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

by Martin Brown

  His father, Caleb, had taught him the value of saving and investing his money. “Always pay yourself first,” he would advise, when Michael earned money during the summers between his high school and college years.

  “Whatever your goals, set aside money to help you meet them. There will always be bills, rent money, or mortgage and car payments, insurance, and more; if you want to do more, travel, get married, whatever, you’ll need money to do that with.”

  “But what about credit?” Michael insisted.

  “Credit was meant originally for buying big things that you could not afford all at once, the best example being a home or a car. Credit to buy a pair of shoes and a thousand other things that you can’t afford to pay when the bill comes due at the end of the month is just making the bankers and the credit card companies rich. Real wealth is extra money in the bank, set aside, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  Caleb, Michael thought, would be delighted to see his son’s savings now. But certainly furious with him if he knew how most of his savings had been achieved. What would also displease him was the number of boxes he had scattered in hidden places containing cash. It was time that he found better ways of putting his money to use, other than hiding it away.

  But even with his growing wealth, Michael was still frugal in a variety of ways. The one-bedroom in-law suite in the private house that Milton had found for him when Fred wanted him out of the house continued to meet his expectations, so there was no need for a more expensive place, even though he could certainly afford to do that. His aging Honda needed parts replaced now and then, but delivered reliable transportation. Still, a newer used car that someone would be happy to part with for an envelope full of cash would be one way to put some of what he thought of as, “his hunting money,” to use. Another way would be spending some money on himself for clothes, toys, or just having fun.

  For the first time since he began work at Milton’s shop, Michael asked for a proper two-week vacation, although he was not certain what he would do with that much time off. There were, of course, new targets he could perhaps hunt down, but other than that, he had no idea what to do with this much free time.

  Then it came to him; it was time to discover the rest of Marin. He had learned well his own area in the northern part of the county, but he knew very little about Marin south of San Rafael. It was well past time that he learned.

  Michael purchased a guidebook to the towns, state and national parks of Marin County, and found that planning two weeks of mostly day trips would be easy. He started by exploring one of the many trails of Mt. Tamalpais, the county’s highest peak. Mid-afternoon that same day, he drove down the west side of the mountain into the small seaside town of Stinson Beach and then drove the short distance up along California Route 1, to where he spent his first night at a quaint bed and breakfast cottage in the small town of Olema.

  The next day, he traveled the length of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, a long winding road that begins at the western edge of the county at the spot of coastline where Sir Francis Drake, knighted by Queen Elizabeth I, is believed to have landed in 1579 and named the area Nova Albion, Latin for New Britain. There he stopped at Point Reyes Lighthouse and made a second stop, this time at the Bear Valley Visitor Center, to walk the Earthquake Trail. This forested walk traces the movement of the 1906 earthquake, as it tore a fissure through Marin on its path of destruction toward San Francisco.

  Turning east, he headed back towards Novato, after making a brief stop to admire the giant redwoods in Samuel Taylor Park, which envelop both sides of Sir Francis Drake, leaving it in a perpetual state of shade. After many more miles of picturesque winding road, Michael came to the town of Fairfax, a place seemingly untouched by modernity. The age of flower power had ended nearly twenty years earlier, and Michael was excited to find a place where the peace generation still held sway.

  Midmorning the following day, Michael headed south on Highway 101 to Sausalito, the town furthest south in Marin, ending shortly before the northern entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge.

  He had first visited here at age ten, when his parents took him and his brother to see the big city, Sausalito to its north, and Berkeley across the bay to the east. By mid-morning, the often-present summer fog had backed off and sat just outside the bay, leaving clear blue-sky vistas of the San Francisco skyline several miles away, and equally grand views of the Bay Bridge and many of the communities of the east bay.

  The streets were busy with tourists enjoying the start of their summer holiday season. Michael was glad that he brought his camera, because it seemed that everywhere he turned there was another picture perfect moment. He turned away from the busy pedestrian sidewalk surrounding the quaint Vina Del Mar Park and walked along the waterfront. Further down the path, he turned back, and halfway up a hill that was reached by a public stairway called the Excelsior Steps, there was a home off to his right, and out on the home’s deck he could see a man and a woman admiring the view.

  Michael opened his camera bag and pulled out his beloved telephoto lens. Placing it on his camera, he could now clearly see a man who appeared to be older than the woman whose shoulder his arm hung around. He pulled her in closer for a kiss and they lingered there for a while.

  Noting the age difference, Michael reasoned this could be an affair, and he wondered what might be the rest of their story. That thought vanished when two little boys came out onto the deck to join what he realized must be their mother and father. Each parent held a child in their arms and pointed to various boats that dotted the wide bay. Michael clicked a few more pictures and watched as the family left the porch and headed inside. He wondered if there was a time when his parents had ever been as happy as this family he had just found as a result of his ceaselessly prying eyes.

  Not long after, he walked south along the old boardwalk that wrapped around Sally Stanford’s Valhalla restaurant just off of Richardson Avenue. The famous former madam ran an elegant brothel on Nob Hill that was reputed to be a gathering spot for delegates to the first-ever session of the United Nations, which took place in 1945 in San Francisco. Stanford-born Mabel Busby became Sausalito’s mayor in her later years.

