My immediate reaction was to say no, not at all, but I stopped for a moment and thought. “I’m not sure,” I said eventually. “Like photography for you, hacking carried me through some tough times, after Mary’s miscarriages. But I always knew that it was a bad thing, that it could get me in trouble, so I had to rein in my enthusiasm for it.”
“Then what makes you feel passionate?”
“Well, you, of course,” I said, smiling. “And Rochester. I like teaching the occasional course, and I’m intrigued by everything I still have to learn to make Friar Lake a success. But I guess it comes down to the thrill of figuring out puzzles and mysteries.”
I told her how I’d lost track of time that afternoon while I was analyzing the data I’d collected about Wyatt Lisowski. “I want to help Peggy, and even though I never knew Carl Landsea and I don’t think he was a particularly nice guy, I want to see justice for him.” I paused. “But most of all I want to know how all the pieces fit together.”
“My puzzle guru in shining armor,” Lili said, smiling. She took my hand and squeezed.
She cleaned up the dishes while I went into the dining room and collected the results on Rita Corcoran from the social media analyzer. Then I opened a new window and started putting in the names of the other Angels, adding in additional parameters that would search for connections between them.
As Lili passed me on her way upstairs, she stopped. “You’re not taking that laptop with us down the shore, are you?”
I looked up at her. “I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good. Because I want you to have a vacation, too, and I want us to be present for each other. Try and shut off the phones and the social media and enjoy ourselves.”
“I have to do something when you go off to take pictures,” I protested. “But you’re right, this little baby is too much of a distraction. I promise to leave it behind.”
She went upstairs, and I worried that I wouldn’t be finished with all my analysis by the time we left for the shore. Could I really stop, knowing that Peggy Doyle’s future could be in the balance? If I had to choose between solving a puzzle and being present for Lili which way would I go? I was afraid of what my answer would be.
Friday morning when I checked the HR system, there were no new applicants to review, so I spent most of the day reviewing the data the social media analyzer had come up with. I found that a couple of the other Angels had made posts or tweets that mentioned Liberty Bell University, usually in a snarky way. One had written, “Imagine me going to college at my age. Not.”
Did that mean these guys had registered for courses to scam the government out of financial aid money, the way Carl had? It made sense that if one of them was doing it, the others would have, too.
Late in the afternoon I checked my hacker support group, curious to see if the kid had responded to my message. He had, and he thanked me for the advice. “I talked to my dad about these courses. He’s a doctor and he always thought I would go to medical school, too, but my grades suck so bad he’s finally accepted I’ll barely get into college. He says he’s happy I’ve found a positive way to channel my enthusiasm, LOL. Of course he hopes I’ll get a degree and become an honest member of society. I guess some dreams never die, right?”
I wrote back to say that I was glad he and his dad were on the same page, and that I was eager to hear which courses he chose. “I might end up doing the same thing,” I wrote. “I’ve been fighting the urge to hack for ten years by now and it might be time for me to make some changes.”
After I sent the message I sat back and considered it. I didn’t need to switch careers—things were going well at Friar Lake. But it was always a good idea to have a plan for the future, in case the college had other plans for me, or Lili wanted to move to Florida.
Saturday morning Lili left for a trip to the salon to get prepared for a double date with Rick and his girlfriend Tamsen. Once again I got lost in the data I’d collected, making tiny connections between the Angels, Rita Corcoran and Liberty Bell University. One random comment on Rita’s Facebook page led me to discover that she worked at LBU, though I couldn’t tell what she did.
That was frustrating. I couldn’t find her name anywhere on the LBU website, which meant she probably wasn’t a professor there, not even an adjunct. But that left a whole range of staff jobs—she could have been anything from a worker in the college café to the president’s personal assistant.
I tried using the basic white pages search I’d done for Carl, where I’d learned about his mother, his sister and his ex-wife. In Rita’s case, I discovered that her middle name was Jane and that her ex-husband’s name was Gregory Corcoran. She was related to an Anne D. Henderson and a Catherine Doonan. I assumed that if they were her sisters, their maiden name was Doonan, but I couldn’t find anything online that proved that.
Her recent addresses weren’t very useful. She had lived in Yardley, in Pittsburgh, and then Newtown. She wasn’t a biker chick, either. I found no record that she owned a motorcycle, and the only clue I found that connected her with the biker group was when she was in the same place as a couple of the Angels, where one of them had checked in at a bar in New Hope and indicated he was with Rita, among others.
Lili came home from the salon, and I was smart enough to glance up from my research long enough to tell her that she looked terrific—which was true, of course. Then I went back to work, stopping only long enough to feed Rochester and give him his evening meal.
At six-thirty Lili and I left to meet Rick and Tamsen at Le Canal, a French restaurant in New Hope that was only a couple of blocks from the bar where Rita had been with the Angels. On our way to the restaurant, we passed it, and there was a line of motorcycles angled toward the curb as we passed. I had the car windows open, and heard ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man” blasting through the speakers.
Le Canal was a world away from that bar. It was a low-slung building alongside the Delaware Canal, with a wall of picture windows that looked out at the towpath. During the day, the mule barges went right past, tourists peering in the windows at lunch guests, but in the evening the canal was quiet, moonlight sparkling on the water and only the occasional duck paddling past.
