The Tangled Web: an international web of intrigue, murder and romance

by J. P. Lane

  “Well, they’re gone now, so that’s no longer an issue for either of us. What did you do with them anyway? Did you throw them out as revenge?”

  Virginia seemed on the verge of tears again. “They’re stored away in the outside garage. I’ve been saving them, and your old train set, for the day a nephew comes along.”

  “At the rate I’m going, I don’t know about a nephew coming along. Maybe you’d better just save that stuff for your grandchildren.”

  “You should really think about settling down again, Logan. It’s not natural living alone.” She bit her lip fighting the tears. “Things will never be the same will they?”

  Logan squeezed her hand. “It will be okay, Ginnie. It will be okay. Take it one day at a time. Do you have anything to help you sleep tonight?”

  “Yes, I have sleeping pills. But I don’t think I better take one tonight. I’ve already had two tranquilizers.”

  Logan closed the door and left her to sleep. Pensively, he went back to the living room to tell the others goodnight. It had been only the day before he was thinking about the time when Gordon and Virginia became engaged, he realized. Gordon was no longer living. In just twenty-four hours, Virginia’s life had changed drastically.

  FORTY-FOUR

  The phone had been ringing off the hook all morning with one condolence call after the other, fielded by family and friends who had gathered at Vale Verde. To get some peace and quiet, Logan volunteered to take the three-quarter-hour drive to the airport to pick up his niece and returned with her just as Gary Matthews was leaving to pick up their nephew who was arriving on a later flight. It was around three in the afternoon by the time Virginia’s son and daughter arrived home and all the family was assembled.

  Logan walked into the house to find Stella Matthews scurrying around taking a headcount for dinner. There were twenty-one Matthews altogether, plus Logan and a bevy of aunts, uncles and first cousins – thirty family members altogether scattered throughout the living areas of Vale Verde. In addition to family, there were friends who had also arrived to lend their support. Stella went from the living room to the verandah to make sure she had included everyone. “This is going to be a case of the loaves and fishes,” she muttered under her breath, bustling into the kitchen to consult with Ivy, who had commandeered the kitchen since her arrival from the cottage earlier that day.

  Stella was checking the extra freezer in the pantry for anything she could put her hands on when the phone rang for the umpteenth time. Virginia who was sitting closest to it answered. “Thank you, Mike. It’s very nice of you to call,” Logan overheard her say.

  Logan’s ears perked up as she continued, “I’ll tell him you called…Yes, it was unexpected… They’re doing an autopsy today… We won’t know until tomorrow… I can’t think of anything right now, but thanks for offering.” Her voice broke and she seemed near to tears again as she said, “Yes, I know that, Mike… thanks.”

  “Was that Mike?” Logan asked.

  Virginia nodded absently.

  “What did he have to say?”

  “Sorry, I almost forgot. He said to tell you he’ll call you tomorrow when things settle down a bit.”

  Realizing he had not yet had a word with his nephew, Logan got up and went in search of him. He found Andrew on the verandah surrounded by a group of youngsters. Logan hesitated, deliberating whether to intrude, when the young man looked his way. With a wave, he promptly came over to his uncle.

  “Hello, Andrew. Good to see you,” Logan greeted him warmly.

  “Good to see you too, Uncle Logan.”

  “How are you holding up, guy?”

  “I guess as okay as I can be, considering.”

  “Well, don’t forget I’m around if you need me.”

  Andrew made a weak attempt at a smile.

  “I mean that,” Logan insisted awkwardly. “You’re my only nephew. And as you know… I don’t have children.”

  “But you were married once, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, I was,” Logan answered in surprise.

  Andrew gazed down at his feet. “I have to tell you I’m really concerned about Mom,” he confided in a low voice.

  Logan shifted uncomfortably on his. “It will take time. It’s only been a day after all.”

  Andrew looked up. “I guess what I’m trying to say is I… I don’t think she should be left alone. I mean… she’s fine with everybody around. But what about when they leave? And what happens when you go back to New York? I think I better stay with her for a while.”

  “What’s a while?”