  Michael stopped at Southview Park, which sits up on the southern end of the small town in an area known to the locals as Hurricane Gulch. There, as he used his telephoto lens to shoot several shots of the city’s dramatic skyline and the island of Alcatraz, with its infamous shuttered federal prison, he thought perhaps this was the place for him…here in a town of just seven thousand souls with a mix of artists, houseboat hippies, San Francisco bankers, and attorneys happily ensconced in hillside mansions, living alongside lifelong residents, who simply could not imagine being anywhere else.

  From the edge of the park, which provided an eagle nest’s view of a dozen Sausalito homes below and above him, his telephoto lens wandered down and came to rest on one house halfway down Third Street, near where it intersects Richardson. Through his lens, he caught the image of an elderly husband and wife sitting at a small kitchen table, eating what he assumed was a late lunch. For the fun of it, he clicked the shutter and captured the image. Before long, he was squeezing off pictures of a couple arguing in their living room, a man sitting in his underwear in front of his TV watching a baseball game, and two teenagers playing ping pong.

  All of it stirred a thought that had never occurred to Michael; perhaps the business of spying and extortion could be approached in a different way. Rather than tracking a target to see what they were up to, just find a perch and start shooting away. Granted, it was far more random than his current approach, but perhaps it would pay off. As Michael had already learned from ensnaring Fred Winters, Marv Reagan, Ward Williams, and John Walker, it doesn’t take many victims to generate a very good living.

  That night, Michael stayed at the Howard Johnson’s near Tam Junction, just off of Highway 1. He could have put up with the late afternoon traffic home, but why fuss when the HoJo’s was offering a twenty-nine
dollar room rate with a chit for an all you can eat fried calamari strips with baked potato dinner? Plus, his plan for the next day was to explore Mill Valley, and from the motel it was just two miles to the center of town.

  After a dinner where he proudly put what he hoped was a nice dent in the motel’s food budget, consuming three portions of calamari strips, he sat and rubbed his expanding stomach and looked up the town of Mill Valley in his guide book.

  He learned that the town, which had been home to one of the Coastal Miwok tribes for as much as six thousand years, was established by European descendants in the mid-nineteenth century and was incorporated in 1900. The town’s first significant population growth came after the1906 earthquake, which caused many San Francisco residents to search for new homes outside of the heavily damaged city.

  With a population of around twelve thousand, Mill Valley, as Michael experienced it in 1986, was a picture perfect place. The climate was warmer than that of often fog-shrouded San Francisco and a good deal cooler than Novato. In a relatively small geographic area, it offered a variety of wonders.

  The town is bordered to the north by Mount Tamalpais, to the west, by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and to the south and east by the Tiburon Peninsula.

  With a plan for hiking and driving around Mill Valley, Michael headed out early the next day. Later that afternoon, he planned to go east into Tiburon and Belvedere, but to his surprise, he filled his entire day with the sights, sounds, and scents of Mill Valley.

  For Michael, all of Mill Valley was love at first sight. He chastised himself for allowing so much time living in Marin to pass without getting to know this wonderful town that was only thirty minutes from his front door without traffic.

  He began by walking through the grove of redwoods which graces Old Mill Park. Next to Old Mill Creek, he stood on the bones of what replaced the old saw mill where John Reed built a thriving business cutting wood mostly for use in San Francisco’s Presidio, Mexico’s military outpost. All of what is today known as Mill Valley, was deeded to Reed by the Mexican appointed governor. The property was designated Rancho Corte Madera, which translates as, Ranch of Cutting Wood. Much of early San Francisco was built with the wood that came from Reed’s ranch.

  The land grant itself, like the one given to another European settler, John Richardson, known as Rancho Saucelito, covered a very large swath of land. In Reed’s case the land given to him in 1834 encompassed all of what is today known as the towns of Mill Valley, Corte Madera, and Larkspur from their eastern edge near San Francisco Bay all the way west to the Pacific.

  Not far from the site of the old mill, Michael walked over an aging wooden bridge and headed along the narrow two-lane road called Cascade Drive. As Michael would later learn, so many of Mill Valley’s roads, which now are trafficked by cars, have never been widened since the time they were established to accommodate horses and carriages, not to mention the pressing needs of a growing population. It’s a fact that makes driving through the town’s winding hills both charming and challenging. All one has is hope that all drivers will exercise the same degree of caution around blind curves and steep shoulders that often leave little room for error.

  Nevertheless, for hikers and bikers, the patch quilt of drives, trails, avenues, and lanes make for an endless variety of enchanting experiences. Michael, with his camera hanging around his neck and a photo equipment bag strapped to his shoulder, stopped repeatedly along Cascade Drive and took photos while walking up a steep street called Lovell Avenue. Relatively few homes dotted this heavily wooded area, and nearly all sat on generously proportioned lots.