We met Rick and Tamsen in the parking lot. Tamsen was a few years younger than Rick and me, a tall, slim woman with shoulder-length blonde hair and a broad smile. She wore an open-necked shirt in light blue oxford cloth with the sleeves rolled up and secured by buttoned tabs, and a pair of white slacks my mother would have called pedal-pushers or capris, and flat sandals with rhinestones on the straps.
She looked as casually elegant as Lili, who’d worn a black dress with a low-cut neck and a swirling skirt, with a diamond pendant around her neck. They hugged and kissed while Rick and I shook hands, both of us looking a lot less formal than the women we were with. Rick wore one of his microfiber shirts and a pair of black jeans, and I was in a polo shirt and khakis. We were the opposite of peacocks, allowing our women to shine.
We were fortunate that our friend Gail Dukowski, who owned the Chocolate Ear pastry shop in the center of Stewart’s Crossing, had worked with the chef at Le Canal during their days in New York, so we were always treated well, given a table by the window and comped with an appetizer platter.
“Rick says you guys are going down the shore soon,” Tamsen said as we nibbled on grilled mushrooms stuffed manchego cheese and tomato and mushroom flatbreads. “I’m so jealous. I’d love to get away for a while, and Justin loves the ocean.”
Lili looked at me, and the same thought passed between us, but Lili voiced it. “Come join us,” she said. “I snagged us a two-bedroom cottage on Airbnb, a block from the ocean. Rochester and Rascal would have a blast together. And there’s a pull-out couch in the living room for Justin.”
Tamsen looked at Rick. “What do you think, coach?”
Rick said, “I’m in this for the long haul. I want to marry you someday, and I want to be Justin’s stepdad, though I know I’ll never replace Ryan.”
Ryan Morgan had died a war hero in Afghanistan when his son was only a few years old, and he’d spent the last years idolizing a photo of his dad in full gear.
“You’re sure you wouldn’t mind?” Tamsen said. “Us horning in on your vacation?”
“Steve’s already said he’s going to be bored while I’m out taking pictures. This way he’ll have lots of company.”
“We can teach Justin how to boogie board,” I said to Rick. “Though I’m not sure I remember all that well myself. It’s been a long time.”
By the end of our meal, we’d made our plans. As long as Rick could get the week off from the police department, and Tamsen could rearrange a couple of meetings with clients of her advertising specialties business, we’d all have a great week together down the shore.
“You don’t think I was too impulsive in inviting them to join us, do you?” Lili asked, as we took a walk along the towpath after dinner. “When I looked at you it seemed like we were thinking the same thing.”
Rick and Tamsen had already headed back to Stewart’s Crossing, but we’d decided to take a stroll. The humidity had dropped and there was a light breeze coming off the water, and stars spangled the sky above us.
“Not at all. Rick’s my best friend, you and Tamsen get along well, and Rochester and Rascal are great pals.”
“We’ll have a week with Justin, though,” she said. “All five of us crammed into that little bungalow with the two dogs.”
“Rick and I will take Justin to the beach. You and Tamsen can have some girl time, and I think we’ll all get along. If not, then you and I will sneak off for dinner on our own a couple of times.”
“Food,” Lili groaned. “We’re going to have to load up a couple of carts to have enough for everyone. A few dozen eggs, bacon, pancake mix… and that’s just for breakfast.”
I laughed. “Don’t over think it,” I said. “You and Tamsen can make up your grocery list together. Remember lots of treats for the dogs.”
“It always comes back to Rochester, doesn’t it?” Lili said. She laughed and took my hand.
“To the three of us,” I said.
18 – Social Media
I finally got to talk to Lili about taking a computer forensic course on Sunday morning, over a breakfast of chocolate-chip pancakes. “What do you think?” I asked her. “Should I give it a try? Or would it be too tempting for me?”
“You won’t be tempted to hack by taking a course in computer security,” she said. “Probably the opposite. I think your instinct is good, that it would satisfy your curiosity without getting you into trouble. And I’m the poster child for career zigzags. I know you’ve done the same thing, too, so it would be useful for you to have some other credentials under your belt. You never know what the future holds.”
“As long as it holds you in it,” I said, taking her hand.
“Of course.” She smiled at me. “I loved the way Rick was so earnest with Tamsen last night, that he’s in it for the long haul and wants to marry her eventually.”
“And us? Are we still on the same page about marriage?”
“I’m not closing the door to it,” she said. “Right now, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” She looked at me. “And you?”
“I agree. There might be some time in the future when it will be advantageous for us to be married—benefits or Social Security or something like that. But for now, I agree with you, things are good.”
She smiled and squeezed my hand. “How’s your search for student life director going?”
“Lots of candidates but no one stands out so far.” I let go of her hand and fetched Rochester a dental stick from the bag on the counter. I handed it to him and he chewed noisily as I sat back down across from Lili.
“Some of them have written doctoral dissertations on student engagement,” I said. “I’m glad I never went on for a PhD. I couldn’t imagine getting so involved in something to write a whole manuscript on it.”
