Death Benefits (A Martin Billings Story Book 2)

by Ed Teja

  I wondered what she might know about Walker's last cruise, or at least what he was up to in the days before he went sailing. I also needed to let her know that, if Walker was dead, James would be buying out her share of the business. If she had money problems, that part would come as good news, at least. Apparently, a dead husband, more or less, was hardly a bump in the rocky road of life.

  "You are enjoying this," Bill said.

  "I am? What am I enjoying?"

  "Playing detective. Unraveling the twisted lives that have to be unraveled to pull back the curtain on the sordid players in this farce. You want to know what happened, who did what to whom? Curiosity is fine, but you might spare a thought for what we do next in terms of making a living. We did okay with the wood haul, but it won't last long."

  I'll admit that I was still far too curious as to what happened.

  Clearly, my attention should have been focused on getting back to my boat and starting to look for a new cargo to gamble our hard-earned money on. The cash tended to melt away if you didn't actively replenish it.

  Even sitting still, a large boat ran up a tab and despite the infusion of money from James, we ran a shoestring business. Bill had muttered darkly about a possibility of loading up on nutmeg in Grenada since we intended to head back there anyway. Just his muttering got me thinking.

  If the price was right, there could be a little money in his idea, especially if, before leaving Venezuela, we could load up on Polar beer and Cacique rum and fill our tanks with inexpensive diesel. All of those found a ready market in the islands, where import duties kept things pricey.

  Best of all, hauling cargo took us back to the world we knew. A world of beaches and reefs, port captains, boatyards and open seas.

  Getting there sooner would be better than doing it later. Unfortunately, my work here wasn't finished, even if I just considered the basic job of getting the papers signed. I wondered if I could get Mrs. Walker to sign them for me on a "just in case" basis.

  "Did she say anything that might suggest whether she expects to see her husband again?" I asked.

  "Not really. She did say things that made it clear that if she did, it would not be an event that made her life complete. As I said, she was happy where she was until the money ran out."

  I nodded. "That's the impression I got of the happy couple as seen from the outside."

  "Well, I can confirm that she was definitely happier to return when I told her that he hadn't returned home. I can add that she didn't seem all that surprised that he was still gone."

  "As if she knew he wouldn't be?"

  Bill shook his head. "Not sure."

  "From everything I've heard his attitude toward her hasn't been one that would foster a close and caring relationship."

  "Apparently not, Junior. Now if we are done chewing over the obvious, I want to get to know this lovely lady."

  He meant Consuela, of course. Names are important in Bill's cosmology.

  My guess had been that he either had known a Consuela once who had caused him to form a favorable impression, or he had yet to meet a woman by that name and was curious. Bill's curiosity was as big as he was, and women occupied a significant portion of the time he spent satisfying that curiosity.

  Here is a fact of life, a law of physics that no scientist will ever adequately explain. Perhaps, although science is reluctant to admit to such things, it is inexplicable. The law is: Bill attracts women.

  To put the inexplicability in context, consider that Ugly Bill comes by his nickname “Ugly” honestly. His silvered hair and beard both have a wild look of their own and perhaps their own agendas as well.

  Untamed is how Matilda describes his overall appearance. Maybe so. You'd put his age somewhere between forty and eighty; he is about six-foot-six and weighs over two hundred fifty pounds but isn’t fat.

  And lots of girls and women find him irresistible. The untamed must be alluring. Consuela, who was staring at him with bright eyes, obviously fell into the category of women drawn to him. It makes me jealous at times, not of Bill, but of his magic.

  "I've known a few Consuelas in my time," he said, clarifying the situation with her name, "but you must be the finest, mi amor."

  She grinned her delight.

  Bill looked at me briefly. "Okay, Junior, while you carry on with your detecting shit, I will take this beautiful and undoubtedly overworked young lady out for some well-deserved relaxation." He smiled at her. "Would you care to go for some drinks and then later, dinner and dancing?"