  “A month or two I guess.”

  “What about college? Don’t you have to go back?”

  “I would be only skipping the rest of this semester. It’s not a big deal. I wouldn’t be missing that much.”

  Logan studied his nephew. “What courses are you taking?”

  “Digital Arts and Design – digital film actually.”

  “Oh? Like special effects?”

  “That’s part of it, but there’s a lot more. One of the courses is creating your own short film from scratch – write, shoot, direct, edit – the works,” Andrew explained, pleased that Logan seemed to understand what he was talking about.

  “You’re not thinking of joining the family business then?”

  Andrew’s face flushed. “No, I don’t think so,” he stammered. “I’m really not too interested in that kind of thing. I’ll leave that to my sister when she gets her MBA. Maybe when I graduate I might be lucky enough to enter your kingdom.”

  Logan regarded Andrew searchingly. “Enter by all means, but understand one thing, you’ll be entering by merit of your ability, not because you’re my nephew. Talk to me when you’ve earned your dues. The door of my office is always open to you.”

  Logan remembered only too well when he had launched out on an entirely different path from the one his family had trodden for generations. If his nephew had decided to do the same, he would at the very least support him. He knew from his own experience it was pointless doing otherwise. Andrew had a firmness of jaw that told him his nephew would chart his own course, regardless of opposition. In fact, now that he observed him closely, he could see a bit of himself in the boy.

  “I think you’ve made an interesting choice,” he told him. “If that’s what you want, go for it. There’s no greater tragedy than a person compromising what they really want in life. The truth is we’ll always want what we want, no matter how much we try to fool ourselves into believing otherwise.”

  After they had talked for a while, he left Andrew to his own devices and strode towards the water garden, thinking it was only weeks before when he had seen Gordon deep in conversation with Frank Sterling. At the time, it had struck him that the two men had seemed rather tight. Now he was leaning towards believing there was something to Allan’s allegation concerning Indies Shipping after all. Ironically, what gave that allegation some credibility was Gary Matthews’ claim that Gordon had been put under undue stress by adverse media reports. If Logan knew one thing about Gordon, it was that Gordon was a man who had been concerned with appearances, maybe overly so. If there were any truth to what Allan had divulged, then Gordon would have been completely devastated when the lid came off and the ghastly mess was made public.

  The big rock by the fishpond as still warm from the sun as Logan seated himself on it. He gazed at the pond, watching as a few curious koi began swimming over in hope of a meal. Soon more followed until, as if a signal had been sent throughout the pond, they started arriving from every direction, thrashing around in a feeding frenzy. Finding no food to be had, they gradually dispersed and the water became still again. Somewhere nearby, a Bluequit chirped. It was perched on the shrubbery where Lauren had emerged that evening of the party seeming almost like an illusion silhouetted against the sunset. He had not suspected then that she would take his heart hostage.

  He still hadn’t heard from her. But if there was one good thing amidst all the chaos, it wa
s she knew nothing of his involvement in the assassination. That was pretty clear from her last report claiming Freeman’s murder was drug related. As to his relationship with her, he had come to terms with the fact it was hopeless. He faulted himself for his self-indulgence. He should not have pursued her in the first place, knowing perfectly well what was about to happen. And had she not saved him from his own folly by putting an end to it, he would have been forced to live a lie. To his mind, there was no greater lie than an unspoken truth that needed to be spoken. Noticing it was already getting dark, he got up and headed back to the house.

  A large buffet spread had been put together and laid out in the dining room by Ivy, Clara and a multitude of helping hands. Not feeling particularly hungry, Logan went to the table and started helping himself meagerly. Ivy appeared out of nowhere and grabbed his plate from him. “Mr. Logan, give me that plate. Where have you been? Everybody has already started eating.”

  “Take it easy with those servings, Ivy,” Logan protested as he watched her moving around the table dipping into as many dishes as his plate could hold.

