Tahoe Dark (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 14) (17 page)

She continued, “We believe that this particular mustard plant used to grow in other places. But changes in environment have killed it off everywhere else. Tahoe is the last place where you can find it. It’s a low-lying green plant with little yellow flowers. Very pretty in a non-dramatic way. It grows in the beach sand near the water, generally between the low and high water lines. And it’s very particular. When we have a drought for a few years, and the water level stays lower, the plants highest up on the shore will often die. The lower plants do better and expand. But when the water levels rise after a heavy winter, those lower plants are inundated and die off. In several places around the lake, we’ve put up fences around the plant to keep people from trampling it.”

“Why has it survived in Tahoe?”

“We don’t know. Some combination of high altitude and pure water and granitic sand, and a climate with just the right mix of weather makes it do well here. Beyond that, it’s a mystery. But because bio-diversity is precious, it’s very important that we save the Tahoe Yellow Cress. Scientists have even grown the plants in a lab and then planted them around the lake, trying to expand the population in hopes that it might survive. Because of its uniqueness, we have our students study it in one of the classes we teach, Plants of the Tahoe Basin.”

“Is there any kind of a map that shows which shores one can find it on?”

“Yes. There’s even a website devoted to it. I’ll write it down for you.” Dr. Blue wrote on a pad, tore off the paper, and handed it to me.

http://tahoeyellowcress.org/

“Here, I’ll show you.” She walked over to a computer and brought up the website. “Here’s the map. It has color coding for beach areas with known populations. I’ll print it out.” She clicked and a nearby printer whirred. She handed me the page.

I pointed to the business card. “The partial bug I mentioned that is stuck in the pine pitch next to the Tahoe Yellow Cress?”

“Yes?”

“Street said it’s a Western Pine Beetle. They’re the beetles that attack Ponderosa Pines.”

“Right,” Blue said.

“Can you think of any areas where they grow in close proximity to the Tahoe Yellow Cress?”

“Thus suggesting where this pine pitch might have come from?”

“Right.”

Blue frowned. “As you might know, the most common pines near the lake are Jeffrey and Lodgepole with relatively few Ponderosa Pine. Jeffrey Pine occasionally hybridizes with Ponderosa. The hybrids are uncommon, but some of what look like Ponderosa are really half-breeds. Maybe those attract the Western Pine Beetle. I don’t know. Dr. Casey would. There isn’t much pure Ponderosa near the Tahoe beaches where Tahoe Yellow Cress grows. Nothing comes to mind.” She studied the map for a bit.

“Wait,” she said. She pointed at the map near the beaches out by Camp Richardson. “Most of the basin was clear-cut back during the heyday of the Comstock Lode, and they used the lumber to shore up the mining tunnels under Virginia City.”

“Right,” I said.

“But back at the turn of the twentieth century, Lucky Baldwin and D.L. Bliss left some old growth Ponderosa untouched on their land here on the South Shore and on the West Shore. You can tell because they’re very big.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Those monster trees over at Valhalla near Camp Rich.”

Dr. Blue nodded, then pointed to the map. “And not too far away is where Taylor Creek flows from Fallen Leaf Lake into Lake Tahoe. There is some Tahoe Yellow Cress nearby.”

“Just down from the giant Ponderosa Pines of Valhalla,” I said.

Blue looked up at me. “Pine pitch often falls out of trees. It could be that somebody stepped on some pitch that had a bark beetle in it, then walked down to where the Tahoe Yellow Cress grows, and got some of the mustard flower stuck in the pitch on their shoe. Of course, that scenario doesn’t get the pitch onto a truck tire.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “Thanks, doctor, very much.”

I shook her hand and left.

TWENTY-TWO

I drove north on 89 and headed out past the turnoff to Pope Beach Road. I continued on past Camp Rich, then parked on the shoulder of the road. Late afternoon in June meant that campers had their fires and barbecues going. There were lots of people biking and walking the various paths. I didn’t want Spot to startle anyone, so I took his collar, and we walked out the path that led to Valhalla, the public area that comprised the beautiful Heller estate with its grand hall and lawns and beaches, and the Boathouse Theater right on the water. Young couples wandered the beach by the lake. Over at the Beacon Restaurant, laughing groups of people drank beer out on the deck. Out on the lake, a ski boat and water skier took advantage of the calming water that evening brings.

