Clint Faraday Mysteries collection A Muddled Murders Collector's Edition (22 page)

“
I see.
You left for the Lemon Grass at?”

“
Just
before seven” Martha answered. “We got there for reservations about
five til.”

“
Thank
you. Did you speak to Sheila when you came back to
dress?”

“
Well,
she was out here with her daquiri and we may have said hello or
something. I couldn’t say. It’s not the kind of thing you remember
when you’re in and out all the time. We just came through here on
the way to our room.”

“
I asked
her if Hamilton was about,” Gilda said. “She said he’d gone to the
marina with some girl he met.”

“
Yes, he
was there,” another put in. “I’m Bernie Fowler. I was there with
Rita here until about tenish. We came back together. Him and Laura
Hunt from Bastimentos.”

“
The food
is really good there!” Rita cried. “I had shrimp camarones or
whatever in garlic. It makes you smell, but I love it. Do you ever
eat there?”

Bernie looked like he could kill her. Clint
replied, “Sometimes,” and hid a little laugh behind a cough. He
thought of Roberto’s “Sometimes.”

“
I’m
Hamilton Williams,” another said. “They sort of answered for
me.”

“
I’m
Verity Knowles,” the other younger woman stated. “I don’t really
have any alibi because I was with a man I met by the Parque
yesterday. We went on a little boat to across from what he called
Playa something-or-other where there’s that big hotel. We didn’t go
to the hotel and only talked to one other person on the beach
there.

“
Oh, yes!
That man called him Carlos!”

“
You
didn’t know his name?” Clint asked.

“
I just
called him ‘Spike’ because he looks like his name should be
something like that.”

“
That
leaves you two, who will be the Emile and Florence
Devereaux.”

“
We’re no
part of this sordidity!” Florence replied regally. “We are NOT the
kind of people who get involved in MURDERS!”

“
Guess
what, Ma! You ARE,” Liam said.

“
You
answer for yourself, not us,” Emile ordered. “We’re quite capable
of handling this situation.”

“
Yeah!
You’ll handle it exactly like Mark did and end up exactly where
Mark is!” Liam replied. “Might even learn that not everyone is
impressed with all your money and power.”

“
Some of
the old families here could buy and sell the bunch of us for pocket
change,” Hamilton said. “I’ve met some of them. I rather imagine
Mr. Faraday knows a few.”

“
A few,”
Clint agreed. “I could introduce you to two in the jail in Panamá
City. They found out how impressed the general population here in
Panamá is with all that crap. They are NOT impressed.

“
Mr.
Devereaux, am I to take it you refuse to answer
questions?”

“
That’s
my right!” he snapped.

“
In the
USA,” Liam warned. “As Mark discovered, the law isn’t the same
here. All you’ll do is end up in a cell with him.”

“
Oh, Mr.
Faraday, we’re just all upset by all this horrible turmoil and that
lovely young girl being dead,” Florence gushed. “Of course we’ll
answer your questions. We just want this ordeal to be
over!”

“
Er,
yes,” Emile put in. “We were at the Playa Mango all afternoon. We
came back by the Rhumba Room and then here at, oh, eleven thirty.
Police all over the place. We didn’t kill anybody!”

“
Thanks,”
Clint replied. “That about ties it.”

“
It
DOES?!” Verity cried.

“
Yes.
It’s down to two possibilities. Both of you killed her, actually.
Gilda with the poison and you with a knife. I don’t suppose you
knew she would be dead within a few minutes from the poison, so you
stabbed her.”

“
But ...
but ..!” she whined. “I was with Spike!”

“
At the
beach below the Playa Mango? Where Emile and Florence would have
had to see you?”

“
Maybe
... it wasn’t the Playa Mango! It was farther out!”

“
No. You
said, ‘Playa something by the hotel.’ That’s the only one with a
beach that close.”

“
Why me?”
Gilda asked.