  Ignoring his protest, she bypassed the salad and dumped an obscenely large helping of rice and beans onto the already heaped plate. She handed him his dinner with a commanding look. “You eat everything on that plate, please sir. Look at you! You’re as thin as a rail! You need a woman to look after you. But no woman going want no mawga man like you, so you better fatten up.” Having dispensed her unsolicited advice, she disappeared back into the kitchen.

  Finding nowhere to sit at the table, Logan found himself the last empty chair in the living room. He sat and balanced his plate on his lap, listening with one ear to everyone talking at once. He wasn’t sure if it was because his nephew had jogged his memory, or because of Virginia’s remark the night before, or Ivy’s more recent remonstration about his needing a woman in his life, why his ex-wife Theresa’s first attendance at an Armstrong family gathering now came to mind.

  It had been a similar kind of affair, shortly after they were married, during Theresa’s first visit to the island. Defeated by the misconception no one was listening to a word she was saying, Theresa whispered in his ear, “Tell me, is anybody listening to what anyone else is saying? I can’t get a word in.”

  Logan challenged her to put it to the test. “Say you’re pregnant and see what happens,” he egged her on.

  “I can’t say I’m pregnant,” Theresa protested. “It isn’t true.”

  She thought for a moment then said loudly, “Remember the time we had to sleep in the car in the South of France, Logan?”

  “You slept in your car in the South of France?” The question had come from one of Logan’s aunts who had been engrossed in conversation at the other side of the room.

  “Never say I didn’t tell you,” Logan smirked. “Don’t believe for a minute everybody isn’t listening to everything that’s being said around them. The ability to talk and listen at the same time is a skill unique to this crowd. We invented multi-tasking. But I’m afraid you’ll have to straighten my aunt out on that one. In case you haven’t noticed, she’s still waiting for an explanation as to why we slept in the car.”

  It was now after eleven and emptied of company, Vale Verde seemed eerily quiet. Logan was on his way to his bedroom when an ashen-faced Virginia came flying out of the master bedroom with a prescription bottle in her hand.

  “Logan! I was just coming to find you,” she cried pulling him by the arm. “Come inside the room with me! I can’t risk anybody hearing this.” Her hand shook uncontrollably as she closed the door behind them.

  She shoved the bottle in his face. “Logan, look here!”

  “It’s empty. But why all the fuss over an empty bottle?” Logan asked perplexed.

  “My sleeping pills were in this bottle! It was almost full when I last took one. Now it’s empty!” she exclaimed hysterically.

  “Virginia, get a hold of yourself. Why are you so upset over an empty bottle of sleeping pills?”

  Virginia slumped on the bed and burst into tears. “Why can’t you understand what I’m trying to say? Isn’t it obvious?” “God forgive me for thinking it, Logan,” she said in a still voice, “but I know Clara wouldn’t have stolen my pills.”

  Logan’s eyes moved from Virginia’s to the bottle. “What are you getting at?” he asked, appalled by her insinuation. “Gordon died of a heart attack.”

  Virginia’s lips quivered in disagreement.

  “Virginia, don’t be ridiculous. Come on now. You’re just overwrought, and that’s understandable. You’ve been through a lot in the past day.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  It was an unseasonably hot day for so late in the year. The humidity permeated every pore like a muggy steam bath, fogging windows of air conditioned buildings. The breeze off the sea, which would have made such a scorcher barely tolerable, had completely abandoned the capital. Not wishing to brave the heat, Mike stood at the sliding glass doors opening out on to his upstairs balcony and peered through the misted-over glass panes. A murky smog hovered over the city, the combination of particles of dust and industrial pollution with nowhere to go without a southwester to carry it away.

  Mike gazed out at the city unseeingly, his mind some fifty miles away at Vale Verde. He had learned from Logan that Virginia was inconsolable. She was blaming herself. She felt she should have known something was wrong when Gordon had not gone to work for three days, something unheard of for him. Mike had wanted to know if Logan thought Gordon’s death had anything to do with the Indies Shipping scandal.

  “That has crossed my mind,” Logan admitted.

  Mike shook his head. “Life’s a bitch, Logan. The only sure thing about it is you can expect the unexpected.”

