Clint Faraday Mysteries collection A Muddled Murders Collector's Edition

by Moulton, CD

  “Carlo (Tavares, the jefe of homicide dept.), let Gloria go if she gives a true statement with a warning that she can be charged for as long as you can here. If she gets into any other trouble in that time she gets charged with all of it,” Clint requested.

  “At your request. She is an accessory to a number of very serious crimes.”

  “Oh, she was damned easy to use,” Amanda said. “There’s no one in the whole world who knows more about using and being used than me. I’ve had a whole lifetime of living it and’ve been practicing for the past month. She didn’t do anything except help me get here and hold the money for me. She didn’t know about the other parts.

  “Honest. I won’t lie about anything or deny anything.”

  Carlo shook his head and shrugged. He sent her with a recording secretary and interrogator to a booth, then turned to say to Amanda. “I don’t quite know how to proceed with this kind of thing. You will certainly plead insanity in Peru. Perhaps I should simply send you there for your statements or whatever.”

  “‘Whatever’ would suit me,” she agreed with her grin. “Why Peru?”

  “Frank Lindsay is alive, he just wishes he weren’t,” Clint replied.

  “Oh, I figured you’d get there barely in time to save the lousy bastard son-of-a-bitch. I didn’t want that one to die for a lot of years. He won’t ever rape a little girl or anyone else again! They’ll run screaming when they see his face even if he physically could. It’ll hurt every time he moves. He was the only one in my life worse than Pops.”

  “I can’t argue that point. You had one hell of a lousy life.”

  “Up until I was eight – spelled a-t-e – it was a fairly good life. We even had fun sometimes. I had given it a twenty five percent chance you wouldn’t find the Cali place. I would have stayed there the rest of my life if you hadn’t. I love that place because I was truly happy there for a couple of hours now-and-then.

  “Could you leave this for Peru or wherever? I’m dead tired.”

  Clint asked Carlo, who said he was tired, too. If she would sign an agreement they would do that.

  They did that. Clint went to sack out for ten hours (of which he actually slept six. He never slept more than that) and packed to go to Peru with Amanda and an officer that was being sent to take her back. Gonzalo said he would try to get her sent directly on to Panamá as soon as she was booked in Peru. He did NOT want her in Peru!

  “I think you’ll even like her,” Clint warned.

  “After that Lindsay person? I really don’t think so!”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Well, here’s a copy of her statement. She didn’t leave out anything,” Gonzalo said. “You were right. It scared the piss out of me to see that I actually was beginning to like her. She’s totally honest and knows she’s crazy.”

  “She has some kind of charisma or something,” Clint agreed, taking the statement forms. “You sent this on to Bocas?”

  “Yes. You’ll arrive there at about eight thirty tomorrow morning.”

  Sworn Statement

  Amanda Beatrice Lesley

  18/12/2008, Celinas, Peru,

  Dt. Gonzalo Gonzalez

  I, Amanda Beatrice Lesley, present this statement as a true record of events. I swear under penalty of perjury to the truth of the following to the best of my knowledge.

  I suppose this started when I was eight years of age. We were living in Switzerland on the Lesley Horse Farms. My father had become friends and business partners with Dr. Orison and Karl Rasmussen, a lawyer from Norway. They were, at that time, residing on the ranch. Father had a brother who died in an accident in California, USA, and left some very valuable properties to him.

  That was a fairly happy time. The ranch was successful and was bringing in a large income. Father and the partners bought land parcels in several countries.

  Father had always been, shall we say, too affectionate with me, but I didn’t know anything at that age. You can’t know the horror when it extended to him raping me.

  That continued until I was sixteen years old when he shifted his attention to my younger sister, Wanda. He was already using my brother, Donald, at that time. Some times he would have all three of us in the ... I will leave that to your imagination. It was horrible.

  I had experiences in my mind that told me something was radically wrong. My mother tried to help us kids, but didn’t have a clue as to what to do. Father had started seeing Frieda Helmut.

