Clint Faraday Mysteries collection A Muddled Murders Collector's Edition

by Moulton, CD

  “Then, if that part’s true, this is revenge by those girls against Lawrence. It takes it back to him being the totally nasty bastard. I can see how that would drive them to want to see him destroyed,” Clint mused. “How did the lovely doctor become involved? There’s no excusing him if he ... the lawyer seems very chummy with the doctor.

  “I’m beginning to think those two are really behind the whole thing. They’re beyond slime. I want to see that doctor, at least, writhe and scream for days.”

  Judi was listening to Clint’s end. She said, “Clint, don’t concentrate on him! You could lose the real one if he’s not it! Get your perspective back! Please!”

  Clint paused, then told Sergio he would be in touch later.

  “Thanks, Judi. I always say to keep your head and be objective, but I don’t know if I can with this one.”

  “When you know you’re right, beyond doubt, talk like that. Not when it’s only what you think,” Judi warned. “I feel the same way, but you know how many times things seem to be something it turns out they’re not. You could be manipulated by one of them if you go off on a ... that kind of thing.”

  Clint nodded. He would wait to see what the passport records told him. If someone was manipulating him he couldn’t see how or who.

  Sergio called back before they finished dinner. “Clint, all of that family had two passports except Donald. The girls were born in California of Swiss parents. Donald was born in Switzerland. I’ll check them out, too.”

  “Shit!” Clint replied to no one.

  “Well, how long are we going to have to stay here?” Amanda asked. “I’m not in a hurry to leave. I’d be happy to spend a couple of months going around the country. I even think I’d like to live here. Even with all that’s happened it’s different enough that I could be totally content. The men here aren’t so hung up. They don’t think much about age or that I’m forty pounds overweight. In fact, they like bigger women! It’s nice to be hit on. I don’t much like men, but it is a good feeling when they think of you as more than a piece of ass.

  “Well, that’s what they’re after, but they do seem to think there’s more to it than that, that I’m also a person.

  “Sorry. I feel so FREE now! I didn’t realize how much of my life was controlled by my controlling SOB father. I always thought I was the most independent one, but why would I even come on these trips with him if I was?

  “The whole family’s a basket case, I suppose. Maybe now we can get on with our lives.”

  Clint remembered the hints that Lawrence was abusing the girls. That would definitely fit here!

  “It shouldn’t be long,” Clint answered. “Mind if I ask some personal questions?”

  “Depends on what personal questions. Fire away. If I don’t think it’s any of your business I’ll say so. I AM independent that way!”

  “Well, one is about your mother. What did you feel about her?”

  “I was always confused. I loved her like nobody else in the world, but I also resented that she wouldn’t stand up to my father. She was trying to protect us kids in a way, I know, but she went about it all wrong. The way we were treated was what killed her, I firmly believe.

  “She once had a nervous breakdown because of it. She should have just taken us and left the bastard, but she kept trying to get us to.... I don’t know. Things are different in Europe. That’s why I like California, but he got as bad there after awhile. We were getting older. He was losing control and was getting worse and worse. Mom had a bad heart and was terrified that we would be left with just him. That’s what killed her.”

  Clint nodded. That more or less confirmed it.

  “When did you first meet Dr. Orison?”

  “When Mom had a nervous breakdown. About twenty years ago. I was twelve. Pop’s lawyer recommended him. He counseled with us kids a lot and explained that Pops was a bit crazy and dangerous and we should just stay out of his way as much as we could. He helped all of us for a long time. He counseled Pops a lot, too. He tried to keep him on an even keel, but nothing would work with Pops. He was always worse after Doc talked with him.

  “You asked about Mom. I was more than confused by Pops. Up until I was about eight years old I remember him being kind of fun and affectionate. It changed pretty radically and was really bad until I was about fifteen. He turned his attention to Wanda then. She was always a lot more meek than I was and wouldn’t stand up to him at all. Dr. Orison helped her a lot more than me. He convinced her she had to try to forgive Pops because he was crazy and not responsible and that he was sick. We didn’t know about the cancer until you found that was what it was. We thought he was taking vitamins and tranquilizers because he was nuts and it would help. We thought he shaved his head to try to look like those people in the movies.

