Deadly Island

By C. D. Moulton

One of "The Kids" is charged with murder on St. Wartons. CD investigates to find himself in the middle of a very strange intrigue indeed  A bunch of international mobsters are going to try to take over South America

Critic comment:
James Bond, move over  I like this one. I really do like the kind of story that goes right to the line, but manages to not QUITE cross it.
– JMD *****

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. D. Moulton
• Release date: Jul 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201465445

Book preview

CD Grimes

Book 16

Deadly Island

formerly Trouble With Travel

© 1993 & 2019 by C. D. Moulton

all rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, ectronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any other information retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holder/ publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblances to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

One of The Kids is charged with murder on St. Wartons. CD investigates to find himself in the middle of a very strange intrigue indeed! A bunch of international mobsters are going to try to take over South America!

Critic comment:

James Bond, move over! I like this one. I really do like the kind of story that goes right to the line, but manages to not QUITE cross it.

– JMD *****

Contents

About the author

Prologue

Chapter one

Chapter two

Interim

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Epilogue

About the author

CD began writing fiction in 1984 and has more than 300 books published as of 3/15/16 in SciFi, murder, orchid culture and various other fields.

He now resides Gualaca, Chiriqui, Panamá, where he continues research into epiphytic plants and plays music with friends. He loves the culture of the indigenous people and counts a majority of his closer friends among that group. He funds those he can afford through the universities where they have all excelled. The Indios are very intelligent people, they are simply too poor (in material things and money.) to pursue higher education.

CD loves Panamá and the people, despite horrendous experiences (Free e-book; Fading Paradise). He plans to spend the rest of his life in the paradise that is Panamá

CD is involved in research of natural cancer cure at this time. It has proven effective in all cases, so far. It is based on a plant that has been in use for thousands of years, is safe, available, and cheap. He was cured of a serious lymphoma with use of the plant, Ambrosia peruviana.

Information about this cure is free on the FaceBook page Ambrosia peruviana for cancer. CD asks only that all who try it please report on its effectiveness on that group.

Prologue

That one really helped us to clear up a lot of things the old election left hanging, Len (Len Stewart, Sheriff) said, speaking of a case we'd finished. The trials were over as of a week ago. "Harding gets life plus, Timkins gets fifteen years and my case is proved.

This was another case that cost you umpty million dollars and you got one dollar from the state for your help, but it did me a lot of good in proving what that scumwad said about me in the election was a pile of crap!

Hell! Your case was proven back in eighty four when you were elected, Dave, my author friend (He writes the Maita SF books and some detective stories as well as a lot of research stuff about orchids and the deterioration of the environment) No one with the intelligence of a retarded orangutan believed a word of it, anyhow. You're so clean you squeak and always will be.

Do I denote disapproval, Dave? Cal (Sgt. Cal Jones, FHP and regular member of our get-togethers) asked.

Cal! Wilma, his wife, warned.

Cal and Dave have a sort of strange relationship. Cal didn't like Dave from the moment they met. It was just a chemical thing they both see through, so manage to get along now.

Dave? I said. Of course he disapproves!

I'm CD Grimes, PI and beach bum. I inherited several billion dollars worth of companies, so can afford it. We were gathered on the dock at my Englewood place for a cookout, swimming, fishing and enjoying life.

Alma, my knockout wife, and Mary, Len's wife, brought us a key lime pie to go with the gourmet coffee Alma mixes for us.

What, besides almost anything imaginable, does Dave disapprove of? Alma asked, giving him her lopsided grin.

Airhead bimbo broads who interrupt serious intelligent conversations we important male types are having, Dave shot back.

Selma Wentworth, Dave's live-in, poured what was left of her lemonade over his head. He ignored it as it dripped from his nose into his lap.

With our little group one never knows what's next. She cocked her head to the side, grabbed a couple of ice cubes and dropped them down the front of his bathing suit. That got a reaction!

He jumped up with a Whoop!, reached around under her arms and pitched her off the dock. Alma and Wilma rushed him, dumping him in almost on top of her.

I said, What the hell? and shoved Alma in, but she managed to grab me around the neck, so I went with her. Ten seconds later we were all in the water.

