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

“Except that Larry could have sold it between the last time she saw him and the time he disappeared. She admits that she didn’t report him missing for several days.”

  “Then there are three possibilities.” I said. “The first is that it’s not the same watch; but if it is then Dale either bought it or took it as part-payment of Larry’s debt − or he stole it from Larry. And we both know what that would imply.”

  “Let’s have another drink,” said Lucy.

  At six we rounded up the taxi driver to whom I’d given a couple of hundred pesos for some food. On the drive back to Subic Lucy said, “What do you make of the Triad thing?”

  “Well, I assume it probably happened more or less as Paul told us because I can’t think of any reason why Larry would have made it up. We’ll see if Gary can shed any light on it.”

  “But it’s hard to see why the Triads would kill him if he owed them money. What would be the point of that?”

  “To send a message perhaps, although it doesn’t seem likely. But then there really doesn’t seem to be any motive for Dale to have killed Larry either. An old second-hand boat and a Rolex hardly seem to justify a murder,” I said. “On the other hand people have been murdered for less.”

  “So that just leaves Cary. After all she’s the one with the most to gain; especially the insurance money. And the house.”

  “Or suicide,” I said. “A man out of his depth with debt taking the easy way out and knowing that his wife would be well provided for because of the insurance.”

  “But he could have asked Cary to sell the house if there was no other way out,” Lucy said. “If she loved him as Paul said she did she would hardly have refused.”

  “Don’t forget that the land belongs to Cary’s family, and her family is quite poor. The land is probably the only thing of value that they have, so I doubt that selling it to pay off Larry’s debts would have been an option. The other possibility that Paul mentioned was about the bar in Olongapo. We’ll find out more about that the next time we see Paul, I hope. We’re going to need to see Cary again. I want to find out how much, if anything, she knew about the Macau thing. And I want to ask her about the watch again, too.”

  We were back at the hotel by six forty five. I went down to the Café at seven. Lucy was still dolling herself up and said she’d be along soon. I took that with a pinch of salt.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gary

  In contrast with Lucy’s tardiness, Gary was already in the bar when I arrived. He was a tall fresh-faced man in his late twenties with a shock of blonde hair and casually dressed in khaki shorts and a long-sleeved khaki combat jacket. He was wearing flip flops on his feet. He greeted me in the usual Australian vernacular.

  “Hello mate. Sorry, I couldn’t wait so I ordered a beer already; can I get you one too?”

  “Hi Gary, I’m Kane. Thanks, I’ve grown quite fond of the local beers so I’ll have a San Mig.”

  “Excellent choice, mate; try the extra strong one.” Gary called over the waitress and ordered me a Red Horse.

  “So Paul tells me you’re a private detective; where are you based, Manila?”

  “Boston, USA.”

  “Geez, you’re a long way from home.”

  “Yes. Well my, er, assistant, Lucy, was vacationing in Thailand and she met Dale Porter there and became friendly with him and his girlfriend. Then she heard he’d been arrested for murder in Manila and urged me to come over to see if I could help him.” I took a long swig from my bottle. “Actually she didn’t urge me to come, she insisted. Well, you know women.”

  “Don’t I just? Paul says your assistant’s a real cracker, if I’m not speaking out of turn.”

  “She’d have been delighted to have heard that if she were here. She will be here soon, but she’s freshening up in the hotel. We’re staying next door. It might be best not to mention the strength of the beer you ordered for me.”

  “Got it mate; no worries.”

  “Since she’s my assistant I’d better wait for her to arrive before our chat, but let me fill you in on the background.”

  “I’ve got most of it from Paul, I think. Dale’s in jail in Manila because they think he killed Larry. You’re here to investigate the circumstances of Larry’s death and get Dale released. That’s about it, right?”

  “Yes, Dale’s remanded in custody while the matter is being investigated. Lucy wasn’t sure there’d be much of an investigation here and I rather think she could be right. So I’m just exploring all the angles at the moment and trying to make sense of everything.”

  “Gotcha.”

  We’d both finished our drinks and so I ordered another round. The beers came with a bowl of greasy salted peanuts in their husks.

  “So what do you do here, Gary?”

  “I work for a shipping company, dealing with international freight. I’ve been here over three years and it’s better than working for a living.”

  “Well I’m self-employed,” I said, “and so far, working pro bono on this case so I need to wrap things up as soon as possible. I’m hoping you’ll be able to help.”

  “I’ll do what I…”

  Lucy had arrived wearing extremely short pants and a tight fitting T-shirt. Her tanned shoulders and legs were glowing. She beamed at us and held out her hand to Gary rather in the manner of a royal personage.

  “Oh hi, I’m Gary,” he said, eying her chest.

  “Lucy,” she said. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’ve just been tidying myself up. I expect Kane told you, we’ve been to the beach near Olongapo.”

  “Well, I’m very pleased to meet you. Kane’s been telling me all about you,” he lied convincingly.