  The air was fresh and cool, but not cold. The redwoods kept the narrow roads and lanes well shaded. In certain spots, where bits of dust and debris that redwoods shed constantly floated to the ground, they were illuminated by rays of sun, causing them to sparkle like fairies coming out of a bright blue sky.

  Then at one of the many turns on Lovell, Michael came upon an open vista from where he could see homes in every direction, mostly sited along embankments heading down the hillsides of Cascade Canyon.

  What took the breath away of those athletic and ambitious enough to discover this scenic spot was the natural beauty of its surroundings. Michael was inspired, however, by a very different attribute. As he gazed through his heavily wooded surroundings, he was inspired by a bird’s eye view of dozens of homes, many of which had outside decks, some of which were adorned with gardens, pools, and gazebos. Looking behind him, he could see another row of homes going up the hill and the markings of what had to be another road circling this higher space as well.

  The potential for spying, particularly from inside a car slipping into one of the many dugouts that allowed drivers in other cars to pass, was likely endless. Perhaps, Michael thought excitedly, he had found a phantom photographer’s paradise.

  Less than thirty minutes from leaving the spot Michael would always think of as “Point Inspiration,” he had completed the loop, turning off of Lovell onto Elma Street, which runs along Old Mill Elementary School, which led to the front door of the Mill Valley Library, on the western edge of Old Mill Park.

  It was nearly two o’clock, well past his normal lunchtime, but on this one day, Michael gave his appetite no thought. The library, which was built under a stand of new growth redwoods, had the feel of an old mountain lodge, complete with a huge fireplace in the center of its reading room.

  On the library’s lower level, Michael was directed to the room set aside for the Mill Valley Historical Society, and a kind woman with soft blue eyes and a gentle smile led him to a collection of large ancient ledger books that held the plat maps for the entire town. It was the gold mine he suspected he had found.

  The entire town was built around a series of pocket canyons, and its streets, like the legs of a spider, wandered up and down this land that he reasoned must have been formed by a retreating glacier at some distant point in the past. It was as if God took a mound of clay and squeezed his fingers down upon it. What he had stumbled upon was a blessed spot with an endless bounty of opportunities.

  Having written down the numerous names of roads that looked promising, Michael returned to his car and began to explore a complex network of picture perfect opportunities that by foot would take him two days or more to cover. He went up Summit Avenue and discovered how perfectly it looked down on Tamalpais Avenue and then Myrtle Avenue; Summit also looked down on Ralston which, in turn, looked out on Marguerite, which offered wonderful views of the backs of homes on Magee. In another part of town, Rose looked down on Hazel, which offered perfect views of Monte Vista.

  It was past six when Michael realized for the first time that in his excitement he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He went to the center of town, known as the Depot, once the terminus point for the old Northwestern Railway’s electric train service that carried passengers down to Sausalito for their ferry trip to San Francisco. The electric trains lost their business soon after the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge. All that was left now was a spacious tree-shaded town square where young parents pushed children in strollers, and others played chess or gathered at one of the three coffee shops adjacent to the Depot.

  Michael found an old Italian restaurant with dark wood tables and black barrel-shaped chairs called D’Angelo. There, he feasted on his two favorites, pasta and pizza, and treated himself to two glasses of burgundy wine.

  On his drive back home, Michael’s mind was racing with thoughts of new possibilities. Novato was devoid of opportunities compared to Mill Valley. In his chosen profession, nothing was more valuable than the ability to hide in plain sight. Michael was certain that he had found his perfect home. Knowing the why and how, the only remaining questions were the when, where, and who.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The excitement that Michael felt after his discovery of Mill Valley was tempered in the following week by the jarring realization that leaving Novato would cause certain inevitable complications.

 
; His living space, while happily affordable, was the least of his issues. More daunting was the job he had grown accustomed to and the darkroom always at his disposal. Of course, he could keep the job. After all, living in Mill Valley, he would be going against rush hour traffic, heading north in the morning and south in the evening. Nevertheless, he was not pleased with the idea of living and working in two distinctly different parts of Marin.

  If he was right, and Mill Valley was indeed a gold mine just waiting for his inventive mind and talented eye to capture, then certainly there would be far more money to be made in getting close and personal with his soon-to-be-neighbors, even if they had no idea of how Michael defined close and personal. That meant becoming part of the community and following the same pattern that had worked so well for him in Novato. Get a retail job, hopefully with a camera shop, and become active in the town’s social and business organizations.

  Like his father, ever cautious about change, Michael decided on a half-step. He concocted a story for Milton that he had met a girl in Mill Valley who had invited him to move into her one-bedroom rental, but he added quickly, “I don’t think there is any need to change my hours. I can easily leave home in time to open the store before ten every morning. I’ll just have to get going a little earlier to do that.”

  “That’s fine, Michael; I’m glad you met someone you like. I didn’t even know you were dating.”

  “Yeah, I guess you could say it’s been a whirlwind relationship.”

  “Well, I appreciate your loyalty, and I appreciate your wanting to stay, but there are several camera stores between Mill Valley and here, and if you ever decide to make a change, I won’t be happy for my shop, but I’ll be happy for you.”