Tahoe Hit (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 18) by Todd Borg

Author:Todd Borg [Borg, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thriller Press
Published: 2020-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

THIRTY

To get from Tahoe to Pleasanton in the East Bay, I drove down the Sierra and took Interstate 80 west through Sacramento. I headed across the long bridge over the Yolo bypass, which is designed to absorb massive flood waters when Mount Shasta melts too fast 200 miles to the north.

Spot had his head out the window ever since we hit the valley floor. Meanwhile, I had the AC on, blowing straight at my face. I felt guilty about the wasted energy. But the open window made Spot happy.

Eventually, he realized the truth of Central Valley heat in the summer. You can’t just put up with it. You have to escape to a cool environment. He pulled his head in. I rolled up his window. He lay across the back seat, panting with the effort of a dozen toy poodles and using a tongue almost the size of a poodle.

UC Davis’s grand Robert Mondavi Center flashed by on the right. Soon I drove by the turnoff for Travis Air Force Base. I remembered reading that it was the inspiration for the name of the character Travis McGee in John D. MacDonald’s famous mystery series. As I approached the long crawl up the coastal mountains just before the San Francisco Bay, I turned south on 680 and headed down through Benecia and Walnut Creek and Danville.

Spot’s panting sounded like a large bellows. But eventually the bellows turned to the low setting.

At 4000 feet, Mount Diablo is the big imposing East Bay landmark. One of the highest Bay Area mountains, it sports a glorious patchwork of Black Oak trees that grow in winding ravines like dark rivulets through the gold of the grasslands. On a clear day, Diablo is visible from 150 miles away as you come down from the much higher Sierra. Up close, it dominates every view with its beauty.

A few miles past Diablo, I turned off in Pleasanton, a valley town that, while very warm, was cooler than the Central Valley and quite pleasant in manner and attitude compared to its hyper intense Silicon Valley cousins. It took me only a few minutes to find the address where the Columbo Romero boys headquartered their business of turning hard cases soft.

The house was in a planned development of cream stucco houses with terra-cotta tiled roofs. Although the houses were modest in size, all had two-car garages and arched entries that led to shaded front porches. The roof’s tiles were largely covered in indigo blue solar panels. On the few windows that faced south and west were large deep awnings. The designs were all about keeping out the hot summer sun.

I pulled up to the address on my Post-it note, parked on the street under a tree, and rolled down the rear windows.

I noticed that the house to one side had two small bicycles on the gravel yard and one tricycle made of red and yellow plastic.

At the house on the other side was an elaborate fence and bush hedge that partially concealed a trampoline.

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