The Black Widow - Mark Kane Mysteries - Book Three: A Private Investigator Crime Series of Murder, Mystery, Suspense & Thriller Stories...with a dash of Romance

by John Hemmings

  “Of course I do.”

  “We had dinner with Cary last night. Lucy met Dale in Thailand where he was staying with an American girl he’d met on vacation. It was just a holiday fling, nothing serious. When I mentioned it to Cary, Lucy got the impression that Cary’s reaction was indicative of jealousy. She looked angry. I didn’t pick up on it but Lucy did.”

  Paul had a mouthful of beer and he tried to stifle a laugh but ended up spraying it across the table. He apologized and picked up a napkin to wipe his mouth.

  “I’m sorry guys but you’ve got the wrong end of the stick there; Cary doesn’t even like Dale. Let me tell you a story. Before Larry and Cary got hitched they were together as a couple for a long time. Dale was Larry’s friend, but one day Dale got a bit drunk and made a pass at Cary. Larry wasn’t there, but Cary was really pissed. Later Larry tried to smooth things over, telling her it was just the drink, but Cary wouldn’t have it. She made Larry read Dale the riot act and then Dale had to apologize to Cary in front of all her friends; it was a bit embarrassing at the time. I don’t think Cary ever really forgave Dale. I wasn’t there when Dale made the pass at Cary but Gary was – he’s another of our friends; but I was there for the apology. Cary had a face like thunder. I think it’s safe to say that Cary didn’t approve of Dale; she thought he was a bad influence. But then something strange happened.”

  Paul took a swig from his beer.

  “I don’t know who introduced them but Dale started to go with Cary’s sister, Angel. Cary wasn’t happy about it apparently but Dale was quite persistent and Angel became Dale’s girlfriend. I was there once with the four of them in a bar in Olongapo. Dale went to the restroom and Cary said to Larry, ‘If Dale ever does anything to hurt my sister I’ll f− kill him.’ So I think you’ve misread the signs there, Lucy. If Cary thought Dale was playing around with another girl she’d be well pissed because it would show disrespect to her sister. Filipinas take that kind of disrespect seriously, and nobody’s more important to them than their family. Although…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well I don’t know if Dale and Angel are still together. When I say together I don’t mean physically. As far as I know Dale and Angel were never shacked up together; Angel was still living with her parents. I don’t think Dale’s relationship with her was all that serious and I’m sure he was still playing the field, but Angel might not have known that, God bless her. Anyway, I haven’t seen or heard about Dale since I came back from my vacation. I’d vaguely heard that he’d moved to Manila.”

  “Do you know where in Manila?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea mate. You have to understand that people like Dale come and go. They’re like Clint Eastwood in those spaghetti westerns from the 1960’s, except they all have a name; but they have an indefinable past and an uncertain future; they kind of float around Asia looking for the main chance. A lot of them you might see for a few months or even a year or two and then they vanish.”

  “Do you know anything about Larry’s boat? It apparently went missing at about the same time as Larry disappeared. Dale told me that Larry gave it to him to settle a debt. As I’m sure you know Peter found it in a mooring leased by Dale in Lower Mau.”

  “I don’t know. I know Larry loved that boat but I don’t know about his dealings with Dale. I was back in Sydney in the summer and I was still away when Larry disappeared. I only heard about it when I got back in late September.”

  “Cary’s supporting Dale’s claim about the boat, although to be honest I don’t think she knew about the transfer of ownership either. I think she learned about it from Dale after he was arrested.”

  Paul chewed this over for a while, and took another swig of beer. Then he said:

  “Look, Cary might not approve of Dale but she’d do the right thing if she believed him. And don’t forget she may still consider Dale to be her sister’s boyfriend, although if they have split up it would probably come as something of a relief to her.” Paul took another sip of his beer. “Don’t get me wrong, the incident in the bar was an isolated one and Cary wouldn’t interfere with Larry’s friendships. There are a lot of expats that Cary doesn’t really like much. Well, as you probably appreciate, some of the guys who end up here are not very… prepossessing is the best way I can think of putting it. But she knew that Larry and Dale were good friends so she wouldn’t do anything to hurt him; I think I know her well enough to say that.”

