Chapter 24
Thursday afternoon
On the way back to Webb’s Glass Shop, Savannah called Edward to meet her and Jacob for a meeting to discuss progress with the investigation. When she parked in the back of the shop, Amanda and Edward helped them unload the plates.
“I’ll wash the charger plates after the meeting, Jacob. You’ve more than done your share today. You can go home right after our little meeting.”
“What about decoding the summary sheet of Dennis Lansing’s file?”
“I don’t mind if you work on it for a little while after our meeting, but I think you’ll be better for taking time to rest. Suzy also needs some down time. She is on duty all the time you’re away from home. This has been a stressful week for us all.”
“I didn’t think about Suzy. Thanks. She needs some rest.”
They gathered in the small office in the far back of Webb’s Glass Shop. Savannah sat in the old oak chair in front of the rolltop desk while Jacob and Amanda dragged in stools from the classroom. The side chair was Edward’s spot by habit.
Amanda pursed her lips. “What’s up with you and Edward?”
The bell over the front door of the shop rang and Savannah shushed her. “Not now. We have investigation matters to discuss.”
Edward carried in a tray with a pitcher of iced tea, four glasses filled with ice, and a plate of cookies that smelled of ginger. “It’s still hot out there. Remind me again, when does autumn actually arrive? In England, we can get snow in September.”
Amanda grabbed one of the cookies and laughed. “For you, our whole winter is probably warmer than a British summer.”
“Okay, okay.” Savannah fidgeted in the oak chair so that it squeaked. “I want to go over what we’ve learned and figure out what to do next. But first, I got my weekly e-mail newsletter from the Dali Museum this morning. They’re sponsoring a candlelight memorial ceremony on Friday night. It will start at seven-thirty p.m. I would appreciate it if we could all attend.”
“So we can talk to our suspects without being obvious?” asked Amanda.
“That’s the plan,” said Savannah. “Now, on to what we know. What still hasn’t turned up is a guest list from the reception. Officer Williams may have forgotten to tell me about it but that seems unlikely. They certainly don’t have to share that with me. I’m only supposed to be looking into my dad’s records. Anyway, Amanda, what have you found out about the director of the Dali Museum?”
“Well.” Amanda stopped abruptly as some crumbs escaped her mouth. She put a hand to her mouth and mumbled, “’Scuse me.” She gulped some iced tea and began to choke.
Edward leaped up and gave her a quick slap on her back.
She coughed and then blushed nearly purple. “I’m so sorry,” she said when she recovered herself. “The ginger is a little strong and for me that translates as hot pepper spicy. Sorry.”
“So . . .” Savannah waved come on to her.
“Okay, I made a preliminary troll through the cyber footprints of Lucas, Gina, and Harriet. First, our exceedingly friendly security guard, Lucas Brown, doesn’t appear to have ever owned a computer and I’ll bet his phone is a basic flip phone with no features at all except maybe text messages using the phone keys—painful. He’s a pure Luddite.”
Jacob reached for a cookie and looked at it closely. “It’s okay not to like fancy phones.” He took a tiny bite. “My phone is basic. I am not a Luddite.”
Savannah looked over to Amanda with raised eyebrows.
“Right, that was rude,” Amanda said slowly, then gathered speed. “We all know you hate using the phone, but—”
“You have so many strengths in other areas,” finished Savannah. “He’s fine. Go on, Amanda, my hacker maven.”
“I had some trouble with the information I found about Harriet. She acts as Dennis’s business manager and publicist. Her online presence is massive. She posts to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. She has a Pinterest page for every exhibition that Dennis has put on. It’s a wonderful record of his progression as an artist. It will be easy to create a catalog of his entire body of work from her pinned images.”
“Did she use any social media for personal communications?” asked Savannah.
Amanda nodded. “She apparently used her cell phone to text personal conversations. I found a couple requests for Facebook contacts to message her a phone number so that they could continue their conversation more privately. It’s not unreasonable for a public person to do that. I can’t get into phone records.”
