forest like showy, drag-queen bouncers, letting all the other songbirds know who was now in charge whenever the hawks and eagles and ospreys and falcons took a break from local raptor patrol.
The air was redolent of pine scents as the conifers readied their energies for the growing season that was still over a month away. Hardy sprouts of green grass poked up at the edge of the roadways, sustained by thermal-mass heat from the nearby asphalt even after the blazing sun went down and the temperatures were forced back down by hundreds of square miles of thick Sierra snowpack to the west.
I drove up the West Shore to Tahoe City and rolled over Fanny Bridge next to the dam that holds in the top six feet of the lake and stores it like a reservoir. Highway 89 turns west just north of the bridge. Before I followed it down the Truckee River Canyon to Squaw Valley, I stopped at a grocery store and bought two pastries. I was very vigilant as I did so, fulfilling, as with my usual attention to work responsibilities, my promise of discretion. Confident that no one was watching me, I paid for my purchase and went back out to the Jeep.
Just to reinforce my standards of diligence, I let Spot out and made a show of feeding him his breakfast treat while I ate mine, during which I surreptitiously studied my surroundings.
Everyone in view was focused on my dog, which meant that no one in view was focused on me. I’d seen it hundreds of times. All people have a similar reaction to a 170-pound Harlequin Great Dane, regardless of whether or not he is ravishing a Danish. It’s an open-mouthed stare that morphs into a grin and then to a raised arm and pointed hand and a shout to their companions to check out the giant, splotchy, black-and-white dog.
If anyone had an agenda that was about spying on me, they wouldn’t fit the pattern and would thus stand out.
Obfuscation meets Holmesian deduction.
No one was following me.
I turned onto 89, driving next to the Truckee River on its way down to Truckee and then Reno before it dead-ended at Pyramid Lake out in the Great Basin desert, dumping its water there to eventually evaporate.
A few miles down the river valley, I went past the River Ranch Lodge and Restaurant and the road up to Alpine Meadows ski area. After another mile, the Olympic rings and the Olympic gas flame came into view, leftovers from the big snowfest back in 1960. I turned left and drove into Olympic Valley. The snow-capped peaks of Squaw Valley ski area came into view, a picture with a postcard quotient as high as they come. In the distance ahead, I saw the little dot of cable car carrying skiers from the base village up to High Camp atop the 2000-foot cliff.
My intersection approached up ahead. I turned off to the right and drove up to a curve that matched what Scarlett Milo described over the phone. I stopped and got out and dialed her number.
As it rang, I scanned the slope that rose above me. There were several nice homes visible in the forest and, no doubt, several that were hidden but nevertheless had views down to the valley floor, me included.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Ms. Milo, Owen McKenna here. I’m at the turn you described.”
“Okay. Hold on.” There was some background sound, a sliding door maybe. “Okay, I’m out on my deck,” she said. “I can see you down there. You’re standing near your car door and… Oh, what is that big black-and-white animal protruding from the rear window of your car? There’s something pink, too.”
“That’s my dog. His name’s Spot. The pink is his very large tongue.”
“I see. Well, I don’t see anyone else, and that was the purpose of this little exercise.”
“The result of a prime obfuscation session,” I said.
“Okay, come on up,” she said. She proceeded to describe where and how I should turn and what to look for to know which house was hers, and then there was a snapping sound in the phone, followed by a deep crack that thudded in the air where I
The air was redolent of pine scents as the conifers readied their energies for the growing season that was still over a month away. Hardy sprouts of green grass poked up at the edge of the roadways, sustained by thermal-mass heat from the nearby asphalt even after the blazing sun went down and the temperatures were forced back down by hundreds of square miles of thick Sierra snowpack to the west.
I drove up the West Shore to Tahoe City and rolled over Fanny Bridge next to the dam that holds in the top six feet of the lake and stores it like a reservoir. Highway 89 turns west just north of the bridge. Before I followed it down the Truckee River Canyon to Squaw Valley, I stopped at a grocery store and bought two pastries. I was very vigilant as I did so, fulfilling, as with my usual attention to work responsibilities, my promise of discretion. Confident that no one was watching me, I paid for my purchase and went back out to the Jeep.
Just to reinforce my standards of diligence, I let Spot out and made a show of feeding him his breakfast treat while I ate mine, during which I surreptitiously studied my surroundings.
Everyone in view was focused on my dog, which meant that no one in view was focused on me. I’d seen it hundreds of times. All people have a similar reaction to a 170-pound Harlequin Great Dane, regardless of whether or not he is ravishing a Danish. It’s an open-mouthed stare that morphs into a grin and then to a raised arm and pointed hand and a shout to their companions to check out the giant, splotchy, black-and-white dog.
If anyone had an agenda that was about spying on me, they wouldn’t fit the pattern and would thus stand out.
Obfuscation meets Holmesian deduction.
No one was following me.
I turned onto 89, driving next to the Truckee River on its way down to Truckee and then Reno before it dead-ended at Pyramid Lake out in the Great Basin desert, dumping its water there to eventually evaporate.
A few miles down the river valley, I went past the River Ranch Lodge and Restaurant and the road up to Alpine Meadows ski area. After another mile, the Olympic rings and the Olympic gas flame came into view, leftovers from the big snowfest back in 1960. I turned left and drove into Olympic Valley. The snow-capped peaks of Squaw Valley ski area came into view, a picture with a postcard quotient as high as they come. In the distance ahead, I saw the little dot of cable car carrying skiers from the base village up to High Camp atop the 2000-foot cliff.
My intersection approached up ahead. I turned off to the right and drove up to a curve that matched what Scarlett Milo described over the phone. I stopped and got out and dialed her number.
As it rang, I scanned the slope that rose above me. There were several nice homes visible in the forest and, no doubt, several that were hidden but nevertheless had views down to the valley floor, me included.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Ms. Milo, Owen McKenna here. I’m at the turn you described.”
“Okay. Hold on.” There was some background sound, a sliding door maybe. “Okay, I’m out on my deck,” she said. “I can see you down there. You’re standing near your car door and… Oh, what is that big black-and-white animal protruding from the rear window of your car? There’s something pink, too.”
“That’s my dog. His name’s Spot. The pink is his very large tongue.”
“I see. Well, I don’t see anyone else, and that was the purpose of this little exercise.”
“The result of a prime obfuscation session,” I said.
“Okay, come on up,” she said. She proceeded to describe where and how I should turn and what to look for to know which house was hers, and then there was a snapping sound in the phone, followed by a deep crack that thudded in the air where I
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