  “You’re not wrong about that,” Logan agreed in a worn voice.

  “How much longer will you be here?” Mike asked.

  “I’ll stick around for as long as I can. I can’t stay too long though. I’d just got back to New York from London when I had to come back here. It’s been crazy.”

  “Sure has. When’s the funeral?”

  “No date has been set yet.”

  “The state funeral for Freeman is next week,” Mike remembered.

  “That should be a circus.”

  “Circus or not, I’d like to see that bastard good and buried.”

  “I never knew you felt that strongly about him.”

  “Which thinking person didn’t feel strongly about him? With few exceptions, the whole country is rejoicing. Or haven’t you been keeping up with the news? Tell you one thing. I’d give my right arm to know who was behind it.”

  There was an imperceptible pause before Logan said, “They’ll never get to the bottom of it. Trust me on that one.”

  “That doesn’t sound exactly like a vote of confidence in our law enforcement. What makes you so sure?”

  “They never got to the bottom of Kennedy’s assassination did they? And that was the F.B.I., not our sadly under-funded C.I.D.”

  Mike turned away from the sliding glass doors deep in thought. That last remark of Logan’s had triggered something that had been lurking at the back of his mind ever since he had heard about the calls made to Cali by the now former Minister of National Security and Defense. Learning of those calls had lead Mike to question Logan’s interest in Colombia’s leading drug cartels. And what was the real reason behind Logan’s visit to the island shortly before Erick Freeman was killed? When Mike had seen him, he hadn’t given the impression he was on vacation, though he had been sticking close to the cottage. And why had he been in such a rush to get that information on the cartels? It all seemed like too much of a coincidence to Mike. Though he would never ask any questions and knew he would never get any answers, he was pretty sure Logan had been involved in some way. If that were the case, it had to be hell for him dealing with political intrigue of that nature, running a business, and handling the suicide of a family member, all at the same time.

  It didn
’t take long before his thoughts returned to Virginia. He thought it sad that twenty-three years of marriage had ended in tragedy for her. She and Gordon had an idyllic marriage from all appearances. What would life have been like for her, and for him, Mike, had she taken a different path, he couldn’t help wondering. Not that he had ever blamed Virginia for leaving him and marrying Gordon. He had behaved like a complete ass. But if it was any consolation, he had been young, too young to be thinking about settling down. Though over the years he had come to question whether there was such a thing as being too young to begin a lasting relationship. He knew couples that had married in their early twenties and made it work. Gordon and Virginia were a prime example. One thing he knew: two decades after the fact, he could safely say Virginia was the love of his life.

  Logan hadn’t been around at the time they broke up. He was still at university in England. By the time he heard about it, it was already stale news. The whole thing fell apart on a day that started out looking like it was going to be all right. It was a typical Saturday morning in those days when Saturdays were about parties, tennis, sailing, going to the beach, and getting laid if you got lucky. He and Virginia had gone to the beach with a group of friends, her friends mostly. He couldn’t quite remember how many of them there were. It was too long ago to recall with any accuracy, but it was a big enough group as he remembered. They could blame what happened on his roving eye all they wanted, but who could have resisted the vamp? She had been eyeing him all morning, shooting him flirtatious looks when Virginia’s head was turned the other way. She was Virginia’s friend and he had made a valiant effort to ignore her blatant come-ons – until she walked into the water wiggling her ass for all she was worth. That was some ass, Mike recollected ruefully, one of the finest he’d ever seen. The tragedy of it was it was the very ass that got his burned.

  After, he had begged Virginia’s forgiveness. Though knowing it was a lame excuse, he had tried to explain it hadn’t meant anything. It had been a harmless fling. Unrelenting in her anger, Virginia had huffed off into Gordon’s waiting arms faster than Mike could say give me a second chance. Having lost Virginia, he decided he might as well continue seeing her friend, milk it for all it was worth. He was doomed anyway. As it transpired, that had been his second fatal mistake. Virginia had been enraged when she heard about it through the grapevine. She had called and given him a piece of her mind. He had been at a complete loss as to why she was still so angry.