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

by Martin Brown

  “This is my home,” she said, exiting the car. “I thought we would have a lot more privacy here.”

  Eddie thought it likely that she was the only teacher at St. Hilary’s School to live in a multi-million dollar water view home.

  “Can I get you something to drink, Detective?”

  “A glass of water would be great.”

  “Well, for me, it’s the end of my workday, so I’m going to celebrate with a glass of white wine; sure you won’t join me?”

  “I’d love to, but I have to live within the rules, no drinking on the job. And don’t think there aren’t days that I’d like to forget that rule.”

  “Are you a spiritual man, Detective Austin?”

  “I try. Both my wife and I were raised Catholic, but there are a lot of times we miss the mark for showing up on Sundays.”

  “C and E, Christmas and Easter?”

  “Some years, yes, but we have a son now, he’s five, so we go more often. Trying to set a good example. Teach him the difference between good and evil and the importance of kindness and sacrifice.”

  Juliette smiled as she sat back down and took a small sip of wine.

  There was an awkward silence for a moment, just an exchange of smiles. Eddie was about to say something when Juliette shocked him by saying, “Detective Austin, I think you’re an angel of God.”

  “Really? I’ve been called a lot of things, but never that.”

  “And you have a sense of humor. Well, let me tell you why. Last night when I got home, I saw that front-page picture of Michael Marks and the story of his murder. I was shocked in one sense, but in truth, not at all surprised.”

  “You mean that he had been killed?”

  “No, that he had not been murdered years ago.”

  The air went out of Eddie’s body as he paused for a moment. “Ms. Parker, why would you say something like that?”

  “Because he was a terrible, terrible man.”

  “Well, I’ve wondered if that might be the case, but tell me why you think so.”

  “I’m happy to tell you. It’s embarrassing, of course; most secrets are, but I want to tell you. Last night, after I read the story, a part of me felt ashamed because so often I had thought how wonderful it would be if someone killed that man and then I’d ask God’s forgiveness for holding so much hate in my heart. Last night I prayed that God would send an angel so I could share the terrible truth I’ve been holding for so many years. Today, you appeared and you found your way to me.”

  “Well, I have to admit, it was a coincidence that I found my way to you.”

  “How so?”

  “Do you remember a Sarah Lauerman?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “She’s with the Mill Valley PD and she was the first officer on the scene Friday morning when the shooting was reported. She was a student in your fifth grade class and remembered the day Michael came to photograph you and your class.”

  “You must be talking about Sarah Scott. I remember all the children in that class because they were my last class at Mt. Carmel Church School. All of them were wonderful. Some transferred to St. Hilary’s, but most went to one of the local public schools the following school year. I wonder what about Marks triggered her memory of his being in our classroom?”

  “She said that she and the other girls wondered if there was something going on romantically between you two.”

  “Oh, my,” Juliette said with a good laugh. “Well, she was right. Good observational skills. Perhaps Sarah was destined for law enforcement.”

  “She’s a credit to her department.”

  “Well, Marks was attracted to me, but that wasn’t his real reason for being there. He wanted to get an introduction to my brother-in-law, Herb Fancher, and then he showed me the pictures he had taken of the two of us, and I nearly passed out.”

  “I’m guessing he wanted to extort money from your brother-in-law, am I right?”

  “You are, but there’s more to the story than you can imagine, so let me start at the beginning.”

  Juliette told Eddie that she was once in love with Herb. Michael had caught them in the act, she explained, although she did edit out the graphic details of their sex play.

  “He was going to expose the photos of the two of us to our families, which of course would have been a disaster in several ways, not the least of which would have been the end of Herb’s marriage and any future relationship I might have had with my sister.”

  She paused for a time, and Eddie, who could see she was reliving a deeply painful time, stayed silent.

  “I cried for days over what he did. The photos were explicit. Neither I, nor my brother-in-law, could believe what he had done. He hid in the woods behind Herb’s home, and on an afternoon when my sister was attending an event in San Francisco, he caught the two of us. Herb called him a lot of names, none of which I would ever repeat. Whenever we spoke privately, the few times we did after Michael Marks’ blackmail, we simply called him, the phantom photographer. What we did was terribly wrong. Herb had taken over his father’s very successful construction business and had a lot of money. I’m sure Michael knew all that before he ever targeted us.”

  “Do you know what he charged Herb to keep those photos a secret?”

  “Herb was too much of a gentleman to share those details, but I got the impression it was over fifty-thousand dollars.”

  Goodbye Disneyland, hello Tahiti dream vacation, Eddie thought.

  “I don’t know if he ever got all that money.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, not very long after all that happened, Herb was killed.”

  “What? How?”

  “He died when the Nimitz Freeway collapsed during the ‘89 earthquake. You must have been a boy at that time.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Whether he got all that money or not is a secret that probably died with him on Friday. But I never heard from that terrible man again.”

  “So your sister never knew about any of this.”

  “No. She died of breast cancer two years ago. Three years after Herb died, she married a wealthy widower. He died eight years ago and left the house to her. Neither of her marriages led to children. Suzette always had other interests. I was her only sibling, and she left this house to me. I love this home, but I still feel my guilt every time I walk through that door. The Lord moves in mysterious ways.”

  “I’m guessing all your parents are gone.”

  “Oh, yes, all gone. There is a season, as the Bible tells us. So it’s just me in this big house with a lot of difficult memories and some lovely views,” Juliette said wistfully, as she drained the rest of her wine and looked out toward Sausalito. “I’m reasonably certain of one thing. Herb and I could not have been his only two victims. There might have been dozens of others.

  “All that volunteer nonsense I read about in the IJ yesterday, I don’t believe any of that. Just like his coming to the school to help me document my students’ class projects; I’m sure that was just a ruse. Everything he did was with the purpose of furthering his business, I’m quite certain of that. It’s impossible to learn people’s dirty little secrets if you have no real idea who they are. The way he terrified me, he was already accomplished at the art of extortion. And that happened a long time ago.”

  “Well, you’ve been incredibly helpful,” Eddie assured her, as he stood to leave.

  “If I’m right about other victims, you know your list of suspects might be very long.”

  “I already imagine it is, Ms. Parker.

  Back in his car, with a pink sunset sky starting to reflect its dramatic colors onto the bay, Eddie needed a couple of moments to reflect on what he had just heard.

  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 th
ird 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.”