  Her face said that, yes, she would care to. I was just happy she didn't swoon.

  "Fine. I'll keep doing the heavy lifting, mate. I'll go to Walker's apartment and talk to the missus. Someone has to warn her that her husband might be more than simply missing in action. I'll be curious to see if her reaction to 'probably dead' is any different from that to 'missing'."

  "I'd guess you will make her day," Bill said. "But don't bother going to her apartment."

  "No? Isn't that where she is?"

  Bill grinned. "On the boat, I told her that you wanted to talk to her as soon as possible. She assured me that her priority was going home to unpack and shower. She wanted to be left alone, but she will meet you this evening at Maremares Hotel on Ave Americo Vespuccio. She said that if you meet her in the bar at seven, she will let you buy her a few drinks and then dinner."

  "That is kind of her."

  "What can I say? I told you she is a classy bitch."

  I got the impression that Bill was not enamored of Evelyn Walker. That didn't bode well, as Bill is quite tolerant, except when it comes to my shenanigans.

  Of course, I hadn't met her yet, other than the brief encounter long ago, and I wasn't sure I liked her. I know that it isn't fair to form opinions about people on such sketchy information, but I wasn't trying to do it and it is definitely human.

  # # #

  One time, back in my wayward youth, I tried to talk a cop out of giving me a ticket. Full of the idealism of youth, I relied on logic to make my case.

  While I am certain I won the discussion, it was a Pyrrhic victory. You see, I had been minding my own business, driving my car along in the fast lane, oddly enough, right at the speed limit. The car in front of me stopped abruptly so the driver could make an illegal U-turn.

  Unfortunately, we had just gotten to a spot where the city was watering the meridian and the water ran out onto the street.

  When I hit the brakes, instead of stopping, my car hydroplaned into the back of his car. It was a low-speed fender bender, not even a big enough impact to warrant a whiplash injury.

  The cop strutted around the accident scene for a time, chewing gum and resting his hand on his gun while we stood there, and then, in his infinite wisdom, gave me a ticket for "failure to have vehicle under control."

  "He was stopping in the fast lane," I pointed out. "He broke the law and there was no way to stop in time. I couldn't avoid him."

  "If you couldn't stop without hitting him, then you didn't have your vehicle under control," he said.

  "By that logic," I argued, "there is no such thing as an accident. No matter what the circumstances you can give a driver that kind of ticket. The only possible defense would be that you meant to hit the other car."

  He smiled. "That's right. There really isn't." Then he smiled. "It's no surprise that I meet my ticket quota every month." To prove his point, perhaps, then he gave the guy I hit a ticket for making the illegal U-turn.

  My conversation with Walker's wife didn't get me a ticket, but it took a path that was just as circular.

  I showed up at the bar a bit early. It was dark and dingy, as a bar should be. A tall dark-haired woman sat at a booth. She was slim, well-dressed, and everything she should be. I guessed it was her and, feeling a bit uneasy, walked over to find out.

  “Evelyn, right? Evelyn Walker?”

  “Yes,” she said hesitantly, looking up at me for just a moment. Then
she smiled. “Billings, isn’t it? You are the captain of that nasty boat from Grenada that brought me here.”

  “Martin,” I said, sitting down on the seat across from her. “My ship isn’t Grenadian; it just happened to be in Grenada when we first met…but yes.”

  She signaled the waiter and we ordered drinks. I asked for scotch and she had a martini. I was suddenly meeting martini drinkers galore. That was new.

  “I do remember you," she said. "We met at James’s house. It was a dreadful evening, but how do you escape a boring party like that? And who can find anything interesting on an island no bigger than a small town?” Her eyes broke contact with mine as she recalled the evening. She seemed to remember it in much more detail than I did. Her smile made me wonder if she had thought I'd made a pass at her. “James Wong is a delightful man,” she said, finally.

  “Salt of the earth. But I’m glad you think well of him.”

  She frowned. “Really? Why is that?”

