Free The Phantom Photographer: Murder in Marin Mystery - Book 3 (Murder in Marin Mysteries) by Martin Brown Page A

envisioned the day he would inevitably confront Walker and knew that his first defense would be to explain that they were longtime friends, and that this was a one-time meeting, and there was a great deal less here than met the eye.
    To go inside and catch them a week later meeting at the same time and the same place would certainly place a question mark at the end of the story. It would remove any reasonable doubt that they had been caught in what was clearly a long-term affair.  
    So, Michael followed his movements of seven days earlier. Back up at his perch on the third floor, he photographed the two sitting at a different table at the same bar. Sheila wearing a different dress, and Walker, on a somewhat warmer day, sitting with his suit jacket off and his sleeves rolled up.
    When they left the bar, apparently ready to go upstairs to their room, Michael was ready to head out, but decided on a different plan. He went down to the lobby, taking one of the stairwells from the third floor. Exiting into the lobby, he arrived just in time to see the two of them entering one of the hotel’s glass elevators. As it began going up, they embraced, and then kissed, apparently too eager for each other to wait for a little more privacy.  
    Michael caught their embrace from the lobby, smiling in amazement and delight over alcohol’s ability to overcome human inhibitions. He could see the elevator stop on the fourth floor. Because of the hotel’s open atrium, he was able to watch as the two lovers walked, somewhat unsteadily, down to their room. He was not sure of the number of the room they entered, but because he was certain of its position on the fourth floor, he was quite certain he knew their location.  
    Michael, flushed with the success of his past captures, was feeling particularly daring this night. He went back to his car, opened the trunk, and grabbed a Chewbacca mask, which he had thrown back there after a recent Rotary Halloween party. He then rummaged through his usually untidy trunk in the hope of finding a small spy camera that Milton had given him two weeks before.  
    “It’s a cute gadget and it’s supposed to capture a good quality image,” Milton said. “Do me a favor, shoot a roll of film, process it and see if you think we should offer them for sale.”
    Michael played around with it for twenty minutes that afternoon, trying different ways of holding the camera while clicking its shutter. He was intrigued, tossed it into the trunk of his car, and then forgot about it. What better time to test it, Michael thought, as he shut the trunk and headed back into the hotel.  
    Moments later, standing in front of Room 408, he donned the mask, placed the small camera in the palm of his hand, and knocked on the door. When Sheila opened it dressed in a silk robe that barely reached to her upper thigh, she giggled and said, “You’re not room service, are you now?”
    “No, ma’am,” Michael said innocently, and then asked, “Is this 308?”
    “No, that’s one floor down, Chewbacca,” Sheila said, her speech slightly slurred from the impact of two vodka martinis.  
    “I can’t see too well with this mask on; sorry to bother you,” Michael replied, while squeezing down three consecutive times on the camera’s high speed and all but silent shutter. As Michael did this, he imperceptibly made slight adjustments of the angle at which he pointed the center of his palm.
    “Sorry to bother you, Ma’am.”
    “That’s all right, Chewie. You’re kind of cute.”
    Michael gave a small laugh, apologized again, and turned to walk away…totally satisfied that he had gotten some wonderful photos of Sheila about to engage in another session of Friday night fun at the local Embassy Suites.  

    Michael was so excited that he went straight to the darkroom in the back of Milton’s shop to see what, if anything, he’d captured after this inventive use of the newest weapon in his arsenal.
    In watching and waiting for