Savannah drew a hand through her curls. “So, if we want more information about her, we’ll have to ask. First, I’ll talk to Joy and see if she’s willing to share at least something. I know the department is overloaded right now with the St. Petersburg Arts and Culture Festival and the tragedy in Orlando.”
The month-long celebration of St. Petersburg’s artistic creators and creations is often referred to as the SPF or SPFestival. It consists of fifty-seven events at 149 venues by 102 organizations and/or performers during the thirty days of September. It focused on events and activities produced by local and national artists, arts organizations, and arts-related businesses in and around the city’s unique arts districts including the Grand Central District, where Webb’s Glass Shop was located.
Amanda spoke. “The last person I chased is Gina, the moody and erratic museum director. She’s a powerhouse on social media. She is active on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Snapchat, GooglePlus, Pinterest, Instagram, and Reddit. I don’t see how she can keep up with the noise. She must have an assistant. Anyway, the one she uses the most is Twitter. There’s a tweet every ten minutes on her feed. They’re all public posts using the museum accounts. She uses them exclusively.”
“Okay, but I want—,” said Savannah.
Amanda held up a hand. “Let me finish. Because her feed is so active, it’s obvious when she’s off-line. She normally stops at about ten o’clock in the evening and then starts up again at about five a.m. That’s a regular pattern. What’s not so regular is that there are some unusual periods of no activity at all.”
Edward frowned. “What does that tell us?”
“One of those times was during and immediately after the reception at the museum. On that evening, all social media stopped after about ten o’clock. She was off-line until midnight when she posted a few pictures. All social activity normally ended at ten o’clock in the evening, so I noticed it. She resumed at four a.m., which is earlier than her normal time of five a.m.”
“That’s something to consider. That means she was offline during the reception. But during the interval when Dennis was murdered,” Savannah paused, “she was working away.” She quickly pulled a tissue from her pocket and stemmed her running nose with a quick wipe. “Excuse me.”
“Yes, I was disappointed about that, too.” Amanda looked at Savannah in concern, then reached for another cookie but pulled her hand back. “So, I looked back into her history and found a couple other three- or four-hour blocks of time in the preceding month where she was completely off-line.”
“So, if we extrapolate a bit,” said Edward, “we can assume that she was spending that time with someone who was more interesting to her than Facebook. I wonder who?”
Amanda shrugged her shoulders. “I haven’t checked out Dennis yet. I’ll be able to do that this evening.” She grabbed another cookie. “You said you wanted to learn a bit about social media. Tonight, after this meeting, would be a great time.”
“I did say that.” Savannah rolled her eyes. “I’ll look over your shoulder this evening. I’m good with searching for information, but social media? Yuk!”
Amanda rubbed her hands together. “Yay! Teaching the teacher. Oh, what did you find out from Dennis’s social worker?”
“One thing I found out is that having Jacob along means that the questioning will take a couple drastic twists. Do you want to tell them about our discussion with him?” She nodded toward Jacob.
He ducked his head and shook it. “No, you tell.”
“Sure.” She sipped her iced tea. “Our social worker was helpful, but he wasn’t in the best of health. He uses an oxygen tank all the time. He certainly enjoyed talking about the program and his memory was clear. He confirmed that my dad kept all the records and that Dennis’s partner in the apprentice program was nicknamed Chuck.”
“Chuck? You mean, short for Charles?” said Edward.
“Yes, our very own state representative. Dennis and Chuck were members in the same gang that caused a lot of trouble around town. His records have got to be in the file cabinet somewhere. So Jacob, if you can work out which one it is . . . that would be helpful. Maybe there’s more information about their activities that we can investigate.
“Sorry, Amanda, there’s another name to add to your list of social media investigations—Florida State Representative Charles King.”
“You mean our list of social media investigations.” Amanda rolled her hands over each other. “Mwu ha ha ha. This is going to be fun.”
