinely surprised by my presence, his face would have registered telling involuntary muscle movements that scientists call “micro expressions”—an eyebrow lifted almost imperceptibly, the subtle opening of an eye or parting of lips that can speak the truth far more accurately than words alone. But I perceived nothing in McMahon’s facial movements, involuntary or otherwise, to suggest that he regarded me as anything other than a paying customer.
“Australian?”
“Born and bred. Ever been?”
“Several times. Good people. How’d you end up in Tahoe?”
“What else? Chasing a sheila. We fell out of love and I fell in love with where she lived.”
“A lot of other Australians around here?”
“None at all, hardly. Ten, twelve, maybe. I probably know ’em all. Half are retired buggers. Lack the strength to even stand up. The other half are too drunk or doped up to get out of bed most days. What about you? You’re not from around here.”
“Rancho Bonita.”
“Well, you couldn’t have timed it any better, mate, what with all this fresh powder. I can put you on a set of Rossi parabolics that’ll blow your mind.”
“I’m not here to ski. I’m trying to locate somebody.”
I showed him Savannah’s picture and explained the circumstances of her disappearance.
“Gorgeous lady,” McMahon said. “I’d be bent out of shape, too, if somebody like that had vanished from my life. Tell you what, let me Xerox a copy of that. I’ll put it in my window and ask everybody who comes in if they’ve seen her around.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“You’d do the same for me, mate.”
He took the photo into a back office where his copying machine was.
McMahon, I realized, wasn’t Crocodile Dundee. If what he said was true, that there were no more than a dozen native Australians residing in the greater Lake Tahoe area, then whoever had taken Savannah had to be among the dumbest Aussies who ever lived to front himself the way he did, and Dundee sounded anything but dumb over the phone. The more I pondered it, the more I became convinced that the accent was fake.
I drove over and cruised the strip mall that was home to Los Mexicanos. The restaurant had mirrored front windows and a pretend brick facade painted bright orange. Every employee I approached leaned away from me when I showed them Savannah’s picture, fear in their eyes, like they were about to be deported. Nobody remembered seeing Savannah or a green van parked outside that day. The other mall shops were closed for the evening. There was nobody else to ask questions of. I ordered a chile verde burrito to go and ate it sitting in my car.