Clint Faraday Mysteries Collection B :This Job is Murder Collector's Edition Read Free Page A

about four inches above the
water. He dropped his bail line into it and threw a five gallon
bucket to McDonald and took one himself to throw water out. In a
few minutes it would remain afloat without any further hand
bailing. Clint let the high-flow bailer from his boat draw a lot
more of the water out. McDonald invited him to have some coffee or
booze or whatever so they left it running and went to the somewhat
overdone stilt house where Benson McDonald introduced his
ladyfriend, Shirley LeGrande. They talked awhile. Clint brought up
the drug boat and murder.
    “ I’m here because of drugs coming in
through Nassau,” Benson said. “I got into trouble with a bunch at a
casino there. I had a little restaurant and beer bar and they
started trading right there. I threw them out, then the place
burned down. I caught two of them one night in a dark alley and
almost killed them. Their buddies have been after me ever
since.”
    “ Not the same group, I
hope?”
    “ I wouldn’t know. I doubt
it.”
    Shirley seemed to be a lot more friendly.
They chatted, then Clint left. Benson had a tripod to take the
motor off and into his bodega (shed) to dry it out. Clint told him
to meet the people halfway and they would gladly go the other half.
They were NOT going three quarters of the way.
    He said he didn’t want friends. He wanted to
be left alone. Clint told Shirley that they wouldn’t hold him
against her. If she wanted friends she could have them. She
nodded.
    Well, McDonald was out as a suspect.
    Clint visited with another Indio family. He
helped them put a couple of sheets of zinc on the roof that had
been blown off. This time it was anchored. Before, it had a couple
of heavy rocks holding it in place. The Indios noted years ago that
the zinc-plated panels would rust where the nails went through very
quickly. If the zinc wasn’t scratched through or holed it would
last for twenty years or more – so they didn’t drive nails through
it. Clint said they had kilometers of polypropylene rope, so why
not tie it down? They did that. They would have to replace the rope
about every five years. The sunlight broke it down.
    The wind was picking up and it was getting
darker than Clint liked. He turned on the weather channel on his
boat and learned this last storm front had intensified and would be
a lot worse than the first two. The bay was getting pretty rough
before Clint got home. He was protected from the worst of it where
he was, but people on the Caribbean side would get hit hard this
time.
    Sergio had called several times, but Clint’s
cell was on the boat while he was working and he hadn’t heard it.
He called to learn that another tortured body had been found. This
one on Isla Popa.
     
    Assumptions
    “ It would seem you were correct in
assuming that the body found between Solarte and Bastimentos was
nothing to do with the drug runner,” Sergio admitted when Clint
went to the station in the morning. “It perhaps has to do with
drugs, but who knows?
    “ Have you anything new to
report?”
    “ Other than that McDonald is a total
ass, but has nothing to do with it, no. I’m going calling on Quiroz
and Larienze in a bit.”
    “ That’s nice. So. Who are Quiroz and
Larienze? Those unpopular people on Bastimentos?”
    “ Yeah. I want to see what their stories
are.”
    Sergio nodded and told what they knew about
body #2. Except that he could be a man who was around every once in
awhile they called Carlos they didn’t have anything. It was pretty
exactly the same kind of torture body #1 showed. It didn’t mean too
much in itself.
    “ It means someone wants information
that they didn’t get from the first one,” Clint pointed out. Sergio
agreed. They didn’t know if whoever got the information from
#2.
    Clint went to the regular places for gossip,
then took his boat to Bastimentos. Quiroz had the much easier place
to get to so he went there first. Quiroz was an arrogant snob. He
first called that his dock was a private