Read Clint Faraday Collection C: Murder in Motion Collector's Edition Online
Authors: CD Moulton
Tags: #adventure, #murder mystery, #detective, #intrigue, #clint faraday
To each his own.
Grossman wasn’t there at the time. It was
late afternoon and he would probably be in one of the more popular
bars. The floor attendant said he went out most nights and stayed
until about eleven. He sometimes had a professional lady with him
when he returned.
Clint grinned and said this was the kind of
place people wanted to get away from the proper work life. She
agreed and said she could get him a woman anytime, so remember her.
Clint said he would.
Kelvin was out front of the hotel when he
went out. He asked where there was a good restaurant – typical, not
tourist. He liked native foods.
“
Yet you
stay here?”
“
Because
my business is with someone staying here so I didn’t really have a
choice. I want to know the kind of place I like for when I come
back. I think I’ll come back here at times. It’s really a beautiful
place.”
They chatted a few minutes, then Clint said
he’s spring for dinner if there was a good place they’d both like.
He was taken to a small place about half a kilometer from the
tourist town where he got a truly delicious meal.
He went back to the hotel and sacked out. He
was up, as always, at five in the morning and was sitting on his
little balcony with a pot of coffee supplied by the hotel when
Grossman wandered out onto the balcony.
“
Faraday?
Following me?”
“
Uh-huh.
I have to find out a couple of things.”
“
Like?”
“
Did you
arrange for Sarah and William to get knocked over or was it
Greenwood or Auermond who arranged it?”
He stared at Clint for a moment. “Sarah and
William? Knocked off?
“
I
haven’t been in touch with any of them. It was getting tiresome for
them to keep railing about losing their life savings instead of
looking for a way to make a go of something else there. I think we
can find something, but I’d rather be able to buy them out cheap.
The insurance will pay them off if any of us die.
“
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
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.