  I was planning, even then, to kill my father very slowly and painfully. When he stopped raping me and turned to Wanda, Frank Lindsay, the trainer at the California farm, had seen us several times in the barn when Father didn’t know it and he started doing the same things and worse with me. Frieda knew or suspected it and protected him from being caught. Mother was getting very sick and was terrified of what Father had become. She didn’t ever know about Frank. Frieda, I later learned, forced Frank to marry her so she could run things. She was the most evil person, outside of my father, I ever knew. Maybe worse than him.

  Father started getting worse. He was with Dr. Orison a lot and I was able to hide in the trophy den a couple of times when I heard him talking to Father about his cancer and about the treatments that may be able to arrest it. He told him the cancer was incurable. He started giving him morphine and some kind of chemical therapy.

  Mother died. I heard Dr. Orison talking to Razzy, that’s Rasmussen, and Frieda in the den during the funeral. Dr. Orison said he hated to have to do that to Mother, but their plan with father demanded that they do it. Frieda said she knew damned well it would come to that, but what about Father?

  Dr. Orison said it would take several years for the cancer to kill him and that it would soon be too late to stop it from spreading. He could use the morphine and treatments to make him do anything he wanted. Frieda asked why he was doing what he was doing to the children and Orison said it kept them in control.

  I decided to kill those three bastards right then. I knew, I suppose, that I could save Father’s life if he got the proper operation, but I hated him almost as intensely as I hated Frank and now Frieda. I couldn’t believe, in one part, that anyone could be as cruel as them – but another part was telling me that I could turn it on them and make them all suffer the way they had made me and my siblings suffer. It was Father, but they were pulling the strings.

  Things went along. I found that they were fixing races and taking millions of dollars to an offshore bank, but it was in Donald’s name so they couldn’t be charged with anything if it fell through for any reason.

  I told Donald, who hated Father almost as much as I did. I took some pictures of the deals with the horses and put them on three CD’s. Donald used them to make Father continue with the plan and to not tell anyone else involved about it. Father also had to make Razzy and Orison put Donald on their corporation and to leave him off. He would die soon and the control had to be there. If anything happened it would still look like Donald was running the show – like he was.

  We started taking vacations using other passports. We all had passports from two or three countries since we were in business or born in countries where our parents weren’t citizens. This was to work the offshore accounts.

  We can now fast-forward to recently. Not much new happened except someone who was working with fixing races was killed and that had to stop for a couple of years or they would all be killed by gangsters.

  I suppose the next thing was when we were there in Bocas del Toro and I came into Father’s room to see him dead and Donald trying to revive him. I thought Donald was killing him and grabbed the syringe and stuck it into Donald. He was dead in less than a minute.

  I was in a rage. I suppose that’s when I, as Clint says, went over the edge for real. No more fantasies. I couldn’t watch Father die a slow and horrible death. Donald had taken that away. I stabbed Father in the throat with the syringe and gave him another dose, but he was already dead.

  Clint is the one who soon showed us wha
t Father had planned. He would suicide and make it look like murder that we would all be suspected of. We would get no money, but would inherit a lot of land that we couldn’t keep because we could never hope to pay the inheritance taxes.

  I knew about the offshore accounts and that they were in Donald’s name. That scared me because I didn’t know if we could inherit it.

  Well, the new will wasn’t recorded so that plan was avoided. We would get the money in the legal accounts if nothing else and that would be more than two million Euros apiece. After death taxes we would still have almost a million apiece – more, because Donald was dead.

  You know the rest. Trudy, the only sane one among us and someone who deserves it, gets the offshore accounts and Razzy and friends get nothing.

  I had to kill them too fast. I had wanted it to take a long time and be very painful, particularly Orison. I did manage to pay him back a little.

