Clint Faraday Mysteries collection A Muddled Murders Collector's Edition

by Moulton, CD

  “And?”

  “And the material they had been using to blackmail Lawrence and Donald.”

  “Know who?”

  “Frank and Frieda Lindsay. There was a bit in it that I interpret as meaning they’re married. That may be ‘way off, but I really don’t thinks so.”

  “And they studiously avoid each other, so the marriage is a business arrangement. I don’t get the advantage.”

  Clint laughed. “Why, maybe simply because you can’t be made to testify against your spouse in a courtroom?”

  “Neat! If Lawrence and Donald – or any others – get caught you’re the only ones who can get off Scot free because your testimony can’t be forced.”

  “But you can be forced to testify against the others. Like, ‘Oh! Deary ME! All I know is that he tried to get me to meet some people and I didn’t want to so he said he’d get even! Oh, golly gee whiz! So THIS is why! Oh, deary me!’ and a lot of that line.”

  “It can backfire on you ... and that was the protection Rasmussen and Orison had against THEM! I’ll bet you a thousand to one that those two weren’t seen or mentioned on that little program!”

  “Y’got it! They were on it, but always in an ambiguous situation. They seemed confused by what was going on around them a lot of the time.”

  They chatted for a few minutes, then Clint went on to the Condor.

  Manny called Clint again in the morning and informed Clint that Orison and Rasmussen were flying into Bocas del Toro on the eight o’clock flight. Did he want them to think he was there all the time?

  “Tell them I’m at Dave’s place at Dolfin Point,” Clint requested. “I can call José’ and have him tell them I’ve just gone to Zapatilla, then will go to Bocas in the afternoon. I’ll take the bus so I can come across on the water taxi. It would be a dead giveaway to come in at the airport.”

  They discussed the weather and what kinds of damage had been done. Clint packed up his backpack and went to the bus to Changuinola. They were a bit past the dam when he saw Dave and two Indios taking pictures of plants on trees that had slid down the mountain in a mudslide. They had to wait a few minutes several times for the road to be cleared enough to pass, but made it in just under four and a half hours to Almirante. Clint took Taxi 25 to Bocas Town and requested that they let him off at The Reef Restaurante. Orison and Rasmussen were staying at the Tropical Suites. Travis said they’d been trying to find him all day, but he told them Clint was out fishing or scuba diving somewhere.

  Clint went to his house where Judi came over to inform him that two men had been there four times looking for him. She told them that Clint was out in a boat somewhere and would be back today or tomorrow – probably.

  “If you see them say I’m home.” She was going into town and might run into them. She chatted a few minutes longer, then flagged down a passing taxi and headed for town.

  “Why the hell are they looking for me? Hell, that disguise works like a charm! Because you talked to them in San Blas and are the only one from here who even might know anything?

  “Crap! Now I don’t know what’s happening or why again!

  “So have a beer – and stop talking to yourself!”

  He took a shower and opened a Balboa, then went to his comp to see what was new in his e-mail. Not a lot.

  “Mr. Faraday!” Orison called from Clint’s front door. “May we have a word with you?”

  “A whole sentence or so. Passe! Passe!”

  Rasmussen and Orison came in. They looked fairly ragged. “What the hell’s wrong with you?!” Clint exclaimed. “You two look like warmed-over hell!”

  “We lost some very important material and you are a detective. We hope you can locate it for us,” Rasmussen said. “A mugging. A puta ... you know the story. There was a key taken that has been used to open a safe deposit box in Santiago. We MUST recover that box!”

  “You were mugged in San Blas, a key was taken for a safe deposit box in Santiago and was used? Obviously, whoever knew what was in the box. The two places aren’t close in any wild sense of the word. Santiago’s halfway or more across Panamá from San Blas.

  “What kind of things are missing?”

  “Oh, some money – you have to be aware we’re putting funds into an offshore account or you’re not much of a detective,” Orison replied. “The money’s really not the most important thing missing. It would do no good to try to snow you with a load of crap. There was a CD-DVD in the package that is critical to our personal and business safety. We have to have that CD!”

