Clint Faraday Mysteries collection A Muddled Murders Collector's Edition (90 page)

The Indio didn’t own the land, he was
probably just passing by and they offered him twenty bucks for
permission to go onto the land. He didn’t have an argument against
giving them his permission. He didn’t care. The owner of the
property might come at any time to tell them to get out. No one
lied to them or claimed the right to give permission. What they
assumed was their problem.

On the other hand, the owner probably didn’t
care. The Indios wouldn’t pass through his land if he did. At
least, not these particular Indios.

Clint went on to Drago and started back about
an hour later. The people had managed to move about a kilometer on
along the beach.

Clint shook his head. If the spot the chest
had been found was any indication he would know any other would be
in a hidden recess or somewhere not in direct view of the
Caribbean.

He got back and cleaned up, dressed and
headed back into Bocas Town. Dave and Selma were in the parque. He
talked awhile and Dave said he could have sworn he saw John Brandon
in a boat out by Carenero on the Caribbean side. He and Selma had
gone to visit friends on Bastimentos and had seen him when they
were coming back. He was alone.

Curiouser and curiouser. Clint wondered if he
had a metal detector with him. Dave said he didn’t know him except
to say hello. He and his wife had gone to several places where Dave
was playing.

Those people earlier didn’t mean anything. If
Brandon was out treasure-hunting, it might mean there was another
chest somewhere close. That would mean ... the shocked reactions of
people about the one found was because something was NOT in that
chest, not because something extra was.

What? They weren’t very excited by the money.
What could be in a chest somewhere out there?

Clint suddenly wanted to get to the far side
of Carenero to see if Brandon went to a specific spot. He grabbed a
taxi and got to his boat to go out fast. He went around the
northwest end of Carenero and headed along the outer side fast. He
wouldn’t appear to be looking for anything that way. Just a
fisherman heading in.

There were three boats along the beach there.
One was at the mouth of a runnel that went onto the island. The
water would be too shallow to take a boat in there, so whoever was
in that boat had gone onto the island. The runnel also formed a
little indent that would leave what whoever was doing there out of
view. It was much like the one where the chest was found on Isla
Colón. Too much.

It was getting weirder! Clint hadn’t thought
that would be possible. He called Sergio and said to get a boatload
of police out there. Bring the metal detectors he had and get the
one at his place.

“
What
have you discovered?” he asked.

“
I wish
to hell I knew!” Clint said, as the saying goes, “With great
emotion.”

Busy Day

Clint watched as Brandon moved along the
inner side of the curve of the runnel with a metal detector. He was
slogging around in the loose mud. Chitras were eating him alive if
he didn’t have a hell of a lot of Deet. They were always bad on
Carenero. Sergio and the police came up and were talking with Clint
when Brandon saw them. He casually went to his boat and slid the
metal detector in, then pushed it off the beach and started out.
Sergio was going to stop him, but Clint said to ignore him for the
moment. He wasn’t going far.

Basilio, an Indio friend on the police force,
said the idiot didn’t know much about the area if he was searching
the runnel for something that was buried fifty years ago. The
runnel wasn’t there that long. “The runnels bring out mud and trees
and everything else after a storm and fill in as they move along.
You can see there are no old trees around here. If you notice the
kinds of trees you can see where the old runnel was. Fifty years
ago ... about thirty years ago the runnel filled in so much it
moved. You have to find where the trees are all less than thirty
years old to know where it was. The hardwoods. The regular trees
grow fast enough that you couldn’t tell. I would say it was about
fifty meters northward ... just a minute.” He walked along the
beach and said it could be there, but he thought it was about
fifteen meters farther along. The runnel had moved twice. It might
be either spot. The last one could be a very old run.

“
You can
tell where the shores were. There are older hardwoods to the edge.
See those with the small leaves? They have been there for several
hundred years. No less than one hundred. Move along just outside of
them ... no, just inside of them. The box would have been buried by
the shore, not in the runnel. We have to check both
places.”

Clint didn’t doubt the information would be
one hundred percent accurate.

They didn’t find anything there before it
started getting dark. Sergio left two officers in one of the boats
to sit out a bit to observe if anyone came. He would send two
others out to relieve them at the end of their shift.

“
Just
observe and note time and exact locations they go to. Don’t
interfere or try to approach them. We have to know more before we
do the wrong thing,” Clint suggested. They agreed and would come
back at daybreak to continue their search. Clint went in to his
house, cleaned up and dressed again, then went in to meet Gina to
go to The Plank, where Dave would be playing. Not much else
happened. It was a good evening. Selma had gone with Judi to see
Almirante and Changuinola, so Clint, Ben, Manny (who had come in to
take care of some business) and two Indio friends finished the
night after Gina went back to the hotel. She wanted to be alone
awhile to figure out what she was going to do now. She still wasn’t
altogether convinced she was going to get any thousands of dollars,
much less millions.

Clint went home. Dave went home. Ben went
home – with the Indios.

“
I’ll
take the older runnel with Ronaldo and David. You take the newer
one with Sandoval and Pablito,” Sergio instructed. “Move along
where you can cover about five meters from where the shore was. Go
up the north side and return along the south.”