  I glanced at my watch. I still had another half an hour with Paul and I didn’t want to waste it. I pressed on.

  “Do you know that Larry had a substantial life insurance policy and that Cary’s the beneficiary?”

  “Yes, I know. It’s a hundred thousand dollars; that’s a lot of pesos. I went up to see her last weekend because she wanted some advice. The insurers say that the premiums haven’t been paid and there’s insufficient evidence to prove that the body that was found was Larry’s. It’s ridiculous of course. They take the premiums quick enough but when they have to dish it out it’s a different story.” Paul looked at me and Lucy in turn. “Hey, guys… I hope you’re not thinking that Cary would do Larry in for the money. Cary doesn’t care about money that much. She’s got the house, luckily. But fair’s fair. Larry would be spinning in his grave. He’d want her to have the money. Why not? She’s entitled to it.”

  “Did she tell you whether she’d tried to make a claim?”

  “No, she said she hadn’t. She seemed a bit confused about the whole thing.”

  “And the house is worth about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars I’m told.”

  “I don’t know who told you that. I don’t really know what it’s worth. I suppose it’s worth whatever somebody will pay for it. I guess a hundred and fifty grand’s probably about right. The land belonged to Cary’s family and I don’t know what the land is worth. Larry paid for the house to be built. It was his wedding present to Cary. But with the cost of construction up here I doubt that the construction of the house cost more than fifty grand. Anyway Cary would never sell that house, it means too much to her. I warned her to be careful. There’ll likely be a few guys beating a path to her door. She’s an attractive young girl with her own house. She’d be quite a catch for somebody, but she’s not interested, I know that.”

  “Do you know where Larry got the money for the house,” I said. “I’m just curious because I know he never had a permit to work here.”

  “I can’t say for sure. The easiest way to lose a friend is to take too much interest in things like that. But Larry was a gambler, and like all gamblers he had good and bad luck. Maybe he was lucky around that time. But he got into trouble later − that’s why when I heard he’d disappeared I wondered if it was connected with that.”

  “With what exactly?”

  Paul gave a deep sigh. “The Macau thing,” he said.

  “What was that?”

  “Larry never applied for a resident visa after he was married. I don’t know why, but it meant he had to leave every month for a few days. He could have applied for extensions of stay at the immigration department but he rarely did that. He mostly used to go to Hong Kong because he had friends to stay with there and the round trip only cost about sixty or seventy dollars. Also he went there because he liked to gamble in Macau. About six months ago he lost a lot of money in Macau. They have Triad loan sharks in the casinos there – local Chinese – who’ll give short-term loans to gamblers at very high rates of interest. Like most gamblers I suppose you hope your luck will change. It didn’t in Larry’s case. After a few hours he owed them a stack of money, although he never told me how much; I know it was in the thousands of US dollars though. When he couldn’t repay the loan he was abducted by the loan sharks and they kept him in some crappy apartment in Macau. They told him he couldn’t leave until he paid them and he’d have to get the money from his family. Well Larry doesn’t have any family there. In fact I’m not sure at all about his family; I only know that none of them
came to the wedding.”

  Paul paused to order another beer. He looked at his wristwatch and then continued.

