Clint Faraday Mysteries collection A Muddled Murders Collector's Edition

by Moulton, CD

  “They asked a lot of questions about Avenidas, at first. John said he might want to invest in stocks and was he trustworthy and such. They seem to keep an eye on him and on who goes to that office. When Avenidas is here they sit in the Seahorse Café across the street from the office for hours. They don’t go there when he’s not around. DUH!

  “A little note. They were in town until after midnight night before last. I’d say you have another suspect or two.”

  “You’re a jewel! Thanks, Judi. You get more information faster than I can. You’re a damned good detective.”

  “I guess. For this kind of thing. I can get the information, I just don’t know what to do with it when I do.”

  They chatted for a few more minutes, then Clint went to the police station to tell Sergio what Judi had learned.

  “I found out that Sylvia has been asking a lot of questions about somebody she calls Nicky. He’s supposed to be from Colombia and she says she knew him a little in Cali and Medillin. She thinks he works for drug lords – big surprise here,” Sergio reported. “I think I want to know a lot about her. Maybe she’s the important one and John is just being used.

  “Yeah! I believe that!”

  “It looks like there’re a bunch of weird people involved. There has to be something about that chest that’s a lot more behind this than the treasure or the cash,” Clint mused. “Can you arrange for me to give it a close going-over?”

  “I’ll be with you and say I’ve hired you. We did that before. It’s locked in the big vault.”

  They went over to the property department and through to a room that was triple-walled. It had the most valuable things, confiscated or otherwise, there. The chest was in its own area, the cash neatly stacked beside it with the count and the ID’s of the people who counted it. The slip said there was one million four hundred eighty eight thousand two hundred dollars.

  “Who stole the twelve grand?” Clint asked. Sergio laughed and said that was the least anyone had taken from such a find yet and it was taken before it got to the property room. Clint noted that he and Sergio had to have positive ID to enter the room and their pictures were taken along with a fingerprint scan. Sergio was the jefe of the police and had to furnish the same things a stranger would. Good system.

  There was a careful listing of the other contents, which were replaced into the chest. Clint mostly ignored that and the money, except for the twenty money bands that had the initials on them. He carefully checked every inch of the chest itself, finding nothing new.

  He sat back to think, then shrugged.

  “Sergio, I think whatever was here was taken ... or maybe not!” Clint exclaimed. He thought a moment, then asked, “Why were only those twenty bands marked? Could there be a reason?”

  Sergio grinned and said they would find out. They slipped the bills out of the bands. There was nothing on the inside of the bands.

  Clint inspected the bills themselves and soon exclaimed, “Clever! Sergio, note that there are bills with a single letter in the left margin near the bottom. Six of them in this stack. Take them in order and they read, ‘e-l-e-v-e-n’ See if it holds..”

  Sergio picked up a stack and said, “I’ve got ‘s-i-x-t-e-e-n’ in this one. ‘t-h-r-e-e-n-i-n-e’ in this.”

  They went into all of them, listed the letters, then carefully slipped them back into the bands in the same order they were found.

  “We have a neat puzzle,” Clint then said. “We have the numbers and the a name, Southern.

  “The number are an account. Southern is a clue to which bank it’s in.”

  “Southern ... Trust?” Sergio wondered. “There used to be a Southern Something Trust. Offshore. It merged with Secure Sentry Bank about thirty years ago. We come across it, at times.

  “Now! How do we find the proper order for the numbers?”

  “It’ll be something ... crap! We don’t have the order of the packages in the chest.”

  “It won’t be that. They were loose enough that they could change positions a bit.”

  “Hmmm. The it’ll be something on the top or bottom bill.”

  They checked, but there was nothing. Clint was inspecting a package and said, “How about the serial numbers of the top or bottom bills? This top one starts with a three. So does the bottom.”

  They checked. That was true of all the money packages. Top and bottom were the same.

  They ended up with 43971652902001103642.

