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

by Martin Brown

  Having quickly built his hideout, his next challenge was to commit this location to memory and to find the safest path back up to Hazel. He considered whether a path down to Marion might be easier, but abandoned the thought as he noted that the homes along Marion were closer to the Fanchers, and Hazel offered the added security of an adjacent undeveloped lot.

  The hill back up was reasonably easy to navigate. Although, now forty pounds above his ideal weight, Michael, who was just entering his late twenties, still had youthful vigor on his side.

  To assure his finding his way up and back, he took a blue cloth rag he kept in his camera bag and tore it into strips. Every six feet, he tied one of those strips to a small branch and felt reasonably certain that he would find his way back down to this spot at dusk that coming Sunday.

  By now, Michael was certainly not a novice to the business of spying, but this game of hide and seek in the canyons of Mill Valley presented challenges that he had not yet encountered. Having to feather a nest in a dugout along a steep hillside was certainly more challenging than rolling into the high grass opposite the home where Fred and Nora were enjoying a tryst. But Michael welcomed the challenge. He saw it as part of the opportunity and the excitement of working in this varied and challenging terrain.

  At dusk that Sunday afternoon, with the setting sun creating an increasingly dramatic glow from behind Mt. Tam, Michael walked quietly along Hazel, camera bag in tow, to where he found the stick with a small blue strip tied around it, sitting just inches off the paved road. He followed his markers down to the dugout he had made and nestled down inside.

  He was pleased to see the lights in the Fancher home already lit. And on this relatively mild evening, Herb and Suzette were having drinks outside on the home’s spacious redwood deck. Through his telephoto lens, Michael was surprised by the seductive way in which Suzette was dressed.

  Shit, she’s hot, Michael thought, as he snapped a couple of tight shots capturing her cleavage for his personal collection. Herb was certainly feeling frisky because he ran his left hand down her neck to inside her dress, where he cupped one of her breasts and bent down for a long deep kiss. All expertly done while he balanced a full martini glass in his right hand.

  Smooth operator, Michael thought, as he looked on in envy.

  Neither of them appeared to be the least bit shy about enjoying their drinks and each other in the fresh evening air. One wonderful feature about so many of Mill Valley’s canyon homes is that on raised stilts jutting out of the side of a canyon wall, they afforded their residents what most assumed was total privacy.

  Herb placed his drink on the cocktail table and dropped down to his knees. At which point, to Michael’s surprise, Suzette slapped him hard against the cheek. Herb stood up, pulled on the back of her hair, and slapped her back. This had the effect of getting them both a little crazy, and they suddenly began tugging at each other’s clothing. Meanwhile, Michael was focusing and clicking just as fast as his equipment allowed.

  Suzette stood up on a chair and Herb came up behind her and carried her into the living room, placing her down on the couch. He disappeared for a time, and then returned with a massage table. He methodically undressed his wife and then placed Suzette face down and covered her with a sheet. Slowly, he caressed her with kisses along her back and shoulders. Then Herb went off again to another room.

  Michael lost sight of Herb for a time, but thanks to a large floor to ceiling window, a feature in many Mill Valley homes, allowing for unfettered views of the glories of the great outdoors, Michael had an unimpaired view of the great indoors.

  What a lucky bastard I am, Michael thought, unaware that he was about to get luckier still.

  Herb returned wearing nothing except bright red bikini briefs and carrying a black leather-riding crop. Crack went the small jockey’s whip with a slap against Suzette’s buttocks. The muffled sound came through the massive windows and echoed almost imperceptibly around the canyon. Michael could hear the sound of a second slap as he clicked and giggled in his cozy hideout. Suzette pleaded with him to stop, but Herb cracked her again with his riding crop. Her cries for mercy were likely an essential part of their shared enjoyment.

  Their carnal pleasure continued, appearing to be a blend of S&M brutality and Kama Sutra abandon, finally concluding in Suzette bringing Herb to an angrily vocalized climax in an act of oral copulation.

  Michael was delighted with what he was quite certain were the most explicit images he had ever achieved.

  Not long after, with the two lovers wrapped in oversized terry cloth robes, curled around each other and sipping snifters of brandy as they listened to classical music, Michael made his retreat out of the dugout. Although not fully dark yet, he had brought a small pocket flashlight to help avoid unexpected roots and rocks on his way back to Hazel. He walked home quickly, and not being able to resist the urge to see the images he had just created, he got in his car and made the short drive down to the camera shop, where Walt, like Milton, had made his darkroom available to this promising and apparently trustworthy young photographer.

  Michael was greatly pleased with nearly all the images that emerged. “Sweet Jesus,” Michael muttered to himself. “I’m a fucking genius.”

  The following day, Michael returned to the library to learn a little more about Herb Fancher, Jr. He was certainly an ambitious man. At thirty-eight years old, he was managing the construction firm his father had founded in 1950. Under his leadership, the firm had grown into one of Marin County’s largest private sector employers.. He served as one of the city’s five planning commissioners, and in the past had been frequently mentioned as a potential candidate for the five-member Marin County Board of Supervisors, the body from which Barbara Boxer began her ascent to the United States Senate.