“
No one
else here when or where they could have poisoned her,” Clint
answered. She nodded and sighed. “She was a bitch. She could be
charming when anyone was around, then would turn into a totally
evil little bitch when you were alone with her. She was trying to
get into Liam and was blackmailing me for some things that happened
a long time ago. I’m not going to deny anything. I’m not sorry
about it.”

“
You’ve
got that right!” Verity said hotly. “She was a scheming evil
blackmailing bitch!”

“
But she
was always so nice!” Rita said. “She told me she had a crush on
Liam, but he didn’t know it. She said she’d get him one way or
another because she really liked him and she would get anything she
wanted when ... oh!”

“
Well, I
guess that means Mark will be home in ten minutes like he said!”
Kathi said with a smirk. “Shows how much you know! What if he
decides to have you fired? What will you say about
THAT?!”

“
What if
I tell you he stays in that cell until the corregidor gets back
unless I say he can go?” Clint replied. “I’ll guarantee he spends
tonight locked up. He needs the lesson. As to having me fired, from
what? I’m here at the request of the Bocas police department. I
don’t get paid anything I do for them.”

“
Nobody
in this bunch is going to believe you’d solve their cases for
nothing,” Liam said. “Life is about money. No money, no action, no
life.”

“
Sad,”
Clint said. “Life must be hell for most of you.”

“
Can I
take anything with me?” Gilda asked.

“
Oh, just
gather a few things you’ll need and go in tomorrow to confess,”
Clint advised. “I think they’ll just deport you. You were being
blackmailed and that’s the same as robbed. You’re allowed to defend
yourself here.”

“
WHAT?!”
Florence screeched. “Mark sits in JAIL and the MURDERER gets to
wait until tomorrow?!”

“
Well,
this IS Panamá!” Clint answered. That got a hearty laugh from Liam.
Maybe he wasn’t so bad.

Saturday
Blues

“
What do
I wear tonight?” Clint Faraday asked of no one. He looked around
the room as the computer dinged to tell him there was an e-mail. He
sighed and read:
Clint. I’m in big trouble. Changuinola. Ed.
Freddy’s
.

Ed? Ed
Samuels? Ed Hoppe? Ed Kemp? Ed Arsson? He sighed again and
replied,
Ed
who?

Arsson
came
back.

He
wrote,
Two
hours
. That would just
give him time to make the water taxi. He would have to stay in
Changuinola tonight. Crap. The blue shirt and blue jeans. Saturday
blues. It fit.

Wait a minute! Freddy’s was a place only
Indios stayed. Ed was a blue-eyed blond Swede. Could be
interesting. He had stayed at Freddy’s once with Miguel, an Indio
friend. The Indios didn’t seem to be interested in Ed that he knew
about. Ed tended to be a bit intimidating at the best of times.

What the hell. He threw a couple of pairs of
pants and shirts into his maleta, some clean underwear, socks and
whatever he might need and got to the taxi just in time to go to
Almirante. He knew several people on the bus and chatted with them
on the way to Changuinola. He went directly to Freddy’s where
Ignacio, who ran the place, told him Ed had asked for a room and
secrecy in Clint’s name, so he gave it to him. Third on the back
side.

Clint knocked on the door. There was no
answer and not a sound, so he said, “Ed? Clint here.” Ed opened the
door with a pistol in his hand.

“
What do
you need that for?” Clint asked.

“
Got the
Ruskies after my ass.”

“
Oh,
shit!” Clint said – with feeling.

“
Let’s
get some of this straightened out,” Clint said as they sat in the
Restaurante Jose’ across from the bus terminal. “How did you manage
to get the Ruskies after you?”

“
It was
an accident, I swear! I’m not so stupid I’d get that bunch after
me! I was in David at the Fiesta and won some good money at
blackjack. There was this dude there who said he knew where there
was a private game. Texas Hold ‘Em. A friend’s house. I knew it
would be crooked, but you know how I can handle that kind of stuff.
I can always spot what they’re doing and use it against
them.

