Deadly Steps: CD Grimes PI, #9

By C. D. Moulton

Two CD Grimes Mysteries. The final two books of the series are more of  the action adventure form, though not to the popular extremes.

Deadly Island, one of the "kids" is charged with murder on St. Whartons. CD goes there to see what is really going on. He finds a situation where some world criminal leaders are plotting to take over South America through economic manipulation.

A Step Too Far, Shirley's sister is murdered. It seems to somehow be directed at CD. He can't figure who or why - at first. When he finds out, he has to try to stop some old foes in prison who are manipulating people into doing their dirty work for them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. D. Moulton
• Release date: Oct 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215295878

Book preview

CD Grimes Mysteries

Pools Bottles and Deaths

Two books

© 2020 by C. D. Moulton

all rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any 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 actual persons or events are purely coincidental unless otherwise stated.

Deadly Island

One of the kids is charged with murder on St. Wartons Island. CD investigates to find a ring of international crooks with some kind of weird plan to take over South America.

Oh, come ON!

A Step Too Far

Shirley’s sister is murdered. CD’s family is threatened.

That’s suicide! CD is determined to make that fact plain and certain.

Some kind of revenge against him? A drug lord from an old case?

Politicians in prison?

Contents

About the author

Deadly Island

Prologue

Chapter one

Chapter two

Interim

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Epilogue

A Step Too Far

Prologue

Chapter one

Chapter two

Interim 1

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Interim 2

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Chapter eleven

Chapter twelve

Chapter thirteen

Epilogue

About the author

CD was born in Lakeland, Florida, in 1938. He is educated in genetics and botany. He has traveled extensively, particularly when he was a rock rhythm guitarist with some well-known bands in the late sixties and early seventies. He has worked as a high steel worker and as a longshoreman, clerk, orchidist, bar owner, salvage yard manager, and landscaper and more.

CD began writing fiction in 1984 and has more than 300 books published in SciFi, murder, orchid culture, and various other fields.

He now resides in Gualaca, Chiriqui, Panamá, where he continues research into epiphytic plants and plays music with friends. He loves the culture of the indigenous people. 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. Culturally, they are very wealthy) 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 is based on a plant that has been in use for centuries, is safe, available, and cheap. Information about this cure is free on the FaceBook page: Ambrosia peruviana for cancer.

––––––––

Deadly Island

CD Grimes  Book 16

formerly Trouble With Travel

© 1993 & 2019 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!

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 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 wasn’t 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 a small 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 near 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 too 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 to use. 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 starkly against that background and the lush green of the interior. The hills that make up the island are only a few hundred feet at their highest point. It's sort of kidney-shaped, perhaps six miles long and four wide. The hotel, major town and airport are all in the middle of the island on the coast of the inside arc of the kidney. The many sailboats, all bright against the water, give a feeling of lazy tranquility to the view.

Dave and Norris were waiting when I came in. Dave had my Jeep there, which would make it easier. Alma and Norm were with me. Norm came home just twelve hours before I left. We'd talked first thing in the morning. He said he was innocent, and he wouldn't run from anyone or anything. He loaded his stuff into the jet to go back with me without ever unpacking. Alma decided she'd come along, because the kids were in school, and Lou and Paulo could handle things very well. John would stay there to run his engineering firm and to help manage Norm's Modern Transmission repair shop until we returned.

All the guests in our little group socialized with Norris each time we'd come out to the island. We considered him among our closer friends. The case I'd worked on with him (Book 13: File Copy) had given us plenty of time to know each other, and we shared a lot of interests. He wasn't surprised to see Norm with me.

I agreed to meet with Norris later, and went to the house with Dave, Norm, and Alma, where Selma had a delicious lunch of fried scallops in wine sauce prepared. Dave explained what he had while he showed Alma and me his project, a neat cottage with a natural-looking set of lath houses around three sides.

"We mostly bummed around the place all day. I'd spend a couple of hours in the morning with the builders and come back in the afternoon to see how it's going. Norm and John spent a lot of time at the hotel. They like tennis and gravitate to crowds, while I gravitate away from people, so we saw each other at the house, mostly. Sel went to the hotel, sometimes, with them to play bridge and whatever.

"I'm writing a research thing, so I need a lot of privacy. Sel understands that. She knows I'm an obnoxious ass if I'm bothered when I'm writing.

"What happened there, I don't pretend to know. Norm and John left for home, yesterday afternoon, and Norris called last night. I went to the hotel where Ed's body was found in an upstairs room. A linen closet, or something.

