Clint Faraday Mysteries collection A Muddled Murders Collector's Edition

by Moulton, CD

  “SUSPECTS?! SUSPECTS?! It was those ... those evil PAGANS down there! WE aren’t SUSPECTS in anything!”

  “They have no access to cyanide,” Doc said with a very sour look at them. “You have. That makes you suspects.

  “Clint, would you like to see the scene?”

  Clint followed him to the stairs as Maribel was about to faint from the INSANE idea she could be a suspect in anything like this HORRIBLE HORROR!

  “That’s your suspect list right down there,” Doc said. “The wife and two kids and her mother.”

  “There’s one more. I think this one is going to turn into a case where we have to use some of the more modern CSI techniques than you have here.

  “We’ll make do with the older tried-and-true stuff. Can you seal the room to where no one can come in for about an hour and let me detect?

  “I know I don’t have any real authority here, but I think I’ve seen something that’s you’re too close to to see.”

  “You have authority. Sergio hired you as an aide and consultant. I countersigned the form. Where in this room is there anything? It’s damned near sterile!

  “Clint, if you need to know, he died between eleven and twelve last night. You have authority. Go for it!”

  “Which will work against them, I promise. My clues were in that lawn and in the village.”

  Doc shrugged and showed Clint what he’d found. Carlo was laid out on the bed in a peaceful manner and had taken a drink of juice that was laced with sodium cyanide. He was dead in less than a minute. Nothing in the room had been disturbed. The juice was on the lamp table by the bed. Vasquez was dressed in tan pajamas and a mahogany-red smoking jacket.

  “Who found the body?” Clint asked.

  “The wife. She came to see what was wrong when he didn’t come to breakfast precisely at seven thirty,” Doc answered. “Apparently his habits were as strict and formal as everything else here.” He waved and went out.

  Clint looked through the drawers, finding everything neat and orderly. The huge armoire had several expensive suits hung with plastic covers on all of them, shirts ditto, a rack of ties, belts, socks had every item precisely placed. The drawers had underwear, handkerchiefs, etc. in neat stacks. The tieclips, lighters, penknives, pens, cigarette cases and lighters had places and were in them. The writing desk had pens, paper, pads, a computer, printer, ink cartridges, CD trays ... everything precisely in its place. Everything sterile.

  That described the whole house. Sterile. Like a picture in a magazine. A house, NOT a home. People resided here, they didn’t live here.

  Clint turned on the computer and read the list of recently used programs, then to the MSWord program to see the list of recent documents. He tried to bring up some of them, but Vasquez apparently erased them from the documents file. The latest was simply “document 1" and no record kept. The earlier ones were named, such as “House 21" which was dated Dic. 21, 2008:14:52

  “Document 1" was dated Dic. 24, 2008:23:14. It was written last night at 11:14.

  Clint went to the printer cache and discovered that “document 1" was printed, then the cache cleared. There was no draft saved.

  Vasquez printed something, went to bed and died. Where was it? It would have to still be in that room if he didn’t give it to one of the others.

  He soon went back downstairs where he was introduced to Emilio and Margarita Vasquez and an old woman named Bonita Sevilla. He asked them the usual questions, then if Carlo had given anyone anything last night after eleven o’clock or so.

  “Anything like what?” Emilio asked.

  “Anything. A glass of water, a book, a cookie, a piece of paper. Anything.”

  They looked around at each other and said, no, he hadn’t come down from his bedroom after he went upstairs at ten thirty.

  “What was his mood? Was he acting strangely, like he was afraid of anyone?”

  “WHAT do you MEAN?! My husband wasn’t afraid of ANYthing,” Maribel said huffily. “The idea! What would he have to be afraid of?”

  “He is dead. He had something or someone he would be insane not to be afraid of,” Sergio pointed out. Emilio said that was damned well true! (And crossed himself quickly when he said “damned.”) Margarita said he did act like there was something wrong, but he wasn’t afraid of anything. They had wished each other a good Christmas, he looked like he was thinking about something, then had returned the wish and gone upstairs.