“I loved doing the research for my dissertation,” she said. “Weegee was such a fascinating guy and he conveyed so much in his photographs that I could stare at one for hours and keep coming up with new things to say.”
“What was the title of your dissertation again? Something about photo-politics?”
“Weegee and the Photo-politics of Race, Class and Gender,” she said. “Very overblown title, of course, but I loved creating that word photo-politics. Someday I hope there’ll be an Urban Dictionary entry on that word that references me.”
“I can do that for you. The Urban Dictionary’s a wiki so I can create an entry if I want.”
“I’d rather it came from someone who stumbled on me,” she said. “But it’s sweet of you to offer.” She stood up and began to clear the table. “What’s on your agenda for today?”
“I’ve been running some software that trolls social media for information on the other Levitt’s Angels,” I said. “So far it looks like a couple of them have connections to Liberty Bell University, and I think they might all be part of a financial aid scam.”
I described the way the scam worked as Lili cleaned up and Rochester nosed the floor for stray tidbits.
After the kitchen was clean and Lili went upstairs, I sat down at my hacker laptop to review the results of the social media search. Rochester sprawled on the floor beside me as I opened a new spreadsheet and began transferring information to it. A half-dozen terms seemed to come up regularly, including “Levitt’s Angels,” “Levittown,” the bike shop Pennsy Choppers, and a couple of organized bike runs like the one I had done with Bob Freehl. I created a column for each one, and every time I found a connection between a person and one of those entities, I made a check mark.
The portrait that began to come together was interesting. Several of the guys regularly got together for runs, and all of them patronized the bike shop where I’d rented my motorcycle, and where Travis had given me an idea of how Carl’s bike could have been messed with.
If all the Angels on my list had the ability to fiddle with Carl’s brakes, then all of them had to be suspects in his death. Means, motive and opportunity. Every Angel had the means.
They all had the opportunity, too. They had all been at a party at Pennsy Choppers a couple of days before Carl’s fatal accident. The parking lot wrapped around the building, and if Carl had parked in the back, any one of them could have fiddled with his brakes while no one was looking.
Motive was the sticking point. None of the messages or tweets or other information I found pointed to a rivalry between Carl and any of the other Angels. Sure, someone could have gotten jealous and wanted more money from the LBU scam, and if Carl was the conduit to Rita, he might have been able to control who was able to register and how often.
Elise had said that Carl was like her Marine ex-husband, very controlling. One of the other Angels could have rebelled against that attitude. Was someone going to expose the scam, providing a threat to Carl?
Unfortunately, the only person who appeared to have means, motive and opportunity was Peggy Landsea. She was mentioned occasionally in posts as riding pillion with Carl, and she was a smart enough woman to have learned about bike brakes if she wanted to. She had the opportunity, because his bike was at the house when he went to work. Her motive? Perhaps Carl was too controlling, or that anonymous caller to the police was right, and Peggy was being abused.
Getting away from an abusive husband was a huge motivation. Because Peggy wasn’t working, she probably had little money of her own. Though I’d seen her pay bills from the checking account she shared with Carl, if she’d chosen to run she couldn’t take more than the current balance with her. Through her years of drug abuse and pole dancing, she’d become estranged from her family, and I found no indication anywhere on social media that she had any friends other than people she knew through Carl or the Angels.
If she couldn’t run, the only other alternative was to get rid of Carl and inherit his house and whatever he had in the bank. At
least, that’s the way a prosecutor and a jury would see it.
But she didn’t seem to know about the Pell grant scam, and she said she didn’t have access to Carl’s email account herself. So if that scheme was connected to Carl’s death, that let Peggy off the hook.
A lot of assumptions.
I kept working on my spreadsheet, and I was pleased when Rita Corcoran’s name came up in a Facebook post by someone in the admissions department at LBU. A photo had been taken at a holiday party the previous December, and Rita was one of those tagged.
That was verification that I was right, and that Rita worked at LBU. I opened up the post where she was tagged and dropped down the rabbit hole of Facebook research, jumping from page to page and one friend list to another. I finally found a post with a picture of Rita at a restaurant with another woman, the assistant registrar, who had posted, “Lunch with the assistant director of financial aid. Good talk about strengthening the connection between our offices.”
Rita wasn’t named there, which was why the page hadn’t come up in my original search. I pulled up a couple of online pictures where Rita had been identified, and compared them. The hair was the same, a chic shoulder-length bob of brown with blonde highlights, and her nose had a slight twist to it. In all the pictures she dressed similarly, low-necked white blouses under navy blazers. Zooming in, I was even able to identify the same pendant around her neck in a couple of the pictures, a square of some kind of iridescent rock.
Bells started going off in my head. Maybe Rita was the connection between Carl and the Levitt’s Angels. Suppose Wyatt Lisowski had gotten hold of those social security numbers through his job in medical billing, and asked his fellow Angels what he could do with them.
Carl knew Wyatt, a student at LBU who was also a member of the Levitt’s Angels. How did Wyatt figure out the financial aid scam? I needed to know more about Rita Corcoran to figure out if she was the one who had made the whole scheme come together.
Another Three Dogs in a Row Page 52