The long awaited, much anticipated sequel to Misstaken Identity: can a message in a bottle solve a murder?

He woke up early after a sound night’s sleep, his first in memory. There was something about the waves, the sound they made as they rolled onto the broad sandy beach, that always soothed him. That, and the fact that it was thirty degrees cooler than the weather he’d left behind in Salem. Sleeping without air conditioning, with the windows open to the fresh sea air, was better than any sleeping pill.

* * *

I hated my driver’s license photo!

When I threw my fake license together, I’d settled for an old picture of me as a guy, but with long enough hair to make my sex questionable. Now that I was living full-time as a woman, my vanity was such that I absolutely had to have a better picture on it. Fortunately, I’d saved the template I created in Chicago as a file on my new email server, so after I settled into my condo on Sanibel Island, I posed for a passport photo at drugstore in Fort Meyers, then on to a FEDEX store to create a new license with my smiling face.

Before I left, I surfed the web once again for any news of the missing hiker on Mount Hood (me) or the murdered intern at KOIN who had been my friend. There was nothing to be found, and I figured that the old me was already forgotten, except by the drug lords who knew that I’d stolen three million dollars from their bank account, and probably assumed that I’d faked my death on the mountain.

So far I’d kept one step ahead of them. After I left Tampa, I’d pulled onto the freeway and headed south, exiting at Fort Meyers where I had a bite at a fast food restaurant (a woman dining alone was no big deal at such places) before I continued over the causeway to Sanibel Island. I’d read about Sanibel years before, and it had always fascinated me: an island on the Gulf Coast, it ran east to west, which positioned it to trap a never-ending supply of fantastic seashells on its miles of sandy beaches. It was relatively isolated, and most of the occupants were very rich, living there during the winter months and closing up their homes and condos when the summer heat set in. There was a wide range of hotel accommodations, as well as furnished residences available for short and long term rental, and I was interested in a condo on Middle Gulf Drive that had a view of the Gulf and was a short walk from the beach, if the listing I’d spotted on the Internet was to be believed.

So I pulled into a realtor’s office and presented myself to the pretty young receptionist. “What a lovely dress,” she exclaimed, and I smiled back at her. I was beginning to feel the sisterhood that women instinctively radiated towards one another.

“Thanks, I got it in Tampa yesterday.” Then I whispered, “On sale at the outlets.” She laughed. “I’m interested in this listing.” I handed her the address on a scrap of paper. “Is it still on the market?”

“Let’s find out.” She excused herself, and returned in a few minutes with a stunning realtor, who was probably in her late thirties, but who possessed a perfect figure, and only a few tell-tale lines on her lovely face. But I felt nothing in my panties. Had my night with Ryan tapped me out? Or was I already past the point of no return?

After we introduced ourselves, she invited me to a small conference room. I smoothed my dress as I sat down, crossing my legs self-consciously – this was my first one-on-one encounter lasting more than a few seconds with another woman, and I wondered if she’d penetrate my disguise?

She didn’t. “You’re in luck,” she said. “The owners of that unit just packed up and returned to their home in Pennsylvania. It’s available next week – right now it’s occupied by an elderly couple who’ve been spending this week there for the last several years, I think it’s their anniversary – but after that it’s wide open till June. The minimum rental is one week. It’s a popular unit, so if you’re interested I suggest you move fast.”

“So if I wanted it starting next week and wanted to stay there for a month, what kind of discount would they give me for a 30 day lease?” The weekly rent was a fortune, but the unit was perfect, at the end of an isolated lane so nobody could approach without being seen – I’d surreptitiously checked it out after I drove onto the island. If I could stay there till summer, by then I ought to be able to find something more permanent, assuming I decided to stay in Sanibel.

She got the owners on their cellphone, and after a quick conversation she reported that they were willing to knock a few hundred dollars off the rent. Done!

* * *

Island life definitely agreed with me. After a few weeks, I’d settled into a daily routine: up at dawn for a jog in a sports bra, tank top and running skirt on one of the bike paths that circled the island, and then floor exercises to tighten my abs and butt, followed by a light breakfast on my screened lanai (I’d become hooked on donuts with key lime filling) and my daily feminizing routines (keeping my body shaved and moisturized, my toenails a bright pink and a myriad of other female ablutions) before I put on a woman’s swimsuit to lay out with a fashion magazine (I had so much to learn!) by the small pool next to my condo until it got too hot, then I’d take a dip in the pool, lay out some more and finally, if it was close to low tide, I’d walk to the beach and lose myself in the search for seashells, which were endlessly abundant and gorgeous beyond belief. After I returned to my condo with my treasures, and fixed myself a light lunch on my lanai, I’d take a little siesta during the hottest part of the day, followed by a relaxing bubble bath after I washed and conditioned my hair, then after I dried my hair, I’d put on shorts and a girly tee shirt for my daily bike ride (on a beach cruiser provided by the unit’s owners) to Jerry’s market.

