Perri O'Shaughnessy: Case of Lies

“Before you go, what else do you need?”

“Get the file made up. I’ll get going on drafting the Response to the Motion to Dismiss after court. There is a long line of precedents regarding innkeeper liability for inadequate security. Sandy, remember Connie Francis?”

“The singer? Nineteen-sixties. ‘Lipstick on Your Collar.’ That wasn’t even her biggest hit. But even now it strikes a chord with me.” Sandy ’s husband, Joe, and she had broken up for many years and only recently remarried.

“She won an early motel-security case. The damages award was in the seven figures. I don’t think it was in California, though. The trial took place in the mid-seventies. See if you can locate the case on Lexis.”

“She was robbed?”

“She was raped. While staying in a hotel room. It was brutal. I think it almost ended her career.”

Neither woman spoke for a moment. Nina was thinking that people don’t get over violence like that. They may carry on, but they are changed forever. Finally Sandy said, her voice tight, “So some turkey fired off a wild one during a stickup and killed a pregnant third-grade teacher. Do we go looking for him, or just nick the motel?”

“We go looking.”

“Good.”

“We get started, at least.”

“Shall I call Paul?”

“He’s tied up.”

“You’ll need an investigator, and he’s the best.”

But for many reasons, Nina did not want Paul van Wagoner involved. She did not wish to see his confident face, his flirty manner, his sexual vibrations. She was over him, at least for the moment. Someday, Paul could reenter her life neutered into a professional associate. Until then, he needed to stay filed in the Great Memory file.

She said with emphasis, “Do not call Paul.”

“Okay, okay. I heard about another good investigator who might be available.”

“Good. See what you can do.” Nina trotted down the hall and climbed into her old Bronco. Five minutes until court. She bumped off the curb into the street.

There’s an advantage to small-town law. She would make it to court right on time.

TWO DAYS LATER, JUST AFTER FIVE, Nina drove north on the Nevada side of the road that circled Lake Tahoe.

Her response had been filed with the court that morning, and opposing attorney Betty Jo Puckett was nothing if not decisive. She had called Nina within an hour of the faxed service to her office and invited Nina to have a drink with her at her home in Incline Village, on the North Shore.

In all her time practicing law at Tahoe, Nina had never been invited to the home of another lawyer. A talk like this would ordinarily occur in a paneled office where computers clicked and whirred just outside the door. The reason, she had long ago decided, was that she was one of the few women lawyers in town. Men could meet after work, but a meeting with a woman lawyer caused gossip and trouble at home.

She hoped Ms. Puckett would be reasonable. Maybe she’d even be a congenial person, a new friend. Nina snorted at herself as she waited at the Stateline light. A new friend! The woman was a lawyer on the other side of a case, for Pete’s sake!

At least she’d enjoy the forty-five-minute drive.

Rush hour does not exactly exist on the twenty-five-mile stretch between the south and north shores of Lake Tahoe. Traffic may be slowed by gawkers, by people pulling over to park at the nude beaches, by the construction projects that last all summer, but the population for a real traffic jam just isn’t there.

Just barely over the Nevada state line, extending for a few blocks along Highway 50 on the South Shore, the gaming industry reigned supreme. “Gaming” had a much nicer ring than “gambling.” “Gaming” implied ingenuity, and Nina did admit poker and blackjack to a realm where gambling could ascend into skill. Most people played the slots, though, and everyone knew that slots were the main source of casino revenue.

The casino district’s face-lift was almost complete, down to a new gondola gliding up the slopes of the Heavenly ski resort. Old Cecil’s Liquors with its narrow aisles and products piled to the ceiling had been replaced by the new Cecil’s, twice as expensive, a neon sign advertising its new location, too brightly lit, too neatly stocked.

Cecil’s also had new, twenty-first-century neighbors: a bookstore, a Starbucks. The Village Center -brand-new, built with a heavy hand from fieldstone-held a hotel and expensive shops. On her left, the unregenerate originals, the T-shirt shops and tchotchke vendors, stuck it out behind shabby storefronts, still fielding plenty of customers. Raley’s Supermarket had been gussied up into chalet style. As she passed that corner, Nina searched for the lone tree in the parking lot, which had once figured in a murder case she had handled.

No tree. Progress had leveled trees, crime scenes, and favorite haunts with the same dispassion.

At Prize’s, with its house-sized treasure-chest logo looming overhead, she saw that Sammy Hagar’s Cabo Wabo Cantina had started up. Caesars, the class act of the district, had the Reno Philharmonic playing Carmina Burana, but for the regulars, DJ Jazzy Jeff was spinning CDs at Club Nero. X - AnErotic Adventure would be getting playful on Friday night at Harveys. Tall, forest-green Harrah’s looked down its nose across the boulevard from humble Bill’s, which didn’t monkey with erotica, magic, or expensive music acts, but got right to the point. Its neon marquee simply promised “Loose Slots.”

She hit another light at the end of the row, near the Lakeside Inn, the locals’ casino, the last casino before the forest crept back in. To her left now was Kahle Drive, where the casino workers lived in mobile homes and cottages facing an undeveloped meadow. A young woman with long bleached hair, a leopard-print blouse, and jeans walked her big, wild-looking mastiff, fitting symbols of the transition from civilization back to the wooded mountains.

The forest closed in, olive and brown, the sky blindingly clear and the lake on her left filtering its blue-grays now and then through the firs. With air so dry and at an altitude of over six thousand feet, everything was high-focus, almost too clear.

Off Cave Rock, a white cabin cruiser trailed dark blue waterlines. The lake looked as enormous as an inland sea. Sometimes waterlines appeared by themselves out there, sinuous ridges that had given rise to the Tahoe Tessie legend.

Just after the Carson City turnoff, the road wound up high above the lake and the Bronco passed an unmarked gated trail to the left. Nina knew from Sandy that this led down to Skunk Harbor, where the Washoe Indians had been granted an exclusive right to camp, hunt, and fish. The cove was invisible, but she could see from her high seat the untouched meadows and forests below. A couple of hikers toiled up the trail.

Fifteen minutes later she came to the North Shore, the water suddenly close and sparkling on her left, down a hundred feet of steady-sloping granite and dirt to the nude beaches. Nina could see a few plumes of smoke on the distant West Shore -prescribed burning even this late in the year. The mountains over there were a deeper blue frosted with white from early snowfall.

She was alone on the road, Sand Harbor ’s shallow, bright water just ahead. Swinging the wheel, she continued around the curve past the old Ponderosa Ranch and took a right at Country Club Drive, the street name that told her, in several ways, that she had entered Incline Village.

The Bronco labored up the mountain. Just off Mount Rose Highway she came to Champagne Way and turned down the long, winding street, marveling at the chateaus with their mile-high views of the lake basin. She had heard of this street. Local gossip said that a very well-known singer, songwriter, and record producer had a home here. The neighbors didn’t exactly look poverty-stricken, either.