As we got closer I could see that tongues were involved.
Chapter Twenty Two
The Early Birds
“We’re a little earlier than expected,” I said. The three of them turned sharply to look at us. “The traffic was unusually light.”
Cary’s hand shot to her mouth, a reaction I’d got used to seeing when she was surprised. Dale said nothing. I looked sideways at Lucy; she was speechless. Cary took her hand away from her mouth and I could see she was biting her bottom lip.
“Perhaps you’d better introduce us to Angel,” I said, “and then I think we should all go inside for a chat.”
“Sure,” Dale said with resignation. “Please come in. You’re right; I wasn’t expecting you just yet.”
We all went inside and found ourselves in a small but comfortable living room with an open kitchen off to one side. There was a sofa against the wall next to the front door with a coffee table in front of it and a flat screen TV on the opposite wall. There was a dining table with four chairs between the sitting area and the kitchen. Cary asked Lucy and me to sit on the sofa. She, Dale and Angel sat on three of the dining chairs facing towards us.
“It’s not what you think,” said Dale.
“And what do I think?”
“That we killed Larry.”
“Of course I don’t think either of you did that,” I said. “In fact I know you didn’t.”
Nobody said anything. I looked at Cary.
“Because Larry’s not dead, is he Cary?” I said.
Cary looked at me, almost pleadingly. Tears glistened in her eyes.
I looked at Dale. “You’re not dead, are you Larry?” I said.
Dale lifted both forearms in the air, palms facing upwards.
“That’s what comes of hiring a detective, I guess,” he said.
“Would somebody like to tell me what’s going on?” Lucy said. They were the first words she’d uttered since we stepped out of the elevator.
“Which of you would care to bring Lucy up to speed?” I said.
The three of them sat in silence for a minute or two, looking from one to another. Finally, Cary spoke.
“It’s true,” she said. “This is my husband, Larry. I’m afraid Dale is the one who died in Olongapo. I’m so ashamed to have lied to you…to everybody. It’s such a complicated story.”
Larry got up, walked behind Cary’s chair and put his arms around her neck. “Let me tell them Cary. It was all my idea.”
Angel sat silently, her head down and her hands in her lap. There was a clear family resemblance between her and Cary, but she lacked Cary’s inner radiance.
“It’s hard to know where to start,” Larry said. “How can I expect you to believe anything I say now anyway?”
“It might help to tell you that I knew you were Larry before I came here tonight. I knew before I went to the police station to get you released. Perhaps ‘knew’ is too strong a word, but I was ninety-nine percent sure of it.”
“So why didn’t you tell the police?”
“Because I think I know most of the story already. I’ve been in this game a long time. Once I have most of the pieces of the jigsaw I can usually put it together.”
“How did you know?” said Cary.
“I already had a suspicion when we met yesterday, Cary. When you produced the receipt the suspicion was strengthened considerably. The receipt had never been in the pocket of Larry’s jeans; I could tell that just by looking at it. And then it was in Larry’s handwriting and it ought to have been in Dale’s. He told me at our meeting in Manila that he’d given Larry the receipt, not the other way around. I knew it was a forgery – Lucy suspected it first, didn’t you?” I said, turning to my assistant. Lucy’s eyes were wide, trying to take it all in. She nodded vigorously.
“I knew the first time we met, Cary, that you knew nothing about the transfer of the boat. How could you? It never happened. You merely repeated what Larry told you to say after he was arrested. I thought at first that you were doing it to help Dale, but you were doing it to maintain the deception. When I saw the receipt and you told me it was written by Larry, and then produced the marriage certificate and Larry’s letters to prove it was his signature and handwriting I knew that Larry had to be alive. How else could you produce a forged document with his handwriting on it? Then when I spoke to superintendent Santos last night he mentioned Angel’s visit and I realized how Larry had got the forged receipt to you. Angel collected it from Larry the day before when she went to see him.
“And there were other things too. I noticed that there were no pictures in the house of you and Larry alone together, and no pictures of the wedding. It didn’t strike me during our first visit, but it did yesterday. Those pictures would have given the game away immediately, but their absence was telling. All the pictures of Larry had Dale in them too, so that you could simply reverse the identities if asked about the photograph − like you did with the photograph of the three of you on the boat, Cary. After I became suspicious I noticed that Larry and Dale were similar in height and build; similar enough to carry out the deception when all that remained of Dale was a skeleton. You’re a gambling man Larry, I understand. I bet you a dollar to a dime that if I look at your passport it will bear an issue date in late September or early October.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” said Larry. “When I left the Philippines after Dale’s death I went to Thailand and bought a forged passport with Dale’s name and details, but with my own photograph; I paid top dollar for it too. It wouldn’t be good enough to enter the States, but it was more than adequate for the Philippine immigration.”
“What about when you used Dale’s passport to exit the Philippines on that occasion?”