As Dr. Blue had pointed out, most of Tahoe is predominantly treed with Jeffrey Pines. But scattered throughout the Valhalla area near the beach were multiple old growth Ponderosa Pines, giant trees six and even seven feet in diameter and stretching 20 stories tall. Spot and I wandered the grounds, me looking for Tahoe Yellow Cress, Spot enjoying the rock star attention that Harlequin Great Danes draw wherever they go. If he had any regrets in life, it could only be that he wasn’t able to sign autographs.

I looked up at the trees, wondering how often they dropped globs of pitch. Street had explained how bark beetles that tried to burrow into healthy pines often got stuck in the pitch that oozed out. But trying to find pitch with stuck beetles did not seem like a reasonable task. Better to just assume that someone stepped in some and then stepped on the rare plant, mashing the two together to be stuck on the person’s shoe until they scraped it off on the armored truck tire.

Dr. Blue had said that Tahoe Yellow Cress lives in the beach sand, so I took Spot to the water. I wasn’t looking for anything specific, but it seemed appropriate to explore the possible convergence of pitch and pine beetles and mustard plants and armored truck robbers.

We ambled west down the beach, moving away from the giant Ponderosas toward Taylor Creek, where Blue had said that the rare plant grew. We went past the Pope estate and the Baldwin mansion, past the old foundation from Lucky Baldwin’s Tallac House Hotel where San Francisco’s upper crust congregated during the turn of the 20th century. From there, the narrow beach turned around a point and expanded into the large sweep of Kiva Beach.

The waves were gentle, making lapping sounds on the sand. The nearby trees had substantially shifted toward Jeffrey Pines, and the sound of the breeze through their long needles was mesmerizing. Gulls called out. Spot turned to look as two giggling teenaged girls went by on stand-up paddle boards, racing each other, going the same direction we were but faster. A bald eagle flew by just 20 feet above my head, a large trout in its claws. The bird held the fish so that its head pointed forward, the better to minimize wind resistance and to maximize the photo op for anyone with a ready camera.

Nowhere did I see anything that looked like Tahoe Yellow Cress. But I wasn’t yet to Taylor Creek.

Kiva Beach is one of the few where dogs are allowed, but they have to be leashed or under leash-equivalent verbal control.

Spot had never in his life provided any indication that I could control him with nothing more than verbal commands. But my secret weapon was doggie biscuits and my determination to never leave home without them. So I let go of his collar, and he ran with great excitement to the water’s edge. Spot has never been big on voluntary swimming, but he loves to race up and down the beach in six inches of water, making great splashing leaps. Then he arcs around and comes back the other way to see how closely he can fly past me. If I can succeed in getting him to stop, he always shakes the water off directly in front of me so that I get the maximum soaking.

When we came to Taylor Creek, the outflow from Fallen Leaf Lake, the icy runoff of spring was flowing at a robust pace. Because the recent weather had been cold with no rain, the snowpack at high elevations was melting slowly, so it wasn’t flooding. I guessed the creek’s depth at 4 feet and its width at 25 feet. Such a flow should be considered dangerous. Like a riptide in the ocean, it could carry an unaccomplished swimmer well out into the lake.

The only alternative to fording the creek was to go back to the Jeep, drive down the highway over the Taylor Creek Bridge, and take the Baldwin Beach turnoff. But Baldwin Beach didn’t allow dogs. I would have to park on the highway and then hike in through the area outside of the beach jurisdiction, a long hike through wet meadows. The day would be over before I ever saw any Tahoe Yellow Cress.

I turned to Spot. “Care for a cold swim?”

He looked at me with concern.

“Okay, truth be told, a shocking, icy, frigid, freezing swim?”

Spot made a single slow wag.