  “Donald stood up to him more than us girls. He would still beat him and be mean.”

  Clint nodded. He said she had covered most of what he wanted to ask. He couldn’t see how any woman would marry a man as tyrannical as Lawrence seemed here. He wanted to know when it started.

  “He was fun and Okay for a long time. He treated Mom pretty good until, as I said, he started going nuts when I was eight. She found out how he was treating us kids and tried to stand up to him, but he was ... I don’t know. He could control her with threats that he would take us and see she never saw us again. He had the money and land and everything. He could use his powerful lawyers to see everything done his way and she couldn’t do squat about it!

  “You can’t possibly know how truly disgusting an excuse for a human being he became. I’m glad and relieved he’s dead. I think if I ever had the guts I’d have killed him years ago. I should have. Mom would still be alive.

  “You want the truth? I consider him the most vile thing that ever lived! He ruined the lives of everyone in this spineless family and he ruined the lives of everybody around him and I’m GLAD he’s dead!

  “Sorry. It’s the truth.”

  “I think after everything I’ve learned about him that I’m fairly damned glad he’s dead, too. To tell the truth, I’m a little sorry it didn’t happen twenty years ago.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Faraday. I think you saw right through him at the restaurant the first time you saw him.”

  “Not to nearly the extent it turns out.

  “How close were Orison and Rasmussen to him and to the family?”

  “Well, Doc tried to help us a lot, but you could see he was sort of scared of Pops or something. He was careful to not go too far with what he did with us. He helped Mom, but she wasn’t around for too long after he met her. Razzy was before him. He was about twenty five and just licensed in Norway. We took vacations in Norway then.

  “Anyhow, Pops hired him because he said he was as careful and sharp as any lawyer he’d ever met. He was in the same university as Doc and Pops hired Doc, too. He paid for them to come to Switzerland.

  “That was Razzy’s idea. He said the laws there were much better than in Norway and there was no comparison as to the banks. We sort of were a family, but Razzy and Doc had their own places. Razzy really put the farm business together and Pops financed the psycho institution for Doc. We were between comfortable and well-off then. It only took Razzy six or seven years to make us wealthy, then a few more to make us VERY wealthy. He sort of forced Pops to stop raising horses because he liked horses into raising horses as a business. He could have both worlds, that of horse fancier and that of horse breeder for profit.

  “We inherited a lot of land in California that got Pops started in Switzerland. His brother died in an earthquake in the northern part of the state. He was doing research on finding minerals in extinct volcanoes and there was a quake, not very strong, but he was in a blow-hole cave that collapsed. He wasn’t married so Pops got everything. He moved half of the business there and started getting into the racing end. That was always up and down. Pops said it was a losing proposition for five years and a profit-making endeavor for one in a sort of cycle. It did pay fo
r everything in the long run, but the breeding is what makes the money now.

  “Pops started taking us on these tour vacations four years ago. He said he wanted to see the world while he still could. Actually, it was something to make us stay together and to use for control. ‘See what I’m doing for you! You could never go anywhere if you had to make it on your own!’ kind of thing.

  “It’s true that he was planning to commit suicide here and leave us all with nothing?”

  “That’s what it looks like. It’s the thing that turned me from mere disgust to thinking he was, as you said, the vilest person in the world. I’m not sure we can blame all of that on him. It’s his nature, but something or somebody had reinforced it. It wasn’t only the cancer.”

  “Frieda,” she stated clearly.

  “What?”

  “Frieda. The woman who manages the US business. She can be the sweetest person you ever met to your face, but I saw things for years. She is, actually, about the most scheming bitch who ever lived. She and Pops have been sleeping together since even before Mom died.