I’d never been much of a cook, but I had a lot of time on my hands, and it seemed so right for me to put on an apron and whip up something special in the kitchen. I did a lot of daydreaming, and I wondered if I’d ever have the chance to make dinner for a boyfriend like Randy? We’d actually exchanged a few emails, and he seemed to enjoy flirting with me, but I was careful not to tell him where I lived, and it was unlikely that I’d ever spend the night with him in Tampa, if his apartment was as bad as he said.

So I kept looking for things that I could do as a single woman. I became a mall rat, driving over the causeway to air conditioned malls where I’d spend hours trying on cute outfits until my closet was jammed with skirts, tops and dresses, not to mention shoes! I bought a set of second-hand women’s golf clubs on Craigslist, a skort, polo shirt and a pair of Lady Footjoys at a golf discount store, and played a few times in the early evening after the heat died down, which was a blast off the ladies tees, but eventually the bugs got to me. One night, out of desperation and loneliness, I put on my shortest skirt and tried my luck at a tribal casino on the mainland, and I even won a few dollars at the slots, but I was afraid to respond to the few guys who tried to hit on me, for fear that they’d kick my ass once they discovered that I was really a guy.

So loneliness aside, I was happy with my new life, and I truly loved being a woman. Life seemed to pass by at a slower pace, and all the little things that a woman has to do to make it through the day filled me with a strange contentment. With every passing day, it became clearer to me that this was the person I was meant to be, and I knew that I could never go back to being a man, even if I didn’t have a price on my head.

During one of my shopping trips, I bought myself a laptop computer, and in addition to trolling the real estate sites for a permanent residence on Sanibel, I spent a lot of time doing research about my old life in Oregon. It seems that I was presumed dead after the search for me had finally been called off (at a cost to the taxpayers of almost a million dollars) and there continued to be no leads into the killing of the KOIN intern. I’ve never had much of a conscience, but maybe there was a way that I could help the police pin Andy’s murder on the goons who wanted to kill me, and correct the ledger on faking my death in the process….

I also spent an hour each day writing these memoirs.

* * *

After he climbed up the stairs from the beach, Detective Wallace made himself coffee in the kitchen of his smartly furnished beach house, before he turned his attention to the bottle. There was definitely a note inside – more like a long letter on several sheets of paper – and after carefully peeling off the sealing wax and popping out the cork, he extracted the contents with the help of a long spoon handle from one of the kitchen drawers. He removed the rubber band, unrolled the missive – it was even longer than he thought – sat down in a comfortable chair, and started to read.

His hands were shaking by the time he got to the second page. Whoever wrote this had just solved the two cases he was working on! It was inadmissible as evidence, but if he could find the mysterious author, and follow up on these leads, he’d be able to put a vicious murderer behind bars, and some badass drug dealers out of business. And he had to admit, there was something fascinating about the person who was telling him all this: a man who had faked his death and decided to turn himself into a woman. It was almost too fantastic to believe. Had he actually gone through with it? Detective Wallace felt himself becoming strangely aroused as he continued to read….
* * *

A few days before my lease expired, I packed up most of my new wardrobe into several large boxes and left them in a storage locker I’d rented in Fort Meyers. Under the layers of female clothing, almost two million dollars in cash was stashed at the bottom of the boxes. I took my time packing my suitcase – it took a lot of thought to make sure I included all the things a woman needed – and before I left I asked my realtor to keep her eye out for a small condo similar to the one I’d been renting.

Then it was time to head north, to Tampa Bay, where a certain someone was waiting for me. A pretty girl in a hot convertible attracts a lot of attention, and I indulged the guys who honked at me by waving gaily back. I wondered if Randy would notice the subtle changes that I’d undergone: my body was a bit thinner and a lot tighter after 200 crunches a day, and bikini lines accented my deep Florida tan. I hadn’t yet taken the plunge with female hormones, but I knew that it was only a matter of time….