“I would hold your collar so that if you lost your footing, I could possibly keep you on course. Or you might simply pull me out into the deep lake where we would flounder as we succumbed to hypothermia while waiting for young women on their paddle boards to rescue us.”

Another, single, slow wag. Spot knew I was up to something suspicious. He looked at the clear, voluminous, flowing water. Then looked back at me.

A person can walk until wet pants dry and only be mildly uncomfortable. But wet shoes and socks chafe and take forever to dry. I took off my shoes, stuffed my socks inside them, tied the shoes together with their laces, and hung the loop of laces around my neck. I transferred my phone, keys, wallet, dog treats, and other pocket stuff to the two pockets in my flannel shirt and buttoned the flaps.

“Okay, Spot, brace yourself.”

I untucked my shirt, lifted up the shirt tails, pulled the rear shirt tail up and over my shoulder, put the shirt tail ends in my mouth, and bit down on them to hold my shirt out of the water.

I took hold of Spot’s collar, and we trotted toward the water at a good pace. I didn’t want Spot to be tentative. I pulled him into the water. Spot jerked back a bit from the ice shock, but when he realized I wasn’t giving him a choice, he charged forward.

As the water rose to my waist, Spot began swimming and I leaned into the current so as not to be pushed over. Spot’s legs scraped my legs here and there, but my jeans saved me from the real damage that could have come from the claws on his churning paws.

The cold was spectacular, and I’m pretty sure I made a single, gasping inhalation and then never exhaled until the creek bottom started once again rising. In a few moments, we were to the other side. I let go of Spot’s collar, and he once again charged up and down the beach. This time it wasn’t so much a frolic of joy as a panicked, clenched-jaw celebration that we’d run the frozen, arctic gauntlet and survived.

I sat down on a log that had floated in on a previous flood and waited several minutes for my pants to drain. When it seemed that anyone close enough to see and get distressed about public nudity had wandered away, I took off my jeans and underpants, wrung them out, and pulled them and my shoes back on.

“C’mon Spot. Are you in the mood to sniff some mustard? I think I see some Tahoe Yellow Cress from here.”

I wandered off toward some green plants that hugged the sand. They had little yellow flowers, just forming in the spring sunshine. They looked like the pictures Dr. Blue showed me on the website. In real life, they looked very fragile.

I’ve never felt much empathy for plants other than beautiful trees being cut down in their prime of life. But I felt a kind of connection to these delicate little green and yellow bits of life. As I glanced around the giant lake, visualizing the relatively tiny scope of where this nearly extinct plant now lived, it was an emotional experience. I stepped away from the plant, not wanting to disturb it, wishing it the best.

Turning back toward Valhalla, I wondered if pine pitch could have been tracked that far down the beach without being caked with sand. The pine pitch sample I’d gotten off the truck tire was free of sand. Maybe there was another source of pine pitch and Western Pine Beetles that was closer to the Tahoe Yellow Cress plants. I looked around for any sign of Ponderosa Pine. There were many Jeffrey Pines, which would produce similar pine pitch. But Street had said that only Ponderosa would have the Western Pine Beetle.

In the large meadow and wetlands area that stretched back toward the unseen highway a half mile away, there were several sparse groupings of trees. They were tree islands in the meadow, growing on ground that was just high enough above the meadow and regular flood zone to support trees. I couldn’t tell from a distance if any of them were Ponderosa Pines, which looked like less lush versions of Jeffrey Pines. But they were the closest trees to my first batch of Tahoe Yellow Cress. There was nothing to lose in checking them out.

I walked through tall grasses, around shrubs. With no advance warning, my feet sunk into mushy marsh, and both of my shoes filled with water. So much for trying to keep one’s shoes dry.

As we got close to the trees, I could see that there were a few Aspen, and a few fir, and some bush-like trees I didn’t recognize. No Ponderosa. I went through the tree island and looked out the other side. In the distance across the meadow, there was another tree island and then, beyond it, another.

In ten minutes of slogging through wet grass, I got to the next group of trees. It seemed the same as the first, although I had to walk around in the gathering twilight to look at each of the bigger trees to identify their species.