“I took a chance on it. I knew that the immigration staff would only concentrate on looking at the entry stamps, to make sure I hadn’t overstayed. I figured the difference between two white guys of about the same age and general appearance wouldn’t be noticed on the way out, especially by a person of a different ethnic background and particularly as Dale’s passport photograph was nearly ten years old. But I couldn’t take a chance again, so I bought the fake one. It’s a pretty sophisticated forgery. I didn’t expect a problem, and I didn’t have one. The Philippine immigration never suspected it wasn’t a genuine passport.”
“Okay; why don’t we start with Dale’s death, which I assume happened in mid-September.”
Larry asked Angel to make some coffee. She was clearly relieved to be given something to do.
“I can’t expect you to trust me after everything that’s happened,” he said. “It was unforgivable to take advantage of your kindness and Lucy’s by lying to you, but I was too far in by that time and so was Cary. She’d already identified the body as me. As a result, I was in jail suspected of having killed myself. I just hoped that if Cary produced the receipt or something the police would let me go. I’m sorry for that. But what I’m going to tell you now is God’s honest truth. No more lies, I promise.”
“Okay, fire away,” I said.
“Dale was staying with Cary and me. He didn’t have a place of his own so he often stayed with us when he was in Subic. He wasn’t there all the time; he’d come and go. But at that time we’d been having difficulties with the bar we’d both invested in and he was there. He’d lent me money but I couldn’t repay it. I lost a stack of cash in Macau – you know all about that, I know. Anyway Dale’s death had nothing to do with any of that. On the night he died Cary and I were out and we left Dale at home. Dale had called Angel and asked her to come and spend the evening with him. Sometime before Angel arrived some guys went to the house. It’s obvious they were sent by that asshole Tony that Cary knew before we were married. He always hated me because I’d got Cary, but also because I supported an organization that tries to stop child abuse. The group is called Preda and it’s supported by the Philippine Government. Well that’s the theory anyway; in practice not much prog
ress has really been made during the past forty years or so. A lot of local officials, politicians and the police are involved in the child abuse racket because it’s so lucrative. I had the idea of naming names. That wasn’t popular, but my position was ‘look – if we name the names they’re going to have to take it seriously’. It seemed to me the only way to get the government to take action instead of just paying lip service to the principle.
“I guess Tony knew that he’d be one of the names. Anyway, when Angel came to the house Dale was there with two or three guys that Angel had never seen before; local Filipinos. Dale told her to go home. She wanted to go in and talk to him but he got angry and told her to go. Obviously he was just trying to protect her. She knew something was wrong but she was frightened. She took a jeepney home and then called Cary and asked her what was going on. Cary and I went straight back to the house but we were too late. We guessed that the guys sent by Tony had assumed that Dale was me because he was in my house. Dale was dead on the living room floor. He had a towel pushed into his mouth and his wrists were tied. I guessed he’d suffocated. There was vomit in his mouth when we removed the towel. I’m sure they didn’t mean to kill him, because there are easier ways than that. We think they bound his hands and used the towel to gag him so that they could get away before he could call anyone. The phone was disconnected at the wall. And then we found that they’d torn up all the leaflets that we were going to distribute locally and dumped them on the kitchen floor.”
“Are you sure he was dead?”
“Quite sure; the blood had started to collect on the lower part of his body. We think he’d been dead for more than an hour.”
“So why not call the police?”
“We were frightened. We were fairly sure that they didn’t kill Dale deliberately and probably had no idea that he was dead. If we reported it to the police we were frightened of what might happen to Cary and her family. I mean if Tony found out that someone had been killed I didn’t think he’d be averse to getting rid of any possible witnesses. His men had seen Angel. We didn’t know if they knew who she was but Dale might have used her name and they might have put two and two together. So if we reported the death and implicated Tony then Cary, and I and probably Angel would be at risk; after all Angel may have been able to identify them. I could go away but Cary couldn’t and neither could Angel. And the thing is, in the Philippines you don’t know who you can trust. Maybe the police would go straight to Tony for a pay-off and then they’d devise a way to keep Cary, Angel and maybe others in her family quiet for good. No witnesses, no scandal. On the other hand, if we reported the death and didn’t mention that Tony was a suspect then maybe the police would think we’d killed him and we’d be arrested.
“We talked about it all night, about what to do. It was my idea to simply get rid of the body and disappear. That way Tony would think I’d been scared off by his men and he’d leave Cary alone. I’d already talked to Cary about moving somewhere else because of the money I owed in Macau. I didn’t tell her about the loan sharks because I didn’t want to frighten her, but I told her that I was in debt over my head. I was constantly worried that they’d send someone to look for me and maybe hurt Cary. So I suggested that Cary make a formal report to the police that I’d gone missing and that the boat had gone too. At first I was going to take the boat out into the bay and then swim ashore, leaving the boat empty so that people would think I’d drowned. But the problem was that it was the only thing I still had that was worth something. Apart from the house I was broke, because of the bar and the Macau disaster. I couldn’t leave Cary so I had the idea of using Dale’s identity. That way I could stay in the Philippines, travel in and out freely and start afresh. Eventually Cary could sell the house and we’d move somewhere far away where nobody knew us.”