I was wearing a nautical dress with matching flats, and I figured if Randy didn’t have an erection when he saw me, he was right about turning gay. I needn’t have worried. He was waiting for me in the restaurant of the hotel where we’d met, looking just as gorgeous as I remembered. Once again, we bantered over the menu like were total strangers, although with enough double-entendres and whispered word play to make our intentions known.

“Has the lady decided on something to drink?”

“Before or after dinner?”

“Naughty girl! Before.”

“A glass of your most expensive Chardonnay.”

“We’re moving up in the world.”

“I haven’t been out in almost a month.”

“Now I know what I’m drinking after dinner.”

I know, it all sounds so silly, but we were giddy at the sight of each other, and I could hardly eat, I was so desperate to have him back in my bed again. For old times’ sake, I’d reserved the same room where he took my virginity, and when he tapped on the door later that evening, I was wearing the same sexy nightgown. I watched with alarm as he tore off his clothes and practically leaped into bed. That night, I think he taught me every position in the Kama Sutra, plus a few others that were more suited to our particular anatomies….

It wasn’t love, it was pure, sweet lust, and after each round, as our bodies slowly built up steam for more, we teased each other back and forth, almost like best friends. In the raw, we both might have been guys, but in my nightgown, with my long hair, tanlines and pink toenails, I looked and felt totally feminine, which seemed to bring out the animal in Randy. I can’t explain the attraction, nor do I understand why he was so attracted to me, but that doesn’t really matter. For the second magical night, we had sex until we wore ourselves out, and when he finally left me shortly before dawn, I felt totally fulfilled.

* * *

The next morning, I headed north, and then northwest, towards Oregon. I tried to steer clear of southern states which had issues with transgendered persons, although after living full time as a woman for over a month, I was entirely confident in my appearance and mannerisms, and never encountered a problem.

The drive took four days, so I had a lot of time to think about what I was going to do. Settling the score with the authorities who spent $867,000 searching for me on Mount Hood (I confirmed the amount searching the Internet) would be the easy part. Pinning Andy’s murder on the bosses at my old company would be much harder. After I disappeared, they must have hired a new IT professional, who’d installed an impregnable firewall which prevented me from accessing their server and downloading evidence of their crimes. But I still had my old email address, and the day I crossed the Oregon border, I sent this message to the CEO from the business center of my hotel in Medford:

I know who killed Andy Moffatt. For a price, I can keep it to myself. Meet me at the top of Cape Kiwanda on Saturday morning at ten with one million dollars in small bills. Come alone.

Of course, once he saw that the email came from me, he’d instantly realize that I’m still alive, and his erroneous suspicion that I was the one who ratted him out to KOIN will be confirmed. I don’t expect him to come with a million dollars, and I don’t expect him to come alone. In fact, I don’t expect him to come at all – no doubt he’ll send the goon who killed Andy. Rather, my plan is to be waiting at Cape Kiwanda as a girl, and to video whoever shows up while he waits for the old me. The video, combined with the fact that he responded to the incriminating email I sent to my old boss, ought to be enough to put them both away.

After I left Medford this morning, I drove up Interstate 5 until I got to the Woodburn outlets. It will be overcast and cool tomorrow on the Oregon coast, and I need something that will keep me warm and won’t stand out. Something casual. Eventually I put together a woodsy outfit consisting of a gray tunic dress, a short black jacket, leggings and a pair of black skimmer flats.

I had one more stop before I drove over the coast range: in Salem, I left a banker’s box containing $867,000 with a security guard at the headquarters of the Oregon State Police, with an anonymous note wishing that the contribution be used to help offset the cost of searching for missing hikers in the Cascades. Then I drove to Lincoln City, a beach town a few miles south of Cape Kiwanda, and checked into a nondescript motel.

Now it’s time for me to put these memoirs into a wine bottle, seal it up tight, and commit it to the waves. I’m no expert, but I’m hoping that if I throw it beyond the breakers at low tide tonight, it’ll catch a current and wind up in Japan some day. By then, maybe I’ll have lived out my life as a woman? Whatever happens to me tomorrow, my conscience will be clear.

* * *

Detective Wallace sprang out of his chair. The little fool! He – or she – had tossed that bottle into the Pacific last night, only twelve hours ago. He knew this, because he was still in the office when the anonymous contribution of over eight hundred thousand dollars was dropped off yesterday afternoon. It had created quite a stir, and everyone was talking about the beautiful woman who delivered it.