  “When you said ‘Merry Christmas!’ he looked like – maybe it was not merry for him?” Clint asked.

  “Well ... yes. I think that would describe it.”

  “We had exchanged gifts. We always do that on Christmas Eve just before midnight,” Bonita said. “He left his gifts right here in the parlor. There.” She pointed to some packages on a table in the corner. Clint went to look at them: An expensive silk tie with a silver clip. A billfold. A silk bathrobe. A hand-tooled leather date book. A pocket calculator with the date book. A gold pen. All impersonal.

  “Well, I have to get some more information. I have to call a friend in Changuinola and then come back. I would appreciate if no one entered the room except with Doc when they remove the body until he has a chance to see some things.”

  “See what things?!” Maribel cried. “I WILL NOT allow anyone to poke around in his private papers and ... and things! I will NOT!”

  “Oh, mother, there’s nothing you can do about it,” Margarita said. “It will just go on and on if you start that dramatic stuff,”

  “I most certainly CAN and WILL do something about it! I know important people! I will go over your head! You will NOT...!”

  “Mom, SHUT UP!” Emilio spat. “You’re acting in just the way that makes us all suspects! Can’t you see that?”

  “No! We are NOT the kind of people who are suspects in this kind of sordid thing!”

  “Then stop acting like you are!” Sergio ordered. “You are acting like a guilty person. An innocent person would want everything possible to be done to catch the killer of one in their family.”

  “Well, of COURSE I want them caught and sent to jail for the rest of their life!”

  “Then why are you trying so hard to obstruct investigation of the crime?”

  “Got you there, Mom!” Emilio said. “Officer, Mr. Faraday, do what you have to do. We won’t go near that room. If someone’s trying to kill off the family I think it would be best if we went back to, as Mom suggested, Panamá City. I don’t feel safe here at all. There’re too many people who resent us. I know it’s our own fault. We come here to their place and act like royalty. I’ve read enough crime books to know we can’t do that. I do want to go to a hotel on Bocas, though. The rest can do as they please.”

  “WhatEVER do you mean? Kill off the family? It’s our fault?” Maribel demanded.

  “Didn’t you say, repeatedly, that it was someone ... some savage from the village ... who killed your husband?” Sergio asked. “I’d think all of you would feel very much threatened.

  “Emilio, you can go to Bocas if you want to. It’s the legal seat of jurisdiction.”

  Maribel was looking truly shocked now. She mumbled that it would be best if they did get away from the island. It was true that she thought they hated the family and would want to wipe them out. She had accused them of the crime and they would want to get her for that. She didn’t mean it the way it sounded. She was in shock and not thinking.

  Emilio said he hadn’t noticed any difference. Maybe one in that family was worth his salt.

  If they left Clint could possibly find what he knew had to be somewhere in that house – if it hadn’t already been destroyed. Clint went quickly through the other downstairs rooms. The huge kitchen was spotless (as expected) with everything having a place and everything in its place. The refrigerator was sterile, the stove was sterile, the dish cabinets were sterile, the food pantry was sterile. The garbage had been taken outside somewhere.

  The juice was in individual serving cartons in the refrigera
tor. There was no leftover from what would have to be a large meal, so either only exactly enough for the family was cooked or leftovers were thrown away or the cook took them home.

  The shiny silverware, actual pure silver, was in a locked chest. The key was in the cabinet in the dining room where Sergio said it was kept.

  Clint had never seen a place outside of CSI labs and such that was so sterile. Not even they would be THAT sterile.

  He couldn’t get the word out of his mind.

  He went outside to the garbage bin. There was no organic matter inside. Even cans and cartons had been rinsed before being thrown away. The empty juice cartons were in the bin.

  Why? Wouldn’t the used carton be in the bedroom where he opened it to pour the juice?