  Lucy plumped for a non-alcoholic cocktail but Gary urged her to have a Sex on the Beach instead. “It’s kind of a specialty here,” he said. I was warming to him. Lucy giggled and said, “Well maybe just this once.” I could tell she was in flirting mode and enjoying being the center of attention so I got straight down to business. I’d need to have a word with her later about the appropriate way for an assistant to dress for a business meeting.

  Lucy’s drink arrived and she sipped it through its bendy straw. “Ooh, that’s strong,” she said, and then settled back in her wicker chair.

  “Well as you probably appreciate Gary, Dale denies any involvement in Larry’s disappearance or death. He’s under suspicion because he was found to be in possession of Larry’s boat which apparently disappeared about the same time as Larry did – around mid-September. I’ve seen Dale since his arrest and he tells me that Larry gave him the boat in September in lieu of a debt of ten thousand dollars which Larry was unable to repay. We’ve been to see Cary and she more or less confirms this account but only in a vague sense. She didn’t actually seem to know much about it. However, she’s adamant that Dale wouldn’t have harmed Larry in any way; that they were friends. Dale says he can’t remember when Larry gave the boat to him, but it must have been between September seven and September fifteen because, according to the immigration records, Dale was away from the Philippines until the seventh and, according to Cary, Larry disappeared on or around the tenth, although she didn’t report him missing until the fifteenth. Of course, those dates aren’t set in stone because we don’t know exactly when Larry met his death. In order to assist Dale as best we can we really need to investigate the circumstances surrounding Larry’s disappearance and death; if possible to find out how he died and, if he was killed, who was responsible.”

  “Yeah, Paul told me. He said you suspected that Cary might be involved in some way.”

  “Well, it’s no more than a possibility which we need to consider. She stands to benefit substantially from a life insurance policy that Larry had. If Larry was killed, we need to look at whoever may have had a motive. It’s also a fact that the vast majority of murders are committed by someone who knew the victim. It wouldn’t be the first time that a spouse was killed for the insurance. It’s no more than specu
lation. No-one’s accusing Cary of anything; we just need to look at all the possibilities.”

  Gary picked up his empty bottle and studied it briefly. I waved to the waitress to attract her attention, pointed at the bottles and nodded. She disappeared behind the bar and reappeared at the table in seconds. She expertly removed the caps from the bottles with one hand and placed them in the foam insulating jackets on the table. She brought another plate of peanuts too.

  “So was it definitely a murder then?”

  “Nothing is definite so far. From a medical point of view no-one can say. There’s no definite indication that there was foul play. It could conceivably have been an accident, or even suicide.”

  “Larry was a pretty good sailor,” Gary said, “and he was a good swimmer too. If he’d already sold his boat to Dale before he went missing I don’t understand what he was doing out in the bay.”

  “Well that’s one of the problems. The other is that there was nothing on him in the way of jewelry – watch, wedding band, bracelet or necklace – to confirm his identity, although his driving license was found in his shoe. In addition to that Cary has identified the body by its teeth. If it weren’t for those two things there’d be nothing to confirm that the body was Larry’s, except that it was the body of a white male about the same height and build as Larry. I got the impression that you knew Larry as well as Paul did; perhaps better.”

  “Probably about the same; but to be honest nobody really knew him that well. He was an occasional drinking buddy and we’d both been out fishing with him. We were both invited to his wedding. But Paul and I both work here. We’ve got visas and full-time jobs. Larry pretty much lived the life of a tourist. He’d often leave the Philippines to renew his visa and I wouldn’t say either Paul or I saw him that regularly. He was just one of the expat crowd.”

  “And how about Dale?” I said.

  “About the same; we were all part of a loose-knit group of foreigners. I’ve known him for about the same amount of time as Larry. Neither of them were close friends of mine, they were just mates.”

  “Paul told us that Cary didn’t like Dale.”

  Gary thought this over for a while before replying.

  “I wouldn’t really put it that way. I think she liked him okay but she didn’t approve of him, of the way he behaved sometimes. Basically there are two kinds of girls you’re going to meet up here as a single foreigner – the good girls and the bad girls. By bad I don’t mean wicked, I mean the ones who are willing to go with more or less anyone who can give them a good time. Cary’s from a good family and she’s a good girl in the sense that she wouldn’t go with a guy she didn’t genuinely like. I don’t know for sure but I got the impression that Larry was the only guy she’d ever been with – either local or foreign. I was with Larry when they met. We were both at the marina here in Subic and she and Larry hit it off straight away, but it was several weeks before it developed into a romance. I never saw Larry with anyone else, and I never heard that either. In a place like this you’d hear the gossip soon enough if there was any hanky-panky going on.”

  “And how about Dale?”

  “Well he was different. Dale played the field. There’s nothing wrong with that, he was single, he could do what he liked.”

  “But he had some kind of relationship with Cary’s sister I understand?”

  “Yes, they did hang out together for a while. It was never going to be long-term. I know that Dale had no intention of settling down.”

  “Was he faithful to Angel, the sister?”

  “I doubt it. I don’t think it was that serious in his eyes.”

  “What about in Cary’s eyes?”

  “Well Filipina’s are famously jealous and protective of those near to them. I know she didn’t approve of the relationship because she knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere. She thought Dale was just stringing her along.”