  Wanda figured it out and was going to tell on me. I truly hated to do anything to her, but was paranoid and very much confused. I killed those and ran.

  Clint had shown that the poison that was used on Father was sent in some phials by Frieda and Frank. I went to California and convinced Frank that Frieda would implicate him in the murders because Clint had that part figured out and he would go to California to arrest him. He always hated Frieda and had a girlfriend he didn’t much like either, so he killed both of them. I wanted to kill Frieda slowest and most painful of all except Frank, but I had to be practical. I had to get out of California, and fast. I took Frank with me to Peru, where I was able to finally do what I wanted to at least one of them. He was the most important one to me and I was very damned happy to have done most of what I wanted to do to him.

  The others just happened because they tried to use me sexually and other ways and I’ve had all of that I ever intend to allow.

  Anything else?

  A few points. You didn’t feel you had to go after Mr. Faraday, who was pursuing you?

  No. He was only doing his job and there was never anything personal about it. It was soon a game where I knew I would be caught sooner or later, but where I could have a little fun in life. Show I was the superior, you know. I obviously wasn’t. Here I am, a friend of Clint. No hard feelings. He was and is always up-front and honest about it.

  I see. You deliberately left clues for him.

  Clues? No. I left evidence that I had been there to let him know I was ahead of him. I didn’t leave clues to anything in the future that I knew about. He is very intelligent and was able to add two and two and come up with four. I didn’t know I was going to act so fast when I talked to him in Bocas and gave him the clues to where I would go. I know how he figured those spots. As I said, he’s very intelligent. They weren’t deliberate clues.

  Just an unimportant note. You’ve covered enough with this to take care of the legal end.

  How did you con Gloria Sorento into helping you?

  That one’s for the cops in Rio to see if her statement jibes with what I say.

  I met her in a lesbian bar. She is bi. I told her I was running from a millionaire husband who was trying to kill me rather than divorce me because he had a steady string of girlfriends on the side and a divorce would give me half of those millions. She didn’t know anything. I told her he would try to have me charged with all kinds of things so the police would be looking for me. He had already hired a private detective to try to find me.

  What now?

  To Panamá. You will be their problem after tomorrow.

  I’ll bet they’re thrilled about that.

  Sworn and attested

  Amanda Beatrice Lesley

  Amanda Beatrice Lesley

  18/ Dic/ 2008

  “Well, that seems to cover it,” Clint said after reading the form over. “It’s pretty much what I’d figured.”

  “We will be most relieved to have her out of here,” Gonzalo said.

  Bye. Y’All!

  “She’s actually got a lot of people here to like her. I can’t understand it!” Judi protested. “She’s got to be the most depraved, cruel, inhuman nutcase I ever heard of!”

  “Hah! The type can charm you like a boa constrictor charms a chicken,” Dave said. “It’s a survival trait. She’s probably a likeable type of person. She was what her life made her. As Bob Seger said, ‘Tomorrow is the price of yesterday.’ This one proves that in spades!

  “Serg is coming over in about an hour. He’s finally going to be able to go fishing with us.”

  They were at his place on San Cristóbal.

  “Now I have to beg off,” Manny said. “The better half and brats want to go to David to do some Christmas shopping. She always leaves it to the last minute.”

  “They don’t go to that extreme here with gifts,” Clint said. “Something sentimental to your closest friends and family.

  “All along she was a step ahead of me, in reality. It was mostly by chance I was able to get her. A bus went by in Peru. She talked about places they had in South America when we talked here in Bocas. I was in front of a hotel in Rio.

  “If any one hadn’t happened she wouldn’t be caught. Manolo was a tremendous help in some ways. He got me onto the offshore accounts. Trudy is worth hundreds of millions now and is going to give some to the Smithsonian. She’s going to add to the funding here for the clinic and school and is donating a lot of new equipment to Bocas Hospital.

  “Martime is going back to Europe. He gets almost two million Euros to play around with. Nobody except Wanda got offed who didn’t more than deserve it in one sick way or another. Even Amanda admits that.”