"Ed made plays for Norm, who ignored him, and more for John, who might not have. My problem is that John's too friendly with everybody, so I don't think they screwed each other, or anything, but he was seen in Ed's company, a lot. Norris thinks Norm got jealous and killed Ed over John, which is stupid. I don't think John was anything more than friendly with Ed, and I don't think Norm would take it out on anyone for going after John. He'd get into it with John for it.

I don't really know what it's all about – and don't want to know, but Norm's a friend, and I tend to think he's innocent. I'm no expert on investigation. You are. You're also Norm's close friend, so I decided it'd give you something to do to come down here and clear the mess up. You tend to be lazy if no one prods you. You'll lay around and get fat.

I grinned, but many a truth's spoken in jest. Dave says what he thinks, and expects others to do the same. A diplomat, he very certainly ain't!

You're leaving tomorrow?

Five thirty AM. We have a flight and connection set up, and they're waiting with all the permits and that kind of bureaucratic horse manure already handled.

Did you have anything against Ed? I asked, mainly to get a rise out of him. I should have known it wouldn't work.

Nope! I wouldn't try to put it on Norm if I'd corked him. It would be too easy to get rid of someone like him without causing any fuss.

Oh?

"He lived on the third floor. He drank, a lot, after he was off duty. There's a little low railing around the walkway outside his room, and very few people go up on that side. Directly underneath the walkway is the concrete crosswalk to the commons below. All I'd have to do is see he had a few, then wait for him to go to his room, smack him over the head, and dump him over the rail. He got drunk and fell. Case closed. Automatic and sure.

I think, if Norm wanted him dead, he'd figure something more on those lines. He ain't stupid, by a long shot.

But whoever killed him didn't.

Uh-huh. Veddy eenteresdink, isn't it? Maybe someone wanted it to be plain he was murdered – as a warning to someone else?

The closet idea gives another clue.

Oh? He looked expectant.

I was here before, remember. I also think you very seriously underestimate Norris.

It would drive him crazy wondering what I knew. We do that to each other. It keeps both of us on our toes.

Well, CD. Your author friend seems rather strange, Norris stated, positively, after our greetings at the hotel, later. He rather deliberately irritates people.

"As you say, deliberately. He finds it can ensure privacy when he needs it.

He leaves here in the morning. He doesn't know anything about this mess, except that Norm didn't kill Ed.

"I tend to agree, but there's no evidence against anyone else. A lot of people didn't like Ed, for various reasons, but none of them were killing reasons. They were your everyday knock-you-on-your-ass reasons.

Norm's friend was a bit popular – and you do know how persistent Edward could be. When he thought you were gay, he tried various things to get together with you.

"If John had slept with Ed, Norm would try to beat hell out of John! He wouldn't do anything to Ed."

John would be difficult to beat hell out of, Norris pointed out, smiling. Played professional football back stateside?

College. Lots of offers, but he didn't want to spend his life doing anything that doesn't have any real meaning. He was a star running back, who almost singlehandedly won a lot of their games.

I know nothing of American football, or who did what. Norris grinned. "I think I don't wish to know. Soccer is enough of a puzzle to me.

My point was that Norman might find it rather difficult to overpower John, so took out his anger on Edward.

How was he killed?

Garroted. Coat hanger wire from behind.

In which linen closet?

Top floor, west wing. On the far end. The big supplies and furniture storage closet. I suppose he well might have had a private assignation with someone there, but why not simply go to his room? There is no secret about his predilections, and no one cares, so long as he's not too indiscreet, and so long as he doesn't do anything to affect the business.

Was anything out of place in the closet?

I wouldn't know, but I'm told not. No signs of any extended struggle. There were no damaged items or anything that appeared to be out of place.

Can we go look it over while we're here, anyway? There's a little thing Ed told me about that closet. It could be important.

He said Certainly! and we headed for the elevators and up.

I'd used that closet once. It had a small vent window that looked down into the little enclosed privacy yards behind the individual cabins to the side of the hotel. Norris didn't know about it, and I didn't care to mention anything about it, yet.

There was a row of chairs along one side. One was just under the vent, so I sighed, and went to look at the velour cushion of the seat pad. There was a strong impression of shoe prints. The top one was fairly clear.

Norris raised an eyebrow, so I slid another chair under the vent and waved for him to climb up for a look. He stayed up there a minute, then climbed down.

I see. The cabin on the farther end is being renovated, and two young women in the second cabin to the left are entertaining two Japanese tourists. Blackmail?

"I think Ed only used it for voyeurism at the time I was here looking for Angie, but maybe he was branching out. Somehow, I don't see it. Not with him. Blackmail can be a very dangerous game – and Eddie was not the type to take chances."