  “Paul told us about an incident where Dale got drunk and made a pass at Cary and that you were there,” Lucy said.

  “Yes,” Gary said, “it was late one evening near the beach at Olongapo. We were at a karaoke bar. Larry was away; I think he was renewing his visa but I can’t recall exactly. Everybody was a bit drunk and Dale was dancing with Cary and, well, he got a bit more intimate than was appreciated. I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm, but Cary didn’t take it well. She stormed off and later made Larry get Dale to apologize to her in public. I was there then too. It was all a bit embarrassing.”

  “Was that before or after Dale was involved with Cary’s sister?”

  “Oh it was before that. There are some people here who reckoned that he did it to get back at Cary for humiliating him, but who knows?”

  “When did that incident happen?”

  “A long time ago, before they got married. And things just went on about the same after that; it was water under the bridge if you know what I mean. There wasn’t any other friction between the two of them as far as I know.”

  “Paul told us about an incident in Macau involving Larry. Do you know about that?”

  “Yes, I do. It was last August. Larry went gambling in Macau and borrowed a stack of money from some unsavory characters there and then he couldn’t repay them. They kidnapped him and brought him back over here to collect the debt.”

  “How do you know about it?”

  “Because I had to lend him some money; I couldn’t lend him all of it – he owed over twenty thousand dollars, but I lent him seven thousand. Dale was worried that they might find out about Cary and her family and threaten to harm them.”

  “But how do you know it happened like he said? Couldn’t it just have been an excuse to get you to lend him some money?”

  Gary looked over at me as if he was surprised at the suggestion.

  “Because I went there,” he said. “He was in a hotel in Angeles with those bastards. I took the money and they agreed to give him time to pay the rest of it; that was the deal. I was the one who got them to back off, at least temporarily.”

  “That was a lot of money to loan a mate. Weren’t you worried he might not repay you?”

  “Of course I was concerned but I didn’t feel like I had a choice. And actually he did repay me.”

  “Do you mind telling me how? I thought he didn’t have any money.”

  “He gave me his Rolex watch which was worth at least that. He said when he got some cash together he’d buy it back off me.”

  “If he had a valuable Rolex why didn’t the gangsters take it from him?”

  “Coz he didn’t have it with him. Luckily for him it was being repaired in Manila or the bastards would’ve had it off him.”

  “And where’s the watch now?”

  “You’re looking at it, mate,” he said, extending his wrist across the table. It was a dead ringer for the one in Cary’s photograph.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Watch

  Lucy looked at me and laughed. She put a hand on my arm. “So much for the pawn shops,” she said.

  Gary looked at us quizzically.

  “It’s a sort of private joke,” I said. “The missing watch has been the subject of some considerable conjecture between us, because we thought it might have been removed by the person who killed Larry or by the fishermen who found his body.”

  “Christ, I hope that doesn’t make me a suspect, mate,” Gary said in mock concern.

  “No, I think you’re free from suspicion, but you’ve saved Lucy the agonizing task of traipsing around the pawn shops in Subic.”

  “Which calls for another drink, I’d say,” said Lucy.

  “Same again?” said Gary.

  “Why not?” said Lucy.

  “Shall we have something to eat,” I said. “We only had a snack in Olangapo. We can have something here or find somewhere else nearby.”

  “I’m okay here,” said Gary. “But if you want we can look elsewhere.”

  “Well this has become my sort of tempor
ary office since we arrived in Subic, so we may as well eat here. But you’ll have to let us take you out for a proper meal sometime soon, with Paul if possible. You’ve been a great help.”

  The Café provided what turned out to be an excellent seafood platter with freshly cooked fish, king prawns, mussels and calamari. It came with a bowl of rice, a salad and a bowl of bread. While we were eating Gary turned his attention to the mannequin sitting next to me.

  “Is there a lot of training involved in becoming a detective?” he said to Lucy, much to her obvious delight.

  “It’s not so much the training,” she said, moving her plate to one side and leaning forward with her elbows on the table, drawing enthusiastically from her cocktail and engaging Gary directly, ignoring me as if I was wearing a cloak of invisibility. “It’s more a matter of developing the right approach, which of course only comes with considerable experience. You have to have the right sort of mind. You need to be able to assimilate facts and analyze them carefully. You also need an open mind; there’s a world of difference between having an inquiring mind and a suspicious one. And of course as a woman I have the benefit of female intuition which isn’t to be underestimated. It’s one of the things that Kane finds so useful in having me as his partner.”

  Lucy’s self-appointed elevation from temporary assistant to partner did not escape my attention, agog though I was with her description of herself.

  “Wow. All that and looks too,” said Gary. “But isn’t it dangerous sometimes? I mean if you’re investigating a murder or a kidnapping or something.”

  “It’s something you need to take in your stride,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Of course if there’s any rough stuff I have to leave that to Kane. My forté is really in thinking things through and insightful observation. We have a sort of symbiosis. You could say that the success of our partnership is due to it being one where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We’re a team, you see?”

  She leaned back in her seat and sucked some more of her cocktail. I think she half expected a round of applause.