Economic Espionage: A Sylvia Dunham Mystery

By R. Jack Punch

Sylvia sunk into the water after seeing Blount driving the swamp truck and hearing the screaming. Chin Long is sitting next to him, in obvious pain from the python attack. The truck passed by her hiding spot without slowing down. Sylvia felt doomed, standing alone in the dark Everglades with alligators, snakes, and other dangerous creatures. She crawled up when the truck drove by and started to follow its tracks, hoping to find a way to civilization. She heard someone walking toward her, and she slid off the path and into the water.

The person had a flashlight and was obviously Blount, coming back on foot, looking to kill her. She decided to become the hunter instead of the hunted. She waited until the light was far enough away and climbed stealthily out of the water. She kept her rifle ready and followed her pursuer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532047268

R. Jack Punch

R. Jack Punch has been a scuba diver for fifty years. He was a scuba instructor at Genesee Community College in New York before moving to Florida with his wife to enjoy scuba diving and sailing. He has dived in many locations including the United States and Spanish Virgin Islands. His desire for adventure inspires stories about exciting destinations and events.

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Copyright © 2018 R. Jack Punch.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-4725-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-4726-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018904193

iUniverse rev. date: 04/05/2018

Contents

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Other books written by R. Jack Punch

Dedication

T HANK YOU TO all my friends who contributed to the development of these characters. Thanks to my friend Bill and his son James who gave me a box of apples during my last visit home to western New York. Their kind gift inspired a big part of this story. A special thanks also to my wife for her adventurous spirit that makes my life exciting.

Fiction is a deep understanding of reality or is reality a deep understanding of fiction?

Chapter 1

C APTAIN SYLVIA DUNHAM sat at the helm of Moonglow , her dive boat. Her long red hair dried in the wind, and her green eyes matched the clear, green waters of the Caribbean. Her once pale skin was darkened by years in the sun. Her physically active lifestyle gave her a slender build with the hard muscles of a bodybuilder. Her thoughts shifted from her divers to a special dinner her boyfriend had planned for tonight.

The happy divers on her boat had just finished a day of excellent diving off St. John Island in the US Virgin Islands. Sylvia knew the best spots to take her divers. One of the divers gave her a copy of the scuba diving magazine edition with her photo on the front and asked her for her autograph. Sylvia had been ascending from a dive when the photograph was taken and it had later made the cover of the magazine. Sylvia was embarrassed by the sensual image of her long flowing red hair and tight pink and green dive suit. She signed underneath her photo and smiled pleasantly at the young diver.

Eight years ago, Sylvia left her job as a police officer to come to St John and start an Internet business, which became very successful. She became bored with sitting at a computer and took up scuba diving. Four years later, she gave up the Internet business and became a dive instructor and boat captain. However, she was now getting tired of what seemed a permanent vacation and hungered for a new adventure. Her boyfriend, Jim, got her started in the dive business but had recently graduated from college and begun teaching at the school in Cruz Bay.

Sylvia’s phone rang. She noticed the call was from Uncle Wilbur in Florida. She answered the call and her uncle told her his private investigation company was in great trouble. His partner was missing and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Economic Espionage department was investigating him. Sylvia’s heart jumped at the thought of using her skill as a former police detective helping her uncle. With nervous anticipation, she told him that she would be on the next flight out. Next, she needed to tell her boyfriend she was leaving. She figured that she would be gone for a couple of days, and worried that she would miss Jim if it took longer.

Sylvia’s best friend Jan and her divemaster, Sandy, finished up with the divers so she could go to her boyfriend Jim’s school to tell him she was leaving. She knew he would be concerned because she had been going to leave St. John to work for her uncle when they met four years ago. She’d fallen in love with Jim and happily stayed on the island to be with him instead of leaving. She was sad when she called Jim out from his class and told him she was leaving to help her uncle in Florida. When Jim asked her when she was coming back, Sylvia told him she didn’t know. She looked into his worried eyes and turned away and left before he could see the tears roll down her check. She would miss having the special dinner with him that evening and knew that it would break his heart because her own heart was aching.

Sylvia put on clean blue jeans and a silk top. She packed a bag and left on the ferryboat to St. Thomas where the airport was located. She got a flight to Miami and called her uncle, who promised to pick her up at the airport. Sylvia was thinking of Jim and how much he’d missed his Uncle Rob Bemis when he left four years ago to work with her uncle. Rob was the partner her uncle had told her was missing. She had not told Jim about Rob but planned to call him when she got more information.

Sylvia boarded the ferryboat to St. Thomas. She looked back at the island where she’d lived a permanent vacation with Jim for the past four years. She knew everyone on the island and would miss the people who filled her life with joy. Still, she was eager for the adventure and uncertainty ahead of her. The strange feeling she had that she would not come back to St. John seemed fed by a new lust for adventure.