  “Sorry. I’m talking out of turn. It’s nothing you can put your finger on, just dozens of things I saw and heard over the past twenty years. I’ve seen her turn from Favorite Aunt Lucy to Matilda the Hun in five seconds.”

  “I got that impression.”

  “You know her? ... Oh, yes. You went to the ranch. She called Wanda and said you were there. Wanda can’t see through her. Don did to an extent. Trudy definitely did.”

  “Well, I think that answers most of what I wanted to know. I needed some background about your family to be able to see where everyone’s coming from. Maybe you can have a decent future now that Lawrence is out of it.

  “I’d make a small suggestion if I might? Just a feeling?”

  “Shoot!”

  “Get Razzy and Doc out of the equation.”

  She looked thoughtful, then slowly nodded. “I’ve been suspicious of Razzy for a long time. Why Doc?”

  “Because they’re much too close. There’s no way one could be embezzling or worse that the other doesn’t know all about it – and probably is part of it.”

  She nodded again. “Thanks.”

  Clint stood and said his goodbye.

  “Amanda thinks Frieda is behind it,” Clint informed the little group. “She says Lawrence and Frieda have been lovers for years, even before the wife died. She’s also damned suspicious of Rasmussen. She was a bit surprised that I seem suspicious of Orison.”

  “How could anyone not be?” Judi asked. “My God, I never saw them and I’m suspicious of both of them.”

  “They were inside the picture, not looking at it from a distance,” Sergio pointed out. “It’s a matter of perspective.”

  “Relativity,” Marko agreed. “What you perceive is a matter of your position. Your perspective.”

  “Whatever,” Dave said. “Reality is situational. Enough of the trite philosophy already.”

  “I want to see who contacts whom and what their reactions are,” Clint said. “Manny, I have to know if Frieda gets in touch with Lindsay and how. That could shift the whole mess. I have to know who gets in touch with Rasmussen and Orison. I’ll be watching Wanda much more. And Trudy.”

  “Wanda!” Judi exclaimed. “Why Wanda?”

  “Because there’s no way anyone couldn’t see through some of these situations and she could be acting like a retarded idiot on purpose. Trudy because she very plainly did see through them.”

  “Watch Amanda, too,” Judi warned. “Just a woman’s intuition. She’s too assertive too fast.”

  “Oh, yes. I am,” Clint answered. “I would watch her because I tend to like her. The whole family’s in the range of constitutional psychopathic. Those people can make you like and trust them because that’s a survival trait of the type.”

  They discussed the family a little more, then fishing, then anything that came up. Manny went back to Isla San Cristóbal. Dave went to practice some new songs he and Paul wrote. Judi went to a meeting of the garden club and Clint went to Bongos to listen to the local gossip.

  “Well, Clint!” Reynaldo greeted. “There’s a lot of talk around about your dead friend. Most say you know who killed him and others say you’re completely stopped by this one.”

  “He was NOT a friend – and the truth’s somewhere between those extremes.”

  “It usually is,” Gisela (the owner of Bongos) said. “All the people who met them say he was the most obnoxious ass they ever saw. Dave was in and said he thinks a man in San Blas is behind it. He couldn’t be the actual killer. He hired it.”

  “That’s a possibility. Trouble is, there are four or five other equal possibilities.”

  Al (Gisela’s husband) said the killer was here and it was planned. They brought the curare with them.

  Al’s a doctor who helps the local doctors when needed. They would have told him all they knew.

  “Curare grows all over the place here,” Travis (a local medicinal herb expert) argued. “They could pick it.”

  “But they couldn’t process it to injectable,” Al pointed out. “Not in a couple of days. They didn’t go anywhere to get it. They were here less than a day.”

  “That’s the logic I used the minute I saw them there,” Clint said. “If it was one or more of that weird family they brought it from the states. They have race horses so have curare. Injectable.”

  Al nodded. “What about the mouthpiece and sawbones in San Blas? Did they know enough here to have hired someone?

  “This whole thing is weird. If I was going to murder anyone it certainly wouldn’t be with curare in a foreign country! There’s something else going on with that bunch. Count on it.”