  “Because he is a friend of mine and because we need your help.”

  The smile vanished. “My help? What has Clyde done now?”

  “I’m not sure what he did, other than that he disappeared.”

  "So, your friend Ugly Bill said. I was happy to hear that. As I told Bill, I never know where he is off to or when he will be back. And now that dreadful business with the credit cards being maxed out. I figured that if he won't even pay the bills, then the least he can do is be gone. When he is around, all we do is fight anyway. I hate fighting."

  "I wanted to find him."

  "If you really want to find him, something I have trouble understanding, check the whorehouses and bars. He probably has girls booked through the next decade.”

  “Noted. I should tell you that I did find his boat.”

  “Oh, you found Clyde’s toy boat? That's right. I remember Bill saying he had gone sailing. He was hoping I knew where he would sail. I don't know where anyone goes on a sailboat. Or why. I can't understand leaving yourself to the mercy of something as fickle as the wind."

  "Sometimes fickleness is fun," I said.

  She gave me a seductive smile. “Some kinds of fickleness could be. Can be. But you found his boat and he wasn't on it?”

  “I don't know."

  She laughed. "The best way to find out on that boat is to hop up on the deck and scream, 'happy hour,' at the top of your lungs. That will wake the dead."

  "Speaking of the dead... the boat was on fire when I found it."

  “Good!” She smiled.

  “Good?”

  “It's heavily insured. We need the insurance money more than the stupid boat. The boat cost money just sitting there. The marina fees are absurd.”

  That was something I knew a bit about. “The Guardia found the remains of two people on the boat. The heat of the fire will make it impossible to identify them easily. The coroner is working on it. We probably will never identify who the girl was, if it was a girl.”

  She took a pack of cigarettes out of her bag. "That part is sad," she said.

  She tapped the package against her hand, knocking one cigarette out, then made a production of putting it in her lips before lighting it with a flick of a disposable butane lighter.

  She stared at the lighter for a moment.

  They are handy, those lighters. You can buy one almost anywhere. They are cheap enough that you can use them once, say to set a boat on fire, and then toss them. Tossing them into the fire gets rid of evidence and adds fuel to the fire at the same time.

  “Do you think Clyde was one of them? One of the bodies?”

  “Probably. They aren’t sure yet, but that is a reasonable assumption.”

  “If the body is Clyde's, that will save you the tour of the whorehouses to find him. Of course, you might find the excursion interesting for its own sake.” She watched my face closely, trying to see how I might respond. I tried not to react at all.

  "You don't seem particularly upset about this."

  "About the possibility that Clyde is dead?" She took a drag of the cigarette, then let out a long stream of smoke.

  A dramatic pause, I thought.

  She gave me a conspiratorial smile. "It would be stupid and pointless, not to mention suspicious as hell to pretend I cared about him. Anyone you talk to is going to tell you that is a lie. Besides, I've never been good at faking emotions. Or orgasms, for that matter. Maybe if I'd been better at faking, we would have gotten along better. Unfortunately, when I am mad, I scream it to the world. And when I am happy about something, I don't know how to look devastated. His death would be a huge relief."

  "You sound like you are pretty certain he is dead. Why is that? Do you know something? Did he get death threats?"

  She held the cigarette close to her face and I wondered if the smoke didn't bother her eyes. "I know Clyde. I know that he played fast and loose with people. I don't know of any specific death threats, but I am sure he had more enemies than friends. There are irate husbands and boyfriends galore, just for openers. And here is another hard truth for you, Captain Martin Billings. If Clyde was alive, we'd know it. He'd have been on the phone, filing a claim with the insurance company for that boat within the first thirty seconds. In fact, when you said you found the boat burning—before you mentioned they found bodies—I assumed he'd burned it himself. That was probably unfair, though. He wasn't smart enough to think of something like that."

  "Clyde was broke?"

  "Flat broke."

  "Did you hate him for being broke?"

