Synopsis

Note: This book is currently the only one not available to read in its entirety for free. You can still enjoy sixteen of my novels for free on these Web pages. You may buy Dead Move online, or order it at your local bookstore. Please be sure to ask for the Second Edition. It is also in stock at Bay Books, Austin Gifts, and other shops near the Hotel del Coronado.

This is the Second Edition, released April 15, 2008. It is a nonfiction version (true crime/ghost investigation) that replaces the withdrawn first edition of July 2007 (which was presented as historical fiction based on true events in 1892). I have released this stronger, nonfiction edition because I have increasingly realized that the case I present is strong enough to stand up as a true and valid theory about what happened at the Hotel del Coronado in 1892.

I have arranged the material logically as follows.

I wrote a brief Prolog to frame the true story in the dark, atmospheric setting that I experienced during many a foggy evening at the hotel by the sea.

Part I briefly introduces the story as a true mystery of 1892. The 'Beautiful Stranger' shows up one day (Thanksgiving 1892), spends five days at the hotel acting strangely, and shoots herself on the back steps during a great sea storm. A hasty (and perhaps botched, or even covered up) coroner's inquest makes a half-hearted attempt at being conclusive, but raises more questions. The kicker: she wasn't who she said there was, there was a lot more to the story, there were probably dark and shady dealings with the high and mighty around the country, and the story became an instant sensation in the national press. As police around the country worked frantically to find out who she was, her body lay in state for thousands of gawking Victorian ladies who made her into a fallen angel. Police and the press tried a series of identities, until they settled on a questionable i.d. as Kate Morgan, the troubled wife of a gambler and con artist.

Part II briefly introduces the story from another angle, as a ghost story. There are plenty of reports of paranormal activity at the Hotel del Coronado, especially in Room 3327—long ago Room 320, where she was last seen suffering from mysterious medicines, and burning her papers in the fireplace before committing suicide, the ultimate escape from a life and a situation become unbearable. Is the ghost trying to tell us something? For over 100 years, if you believe in ghosts, she has been trying to tell us her real name, and it is not Kate Morgan as most people believe.

Part III recounts (along a chronological timeline, sometimes hour by hour) what we know for sure. Sources include the offical book about the ghost, published by the Heritage Department ('HD') of the Hotel del Coronado, and other sources extensively footnoted. During the atmospheric evenings described in the prolog, I rediscovered this story by reading the HD book, and challenged myself to see if I could figure out a solution by tearing that book apart, drawing diagrams and charts and maps to connect the many loose ends, the constant churn of places where Kate Morgan the grifter traveled on the Transcontinental Railways, and the endless blur of people who come and go in the true story. I found that a valid theory was emerging as I studied this and other sources.

Part IV rewinds the recording of Part III, so to speak, and retraces that same timeline, but now I display the elements of my theory. I believe I can explain every loose end in the entire story. It is, to be sure, a story as tangled and amazing as Kate Morgan's life. I don't believe the dead woman was Kate Morgan, but was in fact her pawn, a beautiful and troubled young runaway from Detroit named Lizzie Wyllie. If Lizzie is the key to the door, then John Spreckels is the hinge on which the entire story swings. What nobody seems to have ever pointed out before is that the owner of the Hotel Del in 1892 was John Spreckels, one of the wealthiest men in the country. Spreckels was at that moment consulting with President Benjamin Harrison and Congress in Washington, D.C. trying to save the Hawai'ian monarchy from being overthrown. Kate Morgan's plot—to use Lizzie Wyllie, as a guest in Spreckels' hotel and taking 'terrible medicines' to induce a miscarriage or abortion to blackmail Spreckels—went horribly wrong, as we know. The story of Kate Morgan is one of treachery and ruthless scheming. Poor, beautiful Lizzie, on the other hand, is the tragic figure in this true story, and the only person in the plot who had any real human feelings as she was abandoned and betrayed by those she loved and trusted. It was a conspiracy within a conspiracy, as vast and powerful forces moved to topple the last monarch of Hawai'i and annex that sovereign nation as a U.S. territory—a corporate conspiracy of global proportions, before which all the money of the Spreckels Machine and all the power of the U.S. Presidency were powerless.

Part Vis what I call the Lottiepedia. Lizzie Wyllie, checking into John Spreckels' hotel on Thanksgiving Day 1892, used the alias Lottie A. Bernard to begin the blackmail plot that would go terribly wrong within a few days, resulting in her death. This section offers a dictionary of important clues and details that will help you remember and understand key points in my analysis.

Part VI is a dramatized narrative, based on the true story, that illustrates the points made chronologically in my theory (Part IV of this book). Read this as you would a good story, bearing in mind that in a few places I had to bridge the gap of the unknown with reasonable guesses. The one fictional element was that I introduced a famous author to meet Lottie at the Hotel Del, a man who might have been in San Diego before 1900, but it is unlikely he ever met Lottie (Lizzie). However, among the notes and papers found in her room after her death was a note on which she had (wistfully?) scribbled Frank Frank Frank Frank, the first name of that famous author.

A brief Epilog summarizes the story and paints the Big Picture—the bigger, global conspiracy of kings and queens, of tycoons and presidents, of sugar barons and pineapple kings, and a tragic crown princess as well as yet another famous author.

Finally, the Maps section offers some geographical background, both on the Transcontinental Railways on which Kate Morgan fled from scheme to scheme across the country, and the local San Diego-Coronado locales where the main part of this true crime story took place in 1892.