  He finished his search and headed back to Isla Colón. Things were exactly as he felt they would be when he looked over that scene and talked to those people.

  “Doug? Clint Faraday here,” Clint said into his phone in the morning. “I hope you and yours had a good Christmas?”

  Doug is a computer expert Clint knew from when Dave’s hard drive was fried.

  “Very good, Clint. A belated Feliz Navidades!”

  “Can you do me a favor? There’s been a death. Something was printed on a Canon IP eighteen hundred printer minutes before the death, but the cache was erased and it wasn’t saved in the documents file. Is there any way to retrieve it?”

  “Are you there? Can you turn on the computer?”

  “It’s on Solarte. No.”

  “Can you go out there and call me when you boot up?”

  “Okay. Half an hour?”

  “Fine.”

  Clint called Sergio to say he’d need the keys to the house. Sergio said he’d meet him at the station and go with him to get away from the station for awhile. It seemed all the cops had hangovers and were sick and argumentative. Clint laughed and promised he’d be there in a few minutes. He called Judi to discuss Christmas. She had gone to a friend’s place to have a big turkey dinner – at which he was conspicuously absent. He explained that he was investigating a murder. She said she had tried to call him, but the place was, as he knew, out past The Bluffs and there was no signal.

  They chatted a bit, then Clint went to the station and across to Solarte with Sergio in the police boat. The Vasquez yacht was moored out from the marina. All of them except Emilio had stayed on it. Emilio said he’d had about all he could take of his mother’s dramatics for one night and had stayed at the Swan’s Cay.

  They went to the house. Basilio and Moises were sitting on the steps. Emilio had paid them to stay there for the night to guard the place. He was the only one who was vaguely human in that family. They bought a big Coke and a bottle of rum and celebrated. They were still a little drunk.

  Face it. They were drunk on their asses! Clint said they could go home. The police would guard the place now.

  They said the police guard was in the barbeque place, sleeping. Sergio said he wondered what had happened to the officer he left there.

  Well, it WAS Christmas. You had to make some allowances.

  Clint laughed and they went inside. Clint went directly up to the bedroom where he booted up the computer, then called Doug.

  “What program are you running?” Doug asked.

  “MSWord.”

  “No. The comp master program.”

  “Windows XP.”

  “You have it on Word?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go to recent documents. Click on the one you want to find.”

  “Done.”

  “Look at ‘properties’ and click on it.”

  “Umm-hmm.”

  “What’s there?”

  “The time and date.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Turn on the printer and click on the icon.”

  “It says no documents in cache.”

  “Right-click the icon.”

  A pop-up window opened with a form and “No documents saved.”

  “On the toolbar there are two circular arrows on the upper left under the upper tool bar. Just under ‘Format’ and ‘Table’, one curling to the left and one to the right. Click on the one to the left.”

  A partial paragraph came on. Clint said that was all that came up.

  “Yes. It retained a few lines of the last item printed. Some programs will save the whole document. This one is set to save a certain number of lines. That’s the best you can do without some very expensive equipment that will read whatever was on the hard drive.”

  Clint said there were six lines. It may be enough. He thanked Doug and printed the lines.

  Clint went downstairs and told Sergio he had to search Maribel’s rooms. If he couldn’t see that she and Carlo having separate bedrooms said one hell of a lot about the marriage and family he was just plain stupid!

  “I saw that the minute I came into this edifice,” Sergio replied. “It’s not a home, it’s a place people stay. As soon as she said he was in ‘his’ bedroom, not ‘our’ bedroom, I knew they were staying together for religious reasons and for the children – which is the worst thing you could do to the children. I can’t see anyone staying with her even for the children.”

  “Well, we can look around for the printed copy of this,” Clint said, proffering the six lines. “I think we can find it unless it was burned or something.”

  Sergio looked a question and read the lines. He shrugged.

  “It was written a few short minutes before he swallowed a large slug of cyanide.”

  “It suggests, it doesn’t state. I thought that would be it.”

