Case of the One-Eyed Tiger

by Jeffrey M. Poole

  Sherlock stretched his neck out, touched the tip of his nose to the photo’s glass front, and nudged it out of my hands. I barely caught it before it could hit the ground. I scowled at my furry companion.

  “What’d you do that for? You almost made me drop it, pal. We don’t want to break this thing, okay?”

  I watched the corgi inch closer again and tightened my grip on the picture. Sure enough, Sherlock nosed the picture a second time. Curious, I spun the picture around and looked at it.

  “What’s the problem? Is there something we’re missing?”

  Jillian took the picture from me and brought it up closer to her face. She looked down at Sherlock and gave him a friendly pat on the top of his head.

  “Oh, you’re so right, aren’t you? You’re such a smart boy.”

  Sherlock’s stump threatened to wiggle right off his butt. I looked at Jillian with confusion written all over my face.

  “What’s going on? Did we miss something?”

  Jillian nodded, “As a matter of fact, we did. I didn’t finish identifying everyone. I’m pretty sure your dog just called me out on that, so I apologize.”

  A look of incredulity spread across my face as I noted the smug look on Sherlock’s.

  “We didn’t look at the children,” Jillian explained. “Let’s see who else we’ve got here. You already noticed Gerald. The twin girls on the far right are Teri and Meri. I really don’t remember much about them, so I don’t know whose children they are. Now, I don’t know who the boy next to Gerald is, but I can tell you the girl on Gerald’s other side is Emily.”

  I nodded as I looked at the freckled blonde girl with pigtails. She looked to be about 8 or 9. Jillian tapped me on the shoulder and pointed at Emily.

  “I told you about her in my shop, remember?”

  I tapped the small figure in the photo.

  “This girl? You’re telling me this is Emelie Vång? I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Sam was related to a famous artist. I wonder why everyone says she’s from Sweden.”

  Jillian pulled her phone out from her purse and started tapping on the screen. I watched her fingers slide and scroll across her phone’s display for a full minute before she finally looked up.

  “It says here that she married a Swedish stock broker and currently lives in Malmo.”

  “Why did she change her name?”

  “I’m told it’s something most married women choose to do.”

  “You know what I mean,” I said. “Why did she go from ‘Emily’ to ‘Emelie’?”

  Jillian shrugged, “Who can say? If I were to venture a guess then I’d say ‘Emelie’ is the Swedish spelling of ‘Emily’.”

  I pointed at the piece of paper with the charts and boxes Jillian had drawn up and, thankfully, had brought with her.

  “If your theory is true, how many people do you think would know that Emelie Vång is from PV?”

  “Presumably no one but her family,” Jillian guessed. “If I tell you how I think Emelie fits into PV then you have to promise to keep it to yourself. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want her ties to PV known.”

  “Got it. Mum’s the word.”

  Jillian tapped the box to the right of Zora’s.

  “This is Dianne, Zora’s sister. See the two boxes here? This one hasn’t been labeled, and as you noticed from before, this other one is off by itself. Well, one is for Stephen, Dianne’s son,” Jillian wrote the name in the tiny box and then drew a line from Stephen’s box to the unlinked one, “and the other is for Stephen’s sister…”

  “Emily,” I finished, turning to stare at the photo once more. “Or Emelie, I guess,” throwing a fake French accent on her alternate name.

  “She lives in Sweden, not France,” Jillian clarified. “And that’s a horrible accent.”

  I chuckled, “Whatever.”

  “So, back to the picture. That’s Stephen on the right and over on the left is Emily. And this?” Jillian tapped her finger on the final unidentified child: a girl with long black pigtails. The girl wasn’t smiling. In fact, her lower lip was protruding and she had a frown on her face. “This is Abigail’s third child, Taylor. She still lives in town.”

  Rusty wheels ground into motion. The name clicked. I brought the picture up for a closer look.

