by Moulton, CD
“Look, I know you think I’m involved with that, but I’m not! If someone arranged it, it was ... I think only Sarah was that stupid. She wouldn’t be dead if she was behind it, though.”
“Oh, that. She set it up to have the Auermonds hit. The hit man didn’t speak English very well and she turned up at the place he was supposed to meet the Auermonds instead, if a little later. All he knew was she was in a rented Honda, two people, so he thought they were the two people and shoved their car over a cliff with them in it. There was a man as a go-between who delivered instructions. I figure it was you or Greenwood, seeing Auermond was supposed to be the one offed. It could be Robert.”
“It wasn’t Robert. That leaves Francis. It wasn’t me.”
Clint looked out at the ocean for a minute, thinking. He believed him. “I like this place. I’ll probably come here sometimes.”
“What’ll you do about Francis?”
“Nothing, It’ll be pointedly suggested that he never step foot inside Panamá again or he’ll be detained for questioning about a murder. For ten years or so. The Auermonds are going to get the same warning. I wanted to know if you should be getting the same one.”
“This isn’t going to get any insurance for them, is it?”
“No. It was an obvious murder. They don’t pay term insurance for murder.”
“I suppose I’ll eat the loss. I probably won’t come back here, anyway. Maybe here, but not that end of the country.”
“I’ll help Robert set something up that’ll pay enough for him to live. He can try to sell most of the corporation and just keep a hectare or so to live. He has the dock and house there.”
“Will it ever sell?”
“If Robert sets up something that pays ... I suppose so. You should get at least half of your investment back in a year or so.”
“I can live with that. I can convince the others that it’s as good as it’s likely to get. They’ll be happy with half. It’s a lot better than eating the whole magilla.”
Clint nodded. “I think I’ll stay here another couple of days before going back to Bocas.”
“It is nice. Expensive, compared to Bocas, but nice.”
Clint nodded again.
(Un)poetic Justice
“So it was another thing where arrogant SOB’s who refused to learn enough Spanish to get by got it back,” Clint said. “Anderson knows some English, but it’s mostly like when you first learn Spanish. The main phrase you use is, ‘Habla despacio, por favor.’ (Speak slowly, please) If she hadn’t kept ranting he could have understood her.”
“That wasn’t her nature,” Judy argued. “She expected everyone here to learn English. After all, she came here to spend her money so the least they could do was learn English! She’d be the type to yell about all those Spanish-speaking people coming into the states who wouldn’t have the simple sense and decency to learn English. After all! English is the language of the country!”
“She was a pain in the ass to everyone. I finally got over her when I figured it had to be her, William, or both who tried to kill me. It very damned well had to be her who tried to poison me!” Robert said. “I can look back and see what an insufferable asshole idiot I was, too. As soon as I met the Indios as people instead of savages they accepted me. I even have two who I consider to be friends.”
“Pancho and Sanchos. They’re as good friends as you’re ever likely to have,” Manny said. “You’re learning that they’re also intelligent far above the average. That’s why we have them as the managers of the transport business. They insisted that we don’t buy a lot of expensive equipment to handle the produce because that would mean we had to charge too much for it to make a go of it. They’re perfectly content with carrying a couple of tons of plantains across a dock to the barge themselves. It’s part of what they always did. The quoted price was ‘delivered,’ which meant they usually had to carry the stuff across town or hire a taxi.
“One lousy month and we’re showing a profit. Not much, but you don’t expect to show a profit in a new business for two years, as a general rule.”
They were on Clint’s deck for a get-together a month and a half after Clint returned from San Blas. The Aurmonds and Greenwoods were back in the states with warnings not to ever come back to Panamá. Grossman might come back to San Blas sometime, but it wasn’t very likely. It was expensive and the natives would never mention the pensión or native restaurants.
It was a nice enough night. The moon was about 3/4 full and there was a cool breeze off the bay. Judi had fixed a good gumbo with crawdads the Indios brought from the mountains and okra she had growing along one side of her fence.
“Well, we can say goodbye to this one. It did work out pretty well in the long run,” Sergio said.
They had to agree to that!
Clint Faraday Mysteries
#15
A Detour Through Hell
© 2011 by C. D. Moulton
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, or places is purely coincidental unless otherwise stated.
Clint and Judi are driving back from Las Tablas when they are trapped between two derumbes. It’s not so bad. They are stranded with a busload of people and things are being set up to wait the night and day until the road is opened.
Then, the murder.
Contents
Bad Driving Weather
All the Suspects
Only for Some
No Connections
Animal Sounds
The Key
Some Disguise!
Stupid Move
Clint Faraday #15
A Detour Through Hell
Bad Driving Weather
“Jude, can you see anything at all ahead through this deluge? I have to creep along up here. These mountains can be deadly in this kind of weather.
“What the hell is going on? They’ve never had this kind of weather on the Pacific side this time of the year! I’d have never come this way if I knew this would happen! This detour is shorter, but there’s nothing for miles!