Larry took a sip of his coffee and sat for a while looking at Cary.
“Okay, go on,” I said.
“I know it seems an awful thing to have done, but the fact is that Dale was dead; nothing was going to change that. We knew he had no family anywhere so nobody would report him missing. But of course we had to think of a way of disposing of the body. The obvious way was to take him out in the boat and put him in the ocean. We decided to take him very far out, beyond the currents that would bring him back to the shoreline. And then at the last moment I had the idea of putting my driving license in his shoe so that if he ever washed ashore or was found they’d think it was me. And then I moved the boat down the coast and painted out the name. I used Dale’s name to lease a mooring. I figured I’d sell it when I had the chance. It never occurred to me that anyone down there would identify the boat as mine. And that’s really all there was. I’m not proud of what I did. I panicked really, and by the time we’d dumped the body there was really no going back.”
I turned to Lucy. “So what do you make of all this?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to know what I might do if I found myself in that situation.”
“The problem is Larry that we only have your word for the circumstances of Dale’s death,” I said. “And we know that you already had a reason for faking your death and finding a new identity. You had bad debts, Macau gangsters were after you and possibly disgruntled bar owners too. And then there was the lure of the insurance money. It’s hard to take all this at face value, no matter whether I want to believe what you say or not.”
“I appreciate that. There’s no reason for you to believe anything I say. You’re entitled to be skeptical.”
I turned to Cary. “Do you stand by everything Larry says, Cary?”
“It’s the truth. But then you probably think I’d say anything to protect Larry.”
“Angel. You haven’t said anything yet. Would you like to tell me want happened when you went to the house that night; the night Dale was killed?”
Angel came back from the kitchen and slumped down on one of the dining chairs. Her eyes had a faraway look as if she was transporting herself back in time. When she spoke, she spoke slowly and quietly. It was almost as if she was talking to herself. Her English was as perfect as Cary’s.
“I’d never seen Dale like that before. He was gentle. He never got angry − so I was hurt when he spoke to me like that. But almost immediately I realized something was wrong. I’ve gone over and over it again and again. If I’d called Cary before I got home maybe Dale would still be alive. I cared for Dale. I know he didn’t love me, but he was kind to me. I wouldn’t say anything to protect someone who hurt him and I wouldn’t stand up for Larry if he wasn’t telling the truth, even if he is my sister’s husband.” She paused and thought for a while. “I can only tell you what I saw that night. I’ve never lied to you or to anybody else about anything important in my life. What I saw was Dale and three Filipino men. They were talking with loud voices. They sounded angry or maybe they were arguing when I approached the house. Everything’s a bit blurred in my memory now, except one thing that’s as clear as day. It was the look of desperation on Dale’s face when he sent me away. I didn’t understand what it meant then, but I know now. He was trying to protect me without a thought for himself or his own safety. He could have told me to call the police or something but I know that all that was on his mind was to keep me safe, and that’s a memory I’ll carry with me to my grave.” She paused again, stood up and came around the table to stand in front of me and Lucy. “I would never disgrace his memory by lying to you about our final meeting.” She started to cry and walked over to the dining table and sat down again. She put her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands and sobbed uncontrollably. Lucy started to cry too.
I waited until everything had calmed down and then asked if maybe I could have another coffee, and Cary went off to the kitchen to make it.
“In the final analysis it doesn’t really matter what I think about all this; whether I believe your story or not,” I said. “I’m not a policeman. I’m not even a licensed private detective in this country. I’m here because Lucy a
sked me to come and Lucy’s the best friend I have. She’s a pretty good assistant detective as well if you want my opinion.” I patted Lucy’s leg and she took hold of my hand and squeezed it. “And Lucy asked me to come because Larry was kind to her when she met him in Thailand, even though she knew him by a different name then.”
Cary put down a fresh cup of coffee on the table in front of me.
“When all’s said and done the real point is that I was hired to prove that Dale didn’t kill Larry. Since Larry’s still alive it puts an end to the matter as far as I’m concerned. But I have to say that whether what you’ve all told me today is true or not Larry was playing a very dangerous game by using Dale’s passport and assuming his identity. If the police had discovered his real identity he would have become the prime suspect in Dale’s disappearance – and rightly so. You might also have been suspected of trying to defraud the insurance company.”
“Neither of us thought about the insurance until after I’d identified the body as Larry’s,” Cary said. “We didn’t expect that the body would ever be found. Then after the insurance agent came to see me I got frightened because he talked about making a claim; but I didn’t want to do that. I know I lied about identifying Larry and about the boat but I only did it to protect us all. I’m not a criminal.”
“What you say may be true, Cary. But the danger is that if the police get involved again they may not believe you. As long as Larry is masquerading as Dale he’s at considerable risk of being arrested again. It would only take someone to recognize him and make a report.”
The Black Widow - Mark Kane Mysteries - Book Three: A Private Investigator Crime Series of Murder, Mystery, Suspense & Thriller Stories...with a dash of Romance Page 17