  “Holy shit! Are you telling me this girl right here is Taylor Rossen? The beat reporter for the Pomme Valley Gazette? Abigail is her mother?”

  It was finally starting to make sense.

  TEN

  “Yes. You’ve talked to her before. As a matter of fact, you met her in my store. She didn’t tell you she was a relative of your late wife’s?”

  “No, she sure as hell did not. Unbelievable. Wait. Look at the picture. Why isn’t Taylor standing next to her brother? Why place her on the other side of the picture?”

  “Taylor and Gerald never got along together,” Jillian explained. “I’ve never seen two siblings who detested each other more than those two.”

  “Who was older?” I asked.

  “Gerald. By a few years, I think.”

  “Let me guess. He was always picking on her.”

  “Every time I saw the two of them together it was the other way around,” Jillian contradicted. “Taylor went out of her way to make her brother miserable. She was a bossy little thing. Still is, if you ask me.”

  “She seemed nice enough to me,” I recalled. “That is, she was still pleasant even after I chewed her out for publishing my picture in the paper without my consent.”

  Jillian stared at me as though I had just sprouted horns.

  “You think Taylor is nice? Far from it. She’s the type of person that will stab you in the back, with only a second’s notice, if she thinks she can benefit from it in any way, shape, or form.”

  I looked down at Sherlock and then at the photograph. Was that who Sherlock was trying to get me to look at in the picture? Taylor, and not her brother? Was the reporter the person that was behind all of this?

  I groaned aloud. Let’s face it. I sucked at being a detective.

  I was reminded of my cell’s unusual text alert. Phones aren’t typically preset to the cricket, Jillian had explained. I know I didn’t change the text alert. No one else has touched that phone besides me. Could Taylor have been the one responsible for changing the alert for an incoming text? Even if she was, what was the purpose? Now that I’m thinking about it, could she have done anything else while she had been in possession of my phone?

  “If Taylor is responsible for setting all this up,” I began, pulling my phone from my pocket, “could she have done anything to my phone that could come back to bite me in the ass?”

  “You gave Taylor your phone?” Jillian asked, surprised. “What on Earth did you do that for?”

  “To get the picture of the guy who she claimed had been her informant. She gave me the picture of Gerald. But, according to you, that is her brother. Why would she do that? Wouldn’t she have recognized her own family? Why pretend she didn’t know him?”

  “They hated each other,” Jillian reminded me. “I’d say Taylor saw it as the perfect way to deflect attention from herself and throw a little heat on her brother. What better person to pin the blame on than Gerald?”

  “But I caught Gerald following me!” I protested. “They’ve got to be working together.”

  Jillian was already shaking her head.

  “There’s no way. Now, I’m not saying they both don’t want the same thing. I would assume neither one of them want to see you in town. However, with regards to them working together, you need to trust me. They aren’t.”

  I continued to stare at my phone. I was convinced Taylor had done something to it but didn’t have a clue as to what. Then again, I didn’t even know what the phone was capable of doing, so how was I supposed to check to see if it had been tampered with?

  “You look lost,” Jillian observed. She held out a hand. “Give it. Let me take a look. All she did was send you a picture?”

  “Y
eah. Uh, let me think. She said she did something to my phone in order to get the picture over to me.”

  Jillian was silent as she considered. She turned my phone over in her hands and stared at the manufacturer’s mark etched onto the back cover.

  “This is one of the newer model smart phones. Its security settings are typically set high. Most of these things won’t allow a picture to be transmitted from a complete stranger.”

  “That’s right,” I agreed. “I remember now. She said she had to add herself to my address book before she could send me anything. Can you tell if she did anything else to it?”

  “Did you know these phones have ways to track family and friends?” Jillian asked as she tapped the surface of my phone several times. She slid a finger across the screen, waited a few moments, and then tapped it twice more. “I wouldn’t put it past her to enable tracking on… There it is. Wow. Do you see this?”