“Excuse hell out of me if I prattle. Driving in this soup makes me nervous.”
“It’s from global warming, according to Dave. He says it’ll get worse. He’s right on a lot of things.”
Clint Faraday was driving back toward Santiago from Las Tablas with his attractive neighbor in Bocas Town on Isla Colón in the Caribbean, Judi Lum. An unexpected storm caught them in the high mountains. Dave was their nutty musician/ botanist/author friend from Bocas Town.
They were a few meters behind a bus, which made them slow down to a safer pace, though Clint didn’t take stupid chances when driving.
“You want me to drive?” Judi asked.
“You’re damned well a better driver than me, but I know this road and you don’t. If I get tired I’ll turn it over to you.”
“Okay. I don’t think I’d like driving in this. I’m all for stopping somewhere and waiting it out.”
“I’m a hundred fifty percent for that! Trouble is, there’s not a damned thing for the next fifty or so kilometers.”
There was a small mudslide across the road. Clint got out and helped the people in the bus shovel enough away that they could pass. They were headed on, a bit worse for wear and wet, after about twenty minutes. They were perhaps six or eight kilometers farther along when the bus turned on the emergency blinkers and came to a sudden stop. Clint could just see where a section of the road had washed out. He sighed, swore colorfully and managed to turn the car around to head back the way they’d come.
The little mudslide had become a big mudslide. The road was entirely blocked and impassable. This really brought on some extra-colorful swearing!
He turned around and headed back to where the bus was stopped. He chatted with the driver, who said the road would be repaired on this end faster than behind. The equipment would be brought from near Santiago. They could depend on being there for a day and a half, minimum. Probably two days. He could alert
the road repair crew if there was signal up here. Cellulars were worthless and he didn’t have a CB like some of the buses, though it couldn’t reach far if he had one. One thing every one of those people on the bus had done when they found the washout was grab their cellular to try to get word out. They were all regular types. He wished he had one of those satellite cellulars.
Clint suggested that he tell the people on the bus that they were in for a wait so conserve food and water as much as they could. He went back to tell Judy he was damned glad they had the food they bought in Chitre. They were going to need it. He could give most of it to the people on the bus. He and Judi bought food for a month for them so it would hold out for a day or more with those people.
“We can use the little stove to cook, but we’ll need a dry place. I have two can openers and a package of paper plates. The stuff in the ice chest should be used first. It won’t last when the ice all melts,” Judi agreed. “We have a lot of things the natives won’t appreciate, though we’ll eat like gourmets.”
“They’ll want the chicken and rice. There’s plenty of wild otoe, yampi and yuca up here. I have plenty of things like spaghetti to make soup. There’s even a box of chicken bouillon. If anyone’s got onions and celery and oregano – we have that – we can make a heck of a lot of soup that they’ll love. There’s nothing like otoe for chicken soup. There are blackberries all over the place.”
He went to the bus and asked if anyone had any onions or celery. Two Indios said they were taking that to Santiago for the market. They had hundreds of kilos of onions and a lot of celery. They said there was otoe close. There was also probably yuca. They had chayote and plaintains. The Indios would donate it all, even though it was going to market as part of the way they made their living. Clint insisted that everyone would give them a dollar. That would be about half of what they could sell the stuff for so it wouldn’t be too hard on them (he’d pay for the difference, no matter how they insisted he not do so. He would tell them he was a rich gringo and it wouldn’t hurt him any to help people who were trying to help him). He had chicken and some canned goods and a stove. They would need a dry area to cook the food. They could catch all the rainwater they needed so it wouldn’t be too bad.
Another Indio came to them and said he was taking coffee to Santiago so they could drink as much as they could drink. He had cacao, too. Clint had packaged sugar and milk in a carton so that would be well! This one, Eladio Cano, Clint had met in Chiriqui Grande a year or so before. Clint could speak Guayme, though he didn’t know much of the language of the Indios on this side of the mountains.
Clint walked around among them. All the women were trying to use the cellulars. There was no signal up here. He warned them they would deplete the batteries and wouldn’t be able to call when they were back to a place where there was a signal. He came across one man standing away from the others talking into a satellite phone. He saw Clint and swore, saying there wasn’t even a signal for the damned eight hundred dollar phone out here – which was likely. It was below the surrounding mountaintops and the angle could make the things as worthless here as the regular phones.
The Indios and Clint started cutting leaves from the large heliconias and strung them on limbs to construct a very dry and secure shelter. The bus driver and some of the passengers pitched in and it was soon done. Judy brought out the little two-burner gas stove and put on a pot of water, the Indios brought their part of the food and an exceptionally good dinner was soon served. The coffee was exceptional quality, the cacao made a good drink for the two six and seven year old children and the bus driver got out a case of beer to drop into the ice-cold little stream (that was now almost a river) running into the washout.
Everyone was in a very good mood and everyone was getting along very well. All of them remarked that this wasn’t such a bad thing at all. Everyone could meet other people and enjoy a little camping trip vacation!