  Suzette was a shapely woman just a few years younger than her husband. As he reread articles on the library’s microfiche system, he was troubled by the recurring thought that there was something indescribably different about the Suzette pictured at various city and county events faithfully standing by her husband’s side, and the woman he had captured at play with Herb less than twenty-four hours earlier.

  Michael shook his head and thought he must be imagining it. Either that or his eyes were being placed under too great a strain; undoubtedly the result of the hours spent tweaking his photos to capture the sharpest possible images.

  Nevertheless, when he returned home, Michael took a photographer’s loupe to his black and white prints of the two lovers’ sexcapades. Fuck, Michael thought, there’s just something off, but it’s got to be her.

  On his way into work that afternoon, Michael wondered if Suzette had tweaked her appearance somehow as part of their role-playing. It was clear that for the two of them sex was part biological instinct and part theater, so certainly anything was possible. Perhaps Suzette was wearing a wig as well.

  When Michael arrived at the shop. Walt was getting ready to take off for the balance of the day. So Michael tossed out a seemingly innocent question to see if it landed any reaction.

  “You know, Walt,” he began, “Sunday, I was downtown and I walked past Herb and his wife, Suzette; I knew Herb from that Rotary crab feed you invited me to and I met Suzette, but the woman walking with him looked like Suzette, but just not quite.”

  Michael gave a shrug, hoping not to raise any curiosity. This was just a question motivated by idle curiosity.

  Walt appeared to be paying little, if any, attention. He was standing up on a ladder picking out some high-speed film for a family portrait he was scheduled to shoot that evening. Pulling his head out from one of the many storage spaces he kept along the upper reaches of the shop, he called down to Michael, “Oh, I’ll bet that was Suzette’s sister, Juliette. The girls are actually a couple of years apart. Juliette is the younger, but they’re almost like twins. They’re different, but also an awful lot alike. It causes a lot of people to do a double take when they meet them. It’s pretty adorable. I’d love to do som
e portrait studies of those two.”

  Michael kept his gasp to himself and was glad that Walt’s attention was focused on the film he was hoping to find. He could only imagine what the expression on his face must have been the moment he realized that he had captured Herb and his sister-in-law, Juliette, at play.

  Between Herb’s company, and his political ambitions, Michael knew in an instant he had struck gold.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Later that night, Michael sat alone at his small kitchen table and dreamed of the possibilities. In a celebratory frame of mind, he downed three beers and an extra-large sausage and onion pizza.

  Herb Fancher apparently enjoyed a bit of torture, Michael thought, as he took off his belt and opened the top snap on his pants.

  The kinky role-playing he had photographed, the riding crop and other toys meant to discipline and titillate, were worthy of a handsome sum, even when viewed in the context of a married couple. But add the fact that these photos reveal a husband and his sister-in-law, and they jump dramatically in value. Further, if his political ambitions were as genuine as locals thought, these photos were deserving of a premium payout. Whatever the final disposition, Michael was expecting a handsome bounty for these scandalous images.

  He needed to arrange a meeting with Fancher. But how would he capture Fancher’s attention? This was a busy, successful man with an appetite to accomplish more. Why should he take time to grant the newly arrived camera store clerk an audience?

  Lunch was obviously out of the question. There would be no exchange of pleasantries over pasta at D’Angelo ending with Michael sliding forward a sample photo or two as proof of his dangerous intent.

  Michael recalled the hunting advice his father gave both him and Christopher, “Good outcomes are the result of careful execution.” Perhaps a photo could be sent anonymously through the mail, but if it landed in the wrong hands, the value of Fancher’s political future would evaporate along with the value of these scintillating photographs.

  Perhaps Walt could make a connection for him, but it was a little early in their relationship to expect such assistance, regardless of how clever a story he concocted. All Michael’s previous targets were connected to a community in which he was well known. The gift of Fancher’s misbehavior unexpectedly presented itself to Michael less than two months after his arrival. He was mostly an anonymous person in Mill Valley, and likely to remain so for quite some time.

  There was no doubt as to the value of the photographs he was holding. He turned out the small light on his nightstand and listened to a late night wind creating strange sounds as it passed through the canyon. Perhaps when he awoke in the morning the solution would be apparent and he could make the most of what he rightly expected to be a handsome payday.

  He awakened at three in the morning after a vivid dream in which a beautiful woman wearing a tightly fitting pair of lace white bikini panties, and nothing else, pleaded with him not to show any photos to her sister. She asked him if he liked having sex with women, and he eagerly nodded his approval. Then she seductively said, as she ran her hand across his chest and put her lips close to his ear, “Well, you know I would do anything you can imagine if you would just forget these photos ever existed.”

  Michael’s sheets were wet with perspiration and tangled nearly in a knot at his feet. He sat bolt upright in bed and said in a low voice that no one but he could hear, “Of course, I’ll find the lover, the sister-in-law. She’ll arrange the meeting.”