  “Let me detect a bit. The package had money – how much?”

  “A couple of hundred thousand dollars,” Rasmussen replied. “For the account, you see.”

  “Yes. You have a package that had hundreds of thousands of dollars in it, but the CD is more important?” Clint gave him a very hard stare. “So that CD will contain the information and the proof that keeps your money supply coming in. It’s what? Blackmail?

  “We found very strong evidence of blackmail in Lawrence Lesley’s records. He’s dead now, so the evidence implicates someone else – or is what you use to be sure you’re not implicated.

  “As I said, someone obviously knew about it and has it now. What you need is for me to find that person or persons so you can protect yourselves from something. Lawrence and Donald Lesley are murdered, probably because of something on that CD. You’re now scared shitless you’re next in line for being knocked over.

  “You don’t need the CD, you need to know who has it. You hit first or you get hit. You probably deserve it because you even have that kind of crooked crap, but I’ll see what my information can turn up.

  “Did you check to see who was in San Blas who went to Santiago or Panamá City in the time-frame?”

  “We’re not detectives. We don’t know what to do! We’re completely lost!” Orison wailed. “Panamá City? Why Panamá City? They went to Santiago!”

  “Because you can get a bus to Santiago every hour from Panamá City,” Rasmussen said. “I can figure that one out. We wouldn’t know how to get that information.”

  “Check the airline passenger lists and bus terminal records. You can also find who might have gone to, say, Panamá City to meet someone else who would then go to Santiago. The trouble with doing that yourselves is that you’d have to recognize a name. If someone is using an agent – such as one who sets you up with a puta who mugs you – you won’t recognize anything.”

  “The whore didn’t mug me,” Orison protested. “I was mugged as I was going back to the hotel at about two in the morning.”

  “So it was set up that way. Same thing. I’ll see what I can find out about it. I have friends who can trace passengers and so forth. Was the safe deposit box opened with a signature or something? I can’t picture a bank that doesn’t require some pretty solid ID.”

  “Er, it was left in a hotel safe deposit box,” Rasmussen said. “Someone named Hanrady picked it up with the key. His description fits half the American or European men in this country! It doesn’t tell us much of anything!”

  “It tells you you’re looking for a gringo or a European average male. That eliminates ninety six percent of the people in Panamá. Ninety seven and a half percent. You’re looking for someone among a couple of thousand people instead of hundreds of thousands. I’ll see what I can find.”

  “I see!” Orison cried. “It’s all very logical now! Eliminate as many as you can and you have a much smaller group to investigate! You started out eliminating all but a small percentage.

  “Mr. Faraday, you can discern how very important the information on that CD is to us. We must have it!”

  “I see, but have you considered one other seemingly insignificant little item?”

  “Er, such as?” Rasmussen asked.

  “You can make as many copies of a CD as you want with almost any computer with a burner. Does that change anything? Does it matter if there are other copies?”

  “Eeeeee!” Orison squealed. Rasmussen
broke out in a sweat and looked unsteady on his feet. “God! We’re totally fucked! Oh, why did I ever get involved in this scheme?”

  “Tomorrow is the price of yesterday,” Clint quoted Bob Seger. “If you get involved in some crooked scheme you have to accept that it can turn on you in a wink.

  “Should I try to find who took the key now? Will you tell me who you think is behind it?”

  “Two totally evil people in California,” Rasmussen said dejectedly. “It was started by us, but got away from us a long time ago. It wasn’t meant to turn into this travesty. I suppose it won’t matter if you find it. We never even considered the fact that a CD is easy to copy.

  “Mr. Faraday, there is a person here who is at least partially responsible for your murders. We would have profited greatly from it if a couple of other things didn’t intervene and become something that was never intended. We were both very glad that Lawrence Lesley died. We wanted it to take longer and be more painful. We knew he had cancer and probably could have cured it. What he was made us not do so. If ever there was a truly and totally evil being who paraded himself as a human being, it was Lawrence Lesley.