  “I think you should go along with her on an insanity plea,” Judi said. “If there ever was an insane person, it’s her!”

  “I can understand it. I can’t condone it,” Dave said. “I worry that it’s not over. She gave up far too easily.

  “On the other hand, she might figure she did what she set out to do, so why drag it out?”

  “You can figure what she’ll do about half the time,” Clint agreed. “It was always a choice where I had a fifty-fifty chance of being right. I was lucky in a couple of them to have something else decide it for me.

  “The truth? I think she won’t kill again.”

  “Then you’re stupid as hell!” Dave snapped. “Some guy would want to lay her and she would revert back to the same ‘I’m being used again’ phase and knock him off. It happened twice in South America!”

  “I agree,” Manny said. “You tend to like her and forget those little details. You can’t allow yourself to forget she’s a homicidal MANIAC and will always act in the manner of a homicidal maniac.”

  “There is that,” Clint replied. “I can hear Sergio’s boat. I guess we’ll be going to the Zapatilla’s?”

  “Nope! We’re taking Manny’s fast boat and going east of Chiriqui Grande to almost Cusapin. There’s a little group of coral heads just outside of a bay there that the tourists haven’t discovered. Yet. I’m told there’re some very weird fish in the area and the islands and shoreline have a lot of orchids that aren’t found anywhere else they know about. We can snorkel, fish, whatever and I can explore a little.”

  “And bring back a couple of thousand orchids!” Judi accused. “It’s sea level so they’ll grow here.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Sergio came in, they packed the boat, took Manny and family to Bocas Airport, then headed east. It was a perfect day.

  “Well, Amanda Lesley will be deported to California. She did kill those people from there and Panamá really doesn’t want the expense of housing her for the rest of her life,” Sergio reported. “That took some doing, but your friend, Manolo, was able to get someone to pull some strings. I don’t know how he does those things.”

  “By intimating that it MAY have something to do with major drug movements,” Manny said. “I admit I pulled a few strings myself. We don’t need her here in Panamá. They aren’t equipped to deal with her.”

  “They’d better g
et a better grip on their local criminals or the tourist trade is going down the tubes,” Dave said. “Two more muggings in Bocas last night. You can’t tell me the cops don’t know who’s doing it.”

  “It’s a matter of being able to prove it,” Sergio said. “We’re watching that bunch past sixth street from Colón. We know damned well it’s them, but which ones?

  “Dave, you suggested that the gringos living here get together and handle the problem. We may take a holiday and let you try to clean up the mess. We look on vigilantes here in a different way than they do in the states. If there is true cause and no other alternative we are very slow in investigating such things. Most times the judge will hold there is insufficient evidence to charge them.”

  “Locals. Not the gringos,” Dave warned. “This one will state that he’s Panamanian when you walk in and then will refuse to even charge a local when there are ten witnesses. I’ve seen it.”

  “You go over his head,” Judi said. “I’ve seen that, too. Appeals from this branch routinely get overturned. He’s mostly just an arbiter with an attitude about gringos.”

  “Whatever, it has to stop,” Dave said. “Doesn’t the idiot realize that running off the gringos runs off investment and jobs at the same time? Bocas Town is already ninety-nine percent tourism and construction investment. People come here because there are jobs. The thugs come here because there’s a lot of money. Look what’s happened to Costa Rica lately. It’s downright dangerous for a gringo to even walk down the street at night in San José’ anymore. The tourists don’t go there much. Gringos are selling out and leaving. Costa Rica is going right down the tubes because they let this crap get started. We can’t let it happen here!

  “I realize that some gringos are arrogant snobs. Go up to Boquete and you see it everywhere. There are some pretty disgusting crooks from the states here, too. No argument.

  “Most of us really care about Panamá. All we ask is fair play – and we’re not getting it here in Bocas.”