  I came up behind Jillian and looked over her shoulder to see what she was doing. She had opened another program and it was showing a map of Pomme Valley on the screen. A blinking blue dot in the center of the screen caught my attention. Granted, the map wasn’t that spectacular to look at but there was no denying what it was showing. I could make out Main Street, and if that curve over there was 5th, then that would mean the blinking blue dot on the outskirts of town could only be…

  “Is that me?” I incredulously asked.

  In response, Jillian pinched her thumb and forefinger together, touched the surface of my phone, then spread her fingers apart. The map zoomed in and displayed a street level view of my house. Guess where the blue dot was?

  “The ‘Spot a Pal’ app has been enabled,” Jillian informed me. “Look what it says there down there at the bottom. ‘Location shared on another device’. Do you have more than one cell?”

  “I’ve had more than one cell before,” I said, shaking my head, “but not at the same time. And never one like this. I used to own a flip phone and man alive do I miss it. I got this one after the accident. Tell me, does this mean Taylor can see where I’m at all times?”

  “It sure looks like it,” Jillian agreed. “I don’t see her anywhere on the map so that must mean she has hers turned off on her end. Or disabled.”

  “So why can she see me but I can’t see her?” I demanded. “You shouldn’t be allowed to do that.”

  “That’s why location sharing can only be enabled in person,” Jillian answered. “Do you know how long she had your phone in her possession?”

  “Not long,” I said. “Maybe a minute.”

  “Were you watching her the whole time?” Jillian asked.

  “No,” I admitted with a sigh. “I definitely should have been paying closer attention. Why? Did you find something else?”

  “Have you installed many apps?” Jillian wanted to know.

  “Apps? No. Not a one. Why?”

  Jillian leaned close and showed me the phone. The cell’s many icons were displayed on the screen. She made a slow and deliberate motion of sliding a finger across the screen. The icons changed, as though a page had been flipped in a book. The screen was now blank. There were no icons, or apps as Jillian kept calling them. The wallpaper was there, but nothing else.

  “There’s nothing on this page,” Jillian remarked. She bore a puzzled look as she switched back and forth between the first page, with all the apps, and the second, which didn’t have any. “A second page would only appear if there were an actual app on it. Do you see anything? I sure don’t.”

  “Okay, what does that mean?” I asked.

  “It’s almost as if an app was installed on this page but was then deleted. Hmm, let me try something.”

  “I’m glad you know what you’re doing,” I mumbled, as I watched Jillian fiddle with the sophisticated electronic device. I was really going to have to buckle down and learn how those blasted things worked.

  She pressed a finger down on one of the apps, the map app from what I could see, and held it there. After a few moments she dragged it to the right, causing the phone’s display to switch to page two. She removed her finger and then let out an exclamation of surprise.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, leaning forward to look over her shoulder again.

  Jillian showed me the display. The map app was now on the second page, only it wasn’t in the top left corner, but directly to the right of the ‘first’ position. The app was in the ‘second’ position, leaving an empty space directly to its left.

  “Is that a problem?” I asked. I sensed Jillian thought this was important but I really didn’t know why. I’ll be honest. I still didn’t know what the hell I was looking at, other than Jillian had done something to my phone to make all those icon thingamajigs disappear. All but one, that is.

  “This app should be sitting over here,” Jillian explained, tapping the empty space. She tried to slide the app over but the little map icon refused to cooperate. “It won’t let me put anything in the top left corner.”

  “And that’s significant because…?”

  “The phone thinks something is there.”

  “Something? Like what, another app?”

  Jillian nodded, “Exactly. The only problem with that logic is that I’m tapping the empty space there and nothing is happening. I was hoping that maybe the app just didn’t have an icon, but still required space on the display. Wait a moment.”

  Jillian pressed her index finger down on the empty space and held it there. After a few moments a new screen appeared. I was looking at a simple page of options with toggle switches. My blood chilled as I saw what those options were and the fact that all the options had been enabled. I think I went from complete shock to indignant outrage in 0.3 seconds.

  Geolocating…On.

