The weather by the coast was so changeable. One minute, a glorious, multicolored sunset painted the horizon and the next, a surly wind carried an angry thunderstorm in from wherever thunderstorms were born. Kingston and I made it home from the shop just as things, namely the sky above, started to get ugly.
By the time we got inside, Nevermore's tail was standing straight up, letting me know static electricity was in the air and his least favorite of nature's music, roaring thunder, was rolling in. (Naturally, his favorite music was the sound of twittering birds because they provided a great deal of entertainment for easily bored cats.)
I'd heated a bowl of lentil and vegetable soup and filled the top with a mountain of salty cracker crumbs. It was the perfect meal for watching the storm roll in. There was still a chill in my bones from my walk on the beach, but the hot soup was doing the trick. The whole adventure had been worth it. My intuition flares were on fire. There was something not quite right about the photographer. With any luck, Mr. Google, an amateur investigator's best friend, would shed some light on the mysterious Heather Houston.
"Heather Houston," I muttered the name before pushing the spoon into my mouth. It was a nice name, almost too nice. Was it possible that Heather Houston was an alias too? It seemed we had a group of strangers show up in town, and all of them were using fake names. I had no proof about Heather's name, but I intended to uncover it. The main snag in all of this was motive. What possible reason could Heather have had to murder Lionel and Glenda? Was Heather seeing him too? There was no evidence to prove that either.
The phone rang as I finished my last bit of soup. "Finally," I said with glee. I answered it. "Where have you been, Detective Briggs? If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were avoiding me."
"Hardly." He sounded weary. "If anything, the only bright spots in my long work day were when my mind was filled with daydreams about you."
I was all alone, but I could feel a blush from my head to my toes. "You were daydreaming about me?" I asked softly.
"I was and I'm sorry there are not two of me. Although, I'm fairly certain if there were, you'd be sick and tired of me by now."
"That is not possible." There was enough background noise that it was clear he wasn't sitting in his car or office. "Where are you? I hear glasses clinking, music and laughter."
"I'm in a restaurant. We just sent a very dangerous drug dealer to prison, and the arresting officers decided to go out for a celebratory dinner. I stepped away from the table to call you but ended up in the noisy bar area."
"Congratulations, James. You're awesome but seriously they need to find you a partner or something because—" I paused dramatically. "Oh wait, you technically have one, and while you're out eating prime rib, your partner is solving murders."
The music grew louder. "Just a second, Lacey. I'm going to move to the front of the restaurant. I'd go outside but it's raining. How about over there?"
"So far just thunder and lightning in the distance but it's coming. Nevermore's tail and my nose tell me so."
Even his deep chuckle sounded weary. "I'm interested to learn what you have on the murder cases. It's probably more than the team I have working on it."
"It's not a sure thing, but let's just say, I'm more than a touch giddy. Are you coming over tonight?" Hearing his voice made me miss him.
"Yes, I need to go home first and take Bear on a walk before it rains harder."
"Sounds good. Why don't you bring him here? We'll lock Nevermore in the bedroom." Nevermore and Bear were still not great friends, but as Bear matured, he grew less wild. And Nevermore was slowly learning not to freak out and run for the nearest tree.
"I'm sure he'd like that, but he's been playing at his buddy's house all day so he might be pooped. I've got to go. I think my food's arrived. I'll see you soon."
"Looking forward. Bye."
A streak of lightning lit up the room causing Kingston, who normally slept like a rock, to pull his beak from his wing. He looked grumpy about the whole thing. I walked over and picked up the cover for his cage. He was still squinting like an angry kid who'd been woken from a nap. "I think there's going to be a lot more lightning, so let's give you artificial night a little earlier than usual. Goodnight, King." He turned his head back to his wing and crouched down as I tossed the canvas cover over his cage.