They were going to sack out in the car, Clint in front and Judi in back. It was slightly cramped for sleeping, but not bad. They took some of their stuff to put in the car trunk as the people started going back aboard the bus. The driver, Sancho Lopez, had rationed the beer. There was enough for everyone who liked beer to have one and two each for Clint and himself.
Clint said this was really a pleasant way to be detained and started to get into the car when there was a commotion from the bus. A woman was squealing and on the verge of hysteria so Clint went to see what was wrong.
When she went back to her seat the fellow who was sitting next to her had gone to sleep, or so she thought, on the whole seat. She shook him to ask him to sit up and he slid onto the floor. There was blood all over! He was dead! There was a knife sticking out of his chest!
“Shit!” Clint said, with deep feeling.
All the Suspects
This wasn’t the kind of thing you could be prepared for. All he knew was that the suspects were all right here. He hadn’t seen any signs of rancor among them. He went back to tell Judi to watch for anything that would give them a clue. A man was murdered on the bus.
He got things explained and a sort of system set up with Judi and went back onto the bus. He showed the papers where he was an agent for the Policía Nacionál and said he was going to try to determine who did this. He would need to talk to all of them. Fix in the mind as much as you can remember from the last time the dead man was seen, less than an hour before he was found murdered. Remember who you were with, what you were doing, where.
The dead man’s name was Carlos Santamaria Vega. Try to remember if you’d seen him anywhere before this trip. He had Sancho get a list of the names of the passengers on the bus for him with their cedula numbers:
Sancho Lopez M. = driver
Cecilio Pastore = attendant
Carlos Santamaria Vega = victim
Eladio Cano ind
Luis Silva ind
Yajaira (Silva) Nunez ind
Maria Guerra + Nilsa & Juan (children, 7 & 9 yrs.) pan
Jose Ricardo & Sister Ana pan
Dona Comacho pan
Silvestre Mario & Salvador (son 9 yrs.) ind
Arturo Taylor pan
Carlos Sandros pan blk
Pacho Sandros (br) pan blk
Elena Sandros (sis) pan blk
Guillermo Robinson pan
Sandy Barnes NA espa
George Barnes NA espo
Penny Goodson eng
Armando Sucha CR
Pedro Vargas ind
David Estevez pan
The Sandros were into real estate. The Barnes and Goodson were backpackers/surfers/tourists. Taylor worked for IDAAN (the water agency of Panamá in Santa Lucia – that Clint never heard of). Vargas owned a pescado supply company in Pedrigal. Estevez was a lawyer. (Him! Clint thought. He didn’t like most Panamanian lawyers even a little bit). The rest didn’t give information and Sancho didn’t ask.
Clint asked Sancho to have Cecilio bring everything Santamaria had as baggage to him. He had an electric lantern that would hold out well until dawn as well as several good flashlights. No one wanted to stay on the bus except the Indios, who were perfectly well aware that people died from many things and a dead body the first night wouldn’t stink or anything. They threw a plastic tarp over the body and went to sleep in their seats in the rear of the bus. The body was in the second seat back from the door on the right. Judi grinned at the practicality of the Indios. The rest would sit around outside in tarps hung over limbs to keep them out of the drizzle. Clint wondered what they would do if another heavy deluge-type band came through.
One woman, Maria Guerra, said there was a row of conduits about half a kilometer back that were plenty big for sleeping. She would take her children and go back there. Most of the others thought that was a good idea. One other noticed the conduit and said they were meter and a half diameter and about six meters long and there were twenty or more of them. That was plenty of room for three or four busloads of people. They would have to be careful that there were
n’t any dangerous snakes or spiders in them.
Clint suggested Sancho lock the bus and that everyone go to the conduit pipes for the night. Take only what they needed and leave the rest locked up. Sancho said Cecilio would stay with the bus. He would have more than enough comfortable room under the cooking shelter.
They formed a parade of sorts and went there. Clint drove back with his lanterns and such and shined his headlights into the conduits that were at angles to be in them. They used flashlights to check out the other pipes carefully and found a dangerous spider in one of them, but nothing else dangerous.
Everyone chose a spot and moved in. Clint and Sancho made a tent of a tarp carried on the bus to cover luggage on the top. Seeing as there were only surfboards and some fresh vegetables up there they used the small tarp for that and the large one for the tent. Judi said she’d take notes and they could wake anyone up for the few shrt minutes of questioning.
Clint took the children first, together. He only wanted to know if they heard anyone arguing or saw anyone doing anything that didn’t seem right. They hadn’t. They had been with their mother/ father the whole time so that would probably help eliminate those from the suspect list.
He decided to take the Indios next. Only one of them had any possible motive that Clint could see and they were a nonviolent people. They were together, the Cano/Silva trio. The only time they were apart at all was when they were getting the vegetables to cook. Silvestre and his son were with them all the time.
Next was the Sandros trio. Together all the time.
Jose and Ana Ricardo were together the whole time. The Barnes and Goodson were together the whole time.