  “It’s a matter of hyphens. We have the bank and number we can check,” Sergio suggested. “Clint, what if there’s been a few tens of millions of dollars deposited and sitting for fifty years? With the interest, what would it be now?”

  “Sheeez!” was his only reply.

  They went back out and were searched. Even the chief!

  In Sergio’s office they contacted Secure Sentry, who said there was no way to find out anything about accounts there, so piss off. Not in those words. Sergio said there was a dead person who had an account there for fifty years, since before the merger with Southern. The heir could cause them a lot of grief. He’d give the turkey on the phone half an hour and call back. All he wanted was information for the heir. They DID have the account number.

  “In what name?” he asked.

  “It should be in the .. Blakley.”

  “Those numbers do not match any account in the name of Blakley.”

  “Then it will be Halverson or the company name,” Clint replied.

  “I can tell you there is something from nineteen sixty one in the name of Halverson ... WOOO! Seventy million dollars original deposit, now one hundred fifty six million dollars! You’re very damned lucky that was before we had to worry about drug money laundering!”

  “That makes a difference now?” Clint couldn’t stop himself from asking.

  He laughed. “We have to account for where particularly large sums come from – large being over ten million dollars. If you can produce a receipt for selling your land for the ten mil it isn’t seriously questioned later if you ever need the information. I think it is not our responsibility to authenticate such receipts if they are presented in a legal form, which means with a notary seal.

  “Colombians, Mexicans and Peruvians seem to sell a LOT of land at VERY high prices. Certain gringos, too. Did you know a small villa in Ft. Lauderdale sold for more than fifty million dollars? In the middle of the land crash?”

  They laughed a bit. Clint said he’d tell the heir what she had inherited so she could make a claim.

  “Well, that accounts for a lot of things,” Clint said when he hung up. “What in the hell will Gina do with a hundred fifty million?”

  “She can give whatever she has no use for to me!” Sergio suggested – which got him a middle finger salute.

  Off Center Day

  Next step; find out how the other players fit in. That was Brandon and wife or whatever. They were another weird part of this. Clint still had a nagging feeling that something was a long way off-center. How would Avenidas and/or whoever else know about the bank numbers being in that chest?

  They didn’t. It was another thing that happened to come up in an unexpected manner and at an unexpected time. Clint checked all his recent correspondence, then went back into town to Avenidas’ office to tell Gina that she may have a hundred fifty million dollars soon, but she wasn’t to let it get to her to where she’d lead a life of hedonistic depravity. She laughed and said she liked the lifestyle. Did she really have to change?

  “I’m serious, you know,” Clint said. “You’ll probably get a good bit of that. You’ll have to pay capital gains taxes on about thirty million, which isn’t too bad here. It will leave you enough to live on.”

  She treated it as a joke. He couldn’t convince her he was serious.

  Avenidas came in and asked what the joke was and she said she inherited a hundred million or so. She thought that was a fun idea.

  “A hundred fifty million. Plus,” Clint corrected. “It’s in a bank account her fa
ther had. Offshore. The part in the chest was just an emergency fund that was never used.”

  Avenidas looked back and forth between them, then said, “You can’t be serious. That treasure chest? What does that have to do with anything?”

  “The bank account number and the registration details were in the chest with the money. Sergio and I found it and checked it out. It’s there. Blakley was killed for nothing.”

  “How would that get in an old chest?” he demanded. “Oh! The money. Then. Damn! It was right there like a ... I mean, that’s turning out to be SOME treasure chest!”

  “Clint! You’re not ... serious! You CAN’T be serious!” Gina cried. “Are you saying Betina Blakley was killed for that ... what was in the chest? How would she be, I mean, I don’t know what I mean.”

  “Well, her, but I meant her father. She killed him to get the money because she thought the papers he stole from your father – you, actually – left it to him, so she could get it. Your father was smarter than that. It was all in his name, so it’s all yours now.”

  “I knew he had to have left something for me, but ... my god!”