The thunder was getting louder and coming a little faster, which meant the storm was almost over us. I grabbed my laptop and sat on the couch with my wool throw over my shoulders. I opened the computer and started typing. I decided to head back to the name Heather Houston. I added in keywords like photographer and coastal scenery and several other combinations and finally got lucky. Heather Houston, a Midwest based photographer, had a blog where she posted her photos. Her last post was dated yesterday, and it was a lovely picture of the lighthouse. It seemed she had a few hundred followers. I was sure a publisher would be looking for someone with more of a following but then I didn't know that much about the publishing world.
I skimmed a few of her posts. There was no mention of a book deal. I didn't know much about the publishing world, but I was a hundred percent certain that if she had gotten a deal she would have posted about it. My guess was that there was no book deal. It was entirely possible that she was working to get one, and telling people it was already in the works made it easier for her to get access to the sites. I scrolled through some of her older posts. She'd started the blog about five years earlier. I didn't expect to find anything of note but then something caught my eye. There was a screenshot of a short article from a photographic journal. I leaned closer to get a better look. The entire article was about a fresh, young photographer named Heather Bailey. She was showing big promise in nature photography. It was quite the glowing review. I sat back with a satisfied grin. There was no doubt in my mind that Heather Bailey was also Heather Houston.
I put my laptop on the coffee table and hopped up to grab a notepad and pen. I started writing down all the various names that had come up during this investigation. Starting, of course, with the purported names of the two victims, Lionel Dexter and Glenda Jarvis. There were the two possible but very unlikely suspects, Margaret Sherwood and Kate Yardley. I wrote down Heather Houston and Heather Bailey. I picked up the laptop and started typing in as many combinations of the names as I could but ended up with a lot of meaningless results.
"Poo." I rested back and tapped the pen against my chin. Another jolt of lighting startled me, and I managed to poke my chin with the pen. "Ouch." I rubbed my skin and thought about all the details of the murders, the old, dilapidated house, the luxury boat, the marina. The boat pushed another name into my head. I grabbed the notebook and wrote down Marco Plesser. The boat Funtasy, the site of Glenda's murder, was owned by a man named Marco Plesser, who, according to Briggs, was no longer alive. I tried a few combinations, and my last try, Plesser and Bailey typed together, proved fruitful.
I clicked on what appeared to be a three-year-old newspaper report about a woman named Greta Bailey who had tragically committed suicide after a man pretended to fall in love with her. The rotten scammer then proceeded to drain her bank accounts and max out her credit cards. He even talked her into taking all the money out of her retirement account. After the poor woman siphoned off every penny she had to the man who promised to marry her, the bum left town with a full bank account and a brand new car. The man's name was Michael Plesser. He was caught and received only a short six month sentence for wire fraud because the victim, Greta Bailey, had willingly handed over her money.
I laughed dryly. "Which gave him plenty of money for a top notch lawyer," I muttered to Nevermore, who didn't seem terribly interested.
I skimmed the rest of the article. Greta, destitute and heartbroken, hung herself in her kitchen. Her body was discovered by her daughter.
"Darn it." I sat back against the cushion. There was no mention of the daughter's name. Bailey was a fairly common surname. Plesser, however, was not and even though the first names didn't match, I was sure our first murder victim was none other than Michael Plesser or Marco Plesser or maybe neither was his real name. Maybe Marco Plesser was his dad's name and he assumed his dad's identity to buy the boat. It was possible he had dozens of identities. It made sense in his line of business, swindling women to hand over their hearts and their bank accounts.
A bolt of lightning caused a moment of power outage. For that quick second, my inexplicable, almost irrational fear of the dark sent my heartbeat into overdrive. I leaned forward to place the laptop on the table, but the follow-up clap of thunder startled me so badly I dropped the laptop the last few inches to the tabletop.
I took a few deep breaths to slow my pulse and was just starting to feel calmer when another bolt of lightning lit up my small house. I raced to the kitchen for my flashlights and candles. Knowing how badly I panicked in the dark, Briggs had brought me several industrial powered flashlights to use in case of emergency. According to my racing heart, this was an emergency.