Jim Barrow, my boatman, was just coming in from the bay with my three kids and Cal and Wilma's oldest and The Kids – two gay kids, Norm Keller and John Hoskins (Kids? They were in their late twenties!) who became friends in a case a few years ago. He had to swing out and around us to dock the Stamas. Otherwise, they ignored us.

Jim had his girl for the day, Kathy Somebody, with him. She was the only one there who was not a regular member of our little group. Jim's girlfriends seldom lasted more than a single day (and/or night) or two. Jim was a complete womanizer who freely admitted he was as much as addicted to sex. He was the ruggedly handsome type women couldn't resist.

The other regular members of our group who weren't there at that particular cookout were: Tony and Shirley Jacobi. Tony's my manager at the Sarasota Crane plant (The Crane crap is why I have the billions) and Shirley is the former Shirley Bock, half-owner of the airport where I keep my jet and Cessna. Mike and Annette Nelson. Mike owns the other half of the airport. He had married Annette a few months ago. There's a nude painting of Mike in the Florida room of my Bonita Springs place. Lou and Paulo Sanchez, my housekeeper and groundskeeper and their two kids who were the same ages and my oldest and youngest. John Kiley, or just JK, who was a twenty two year old computer genius who worked research and development for Crane, but who actually runs certain phases in this and in several other countries through his computers. (I think I'm really beginning to believe that!)

This was the Englewood group. The Bonita group consisted of most of these plus a few from that area. Selma was from Bonita Springs.

We played a few minutes longer, then climbed out onto the dock to finish our coffee and pie as though nothing had happened.

In a case two years ago I bought a company out and ended up with a large home on St. Wartons Island, a little known Caribbean island near St. Kitts. There was a tract next door of about sixty acres that had been for sale. I had been seriously considering buying it to keep it natural. Most of the group spent time there. We all come and go pretty much as we like at my places and get along well enough that having different ones at the place at once doesn't cause problems. We don't interfere with each other.

An example: Alma, our kids and I were there for a few weeks and Cal and Wilma and their two kids unexpectedly showed up. The kids overran the island together pretty much all the time, but Cal and Wilma mostly went their way while Alma and I went ours. Alma and Wilma would go shopping or sightseeing together at times and Cal and I went fishing and scuba diving at times. It was more like we were two families staying in separate houses than two families staying in one. Maybe it's basically that we will never invade one another's personal privacy. No one is hurt or insulted if anyone else makes plans they're no part of. We're really one large extended family. We're comfortable together. Even Dave and Cal – now.

Dave helped Cal write a book. I read it and find it's very good. Now Cal has to find a publisher. The MS had been rejected three or four times and Cal was getting pretty discouraged, but Dave simply walked in with a cigar box one day and handed it to Cal. It was six years of rejection slips. I'd say several hundred, but Dave says there are about a hundred twenty. He then handed Cal a second box of slips. Those were from the time he was first published until now. One, he'd received the day before.

Sixty two books and four hundred shorts. I still get a hell of a lot of rejection slips, so stop whining! Dave demanded. Who the hell ever said it was easy? If editors knew half as much about it as they think they do they'd be famous writers!

Cal sighed heavily and sent the MS to another publisher.

I picked that time to announce I was going to buy the tract next to my St. Wartons place to preserve it and maybe make an orchid garden on it. It had some large trees and I could plant fast-growing types.

Hate to tell you this sport, but I don't think so! Dave said. "I bought it last week. Sel and I plan to go down the first of next month and start building our place and an orchid range. We've designed the tree plantings and a rock face and all that crap to make a garden so we can work together on it.

We'll go to Rancho Norte, then up to Bogota and points north, south, east and west. We're going to try to establish the most complete species collection in the world. We'll have mostly hybrids there on the island in one section and New World species on part.

You can't grow most of the cooler types on the island, Alma pointed out. You don't have enough altitude.

"That. I've owned a little ranch in Catacamas, Honduras, for years. We bought a big tract near the road east out of Tegucigalpa toward Suyapi. It's pretty much straight up and down, but there are nine natural terraces on it. The bottom is in a boxed valley at seven hundred feet and the top is at forty eight hundred feet, which is cloud forest. It's far to rough to be used for timbering, so just maybe the whole damned mountain won't turn into a mudslide if they get a really wet season.