The ferryboat reached the dock in St. Thomas where life swished by at a faster pace than on St. John. The cab driver was miserable and in a hurry to get her to the airport. Sylvia paid the fare without giving him a tip. He sped away indignantly. Sylvia was glad she could get a flight that left immediately. She had to run and was the last to board the plane to Miami. She recognized a couple that had been diving with her on vacation that week. She sat next to them, glad she had a seat right next to someone she knew. Sylvia liked people and learned much from her dive passengers. She knew the man ran a peanut processing factory and his wife was a nurse. They had five children at home. Sylvia noticed as the couple’s conversation began to shift from their adventurous vacation to going back to work, children, and snow. They were going to change planes in Miami and continue on to Buffalo, New York.

Sylvia said goodbye to her dive friends when they got off the plane in Miami. She was going to call her uncle but found there were so many people crowded around her she could not get her phone out to turn it on. She felt like she was in a Texas cattle corral being led to a sale. She saw the exit and figured she would wait until she got outside to call. She saw a smoking area with room to stand without being trampled to death. She certainly felt out of her realm.

Sylvia smiled at the two ladies puffing anxiously on their cigarettes and said hello, The ladies mashed their half-smoked cigarettes out and ran from Sylvia as if she were a monster. Sylvia smiled and said hello to everyone and everyone seemed to be afraid of her. Sylvia thought it was because there were so many people in Miami and not enough air for them to breathe. She pulled out her cell phone and scrolled to her uncle’s name. She pushed the call button and was glad to hear his voice on the other end of the call.

You made it to Miami? Uncle Wilbur asked.

I’m near a sign that says ‘gate three’ by the road, Sylvia proclaimed.

Five minutes. Look for a black, four-door, pick up truck, Wilbur said.

Okay! Sylvia said and pushed the call end button.

She looked around at the mass of people getting picked up. Several cruise ship busses were herding passengers aboard. Cars were honking horns and cutting other drivers off rudely in an attempt to get to passengers that they did not even seem happy to see. Taxis, cars, and vans weaved in and out picking up passengers. Sylvia felt hot in her blue jeans and blouse with a bra she wasn’t used to wearing. Miami was hot and lacked the breeze that constantly cooled the air on St. John. A trickle of perspiration cooled her muscular tummy as she observed a massive race of rude, mean, and unhappy people rushing their empty lives by.

The black pickup truck maneuvered down the road three lanes out. Sylvia bounded through the traffic and jumped into the front seat with her uncle. She appreciated his smile because it was the first smile she had seen in a while. Wilbur Dunham was an athletic looking sixty-year-old man with snow-white hair and wrinkly tanned skin from his time sailing around the Florida Keys.

Sylvia had a brief but sincere reunion with her uncle as he drove her to Key Largo where his office and home were. Sylvia liked riding in the air-conditioned truck. She was used to driving an old rusty pickup truck back on St. John but this one was more modern, cleaner and larger than the compact ones she was used to.

Sylvia noticed how uncomfortable driving in the traffic made her uncle, and they did not talk much until they were on the expressway toward the Florida Keys. Wilbur Dunham was a retired Texas police officer who had moved to Key Largo and started the Dunham Investigation and Security Company twenty-five years ago. Sylvia listened to him explain the problem and why he had called her.

Sylvia and Wilbur merged off the expressway and drove along US highway one as Wilbur explained that Rob was not really missing but in hiding and they were concerned their office and phones were bugged.

A computer securities expert, Johnny Benet, who worked for Dunham Investigation and Securities was found dead at Rob’s house and he was considered the primary suspect, Wilbur said.

Where is Rob? Sylvia asked.

No idea and that is the truth, Wilbur answered frustrated.

Who’s involved? Sylvia asked.

Wilbur explained that they were working on a computer security project for Candy Corp, an international money transfer corporation, when our computer security programmer was found in Rob’s house stabbed to death. A suspicious, anonymous caller phoned the police after hearing a fight in the house. Rob had just left the office with me when the police called looking for him. He got home while the police were there.

Tell me more about the work you were doing for Candy Corp, Sylvia said.

It was pretty much a routine check up on the South Florida office, Wilbur explained.

Wilbur drove directly to the office on Ocean Bay Drive. Sylvia ducked down when she recognized Ken Lewis from a situation she was involved with in the Caribbean.

What’s wrong? Wilbur asked in a surprised voice.

That man is Ken Lewis. He’s FBI and I don’t want him to see me, Sylvia whispered.

Stay here! Wilbur said.