They all agreed and started the search. It
would be slow progress. They had machetes to chop their way through
the lighter brush. Just after one o’clock Ronaldo called that he
had found a large piece of metal. Sergio called to keep looking in
case it wasn’t what they were after. He used a probe and started to
dig down to the object. It was about three feet deep. The covering
soil was a little rocky and hard to dig, but there were no large
stones. Just as he called that it did seem to be some kind of metal
box Pablito found something, so they would probe and dig if it
seemed likely. It was also a metal box. By the time they had
reached it Sergio had the whole top of his box uncovered. He said
it would take them all to lift it out of there, so they went to
take some poles they cut to use as levers and got it to the
surface. It had a large padlock that had rusted almost off holding
the lid closed through brass hasps. All the hinges and bands were
brass. The box was wood covered in copper, inside and out. The wood
had rotted away.

Sergio said they would have to take it back
to Bocas before it was opened. He wouldn’t take responsibility for
it here. They agreed and put it in one of the boats, then went
together to dig up the other. It was much like the first, but
appeared to be much newer. It didn’t have such fancy brasswork. It
was basically steel. It was more like a copy of an old treasure
chest for the movies or something.

“
You know
what?” Clint asked.

“
I would
suggest that we found an actual pirate treasure and what we were
looking for. Both,” Sergio answered.

“
This is
even weirder than I thought,” Clint agreed.

They took their loot back to Bocas Town and
put it in the secure vault before they opened it. The entire crew
who dug it up were there. They had the right.

The treasure chest, the authentic one, had
some very good jewelry and a lot of gold in it. There were almost a
hundred pounds of gold coins, alone. They very carefully listed
every piece. Clint put a handfull of the more common coins in a
bucket and held the bucket at eye level, then told each one in the
crew to reach in and take one coin. Sergio started to protest, but
Clint said this was less than usual and these people deserved a
souvenir. He would expect Sergio to see that they got them out of
the vault. Sergio laughed and said he was going to take one
himself, in that case.

They remade one list with the coins selected
omitted.

They turned to the other chest. It was the
one that interested them is why they left it for last. It was
stacked full of money. Nothing else. No codes or anything. Hundred
dollar bills, all more than fifty years old.

Clint sat back to think while the men counted
the stacks.

“
Sergio,
they used a code on the others. I think this was the real object –
but why? Why not write it off? If they got by without it for fifty
years, why come for it in a panic now?”

“
I would
say because the existence of this much money buried at that time
told a story we haven’t been able to read yet.”

“
That
doesn’t work. There would be no way to connect this to anything,
after all that time. There has to be something that would point
directly to someone or something. Something deadly to someone.
Someone big enough that he didn’t come after however much is in
there a long time ago.”

“
How much
is here?” Serge asked Ronaldo.

“
We have
listed less than an eighth of it. It is more than twelve (Clint
said he HATED that damned number) million dollars. The stacks are
114 deep by ten long by twenty six wide. That comes to twenty nine
thousand six hundred twenty packages. There is five thousand
dollars in each package. That is one hundred forty eight million
two hundred thousand dollars.”

“
With no
way to know who put it there, so we still don’t have a reason for
any of this.”

“
There’s
a code in there somewhere that tells us exactly who. Are you sure
there’s nothing on those bills?” Clint asked.

“
Nothing,” Sergio said. “Other than the fact so many of them
are in series and can ... Clint! This is marked money! Those serial
numbers will tell us who!”

Clint grabbed his phone and called Manolo to
ask if they had the serial numbers of hundred dollar bills from
fifty years ago that were used in a deal and have never shown
up.

There was a dead silence for a full minute,
then, “Have you found the Juan Toren money? More than one hundred
forty five million have never been found or used. That’s fifty one
years ago next week.”

“
We found
a hundred forty eight million of it. Why is it so important that
they’d go to the extremes they have over it?”

“
It’ll
prove which major cartel family was in on selling out four others.
If that’s found there’ll then be no one to the second cousin in
that family alive within three days. Three of the four families
sold out have, as we say, recovered their fortunes and power. The
fourth earned enough to retire in comfort.”

“
Shit!”
Clint cried, making Sergio and the others jump. “Thanks, Manolo.
You can arrange for someone to claim the money if it matches the
serial numbers – and it will. How much will I get for finding
it?”

“
Demand
ten percent. You’ll get it.”

“
It’ll be
for a school and hospital somewhere in the area,” Clint promised.
“We also found a legitimate pirate treasure.”

“
No shit?
The other one wasn’t?”

“
The
pirate treasure part was. This isn’t quite as good quality, but
it’s still good – Oh! Maybe you can find who John Brandon works
for. That’ll be the family that won’t be here in a few
days.”

Manolo agreed to try. They talked a minute,
then hung up.

“
Clint,
be careful. Those people might go wild here and try to kill off
everyone who even knows there was a treasure found.”

“
I intend
to be careful. I intend to protect my friends and the
innocent.”

They took about another half hour of counting
before Clint left to go find Gina at the office. Avenidas was
there. Clint told about finding the treasure and the second box. He
said they were trying to trace the money because there was nothing
there BUT the money. The US treasury was checking to see if they
had any records. The bills were in series, so might be marked
money.

Avenidas was about to die of heart failure by
the look of him. “Er, how much was there?” he asked.

“
We’d
estimate around a hundred fifty million.”

He squealed and went back to his office.
Clint said he was going home to clean up. He’d come back when it
was time for her to leave. It might not be a good idea for her to
be alone much until something about this was settled, though he was
sure her part wasn’t in the danger zone, as he called it. It was
the box they found today that was where the danger remained. At
least a good part of it was explained. It also explained why there
was so little connection to anything before.

He met Selma and Judi on the way home. They
had come back from Changuinola about an hour before. He caught them
up. Selma said that kind of money was just plain obscene. She knew
one person in Florida who had that kind of money and more who was a
decent, worthwhile human being and ten who were pains in the ass
and about as worthless as anyone could be.