"It makes you sick to see what they've done to a lot of the country. Make a buck! To hell with the future!

The tract is four hundred meters wide and three thousand meters long. On a flat plane it would be a million and a quarter square meters, but its at about fifty or so degrees, generally. I've got about two hundred acres on the terraces. The rest of it's too straight up and down. The government sold me the tract cheap because I guaranteed them it would stay completely natural except for the nine terraces, which will simply be planted with hundreds of thousands of orchid and bromeliad species. It'll be the biggest orchid garden in the world. It'll also be the most complete.

Aren't you getting along a bit to be starting that kind of project? Cal asked. It has to be a fifty year program, at the very least. Maybe your heroes in the SF books can be kept alive and healthy for hundreds of years, but this is here and now. You can't!

On top of which you and JK don't think the human race will even be here in a hundred more years, anyhow, CD (Cedric David, my eldest. I'm Carlysle Devon, so he's not a junior) said. He'd grabbed some pie and joined us, along with Norm and John.

John and I are in it with him. So are some others, Norm said as he grabbed a drumstick. "We'll get as much as we can done. When the tides rise that area won't be too affected. There's no way people could ever farm or live on the side of that mountain and it's not easy to reach, anyhow. Everything around it's even steeper. There's a little stream from the top that runs right down the middle. It's mostly a waterfall.

"What Dave and I don't like about it is the fact there are millions of tarantulas up near the top! Really big mothers!"

And me an arachnophobe! Dave grinned. It's a good thing it's always so damned cold up there. I wear what amounts to an isolation suit when I'm there. When the race screws up the planet to that point, one tiny little spot will have that stock growing on it. Maybe something of beauty can survive us. It'll be good to be a part of that.

Unh-unh! Let's not get off on that tangent! John pleaded. I'm up to here with whether any of it has any meaning.

JK says it doesn't. That's good enough for me, I said. Are you two in on the St. Wartons thing or only the Honduras part?

No. It’s a bit too much for us at the moment, Norm replied. Just the species part in Honduras. We don’t have a lot of time for more and that’s the part we think is most important.

We're going down to St. Wartons for a week or ten days, John added. It's just a vacation, though.

Conversation turned to vacations. It was a pleasant evening.

Chapter one

CD? Dave here.

I looked at the clock. It was one AM.

Here where?

St. Wartons.

And?

Remember the Grand Hotel? Capt. Bertram Norris?

Except Bertram, of course. I've always called him Norris. What's up?

Want to work on another murder here? It's been almost four years and this is only the second murder of this type since then. Sel and I are headed on over to Rancho Norte day after tomorrow. Norm and John left here yesterday. It'll be up to you. You've got Norris snowed into thinking there's a chance you could handle it.

I don't know why you think I can pack up and run off anytime you find a murder somewhere! What are you holding out? What makes you think I care?

Remember the desk clerk? Edward Nettles?

Nettles?

It's his real name. Edward Eddy was just some kind of pointless joke or something. He's the victim, it seems.

And?

"Capt. Norris has only the one viable suspect. Norman Keller. He says he'll wait awhile at your request, but he has no real choice but to try to get him brought back.

"I worked with Moose in Ft. Myers on a couple of murders, but this one is out of my league. I have to see something odd or obvious, which is something this ain't.

I can't see Norm killing Ed.

Oh, for pity's sake! Tell Norris not to do anything yet. I'll be there before noon tomorrow. If Norm did do it I'll guarantee to take him back to face the music.

I'll see you tomorrow, then.

I hung up the phone and sighed. Alma said, Mmmmph. Whaz up?

Oh, it seems Norm killed that gay desk clerk at the hotel on St. Warton's and they want me to tag him for it .

Thaz nice. Don't take ... NORM?! KILLED someone?! she was awake now. I told her what Dave said and she shook her head, rolled over and went back to sleep.

St. Wartons is a beautiful place from the air as well as from the ground. The surrounding sea is a deep blue-green when there are no clouds to turn it smoky blue and the wide white beaches stand out