“
Anyhow,
there were six people there. Three were Ruskies, but I thought they
were Czeks. There are a bunch there lately.

“
To
shorten it, they were using a buddy-system routine to make me
always have a hand that was a card from a big payoff after I won a
couple small hands. I can pit a card as well as anyone, so skidded
on two kings for the next hand when we were down to three. They’d
said it would be the big one because it was late and nobody was
doing anything tonight. The cards were cold.

“
I said,
‘What the hell. I brought five grand to gamble with so make it
cutthroat and call it a night.’

“
I was
delt a king and two twos. I skidded a three and a five and played
the full house kings over. Twenty grand. They couldn’t believe
they’d screwed up like that on the deal and started going through
the cards. I dropped back the five and three and everything was
kosher so far as they could see.

“
I left.
They came to the National where I was staying later and told the
desk clerk they’d caught me on camera cheating at cards. I saw them
coming in and got behind the drapes by the desk. They said they
represented a group in Panamá City that no one fooled with. A
Russian group.

“
I got a
bus and came here. My stuff’s still in the National, but it was
only dirty clothes and like that.”

“
Twenty
grand? They would just consider it a lesson,” Clint
protested.

“
Not if I
tried to buy some stuff with a hundred and it’s phony. They
reeaally
want their funny money back for
some reason.”

“
Have you
handled it – other than a few?” Clint asked.

“
No. I
figured I didn’t want my prints all over it. Why? They could just
say it was money that someone else passed to them.”

“
Depends
on whose prints are on it, I’d say. Let’s go to Rio Sereno in the
morning. You can go to Costa Rica on foot there and avoid the
guardia. Call me every day at six and I’ll let you know if I can do
anything. Stay out of sight.”

He nodded. Clint took the money in a plastic
bag and went back to Bocas. A dark-haired big man with a bushy
moustache took the bus to David and then to Rio Sereno.

Clint had the police print all the money.
They got seven sets to check besides Ed’s. They would be discreet
when they ran them through the system and wouldn’t tell anyone it
was more than a routine passport check.

Danskie Chekov and Brendt Kreniev had to be
the ones he wanted, but who were they? Were they using their real
names here or were they known as someone else? What were they up to
that meant they would kill to avoid being identified?

As Ed said, they could claim the money was
passed to them so what was so special about this batch?

Clint took the cash and had Manny contact the
mob in Panamá City to say he had it and it would be returned – this
time. Ed wanted his five grand back in good bills and they’d better
think twice about using that crooked scam anywhere other than
Panamá City.

He had an answer in ten minutes. Give the
money to a man called Hank E. Panque in the parque and get the five
grand plus a grand for trying the game on someone who knew more
about cheating than they did. They just didn’t want the money that
they didn’t know was phony until he tried to pass a bill left out
there where it would have to cause a bunch of soooo innocent people
trouble. They’d take care of the ones who paid for their services
with the phony geetus.

Yeah. Right!

Clint was in the parque fifteen minutes later
when a well-dressed trim tall man approached him and said he was
Hank and thanks for not making a big stir about it. Nobody was
innocent on either side and Clint was smart enough to know they
were just trying to dump the stuff. It was just plain stupid to not
mix it with good money so they would have a legitimate-sounding
reason to have the stuff. Clint agreed and took the five grand,
handed “Hank” the phony and called Manny to say the deal was done
and over and thanks.

The camera got a couple of very good pictures
of “Hank” while that was going on. Clint shook his hand and said to
be careful in Bocas with the stuff because they’d recently raided
two places because of marked and phony money.

Clint called Ed at six to tell him he was now
out of it. Marko had made it plain that he simply outcrooked some
crooks and wasn’t involved past that.

Then he went home to relax for the rest of
Sunday evening. In the morning he would have a long talk with Manny
about whether or not to pursue it. He wanted to know who “Hank”
actually was and what his connection with the racket was. He was
very definitely not just some runner or thug. Something smelled in
a northern European country.