  “So basically he was kidnapped. Luckily Larry managed to get hold of a friend in Hong Kong; he’s a lawyer I think, Derek something or other, and he went over to Macau. Derek lent him some money and so did Gary, and Larry told me he paid back most of the principal, that’s the money he borrowed, and he promised to repay the rest and the interest later. He told the loan sharks that he needed to get back to Manila to get the rest of the cash, but they had his passport and at first they wouldn’t let him go. The interest he still owed was a lot and they’d keep adding interest until it was all paid back. Eventually two of the loan sharks accompanied him on a flight from Macau to Clark, and they stayed in a hotel in Fields Avenue in Angeles while Larry tried to borrow money. He managed to borrow a bit here and there but it was nowhere near enough. In the end they left. They gave him his passport so that he could renew his visa here but told him he couldn’t leave the Philippines and gave him an ultimatum: he had to raise the money by the end of September. Larry wasn’t sure what kind of people they had in their pockets here, but they told him they’d know if he tried to leave the country. Just before I left for the summer Larry told me that he’d been to Clark and seen one of the guys from Macau in a casino there; maybe more than one I don’t remember. I just remember saying it probably wasn’t him; you know they all look alike or something offensive like that.” He grinned. “But Larry was certain and it freaked him out. He was worried that they’d come to look for him and that they might hurt Cary. He was genuinely frightened, I could tell. When I heard he’d vanished it was the first thing that came into my head. Then after his body was found somebody said his death was an accident and I didn’t think about it much after that.”

  “Did you tell the police any of this, Paul?”

  “I’ve never seen the police. But you know there’s something else.” He looked at his watch again. “I’ll have to get back to work so if you want more details we’ll have to meet up again. It’s about a bar that he invested in with Dale in Olongapo.”

  “Okay, it was good of you to come. We’ll meet again,” I said.

  I’d made some notes while Paul was talking. As he was getting up to leave I asked him: “You mentioned somebody called Gary earlier; in connection with the time when Dale made a pass at Cary. If he’s around, I’d like to talk to him.”

  “Sure.” Evans scrolled through his cell phone and gave me the number. “Gary Blake. From Oz like me. You’ll get him on his mobile,” he said, as he left the Café.

  “His what?” Lucy said as Paul hopped into a nearby cab.

  “It’s what they call a cell phone, Lucy. Because it’s portable, and goes everywhere with you.”

  “Cool,” she said.

  “Seems like we may have misjudged young Cary,” I said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Olongapo

  I called Gary when we got back to the hotel. Sure he’d come and see us, he said; anytime. So I fixed an appointment for seven o’clock in the same bar. Lucy had started to refer to it as my new office. We hired a taxi and stopped off at the mall to pick up Lucy’s new business cards and then we headed for Olongapo. Lucy ran her fingers over the embossed lettering on the cards and announced herself satisfied. We followed the Argonaut Highway and then the Rizal Highway to Olongapo.

  “He seemed like a nice guy,” I said to Lucy. “I can’t think of any reason why he’d be less than truthful about Cary. Do you think his explanation for Cary’s reaction to Dale’s romance was plausible?”

  “I guess so. After all we only met her once. Paul would be in a much better position to know about her character than us.”

  “He wasn’t so helpful about Dale. Maybe this guy Gary will know more about him. The story about Larry’s abduction in Macau sounded a bit far-fetched to me. I’m not suggesting that Paul had any reason to lie about it but he’d only have known what Larry told him. I’m going to call up Carter tonight in Hong Kong and run it past him, see what he says about it. We’ll have to talk to Paul again when he has time, but in the meantime maybe Gary will know about the bar in Olangopo. You didn’t say much at lunch.”

  “I was being decorative. Paul kept having a sly look at me, which I expect you noticed with your sleuthful eyes.”

  “It was probably only in your mind’s eye,” I said. “The mind’s eye can be very deceptive.”

  We decided on the way that there was no point in embarking on a search of the pawn shops until we found a place to stay there, but I didn’t want to move until I’d seen Paul again, and Gary. As we swung into Olongapo we left the coast road behind. Olongapo wasn’t an attractive city and it was snarled with traffic. We asked the driver to take us straight to Police Station One. Armed with my letter I was able to see a senior inspector called Virgilio Mendoza, only to find we were in the wrong place. Mendoza knew nothing about the matter, but after umpteen phone calls we were told that we needed to head out of the city and take the coast road to Manga beach. This wasn’t in the city of Olongapo but it was still in the municipality. We should contact the local police there as they were the ones who had taken custody of the body after it was recovered from the sea and they were the ones who knew where Sands had moored his boat. They were also responsible for interviewing Hendriks and had probably seized the boat as well.

