The Body in the Alpaca Pasture

By Jerold Last

Roger Bowman and Suzanne Foster Bowman seemingly can’t visit South America without getting tangled up in a bloody murder case. Their current trip to Salta, Argentina isn’t going to be the exception that proves the rule. Little did Roger suspect that buying a couple of alpaca sweaters for Suzanne to celebrate their third wedding anniversary would plunge the detective couple into another South American murder mystery. In “The Body in the Alpaca Pasture” Roger and Suzanne are asked by their friend, an overworked homicide detective based more than half a day’s drive from the scene of the crime, to visit a small town in his jurisdiction where there was a baffling killing a few days earlier. He wants Roger and Suzanne to advise him whether or not it is worth wasting his time investigating the murder before adding the skimpy file to his already large stack of unsolved cases.

Somebody shot a modern-day gaucho in the back at an isolated alpaca breeding facility in the small town of Molinos, high in the Andes Mountains in Argentina’s northwest province of Salta. In this isolated area far off the beaten track for tourists, everybody at the research facility had an opportunity to shoot the victim without being observed committing the crime. This isn’t a crime that will be solved by CSI. There aren’t any fingerprints, footprints, a murder weapon, or other traditional clues conveniently left around the cadaver by the killer. The local police (both of them) are glorified meter maids, totally untrained to solve a mysterious murder like this one. By the time Roger and Suzanne arrive the corpse has long since been sent to the nearest hospital for an autopsy, the results of which have been lost by the local bumbling authorities. What was the motive? Why was the victim targeted? Was it murder for gain? Roger and Suzanne interrogate the remaining staff members at the alpaca breeding facility as they seek evidence proving the existence of a sinister international conspiracy to explain the reason Oswaldo Pepin died. This fast paced whodunit mystery features an exotic setting, a complex murder case, and a fast paced and suspenseful plot.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jerold Last
• Release date: Sep 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311488022

Jerold Last

The author is a Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of California's Medical School at Davis, near Sacramento in Northern California. Jerry writes “tweener” mystery books (hard boiled stories that follow the cozy conventions of no graphic sex and no cussing) that are fast moving and entertain the reader, while introducing the readers to a region where he has lived and worked that is a long way from home for most English speakers. He and his wife lived previously in Salta, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay for several months each. Jerry selected the most interesting South American locations he found for Roger and Suzanne to visit while solving miscellaneous murders. Montevideo, Salta, Machu Picchu, the Galapagos Islands, and Iguazu Falls are also characters in these books, and the novels portray these places as vivid and real. Jerry and his wife Elaine breed prize-winning German Shorthaired Pointer dogs; Elaine also provides technical advice for Jerry’s novels like The Deadly Dog Show and editing for all of the books, many available from Amazon.

Book preview

THE BODY IN THE ALPACA PASTURE

By Jerold Last

Copyright © 2015 Jerold Last

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Real places and locations are used fictitiously, and the incidents described are not to be construed of as having really occurred. Molinos and Salta are real places, physically very much as I have described the areas. However, any resemblance of specific scenes in the novel to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover photo Copyright © 2015 Veronica Rajal

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As always, my wife Elaine made several useful suggestions and constructive criticisms, suggested specific scenes, and helped edit countless drafts of the manuscript. Elaine also shared memories of our time spent together in Salta when we lived there during a sabbatical leave sponsored by the Fulbright Commission. The description of the breeding facility is also as authentic as our memories (mostly Elaine’s) could reconstruct except it was a vicuna breeding station that I altered to alpacas because I think alpacas are a good deal more interesting.

The cover painting of the Andes Mountains in the Province of Salta was painted by my friend and colleague Veronica Rajal, a professor at the National University of Argentina’s campus in Salta. Thanks to Veronica for the cover painting, and permission to use her original artwork for this purpose.