  Michael raised the sheet and reached down for the lightweight quilt he had kicked to the floor. The wind from hours earlier had vanished and now the deep darkness of the canyon was undisturbed. He shook the sheet and quilt, then laid them out flat. He drifted off to sleep curled up in a tight ball, just as he did on those nights when he was a small boy listening to his mother and father arguing. He slept peacefully for the rest of the night.

  Michael began with the fact that he knew very little about Suzette’s younger sister or how she became romantically involved with her brother-in-law. Did she care at all about the impact this affair would have on her parents or those of her lover? Setting aside, of course, the disaster it would likely create for Fancher’s personal and public life. Was it possible that Suzette knew of Juliette’s relationship with her husband? Had Michael stumbled into, as he had in Novato, a Paul and Beverly Ablow situation? Perhaps this was an open marriage and Suzette was off playing sex games of her own.

  Nonsense, Michael told himself impatiently. And even if he was unfortunate enough to hit upon this situation a second time, these photos in the hands of the public would, at a minimum, ruin Herb’s hopes to follow in his father’s footsteps.

  Research he had already done on the Fancher family business indicated that a number of its construction clients were connected to the local Catholic Church, and to the San Francisco archdiocese. These photos would likely lead to a messy divorce and a family being torn apart by the wanton behavior of two reckless lovers.

  Michael knew a good place to start gathering information regarding Juliette was when he was alone in the shop with Walt; a man who effortlessly denounced petty gossip, while practicing it passionately.

  “Walt, what do you know about Suzette Fancher’s sister?”

  “Juliette? Well, let’s see. I know she teaches at the Catholic school; you know the one across from Mt. Carmel Church, near downtown just off of Blithedale.”

  “Yeah, I park near there whenever I go to Stefano’s Pizza. I was just there last night.”

  “How do you know Juliette? I remember you mentioning her the other day.”

  “I don’t really know her at all. I guess you could say that I’ve just admired her from afar.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got a bit of a crush, big fella.”

  “Guilty, I guess. She is awfully pretty. Do you have any idea if she’s married or seriously involved with some guy?”

  “I’d love to help you out, kid, but I don’t know very much about her, other than, like her sister, she’s a good looking woman.”

  “I wish I could come up with some way of meeting her.”

  “Well, let me see if I can come up with something. You’re both nice people. I bet she’d enjoy getting to know you.”

  Walt, in addition to his penchant for gossip, had a love for playing matchmaker. Perhaps he could offer a program at Juliette’s school where the kids could learn a little about the history of photography with highlights of old photos taken here in Mill Valley. Early shots of the Dipsea Race, or pictures of people hiking, picnicking, and playing on Mt. Tam going back to the 1890s.

  It only took Walt two weeks to suggest an assembly and get it approved by the school’s director for community programs. Then he asked Michael to assist him in presenting the program, “A History of Photography in Mill Valley.”

  “I’m glad you had an interest in Juliette; it encouraged me to put together this program for her school and to propose it for all our local schools.”

  For a town of fewer than fourteen thousand, Mill Valley had an abundance of schools. Four public elementary schools, Park, Old Mill, Edna Maguire, and Mill Valley Middle, plus the public high school, Tamalpais, started in 1908, and at that time, Mt. Carmel School.

  While Walt presented a slide show for students, Michael stood in the back of the auditorium with Juliette Parker, who he had just introduced himself to moments earlier. Juliette explained that she taught a combined fourth and fifth grade class and feared that, “The dwindling student population might lead the diocese to close the school, perhaps as soon as the end of the current school year.”

  “Where would the kids go?” Michael asked, pleased that they had any reason to converse.

  He could not free his mind of the image of Juliette lying on that white massage table in Herb and Suzette’s living room, being smacked across her bottom with a riding crop. When she responded to his question, Michael jumped out of his fog.

  “The diocese has a school in Larkspur, St. Patric
k’s, and one in Tiburon, St. Hilary’s. Our children’s families will likely be given a choice of which of those two schools they would like to attend.”

  “Will you go to one of those two schools or take a teaching position at one of the public schools if an opening is available?”

  “I’ve applied to join the staff at either of those schools; hopefully one will take me.”

  “Would you consider joining one of the area’s public schools, if possible?”

  “My sister, her name is Suzette, she and I were raised in a strict Catholic home. I could get credentialed and likely teach at a public school, but I’d miss working for the diocese.”

  Knowing what he knew, Michael had a difficult time envisioning Juliette as a strict Catholic, but he was happy to know that she so identified with an image of herself that would easily be shattered by the release of his photos.

  After the assembly, Michael and Walt toured the school. Michael made it a point to stop in on Miss Parker’s class. Walt was only too happy to come along, reasoning that his protégé might have an outside chance of getting a date with the attractive teacher.

  Michael looked at all the projects Juliette’s class had accomplished since the start of the school year and pretended to be, “hugely impressed with all the good work,” she and her class had accomplished. He then offered a suggestion, “Let me take a couple of hours one afternoon, any day next week if that works for you, and I’ll come photograph you and your class at work.”