  Her laugh wasn't pretty, and she knew it. "His money was the only worthwhile thing left in the marriage, the only thing he hadn't lied about from the beginning. Once that was gone, Clyde was perfect—a perfect lie. He had no money, no prospects, and no class."

  "So, was that enough that you wanted him dead?"

  She considered it. "Probably. I'll have to get back to you on that, as the idea of him being dead is still sinking in. Believe it or not, making him dead hadn't occurred to me. Maybe I'm not very smart, but I didn't see the option." Her smile was not pretty. “Maybe if he and one of his little whores killed themselves, I’ll finally be able to get on with my life.”

  She blew another cloud of smoke and stared at it. Then, having thought things through, she turned back to me. “Clyde is scum. Or, with luck, was scum. If someone died, I would prefer it was him, rather than someone possibly pleasant whom I didn’t know.”

  "I see."

  She thought for a moment. "If Clyde didn't burn the boat, then who the hell did?"

  It was a good question for the not-so-grieving widow to ask. Appropriate.

  "That is exactly what I am trying to find out. Who would gain from killing Clyde and why would they burn the boat? I can tell you that the Guardia thinks it was bandidos." I didn't think it appropriate to mention the mystery woman, or anyone else, for that matter. Not yet.

  "I knew it," she said.

  "You did? What did you know?"

  She nodded. "I knew he'd die out there."

  I looked at her. "As I understand it, you never go out on the boat."

  She shook her head. "Of course not. I knew it would be trouble, sooner or later."

  "I don't understand."

  She frowned impatiently. "It’s rather simple, Martin. First of all, the boat sits on water. A lot of water. All that water under the boat has salt in it. Salt is very bad for my skin, especially when the water dries out. Worse, the water has all those unpleasant fish living in it. When he goes out, so he tells me, Clyde sails to places that don't have nice stores or good parties. They are deserted beaches."

  "And that is a problem?"

  "Deserted equals boring. More to the point, Clyde is careless. I wasn't going to risk my ass getting on that little bleach bottle of his and going out on the ocean."

  I laughed. "It wasn't carelessness that got the boat up on the beach," I said.

  She smirked. "Do you call that being caref
ul? I doubt the boat was intended to park on the beach."

  I found myself facing the cop all over again, about to be flattened, run over by the eighteen-wheeler that was illogic. I wondered if, against all odds, she might have an uncle or older brother who had been a traffic cop fifteen years ago. "I seriously doubt Clyde put the boat there," I said, knowing already that my refutation was doomed.

  "No, I'm sure he didn't do that deliberately. But he went sailing in a deserted bay where there are bandidos, so the result is due to his own damn carelessness."

  The waiter came with our drinks. We smiled at each other as he sat them on the table and then left. I was glad for the intrusion. I intended to use it to change the subject.

  “When did you see him last?”

  Tension tightened her jaw as she recalled it. “My last vision of my darling husband was just before I went to Margarita. I came home to find him in bed with a girl. They were having a wonderful time. She was young and pretty, of course."

  “Who was the girl?”

  She looked at me with an odd tilt of her head. “The girl? How would I know? Best guess is some local bitch who probably didn't even speak any English."

  "But you don’t know where he met her or anything like that?"

  She shuddered. "No!" She stared into my eyes. "Why the hell would I care who she is? What difference would that make? Do you think I keep track of the names of the girls he is currently screwing? That would border on morbid curiosity. Just some girl.”

  “Knowing who she was, where she was from, might tell us something."

  "Was?"

  "She is probably now a dead girl. There were two bodies.”

  She shrugged.

  “Don't think that I feel she deserved to die just because she was screwing the bastard. She didn't. I blame him. I fell for Clyde's bullshit too, so I don't hate the girls. I know he can be a charmer."

  "Knowing he was going off on a boat that was partly yours must have been upsetting."

  She shrugged. "Not as much as you might think. It wasn't the first time. He did it all the time and I was too sick of it all to even want to fight with him."