  They searched Maribel’s rooms. The paper wasn’t there. Sergio said it was gone or in that boat with her.

  “We can call a family meeting now,” Clint suggested.

  They locked up the house, woke the cop in the barbeque and went back to Isla Colón.

  “I’ve called you here to discuss the death of Carlo Vasquez,” Clint said. “This is a formal meeting.

  “We have learned pretty much about it. We feel we can resolve the issues here and close this case as solved. We know all about his death.”

  “He was MURDERED by those stinking dirty evil SAVAGES in that stinking dirty village!” Maribel insisted.

  “The indios are not dirty. In fact they’re almost fanatically clean people,” Clint replied, unfazed by her beginning tirade. “I will appreciate a lack of these silly overacted melodramatics. Your delivery isn’t convincing (Emilio gave him a thumbs-up).

  “We know for a fact that the people in this room and Carlo Vasquez were the only people in the house. No one else could have introduced the cyanide into that glass of juice.”

  “Hah! The kitchen girl! Lucinda! SHE could have!” Maribel cried triumphantly. “She could put it there before she left! She didn’t leave until ten o’clock!”

  “No, she couldn’t,” Clint replied tiredly. “Please don’t interrupt.”

  “But she COULD! It would be easy! Put it in his juice and take it to him!”

  “She was gone before he went upstairs and never was allowed outside the kitchen and dining room in any case – according to your own statements,” Clint said patiently. He wasn’t about to let her get to him. “He went upstairs, composed a note on his computer, printed it out, went to his bed, poured and drank that juice laced with cyanide. The glass was placed on the lamp table before he died. He had only a very few seconds after drinking the juice to live. He put it there so there wouldn’t be a mess from spilled juice in the bed.”

  “My dear God!” Margarita cried, then crossed herself.

  “I kind of thought so,” Emilio said.

  “Exactly WHAT are you implying?!” Maribel screeched.

  “I as much as knew it,” Bonita said. “I could see that or something worse coming for some time. More than two years. I’ve been waiting.”

  “Continue,” Sergio suggested. “I noted much of what you’ve said and had reached the conclu
sion that it had to be. Tell us the rest of your process.”

  “NO!!” Maribel pleaded. “Oh, please do NOT say it! He can’t be buried on consecrated ground if.... It will be a total disgrace to the family!”

  “Quiet! You have tampered with evidence in a criminal case,” Sergio warned sternly. “If you continue to act in this manner you will be charged with that. Think of the scandal that will surely ensue if you find yourself convicted of criminal acts and incarcerated for three years!”

  She looked terrified and sat back to sob into her hands.

  “Okay. Tell us the rest of it,” Emilio requested. “I won’t be disgraced because of anything anyone else did.”

  “Okay,” Clint agreed. “Let’s now go back to the moment I first came here. We landed in the Indio village where I was immediately told you were an extremely religious family by the natives.

  “They do not hate you, by the way. They pity you because you have all these things and no love.

  “I next walked through that gate and saw four chapels, which meant religion. Catholicism.

  “I saw the extreme sterility of the house. It was only a house, not a home. People stayed there, they didn’t live there. That is another point of the Indio philosophy I couldn’t make most of you understand.

  “Then I went into his sterile bedroom. As Sergio noted, it was ‘his’ bedroom and not ‘our’ bedroom. That told me the marriage has become as sterile as everything else there.

  “He was dressed for dying. He was as much as laid out. The glass of a very fast poison was carefully placed on the lamp table. Cyanide will usually cause a spasm. He wasn’t positioned in a way that would indicate one. He had been moved, if only very slightly. Perhaps he was only turned over and the covers straightened. It was far too neat for a death by cyanide. That it was suicide was obvious: There was no note? He had been moved?

  “Someone took the note and moved him. What happened to the carton he poured the juice from? Why was it moved?

  “That was a mistake. The carton was used, thus should not be there, thus was taken to the kitchen, rinsed and put into the garbage bin. Why?”