  “Well, it’s about settled, in a way. Do you know John Brandon?”

  “I knew a John Brandon in Houston when I went to school. He was a friend of my father. Father was teaching him some kind of import business or something. He’s about forty five now, I’d guess.”

  “Brandon? There is a Somebody Brandon here who was asking a lot of questions about me a couple of months ago. Sara, the girl at the café across the street, told me about him,” Avenidas said. “He was interested in stocks, but he never came here.”

  “He was watching you for several years,” Clint said. “He and his wife tried to drug me for some reason I can’t figure.”

  Avenidas was looking somewhere between terrified and mad as hell. Maybe both. Gina was just confused.

  “Well, I’m going home to clean up. Want to try the food at The Rip Tide? It’s supposed to be as good as anywhere here. I haven’t tried it yet.”

  “Are you trying to pick me up just because I’m now filthy rich?” Gina demanded. “I still don’t believe a word of this crap, you know, but it is kind of fun to think what it would be like if it was real.”

  “Well, that’s not the ONLY reason,” Clint fired back. “I heard you’re as wild as you look like you’d be.”

  “Oh? Who’s telling you beddie-bye stories? Ben?”

  “He’s wild, too, if you can believe the gossip.” Clint wasn’t about to be one-upped like this.

  “I can tell you – he IS!” she fired back.

  So she got him. He gave her the middle finger. She laughed and said she’d like to try the place. Everywhere he’d taken her so far has been exceptional.

  He went out with Avenidas right behind. He said to have a cup of coffee with him. Clint knew he wanted to pump him for information, so he agreed. He’d get exactly the information Clint wanted to feed him. Clint soon saw Avenidas was curious about all the wrong things. He wasn’t as clever as he thought he was. He wouldn’t lead Clint to telling him things he really wanted to know. The old backdoor psychology ploy only worked when the subject hadn’t read the book. He did learn that Avenidas knew more about Brandon than he was letting on. It wouldn’t be a good idea to seem interested enough to ask any questions about him. Yet.

  The food at The Rip Tide was as good as reputed. It was different than most of the food in Bocas. Clint and Gina had a very good time. They meant to go to a couple of places, but the crowd there was right for them and friendly. Dave wandered in about ten with his guitar and played a few numbers from the seventies and earlier. Leaving On A Jet Plane, 500 Miles, then some heavier Janis Joplin stuff, then a little Eagles and CCR, then left about a quarter to eleven. About eleven Gina said she had to get her beauty rest, so would head for the hotel. Clint said his place was as close and more comfortable. She thought about it, then they went to his place.

  In the morning Clint took Gina to the Bahia. Her room had been searched by someone who wanted her to know it had been searched. Things were moved and left open. She said searching her stuff was a waste of time if there ever was one, but they could have at least straightened things up better. Magali, the girl doing the maid bit in the rooms, gave Clint a look. He told Gina he’d wait outside for her to get changed, then he’d walk her to the office.

  Magali told Clint that some thuggy-looking guy had been hanging around and she was sure he’d been in some of the rooms, Gina’s among them. Clint nodded and gave her a five. Gina came out and they walked to the office. Avenidas wasn’t there again.

  Clint went back to the Bahia because he’d seen a guy by the ferry dock that looked thuggy to Clint. He had seen him several times. He always noted people in places who didn’t quite fit. He went inside and had Magali come out to look him over. He was the one who was hanging around.

  Nick walked toward him. He noticed and started to walk the other way, but Clint caught up to him.

  “I’m Clint Faraday, as you undoubtably know. Who are you? Who do you work for?

  “I’ll tell you damned flatly that messing with Gina is going to get you turned into fish bait.”

  “No habla Inglés!” he cried.

  “Like hell you don’t! You were talking to Bob at the Golden Grill. He doesn’t speak Spanish. You were talking to Norman Flannery at The Toro Loco. He doesn’t speak more than five words of Spanish. You’re playing a dangerous game, hijo de puta!”