"Then he was possibly blackmailing someone over something they did in the courtyard, they discovered him up here, watching, and put a quick end to it. I don't seriously think so, either. He was scared of too many thing in life. He didn't take chances and, as you say, blackmail is a very dangerous way to make a living. What he may have discovered from up here without outside confirmation or rather definitive material proof wouldn't serve very bloody well as blackmail material, you will note."

"I agree. You need binoculars to make out the details from this much distance, so a camera or videocam would have to have a very good zoom lens. Sound would be impossible with the technology here.

"That would mean someone was seen with someone else or doing something that would be obvious, which means an obvious person. Someone easy to recognize.

Somehow, I still don't picture Ed trying to blackmail anyone, so there's a lot more to this we have to learn.

Yes. I'm afraid we're led right back to your friend, he replied very seriously. "I admit I don't understand homosexuality, but I've seen some few violently jealous things.

On the other hand, I trust your judgment of people, so will hold off bringing any charges against Mr. Keller, at this time. Quite frankly, I haven't the least vague idea of how to proceed. Murder isn't something we here have experience with. Not this kind of thing. This is my third in seven years, and you taught me a great deal on the first, making it possible for me to capture the second one. I haven't an idea of how to proceed with this sort of thing.

You would arrest Norm if I wasn't here? It wouldn't bother you that he's innocent?

"I think you know better. I would seek a probable cause warrant, there would be an inquest and a verdict of insufficient evidence would be rendered. The case would remain in open status until something new could be added, or until everyone involved died of old age, or for one hundred years, whichever came first.

We have no perfect system of policing, here.

It's still closer than we have in the states, in some ways. You don't catch them, convict them, and immediately turn them loose, knowing full well they're going to continue in their old criminal lifestyle.

"We don't have the population pressures of the states, and we don't allow politicians to meddle. I doubt there's any perfect system – or that there could be.

I won't argue with your author friend about computers. He can make it sound so logical, yet I know there are some flaws.

"Yes, and so does he. He likes to make logical-sounding hot air arguments. If you refuse to fall for anything that sounds  plausible, but that only presents half of an argument, he considers you to be intelligent.

Did you talk much?

Yes. He's rather strange and somewhat scary, but interesting.

Um-hm. Then he considers you intelligent. There wouldn't have been a second time, if he didn't. I'll have to look over the hotel records for the past month. I might require airport and dockage records, too, if possible?

"You own property here, so I can deputize you. You'll get what you need. I know you are fully qualified in the states, to the extent you have certification as a courtroom prosecutor and forensics expert. I can rest assured those qualifications are at or above the standards here.

The terminology makes it official. What now brown cow?

We spent awhile longer carefully checking the storage closet. There was very little to be seen.

Norris did note and point out that the closet door, opened only with its special key, hadn't been forced.

I told him how I'd copied the key when I'd been there before, to hopefully be able to identify a woman staying in the cabins below as a wanted murderess, in the states.

Ahh, yes! But she wasn't in the cabins! he returned, with a twinkle in his eye. "She wasn't at the hotel, at all!

How did you get a key to copy?

"Ed. He thought I was gay. He told me about the vent, and how I could look directly into the courtyards behind the cabins. It was while I was disguised as my brother, Jay.

"Ed thought he could drop in while I was up here, so I managed to not be up here when he could sneak away from the desk.

"It worked out. I saw him and a man behind one of the cabins, and told him I wouldn't ever have intimate relations with anyone who was promiscuous, in this day and age. It got him off my back. Figuratively.

"The person he was out there with was somewhat famous, which could be important, in this case – or not. Some highly visible people stay here – and usually in the private cabins.

"Somehow I very much doubt that it was sex or blackmail. Sex, the person could simply deny. Ed would never try blackmail. He was much too vulnerable, himself.

"This one's going to pivot on who somebody here is, for some reason. Somebody is or was here who shouldn't be. I don't have enough for even a wild guess as to who or why.

"The footprint on that chair will be Ed's. What did he see?

Binoculars! Did he have any binoculars?

No. We would most certainly have noted that, and would have then discovered the chair and its implications. A camera would have brought the same reaction, had it the lens you described.

"The killer knew that. It would result in your asking `Why?' and would end up with you finding the vent. The killer screwed up when he left the chair under the window. It did show us Ed was using the vent to spy.

Was the body near the chair, or closer to the door?

Norris reached into his coat pocket and handed me an envelope of Polaroid prints. They showed the entire scene, from all angles. Ed's body was about six feet inside the door, face down, head pointing away from the door.

"Hmm. He let somebody in, and was moving into the room. The coat hanger was flipped over his head as soon as the door had closed behind them.

"Two likelihoods: One, he answered a knock: Two, he