  We climbed back in the taxi and headed away from the city and we soon found ourselves on a small road which twisted and turned along the coast so that for most of the journey we had intermittent views of the ocean. The Manga beach area was little more than a single street lined with tiny shacks, and girlie bars to quench the thirst and satisfy the lustful desires of the local populace and visitors. The beach itself was down a narrow pot-holed track and the police station was next to the beach.

  A junior officer showed us the spot where Larry had kept his boat. It was called Baloy Beach. He also indicated the approximate area where the body had been found. Nobody had checked with the owner of the mooring in Lower Mau to determine when Dale had rented the mooring or how long Larry’s boat had been moored there. The words ‘a less than thorough investigation’ echoed in my head. I asked if the police could make further enquiries about those two matters but was told that since the case was now being dealt with by the PNP they were no longer involved in the investigation. All in all it wasn’t a particularly fruitful afternoon.

  We found a small hotel with a restaurant that fronted the beach and ordered some fresh calamari and a couple of drinks; melon juice for Lucy and a beer for me. We watched the local children playing on the beach and some fishermen preparing their boats and nets for some night fishing. It was five o’clock and I reckoned we could give ourselves the luxury of half an hour to relax before heading back to Subic for our meeting with Gary. Something had been eating away at me during the afternoon and as the beer started to work its magic I finally realized what it was.

  “So far,” I said, “we’ve been told that by early September Larry owed money to Dale and to some Triads from Macau. But apparently Larry insured his watch and a few other items of jewelry for about twelve thousand dollars. The Rolex was insured for ten thousand. Why didn’t he sell those items, at least the watch, to pay off some of what he owed? He would have had the watch when he went to Macau – why didn’t the Triad loan sharks take it off him?”

  Lucy popped some calamari into her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully for a while.

  “Maybe he sold it after it was insured,” Lucy said, “or before it was insured but after the pictures had been taken. Maybe the whole point of insuring the stuff was so that he could realize some money by reporting it lost. That way he could get the money for the watch twice over.”

  “I doubt he’d have risked pawning it or selling it to a pawn shop if he was planning to make a claim.”

  Lucy stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth and looked at me. “I think he may have sold it to Dale.”
/>
  “Why?”

  “It’s only come back to me in the last few minutes, but when I saw the picture of the Rolex at Cary’s house there was something familiar about it. I remember now that when I was in Thailand Dale had a Rolex and I’m fairly sure it was the same model. We were having a meal one day and I asked Dale if it was a real one because when I was in Phuket fake watches were being sold everywhere. He took it off his wrist and showed it to me. He told me it was a fake, and he said something about how you could tell it wasn’t real, something about the weight, but I don’t remember exactly what he said. Of course, it might not have been Larry’s – I’m hardly an expert on Rolex watches – but it was very similar to the one in the picture.”

  “Well he would’ve still been wearing it at the time he was arrested in Manila, so it would be easy to check. I’ve got a copy of the valuation and it has the watch’s serial number.”

  Lucy was mopping up the remaining sauce from the calamari with what was left of her rice. She carefully maneuvered the succulent muddy mixture onto her fork by using her fingers, lifted the fork carefully to her mouth and popped it inside. She placed her fork on the empty plate and sucked the tips of each finger of her right hand before saying:

  “Wouldn’t he have told us if Larry had sold it to him?”

  We locked eyes. We both had the same unspoken thought.

  “If Dale had the watch when he was arrested then the police will have it,” I said. “There may be nothing in it, but it’s worth checking. I can ask Santos to check the serial number.”

  “And if it is the same one it would save me the trouble of trawling around Olongapo’s pawn shops,” she said cheerfully and with an undertone of genuine relief.

  “It’s likely Cary would have known if Larry had sold it. She obviously thinks he still had it when he met his untimely end or she would have said something when I raised the idea of checking the pawn shops.”