Wylah looking up to mom

At 9:30 in the morning Morgan texts with a friend who was heading into Aspen, and wanted company, but Morgan had a jazz class and couldn’t go with her so they made plans to meet later that afternoon at a coffee shop.

Our neighbor Elliott suddenly wants to talk with me, he has news.  We had not talked about the stalking in quite a while. It had reached a point where Steve said from what I was telling him, that it was a one way flow of information, Elliott was always wanting to know how the stalking investigation was going, which I would bring him up to date on, and then Elliott never really had any new information except another rumor that always came via Brooke Harris’ mother, Christina Harris.  Steve had reached a point that unless someone had real intel we should not be sharing what we know any longer. I had agreed, so with Elliott I had just avoided him. But this seemed too promising.

We meet out front, as he was walking his dogs. The first news was that Elliott heard from Brooke’s mom that Brooke and Keenan had broken up and Keenan moved out of Brooke’s dad’s house. He wondered if it had been quieter lately. I tell him that, yes as a matter of fact, it has been quiet, silent even, Morgan seems to have this feeling lately that somehow it was over. I didn’t know what to make of it, but now it made sense.

Elliott says this is great, and then he said something that was out of place enough to become locked in my memory. “Yeah, ever since the detectives have been coming around more often they freaked out.”

I immediately ask him who he means by, “they.”  Elliot changed the subject. Telling me how glad he was that Keenan was gone, and now everything could get back to normal. Which only added to my need to know and my attention was piqued, so I again asked him, “Elliott, what did you mean by they?”

He again tried to change the subject by asking what we had caught on the video cameras, and launched into an explanation about how he’s been extra careful lately because he walks his dogs at night sometimes, and he doesn’t want to get caught on camera, and have us think he is the stalker. His nervous laugh sent shivers up my spine, and I will never forget it.

I thought for a moment, not concerned at all about the awkward silence. We had not talked to anyone about the detectives. Only to ask permission from Rhonda to use one of her trees in case they wanted to mount one of their cameras in it. They used bolts to put them up for extra security, and Rhonda was absolutely fine with it. Anything that will catch the stalker, she had said and was still looking to talking to them about things she had noticed anyway.

I told Ellliott we hadn’t really had a chance to talk to anyone about the detectives yet, we were all so busy and they were sort of putting together a game plan. But as soon as we had one I assured E we would talk about it, that we would probably want him to be a part of it. I told him I guessed it was up to the detectives from here, how they wanted to proceed and all.

Elliott did not stop surprising me. He then told me, “Toni, its kind of obvious, first it was deputy trucks at all hours of the night, two and three at a time, and now all of a sudden it’s detectives, everyone is talking about it.”

I wanted to ask him who “everyone” was, but I still had not gotten answer to who they were, so I paused again. The detective’s truck was nondescript.  It said nothing on it, I thought about it, and to me I would not even know it was a Garfield Sheriff’s vehicle.

Elliott suddenly remembered a phone call he had to make, and our little conversation was over.

I called Steve as soon as I was in the house and he was amazed, he also had his hands full and said as soon as he could he would break free so we could talk about it. He also cautioned me to make sure the windows were closed if I talked about this with anyone on the phone today.  He knew me so well – my voice carries.

As soon as Steve came home it was obvious this had been on his mind since I talked to him.  Before we even said anything he was telling me about Detective Glassmire’s truck.  It might have county plates on it?  I’m not sure.  And he said maybe there were the pull you over lights, but they are behind the grill. If that truck passes you on the highway, you might think, oh yeah sheriff, but you would not be sure.  He wondered how it was common knowledge around the neighborhood.  He wondered if they had canvassed, gone door to door asking a few questions, and not told us about it.  He surmised that would put the buzz into high gear.

Then he was talking about the other detective’s car.  He was pretty sure it was a silver SUV, small, an Explorer, once again not certain of the plates. He compared it to one of my friend’s car (a friend of mine that stops by, while on errands, from time to time). Steve said they park in the same place, in fact right behind the same tree, slightly pulled off the street. He thought you would have to be very observant to detect the difference.

Steve had a conclusion, he was now certain and it would seem that it has to be someone who lived in the neighborhood – at least one of them. I told him I thought we were already sure of that. He had a more global outlook.  Until we are 100% certain then we are not really certain of anything.  We have to avoid the trap of becoming locked in on one person and miss another.  Many times Steve had said he not only wants it over, but he wants to know that when it is over it is really over.

Together we arrived at one thing, obviously Elliott knows more than he is telling. After that it was all guesswork – all good stuff for the detectives.

This said something to Morgan

At 8:09 pm I text Morgan and ask, “Are you in Aspen? Everything OK? Tell Paul I said hi. ”I want so badly to tell her that Keenan has moved out, but we have already decided to tell her in person, we are trusting everything less these days and are concerned about our phones, Steve has checked Morgan’s out and looked for some spike you can see in the data usage. So far it looks normal, but he still wanted me to be more vague when I sent a text message.

Morgan answered, “Yes. Yes. Ok.” With a smiley face icon. I sent her, “Short and Sweet.” With another smiley face icon. And Morgan answered, “Coming home soon with Danny, won’t be long.” I thought oopsie, so much for vague, and I ended with “Great.”

About 10:00 pm a man showed up at the front door with a very pregnant woman at his side.  Steve walked out and talked with them. When he came back in I asked him what that was about.  He said right street, just wrong house, and winked at me.  I knew what he meant and just shook my head.

Click here to read about the 75th day of Morgan’s stalking https://morgansstalking.com/?p=1670