  He looked at Clint and bunched his shoulders. Clint waited until he took his swing, stepped inside and flattened him with a hard right to the solar plexus. He was on the pavement, gasping and clutching at his chest as several people came running up. Clint said his friend wasn’t watching where he was walking and had tripped over a pothole. Wasn’t that what happened?

  The thug nodded. A woman grinned at him and gave him a thumb up. Jorge, a police officer Clint knew, came over. He had been on the dock and had seen the whole thing. He winked at Clint.

  “Sir, you must be careful,” he said. “Some of the streets here are in poor repair. Should I take you to hospital? I can carry you in the truck.”

  The thug shook his head.

  “Well, let me take your identification so I may file a report.”

  The thug stood up shakily and said there was no need to file a report. He wouldn’t be so careless in the future.

  “You are not from Panamá,” Jorge replied formally. “Please present your passaporte or other identification whenever asked by any police official or you will be detained for investigation.”

  The thug passed him his passport. Jorge said, “Nicolo Franko Bendetti of Houston, Texas. It is in order. You may go.” He turned away.

  “So. How are things, Nicky?” Clint asked. “You used the name of Frank in Houston with the late Betina, I believe?

  “Very interesting. Who got you here? Why?”

  “I ain’t got nothing to do with nothing here!” he spat. “The one who brought me here is dead!”

  “You were described as a wannabe thug,” Clint replied easily. “You didn’t pass the test. Go back home. You won’t last another week here.”

  “I ain’t got enough to get back. She never paid me nothing yet. I was only here so I could be a sort of bodyguard. I only got here day before yesterday. I was only looking for the cash to get home in the hotel rooms.”

  “How much will it cost for you to get back?” Clint asked.

  “I got maybe forty bucks. It cost a hunnert and fifteen for the bus and I got to eat.”

  Clint gave him a hundred dollars and told him to be gone within the hour.

  So! Why did Betina think she needed a bodyguard? One that showed up a few hours after she was killed?

  Clint went back to see if Sergio knew anything more. Very little. He called Manny. Nothing new. He called Manolo, who said the skinny was that somebody in Colombia was very interested, but probably because they could be connected if the wrong things happened. He had pro
mised that if they weren’t involved and if it wasn’t recent it would go away. Clint agreed to go along with that.

  How come everything that happened tended to make less sense out of it? Why couldn’t he make any of it come together in ... he wasn’t going to start that again! He needed some place where this would start to make sense. He had it pretty much together until Avenidas and Blakley came to Bocas. The only way it figured was that neither of them knew about the cash in the chest. They damned well didn’t know about the codes on the bills. That was where they got off whatever tracks they were on. That’s where it became necessary to get rid of Betina. Why? Because the money was now totally out of their reach? Then why kill Betina? She expected trouble, is why Nicky-boy was sent for. The trouble came eight or ten hours before he arrived.

  Avenidas had been promised something, the same as Bendetti had. She was in a position where she could have ... what?

  Sergio said it was very obviously a rage killing. That could well be. Avenidas had been promised whatever could get him out of trouble with those drug cartels. She wasn’t going to deliver. It could have been rage over that – but Clint saw fear. Terror. When Avenidas was faced with the fact she was dead he had gone into an act that was just a bit too much to believe, but that terror was in his eyes and body language. Very clearly.

  It could be figured and closed, except for one thing. John and Sylvia tried to drug him to find out something. That had to mean they thought he knew something he didn’t know. That meant that Gina knew whatever it was.

  Did she know something she wasn’t aware of? Did it mean she knew something she was aware of?

  Clint liked more action and less thinking. The thinking part was supposed to lead to the action, but all it was doing was leading to more thinking. He decided to put a little pressure on Avenidas. He could hope that would lead him to learning what Brandon’s part was in this mess. That was what made no sense in any scenario he could picture.

  He saw Judi going into the gourmet, so went in to ask if she’d learned anything that might give him something.