  Live Call…On

  Call Recording…On

  Ambient Listen…On

  Ambient Recording…On

  Rear Camera…On

  “Are you kidding me?” I demanded, snatching my phone out of Jillian’s hands. “How the hell did she get this on there? Look at this. Does this mean she’s able to listen in on my phone calls? Ambient listening. Wouldn’t that mean she could remotely activate the phone’s microphone and listen to what’s going on around me? How is this sort of thing even legal?”

  “There’s no way she could have gotten this on your phone,” Jillian told me. “There are security measures in place on all these types of phone. No one besides the phone’s owner can install anything. Not without knowing what your security code is.”

  My eyes widened. Taylor had asked me to punch my code in. Something about trying to get into my settings?

  “Do you need that code in order to look at a phone’s settings?” I asked, already knowing what the answer would be.

  “You need a code to unlock the phone so you can use it,” Jillian told me, “and you’ll need that same code if you install anything on it. But you shouldn’t need the code to look at the settings, unless you change a security feature. Why? Zack, tell me you didn’t give her your code.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Good.”

  “But…”

  “But what, Zack?” Jillian asked me, concerned. “What did you do?”

  “She told me she needed my code in order to get my phone to allow a picture to be sent to it.”

  “This model phone doesn’t need a code in order to do that,” Jillian pointed out. “The sender needs to be one of your contacts.”

  “Right,” I confirmed. “She told me that.”

  “But that wouldn’t need a code. Zack, I think that’s when she installed this secret app on your phone.”

  “Does that mean she’s listening to us right now? Taylor, are you hearing this? I’m going straight to the cops with this, you crazy b…”

  “Whoa!” Jillian cut in. “I don’t like that word, Zack.”

  I swallowed my anger and nodded.

  “Neither did Sam. Sorry.” I handed my phone over. “Would you please do the honors and get
rid of that thing?”

  Jillian placed a finger over the secret app and hesitated.

  “Are you sure you want me to do that? It’s evidence your phone has been tampered with. You really don’t want me to delete it, do you?”

  “Well, I don’t want her spying on me, either!” I protested. “How can I…” I trailed off and snapped my fingers. I quickly got to my feet, prompting Jillian to do the same. “Wait. I think I know what I can do. All those hours of watching TV might pay off after all.”

  “What are you going to do?” Jillian asked as she followed me out of the living room and into the kitchen.

  I started opening cabinets and drawers.

  “Look for some aluminum foil,” I instructed. “I saw it on Lore Breakers once that a simple layer of aluminum foil will render a cell phone useless. If this thing can’t get a signal then it can’t transmit data back to wherever it’s sending data to, right?”

  Jillian nodded, “If that’s true, then that would be perfect. Since I’m pretty sure that this app, whatever it is, is illegal then I’m sure there’s probably some way to remotely delete it.” Jillian squatted down to open the cabinets under the kitchen sink. “Do you really need to wrap it in tin foil? Couldn’t you just turn it off?”

  I had been rifling through a drawer with all manner of kitchen utensils when I stopped, laughed like a drunk idiot, and looked at my phone like the alien piece of hardware I knew it to be.

  “Well fine, then. Take the easy way out.”

  With my phone safely off I placed it on the coffee table as I walked by. There was an old-fashioned wall phone hanging just inside the kitchen entry. Verifying that I had a dial tone, I was about ready to punch in a number when I hesitated. I looked over at Jillian and replaced the handset in the cradle.

  “If she’s bugged my cell then there’s a damn good chance she’s bugged my home line, too. Hell, she’s probably the one that made those phone calls from inside the house before I arrived in town. Can I borrow your cell?”

  Jillian pulled her cell from her purse and handed it to me. I’m pretty sure it was the same model as my cell, only Jillian had it in a bright purple case with sparkling rhinestones all over the back of it. Shrugging, I called Vance, who answered on the first ring. In case you’re wondering, yes, by now I knew his number by heart.