Clint Faraday Mysteries collection A Muddled Murders Collector's Edition (89 page)

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 father 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 promised 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.

“
Not
much. Sylvia Gordas seems to have some kind of connection with drug
cartels or whatever. She knows all the wrong people.”

“
I take
it Gordas is her real name. Those drug cartels are coming up much
too often in this. I worry about them getting any of their shit
started here.

“
I think
Manny can find something if they’re part of it. We can give him a
name to work back from.

“
I think
I’ll open a PI agency here. You and Manny do as much as I do in
this.”

“
It
passes the time.” She grinned. “You still don’t have a definite
direction to finding what this was about, do you?”

“
I have
several. Only problem is connecting more than two together. Get the
third in any angle and the other two don’t fit anymore.”

They went to the Starfish and had a cup of
overpriced coffee, then Clint went back home while Judi went to
Almirante and Changuinola with some friends to shop. It’s cheaper
to buy almost anything there than in Bocas, so a trip a week for
groceries and household needs saved more than enough to pay for the
water taxi and bus. A call to Manny got it started as to who and
what Sylvia Gordas was and what her part of it might be. That
should tie John Brandon in, one way or another. He hoped.

Next was a little run out toward Drago. He
saw a boat on the beach just past The Bluffs and two people, a man
and a woman, using a metal detector. People would scour every
single inch of the beach area since the find. Several Indios were
watching to see they didn’t go onto the private land above the tide
line.

No one would bury anything below the tide
line. Couldn’t they see that?

A couple of the Indios saw Clint and waved to
him. He waved back and did the circle to the side of the head with
his finger. It said, “Loco.” They agreed and laughed. One of them
waved a twenty dollar bill at Clint. Clint put his hands up and
shrugged. The Indio pointed inland a little, to a tree about
fifteen feet from the tide line, then to the two with the metal
detector, which got their attention enough that the man turned to
see Clint there – and told Clint that they had paid him to let them
go a little above the tide line with their equipment. Clint waved
and headed out.