“Okay, I walked into that one. That’s all for now, guys. Jacob, you and Suzy need to get going.” She turned to help Edward gather the glasses on his tray. “I’ll meet you next door for dinner. That is, if our Thursday dinner is still on.”
Edward smiled. “Brilliant.”
* * *
After they left, Amanda put the work stools back in the classroom and pulled up the guest chair close behind Savannah. “Now, the first thing we need to do is create accounts for you. You need to do that anyway for Webb’s Glass Shop.”
Savannah faced the PC display screen that sat on the oak desk surface. It had been her father’s and his PC system was a powerful hand-built tower with custom boards that provided extra processing power and additional security checks.
“Okay, which social media sites will be most useful? You know I don’t have a lot of spare time, so I want to get the most bang for my buck.”
“That’s easy. Facebook and Twitter are the largest and most popular, but because your clients are interested in crafting, Pinterest should also be one of your sites.” Amanda pointed to the mouse. “Click on that little icon in the corner.”
“The blue one with the f ?”
“Yes, now press the ENTER key and the Facebook application opens. Now, let’s sign you up for a profile page so we can visit Gina’s site.”
After more than an hour, Savannah finally had a page with a profile picture, a cover picture, and she had filled out most of the information needed to put up a bare account.
“While we’re here, let’s set up a fan page for Webb’s Glass Shop. We can actually start doing some real promotion after this.” Amanda quickly filled out the information needed and inserted a cover photo and profile picture.
Setting up that page didn’t take as long. The next social media site they tackled was Twitter.
“You might actually like this one better than Facebook. Tweets are limited to a hundred and forty characters. So, it’s short and sweet for interacting quickly and there are already a jillion people on it. After you get used to using the hashtags you can interact real time with people who are interested in the same things you like. I think the best path is just to set one up for Webb’s Glass Shop and you can use that for everything.” Amanda took a few minutes to walk Savannah through creating a Twitter account called @WebbsGlassShop and they pulled in the same profile picture they had used for Savannah’s Facebook page.
“Now let me show you around a little bit. Do you mind if I type? Your two-finger hunt-and-peck is driving me crazy.”
Savannah stood up. “Well, excuse me. I grew up in a glass shop, not a tech lab, so I never learned to touch type . . . but I am pretty quick with those two fingers.”
“Come on. Don’t get huffy. I don’t want to be here all night. Tomorrow’s a busy day for both of us. It’s the last day of class. I not only look forward to the last day, but I also dread it. Busy, busy, busy.”
Savannah moved to the guest chair while Amanda took over the typing. “You’re right. I’ll watch.
“I want to show you what Gina’s normal Facebook posting patterns look like and when she was silent a couple weeks ago.” Amanda’s rapid-fire typing brought up Gina’s Dali Museum Facebook page and they scrolled through both the normal activity and the silence.
“What does it look like on Twitter?”
Amanda unloosed her flying fingers on the keyboard and Gina’s twitter feed was displayed on the PC screen. She scrolled down the multiple-times-per-hour Twitter messages, called tweets, to a gap one evening. “That’s the only one I found and that wasn’t repeated except for the evening of the exhibit reception. Let me show you that section.” Amanda scrolled the display. “Then Gina started up again in her normal pattern at five a.m.”
Savannah squinted at the screen. “These messages, I mean tweets, is there a way to get more information about how they were broadcast? I know you can use a Twitter app on your smartphone. Is that different?”
“We can look closer into her account by clicking on her Twitter handle, then we can click on the clock symbol. It tells what posting mechanism she used.”
Savannah got up and leaned over Amanda’s shoulder. “These here look different from the rest of them. See, this bit of wording here says they were scheduled via Hootsuite. What does that mean?”
Amanda put both hands over her mouth. “Oh my goodness. I hadn’t noticed that. She doesn’t do that, ever. I mean I checked over the last month and all her tweets were written either from a PC or from her phone app. This means that she planned ahead of time to make sure that block of time was covered.”
Savannah sat back in the chair. “That means she has no alibi for the time that Dennis was killed. I’ll call Officer Williams.”