  “We have become much of what he was. We did all the wrong things many years ago. We should have, as soon as we found some things about him, simply shot him to death or something.

  “Mr. Faraday, we were trying to resolve it and protect his family. He had the funds and where-with-all to thwart us in many ways and we waited too long. He has destroyed the lives of everyone he came into contact with. His own family, his wife – everyone. Even the two of us. We allowed his money and the fact we could obtain so much of it turn us into the same evil mold as he.

  “I don’t care if ... there are two people in California who have exploited us and Lawrence. They are evil in a different way, but I have to consider that they may be as evil as Lawrence Lesley was. I haven’t ever really considered what I have become. I am doing so now. I think I really do deserve a slow and painful death. I don’t care anymore.

  “Come on, Sven. Let’s go.”

  They turned around and walked out.

  “Quite the little act,” Clint mumbled. “Try to place blame on anyone else, but you’ve figured I knew about the cancer and tried to cover. I think now you know you’ve marked yourselves for murder. Maybe that will show me who’s really the bad guy here!”

  He needed another shower to get the slime off him that being in the same room with those two left. Maybe he should fumigate the house.

  “Hi, Amanda!” Clint greeted as she came into the restaurant at Olas Hotel. “I heard you moved here. How are things? Been seeing any sights?”

  “Oh, Mr. Faraday! Yes. I needed a more ... I don’t know. Not so snobby a place as where I was staying. It’s really very nice and all that, but I’m am SO sick of the overly-rich. My nature is to be a normal slob. I never knew that until now. I’ve been thinking a lot about the places we’ve been when we didn’t do anything but argue and fight. Places where Pops made it hell for all of us.

  “There’s a little place where he bought a little pink house on a cliff over the ocean in Ecuador. I was always happy there because we would go for a couple of days and he would go somewhere else. He said it was to the place in Colombia. He had something there in a place not far from Cali that I saw a couple of times. In the mountains with a river on the bottom of the property. I think he was coming here. It was just so nice to not have him screwing up everything for everybody he came into contact with.

  “How is the detecting? Know who did it?”

  “Everyone does it, but ... oh. You meant the murders. (she laughed). I keep learning all kinds of new things that have little or nothing – or everything – to do with the murders.”

  “I think Donald just happened to be there is why he’s dead. It was Pops who had most of the world hating him.”

  “It was probably the other way around. Donald was the target and Lawrence was just there so the killer said, ‘Why the hell not?’ and knocked him over. If he was taking some of those pain pills on top of the booze he was probably unconscious at the time.”

  “Donald? Who would want to kill him? He didn’t ever do anything.”

  “Oh, the fixed races and offshore accounts, such as the one Trudy inherited. That’s already led to the blackmail and the involvement of Orison and Rasmussen.”

  “Fixed races ... I didn’t ... so that’s what it was about. I knew Pops had some kind of deal with Donald. He always shrugged off when Don took a few thousand without his permission or something such, but he did always treat him the same way he treated all of us.

  “AH! So THAT’S why it never seemed to bother Don at all! I’ll be doubly damned!

  “So? How much was in his offshore account?”

  “Whose?”

  “Pops, of course.”

  “Nothing. He didn’t have any. Just Donald, Orison and Rasmussen.”

  She stared at him a moment. “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And now it’s all Trudy’s?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So THAT’S why Razzy kept calling and telling me to let him know if you were here or not. Judi said you were down at the Zapatillas or somewhere. Did Trudy get his part? How?”

  “It was in a corporation in Donald’s name. He was the one running the whole thing and Orison and Rasmussen were doing a good part of it under his orders, I suppose.”

  “I always thought Don was a lot smarter than he let on. Trudy deserves it, I guess, but she would be the one who profits from Don’s death.”