  Clint could get something started that might be to his advantage. People were listening and these people were gregarious enough that they would discuss it with others. Al and Gisela could figure that’s what he wanted.

  “Well, with the IRS showing a lot of interest, I have to agree. Also the racing commission in California.

  “IRS?” Gisela asked. “Laundering money. They won’t learn anything here.”

  “They will if they know where to look,” Al argued. “It would be put in offshore accounts, but would have to be laundered on the way.

  “Find out the way it was done. ‘Follow the money,’ as they say on TV cop shows.”

  “We have to find where it comes from first,” Clint said. “With the racing commission asking questions....”

  “They’re claiming all kinds of returns for bets,” Gisela said. “Pay taxes on the winnings ... then they don’t have to launder or use those offshore accounts, do they?”

  “Not if they report all the money like that. It could be a clever cover,” Travis pointed out. “The winnings explain why they have a lot of money. They can take out a hell of a lot more than they report.”

  “A semi-legal operation,” Al agreed.

  “And that would explain a lot,” Clint added. He talked a few more minutes then headed for his house. What he needed now would be on the computer records. He just hoped he knew how to find it.

  Whose name would it be registered under? Rasmussen and Orison? Frieda as a simple cover? Lindsay? Someone in the family? Could he connect the facts enough to tie it together or was it two or three different things that just happened here and now?

  WHY WAS DONALD MURDERED? That’s the part that didn’t tie to anything. Clint suspected it was because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Don’t get ahead of yourself! Get the passport records and find who was here to do it.

  Too Much Travel

  “Lawrence was here four times in the past three years,” Sergio reported. “He stayed in Panamá City Paz Nuevo, a clinic that does research on tropical diseases that is owned by himself as majority, Orison and Rasmussen.”

  “Who do their banking where?” Judi asked.

  “A government-guaranteed trust fund based in Banco National,” Sergio replied. “So far a
s we can determine it is perfectly legal and the records are exact.”

  “Do they have any individual accounts with connections to the trust?” Manny asked.

  “No.”

  “They simply made their connections there before they opened the clinic,” Dave suggested. (They were gathered at his place on Isla San Cristóbal where he had a small cabin in the epiphytic plant garden he was establishing. The view was from the deck he’d built over the house. The cabin was on top of a peak so the view was of the islands in the archipelago and into the Caribbean.) “There isn’t any reason to specifically build that kind of place in Panamá (the natives mean Panamá City when they say it with extra stress on the ....ma’). It’s their contact point where they bring the geetus from the states. Probably cash in medical supply boxes.”

  Manny and Judi nodded at that. Sergio looked interested. Clint thought, then slowly nodded. “Lawrence was the horse. The good doctor and lawyer came every two months and always stayed in San Blas in a suite in the Royal Arms Condos – which Orison owns. “I checked with a friend when I was there. He called me this morning at four o’clock to tell me.

  “They met with a man called simply ‘Manolo’ by the natives. He’s from the out-islands above Colombia toward Baranquila. Manolo is known to work with certain Colombians suspected to be connected with drugs. My part in this has nothing to do with anything but the murders of Lawrence and Donald Lesley. You can do what you want with any information I find by accident. I’m not to be mentioned in that crap in any way. I could lose my information source.

  “I’m going to go to one island there – not one with banks – to see what comes together from that part and the murders. If the banking is directly part of that it’s in the game that I would look into it.”

  “Manolo Velasquez, also Mike Vortin et al,” Sergio added. “We came across him several times before. He looks Latino and speaks perfect dialectical Spanish. We don’t know much about him except he’s from either France, the USA, England, Germany or Australia, among others. He has an indefinamente residence in Panamá and in Colón, hangs around the Medellin crowd and stays just on the fringes of a lot of semi-legal deals. He’s very popular with the local natives and police. They say he might be into something, but he doesn’t bother anyone and keeps some of the local thugs from bothering anyone. He’s very personable, but there’s something that scares people about him until they know him.”