The Phantom Photographer: Murder in Marin Mystery - Book 3 (Murder in Marin Mysteries) (27 page)

He strongly suspected that Parker was right. His shakedown of her and her lover was likely the tip of the iceberg. But how fortunate am I, he thought. First Sarah Lauerman leading me in her direction, and then Parker’s willingness to share what were clearly some very painful memories. She thought I was her angel of mercy; in truth, she had been mine.
 

Eddie called Holly and asked where she was.
 

“Just walked through the front door of my apartment.”

“Good, I need to talk to you before you go off sneaking around at that funeral tomorrow. I just got some information that’s a game changer.”

“Okay. I’ll have a martini ready when you get here.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Not for you Eddie, I making one for me.”

“So, you off duty now?” Holly asked, as she opened the door.

“Officially, yeah. Why?”

“Well I thought I might have been a little mean offering only myself a martini. Can I make you one?”

“I’m not much on drinks served in cone shaped glasses, but I’d love a beer if you’ve got one.”

Holly’s head disappeared inside the refrigerator. When she emerged, she had a smile on her face and a Bud Light in her hand.
 

“Look what I found,” she announced with a smile.

“That’s all you got?”

Holly, with her well-known, “You’ve got to be kidding me,” expression on her face, thrust the beer toward Eddie and said, “Quit while you’re ahead, pal.”

She grabbed her martini and got comfortable on an aging red couch that took up nearly a third of the small living room in her one-bedroom apartment.
 

“Let’s talk murder,” Holly said, with that look of mischief she so often wore, and Eddie so enjoyed seeing.

“Okay, here’s the latest, Nancy Drew.”

“You know I hate when you say that.”

“Why do you think I do it?”

“Okay, buddy, spill. What can I do?”

“I just came from having a detailed conversation with a woman who was a target of Michael Marks back in the eighties. Long story short, she was having an affair with her brother-in-law, who, in turn, paid a lot of money to make the photos Marks had taken of the two of them go away. Prominent family. Between ruining the relationship of the sisters, plus the guy’s business, it would have been a huge embarrassment to both families.”

“I suppose the brother-in-law must have paid whatever Michael demanded; I never heard of a story like that going public.”

“Don’t know for sure. The guy was so embarrassed by the whole thing, he spared her all the details. More importantly, she’s convinced that Marks had several other victims. As she put it,” Eddie said, looking down at his notes, ‘He was quite accomplished at the art of extortion.’”

“I asked him how he pulled together the money for all his travels and he said, ‘I sold some of my Apple stock, I got in early.’ Well, that was bullshit! Huh?”

“I don’t know if in his life Michael bought twenty shares of Apple or twenty-thousand, but I think the victim I spoke to was very credible. It’s inconceivable that this was a one-time gambit for Michael. And it provides an obvious answer as to why one guy who worked part time at a camera equipment store could afford such a high quality of life in a very expensive part of the world.”

“What can we do for you at the funeral? And, by the way, I invited Rob along; it’s the only way I could get him off my back for taking two hours out of the middle of one of our usually crazy workdays.”

“That’s fine. I’ve got an assignment for him too. Do me a favor and try to get ahold of Rob, Sylvia, and Ted tonight, and go down the list of my top targets, all of which should be at the funeral. Remember, these are individuals that could help us move the investigation along.”

“Are they suspects?”

“Not at this time. But that could change in time,” Eddie said, as he laid out a folder with photos of six individuals, along with their names, and their relationship to the victim.
 

“I don’t care who goes after whom. Just try your best to buttonhole each one of them. To the best of my knowledge, these are all people who knew Michael best. The piece of the puzzle they are holding may not mean much, if anything, on its own, but together they might give us a much better picture of the victim. Having done that, if you find other people of interest, that’s fine as well.”

“Wow, Eddie, when did you do all this?”
 

“Some notes I just added an hour ago when I finished with the wayward sister-in-law. Some I got from speaking with Ted over coffee at the Depot yesterday afternoon, and I outlined that last night.”

“I’m really impressed you spent your Sunday afternoon doing all this. You always work this hard?”

“To be honest, I don’t. But if you want to catch a killer, your chances are a lot better while it’s something everyone is talking about. I agree with the victim I just interviewed; there might be dozens of victims out there, and to a certain extent, they’re all possible suspects. In most blackmail cases, the victim fantasizes about killing the extortionist, but one in a thousand will act on that fantasy.”

“Why is that?”

“For starters, thankfully, most people are not capable of killing another human being. But, even if they could bring themselves to do that, they’re frightened off by veiled threats in which the extortionist suggests the existence of a secret collaborator who will spill their secrets, and now you won’t just be embarrassed, ruined marriage, estranged family, and so on, but you’ll be facing life in prison.”

