Page 47 of Murder on the Boardwalk

“Really? Then I’ll call him and see what he says about my income sources.”

“Then contact Logan Donnelly,” Brogan urged. “That guy knows every piece of property in town.”

Kelly rubbed her hands together and zipped open her laptop bag. “But first, let’s tackle our prime suspects. What do you have for us, Brogan?”

“As we talked about earlier, after initially getting the runaround about the surfer called Zephyr from most of the people in town—”

“That includes Brent, Wally, Murphy, and to some degree Tazzie Crossland and Richie Plunkett, to name a few,” Jade pointed out. “Who should have spoken up and admitted to knowing him.”

“But didn’t,” Kelly finished.

“It would’ve saved us a lot of time,” Brogan grumbled, tapping the whiteboard. “Our goal is to start eliminating a few of the suspects. Find out if Lee ‘Zephyr’ Willis was indeed out to sea on the Coast Guard cutterQuarter Moonwhen he said he was.”

“I’ll take that one,” Kelly offered. “I’ll dig up his pay slips online and try to reach as many of his shipmates who served with him at the time as I can.”

“I’ll check out this Michael Holcomb, known as Diego,” Jade said, scrambling to boot up her computer.

Brogan made notes on her iPad. “That leaves me to track down Lex Luthor and find out his real name. That means I’ve left Tazzie’s ex-husband, Dennis Marshall, for last. I’ll make a few calls first and then set up a face-to-face meeting with him at his home in Santa Cruz. Lucien and I will take care of interviewing him, hopefully, this afternoon.”

“You guys want to see his reaction to reopening the murder investigation, right?” Kelly prompted.

“Yep. It’s the same reason we had to see Tazzie, Richie Plunkett, and Zephyr for ourselves,” Brogan noted as she keyed in data on her laptop.

After three hours spent scouring public databases and searching online for current phone numbers, the women compared their results.

Kelly went first. “You can eliminate Zephyr. Not only did his pay stubs back up his work schedule that weekend, but I also tracked down several of his shipmates. They each verified he was onboard theQuarter Moon—with them—no confusion about that weekend. The entire crew didn’t arrive back in port until Monday morning. Which means Zephyr couldn’t have killed Gidget.”

Using the black marker, Brogan drew a line across Zeph’s name. “Okay, one down. Jade, any luck with Diego?”

“Definitely. I talked to Michael Holcomb. It turns out he spent that weekend in San Diego with his family, who had been pressuring him to return home to finish school. He didn’t arrive back in Pelican Pointe until the end of August to get his stuff before his senior year started the day after Labor Day.”

Brogan frowned and turned to the whiteboard, marking off the name Michael Holcomb. “If he was in San Diego, Holcomb couldn’t be our guy.”

“No, but here’s the interesting tidbit I learned from him. When Holcomb returned to town, he discovered his roommate, Lex Luthor, had moved out. Luthor took everything he owned without leaving Diego a note explaining where he went. Diego claims that he couldn’t afford the rent on his own, so the decision to move back to San Diego was pretty much made for him. I also checked out his story. It seems Michael Holcomb graduated from Grossmont High School the following spring in 1979. I double-checked. But to this day, Diego has no idea why Lex Luthor left so suddenly or where he went. But I did learn from him that Lex’s real name was Leon Gibson.”

“Bingo,” Brogan muttered and added the name next to Lex Luthor on the whiteboard. “Convenient that this guy moved out right after Gidget’s murder.”

Kelly nodded. “It’s certainly suspicious.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get too excited. After running Leon Gibson’s name through the grinder, I found out the man died in prison eight years ago. He died in 2014 after another inmate stabbed him. Gibson was serving a twenty-year sentence for aggravated sexual assault and rape. His victim was a sixteen-year-old girl.”

Brogan exchanged looks with Kelly. “That certainly sends Leon Gibson straight to the top of the list, dead or alive.”

“Who’s dead or alive?” Lucien wanted to know as he entered the kitchen from the mudroom.

“Leon Gibson, otherwise known as Lex Luthor, died in prison.” Brogan pointed to Jade as she once again read off the details of Leon’s death.

Lucien studied the whiteboard. “Wow, you guys have been busy. So Leon Gibson could be our killer.”

“Highly probable,” Brogan returned. “An ex-con with a history of sexual battery against a teenager. But how do we prove it?”

“We’d need to get lucky and get DNA from Gidget,” Lucien said, rubbing the side of his jaw.

“How’d the exhumations go?” Kelly asked.

“Not my favorite way to start the week,” Lucien grunted, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “I’d rather be at the dentist getting a root canal than watching a team pull caskets from the ground. Not only is it depressing, but it’s downright morbid.”

The researcher-scientist side of Kelly reasoned, “It had to be done, though. There’s no other way to extract Gidget’s DNA. Did Brent say anything about Gidget’s evidence box?”

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