Sylvia watched her uncle as he set his keys on the floor next to Sylvia’s hidden head and opened the truck door. Sylvia peeked over the dashboard and saw two more men in black suits come out of the office. Ken Lewis had them arrest her uncle and handcuff him. When they put him in the back of their car, Sylvia jumped into the back seat so she could watch them. It was a good move because when Lewis left with her uncle, one of the other men came over and opened the front door of the truck. Sylvia ducked down and tried to make herself invisible. It worked because the door clicked shut and the FBI man left.

Sylvia guessed that the FBI man had put a listening bug under the truck’s dashboard. She waited until she heard their cars drive away, clenched her uncle’s keys in her hand so they would not rattle, and quietly opened the door and stepped out of the truck, pushing the door closed. A stranger, wearing a fishing hat and tee shirt walked by on the sidewalk. Sylvia gave her normal smile and hello and she was pleasantly pleased when the man responded in a friendly way.

Sylvia looked around and decided to go to the convenience store a short walk back toward Overseas Blvd, the main highway that passes through the Florida Keys. Sylvia got a cup of coffee and a submarine sandwich at the Tom Thumb store and then headed back to the Dunham Investigation and Securities office. She used her uncle’s key to open up and went inside. She immediately liked the island decor. She sat at a desk and ate her lunch and enjoyed her coffee. File drawers were left open and the desk had been ransacked. The FBI had clearly been looking for something. When the phone rang she decided to let the answering machine take the call.

The phone message was a desperate customer wanting to know if her husband was cheating on her. Sylvia noticed the files under C were open. She looked for Candy Corporation and found nothing but an empty slot in the file cabinet. She figured the FBI took any files that had been there. Sylvia found some small notebooks on a supply shelf and took one. She wrote down the addresses of her uncle and Rob Bemis in the book and put it in her back pocket. She was ready to start work.

Sylvia found the bug in the pickup truck and snapped it to a Harley Davidson motorcycle’s exhaust pipe. Whoever is listening will be wide awake when the cycle starts its engine, she thought as she got back in the truck. Rob Bemis’s house was a half-mile north on Ocean Bay Drive. Sylvia noticed the north side of Ocean Bay Drive was residential and full of nice homes. Rob’s house was on the gulf side of Key Largo with a dock. The front door had yellow police investigation tape blocking the pathway. Sylvia went around the side of the house to the dock.

There were clean boat fenders and boat lines but Sylvia saw no boat at the dock. Far to the northwest, a two-mast sailboat slowly was sailing by an island and a few fishing boats were traversing the pass through Buttonwood Sound on the intercoastal waterway. It was beautiful and made her think of St. John and Jim. As if on cue, her phone rang. It was Jim who seemed anxious to find out what she was doing. She knew Jim could always tell when she lied so she used the message from the caller on the answering machine as her cover and told him she was working on finding a cheating husband for a wealthy woman. They talked for a few minutes when another call came in. It was Wilbur Dunham. Sylvia made her apologies and disconnected Jim to talk to her uncle.

Sylvia’s uncle told her that the FBI was done with him for now and he was on his way to the office in a taxicab. Sylvia agreed to meet him at the office. She took a look around Rob Bemis’s house and saw a window that was ajar about a half inch. She went to the window and noticed scuff marks as if someone had climbed in through the window. She pushed the window open and climbed up inside.

Sylvia found herself alone in Rob’s bedroom. She looked around and recognized his Hawaiian shirts in the closet. She laughed out loud at the fact that Rob owned a beautiful house and that his wardrobe had not changed in the four years since she had last seen him. She left the bedroom and found where Jim Bennett’s body had been found. The blood was hardened on the white tile floor. Not much blood for a stabbing murder, she thought. She looked around and found no signs of a struggle or robbery. She unlocked the back door to leave and her sharp eyes noticed drops of blood on the porch and the walkway. Jim Bennett was killed somewhere else and brought to Rob’s house, she thought.

Sylvia drove the truck back to the office to meet her uncle. She became impatient at the red light on Ocean Boulevard because it seemed to take forever for the light to turn green. She could see the office up Ocean Bay Drive and noticed her uncle step out of the front door backward. He’s in trouble, she thought as the light changed. The F-150 truck had amazing acceleration as she floored the gas pedal. Tires screeched as she took off but the antilock brakes brought her to a smooth stop next to her uncle.

Hay! Take it easy with that truck, Wilbur demanded.

You looked like you were in trouble, Sylvia proclaimed.

Nothing I couldn’t handle, Wilbur said with a little smile.

Sylvia looked through the door and saw a man on the floor holding his jaw. She realized that her older uncle still had the ability to fight and she admired him for his skill. Sylvia went to the man and helped him to his feet. He took a swing at Sylvia who grabbed his wrist and, with ease, twisted the man’s arm behind him and slammed him into the wall. Sylvia had learned to maneuver divers in trouble and found the technique worked well with her attacker. Wilbur did not have time