“No good choices.”

“In truth, in most cases, extortionists don’t have collaborators.”

“Why not?”

“Generally, extortionists see themselves as avenging angels. People are untrustworthy, and if they weren’t, there’d be little purpose in chasing after embarrassing truths that likely don’t exist. The money they earn in extortion is only part of their reward. Punishing people for their deceits is what really gets them off.”
 

“So, you think whoever killed Michael was probably not one of his victims.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t be sure about that. What I can say is that whoever killed Michael knew where he lived and knew something about his habits. They were lying in wait, and certainly knew how to use a rifle. That bullet went through the back of his head for a reason. I think one of the people in this folder might be able to provide that reason.”

“So, if not to stop him from extorting money out of them, why want him dead?”

“Too early to say; but there could be a lot of reasons. Michael lived the life of a criminal for decades. Who knows what kind of trouble he might have gotten himself into? Having tens of thousands of dollars in unacknowledged cash at any given time is one good way to get into trouble. Going after people like the lover of the woman I just interviewed indicates he wasn’t shy about big game hunting. That kind of money must have gone to some use. I doubt very much he was just burying it in his backyard.”

“But what about the trips and the expensive meals?”

“Holly, he was doing this over a period of decades. That’s a lot more cash than you can blow on fancy meals and the occasional dream vacation.”

Holly started reviewing the photos in Eddie’s folder the moment he left. Naturally, the most helpful part was the notes Eddie provided behind each photo.
 

The first was an avuncular looking character with white hair hanging over his ears sprouting in a ring around a well-tanned bald head. She flipped the photo over and read the description. “Walter Douglas, owner of Walt’s Camera Shop on Miller Avenue.” Well, Holly thought, that’s why the guy looks familiar. He taught an extra-curricular afternoon class at Tam High.

Eddie’s notes read, “Ted says that Walt Douglas has always been popular with the locals as a living link between the hard driving high achievers of today and the more arts oriented hippies of the late sixties and early seventies. Two keys regarding Douglas: One, he is apparently the only employer that Marks had in all his years in Mill Valley. Second, Ed tells me that he’s a bit of a gossip. It’s likely, therefore, that he unwittingly served as a source of leads, if Michael was widely practicing extortion.”

The second and third pictures were that of Barbara Marks and Fred Winters, of whom Eddie had written, “This is Michael’s mother. She divorced Michael’s father when Michael was in high school. For the first year Michael lived in Marin, he listed his Novato address as where he was living when he updated his California voter registration from his hometown of Fresno. I was also able to pull up her divorce papers from both Caleb Marks and Winters; both were very nasty splits. She apparently deserted her husband and two boys in Fresno, just slipping away one night with her boyfriend Fred, the man she subsequently divorced many years later”

The fourth and fifth pictures, clipped together, were of Caleb Marks and his son Christopher; Eddie had attached this note, “Michael’s father, Caleb, was apparently clueless regarding his wife’s affair. I have no idea what Caleb’s other son, Christopher, thought of all this, or if he had any relationship with his brother Michael. Either or both of them could know very little or a surprising amount about what Michael was up to.”

The sixth photo was Milton Cook; Eddie simply noted that this was the owner of Cook’s Cameras in Novato, and that he was Michael’s first known employer in Marin. “He may or may not know anything about Michaels’ activities in Marin,” Eddie noted, “but it would be nice to get some names of people that Michael dealt with up there and to learn if his pattern of getting ‘involved’ with the community started back in his time in Novato. If it did, his extortion business may go back a good deal further than we now think.”

Holly finished the last of her martini and then called Sylvia to go over what she had read and decide how they might divide their assignments.
 

“I never spent much time with Michael,” Sylvia said, “but he seemed like such an upbeat caring person. Eddie thinking he might have been an extortionist just seems so hard to believe.”

“Well, people who watched him from a lot closer than the two of us had one question they asked over and over again, where did he get all his money? Certainly not working as a sales assistant at a rundown camera shop that never seemed to make much, if any, profit.”

“It obviously begs the question.”

“But you don’t know the half of it; wait until I tell you about Eddie’s interview with one of Michael’s victims…”

Holly filled Sylvia in on what Eddie had learned earlier in the day from Juliette Parker. Afterward, she broke down the list of six that Eddie wanted to be sure they intercepted before or, more likely, after the ceremony. She later did the same with Ted, and finally with Rob, promising to show them all photos of their targets in the parking lot of the church fifteen minutes prior to the service.
 

All of Rob’s reluctance about two plus hours of Holly’s and his workday being devoted to Michael’s service disappeared the moment he realized that
The Standard
might have the inside track on a major Marin County crime story. There was nothing that better held the attention of his readership than a local murder mystery.