This novel has its roots in a generous invitation from a friend we made during the time we lived in Salta several years ago to spend a long weekend with them in their second house in Molinos. It gave us an opportunity to visit the real Argentina of the Saltanians rather than the more touristic cities we learn about in geography classes. I’ve been back to Salta for visits several times since then, but haven’t had a chance to return to Molinos. So, the town Roger and Suzanne visit and walk through is the historical Molinos of our visit several years ago. Molinos has become more of a tourist destination since then and the roads are better, so local tourists actually drive there from Salta or Cafajate. But it is still far off the usual tourist trails for most people from North America.

Astute readers of the Roger and Suzanne South American mystery series may have noticed that hidden within it is a subset of books with titles beginning The Body in the XXX. These are all fast paced novellas (short novels) rather than conventional (more than 50,000 words) novels. This book is the third of the series entries in this subset. I would appreciate feedback via book reviews as to whether there should be more Bodies in the novellas in the future.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1. Celebrating an anniversary in Salta

Chapter 2. Two tourists in Salta

Chapter 3. Molinos

Chapter 4. An interesting dinner conversation

Chapter 5. Some detective work

Chapter 6. A high caliber autopsy

Chapter 7. The next day

Chapter 8. Back home in Los Angeles

FROM THE AUTHOR

Chapter 1. Celebrating an anniversary in Salta

I’m Roger Bowman, 6 foot, two inches, 190 pounds, 35 years old, blue eyes, and a native Californian, born and raised in San Diego. I run a private detective agency in Century City, near Hollywood in the western part of Los Angeles, with my partner Vincent Romero. I’m really not very good at those day-to-day actions that women find romantic. However, a truly romantic idea occurs to me every decade or so.

Our third wedding anniversary gave me the opportunity to suggest one of those grand gestures that make wives happy.

Suzanne and I first met when she hired me to investigate her father’s murder in Salta, Argentina four years previously. We fell in love with South America and with each other during that very intense time together. We were married the following year, and returned to South America, mostly to Uruguay and Chile, several times since that first case. But we hadn’t managed to get back to Northwest Argentina yet.

Somehow, Suzanne and I always seemed to get tied up in murder investigations whenever we visited the Southern hemisphere. This time, maybe we could just be normal tourists for a change.

How about celebrating our anniversary in Salta this year? We can spend a week or two and revisit some of the places we liked so much when we were there the first time. Just you and me; we can leave Robert home this trip with his nanny, Bruce. It would be fun to visit Salta, Cafayate, Molinos, and some of the other small towns in the Andes Mountains we didn’t really have the time to enjoy when we were there the first time. If I remember correctly we were too busy dodging hired killers that first time to really get a good look at the scenery and lifestyle there. This time it could be like a second honeymoon.

Suzanne looked shocked. I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, Roger. Yes! I’d love to visit Salta with you for our second honeymoon.

A week later Bruce and Robert, tucked into his infant seat in back, delivered us to Los Angeles International airport, LAX. We drove west on Sunset Boulevard to the San Diego freeway, where we were greeted by southbound bumper-to-bumper traffic moving about 60 miles per hour all the way to the airport exit. We drove further west to the airport on Century Boulevard, a broad traffic-jammed avenue of commercial real estate, hotels, grungier older buildings, and less affluent business property. Getting closer to LAX, property values increased dramatically as we passed high-rise hotels and high rent office buildings.

Bruce dropped us off at the International Terminal, where we found our way to the correct gate for our LAN Airlines 1 PM flight to Santiago de Chile, with a stop in Lima, Peru. In Santiago we connected to another LAN Airlines flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Finally, we connected to a LAN Argentina flight to Salta, arriving about 21 hours later at our final destination. With time zone changes we arrived in Salta at 3 PM the next afternoon.

Since the last time we’d taken this trip a few good things had happened. With better airplane service via Santiago, Chile on LAN Chile Airlines we had a much more direct route that avoided the necessity of flying to Argentina via Miami. And, with direct service from Santiago to the proper