  “Trouble is that she’s the only one with a real alibi. She could have hired it, but there was no hired hand anywhere near it – and the poison was brought from the states. In addition I think something’s been stolen from Orison and Rasmussen that’s got them running terrified.” Clint was making a lot of it up to see her reaction (virtually none) and so she could spread the word. “They want an item that was stolen from Santiago by someone who robbed Orison at a local whorehouse in San Blas.”

  “Excuse me? Robbed him in San Blas and then something was stolen from ... in San Blas? Isn’t ... Santiago? Isn’t Santiago a long way from San Blas?”

  “Halfway across Panamá.”

  “So. It was someone who knew ... and set it up,” she said slowly, looking confused. “Who here ... would even...? What if they had ... it has to be ... Frieda? How could she...?

  “This is scary! What if someone thinks the rest of us have things they want?”

  “You mentioned Frieda? The housekeeper who was your father’s mistress? She’s married to that Lindsay character. Why would she be into anything else, except that she might know about it?”

  Amanda was staring open-mouthed at him. “Frieda and Frank? That’s ridiculous! They hardly speak to each other!”

  “Good act, huh? Kind of makes one wonder what they’re doing, doesn’t it? Why would they go to that extreme? A business arrangement? You can see what I mean about all these other things intruding into the case.”

  “You say there were fixed races? I sort of suspected SOMEthing, but that wasn’t ... and Lindsay would be the one who would know how to set it up. Frieda would be the schemer who ended up in charge – then Pops and Don get murdered and Trudy runs off with the prize! I LOVE it! If that scheming bitch lost everything it was damned well the greatest bit of irony I ever heard of!

  “Still, she would be the type ... what would Razzy and Doc have she wanted? Any ideas?”

  “Maybe blackmail evidence held against HER?” Clint wondered (for real!) aloud. “That would be why they had so much money in the account here and so much cash. They’d cut themselves into her deal. Maybe it was getting too expensive for her and she arranged for Lawrence and Donald to get offed. Now she would have what Orison and Rasmussen used to keep her at bay ... but the money’s gone!

  “You know, that IS rich!”

  She looked more scared then. Clint asked why.

  “Because I’ve seen Pop’s will –
the real one. She can inherit a lot of stuff and is mentioned in such a way that she gets half of what anyone else would get if they don’t survive.”

  “That would be at the time of his death. She wouldn’t profit from knocking any of you off now.”

  “No. At the time of the reading of the will. Pops set that up to ... she was blackmailing him, too! He set it up to make her look guilty! He had to know they wouldn’t read the will until they found his killer or had some who had airtight alibis – which no one would ever have if it had happened the way he planned! He was the most despicable person who ever lived, but he was my father and I did love him in a very sick way. He even wanted Frieda to look guilty. All of us and anyone else he could add.

  “But, I really do think she IS!”

  “It is a distinct possibility. More and more.”

  He had a few things to consider now that he’d never thought of before. What if Frieda DID set it up? The slimy disgusting old bastard certainly got what he wanted from his death! Almost everyone involved was a suspect! What a stupid mess! Clint was determined to solve the murders if only so that slimy bastard didn’t get his last wish!

  “Manny? Is there some way you can find if that Frieda woman in California could have set up Lawrence’s and Donald’s murders?” Clint asked. They were at Dave’s place in Bocas Town. Serg had just reported that most of them had been to Panamá several times in the past four years on their other passports. Judi was shopping with Manny’s wife and kid. Dave was still up in the mountains.

  “If she used some local talent, but she didn’t. She’s working with someone in that family.”

  “I think there are a lot of motives in this silly mix. I think Orison and Rasmussen have brainwashed that family for years. I think Frieda has been manipulating the family in another way and was in on all the race-fixing and blackmail. I think anyone in that family would want Lawrence dead and that Donald ... maybe gave them the opportunity to kill two birds?

  “I can’t figure which was the target. Frieda makes it logical that it could be both of them, but she would be working with someone in that family who was after one of them. It would be Lawrence. This thing keeps going off in tangents that turn back on themselves.