Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt
for this month is to continue with last month’s prompt (a story told through a
camera, any type of camera in any circumstance). This next story will be what
happens AFTER what is told through the camera. This week’s story comes from the pen of Phil
Yeats.
In April
2024, Phil published The Body on Karli’s Beach, the third book in
his Barrettsport Mysteries, a series of soft-boiled mysteries set in a
fictional South Shore, Nova Scotia town. For information about these books, The
Road to Environmental Armageddon, his trilogy about the hazards of ignoring
human-induced climate change, and his latest, a novella titled Starting Over
Again: A Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy visit his website: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/.
A
Golden Opportunity (continuation)
by Phil
Yeats
Detective Sargeant Sam Taylor was off
chasing down information on Matt MacDonald and Chris Martin. Detective Max
Beech began filling in the details of their victim, Percival Smythe Jones,
while he waited for reports from the coroner and the crime scene officers.
Max was a
successful detective but known as a maverick in the Halifax Police Department
because he charged off following his hunches while he waited, sometimes what he
considered inordinate lengths of time for those official reports to make their
way to his desk.
Today,
however, he was behaving himself, searching for information on their victim’s
life from his graduation from a small Squamish, BC college to his demise in his
upscale condo in Halifax. The two events were a long way apart, in both
kilometres and years.
After
graduating from college with a science degree, he enrolled in a course at a
Vancouver technical college that provided him with certification as a mineral
prospector. After that, Max lost his trail until he showed up again several
years later, listed as vice president in charge of prospecting at a gold mining
start-up whose stock price rocketed ahead before fading into oblivion. Then his
trail went dark again.
He had the
fancy apartment, a Lamborghini sports car and an almost new Hummer electric
SUV. His father denied subsidizing any of Perry’s activities after his second
year at college.
“So,” Max
said to Sam after a day trolling for data, “where did he get the money?”
“Can’t answer
that question, but I learned things from Chris Brown, the geology student
living in Australia.”
“Don’t hold
me in suspense.”
“First, he
has the photos and will send them to us. But more important, he said they were
all similar to the one we have. What puzzled Chris was that he knows Perry
several shots that zoomed in on the scar on the hillside. He never showed them
to us, but after the visit to that viewpoint opposite the landslide, Perry
changed. He became less of a pest, sort of off in a world of his own with a
sudden interest in geology.”
“That is
interesting,” Max said as he searched his computer for information on faculty
members in the Dalhousie University Department of Geology. “Which one should we
contact?” he said when he found a page with faculty members and their
specialities.
“Talk to the
head, I guess, see where that leads us. Should give us a contact at the
University of British Columbia.”
Max nodded.
“That’s your job for tomorrow.”
“It’s early
afternoon on the West Coast. I could bypass Dal and go straight to UBC.”
“Fine, give
it a shot. I have something to do this evening, something that’s best done
alone. We’ll get back together in the morning and compare notes.”
An hour
later, Max arrived at an apartment hidden away up an exterior flight of stairs
behind a vape shop in a rundown part of the city. He rang the bell and a few
seconds later heard a click as a servo motor released the door lock.
Inside, a
voice called out from another room behind the apartment’s sparsely furnished
main room. The kitchen area in this great room had a counter with a single
stool and a few utensils, dishes, pots, and pans. Many were in the sink, unwashed;
others were stacked on the counter. The rest of the room contained a single
recliner chair with a small side table, tucked away behind the main door.
Another click
released the door to the back room, and Max entered a small room cluttered with
electronics on shelves and a large desk. A chair on wheels in front of the main
computer terminal was its only other furnishing. A baby-faced but bald young
man swiveled around. “Hello, Max. What can I do for you?”
Max only knew
him by Min, the name he laughingly gave himself when Max saved him from a
suicide attempt when he was a teenager. Under Max’s tutelage, and often with
Max’s financial support, he finished high school and three years of university.
He appeared again four years later, when Max needed the help of a computer
wizard to solve a case.
Min sat
silently, brow furrowed, for a minute after Max described his problem. He
swivelled to his keyboard and tapped away for several minutes. “Right. This
shouldn’t be difficult. Meet you at, say, seven tomorrow for dinner at the
trattoria.”
Min was
sitting at a table with a glass of red wine in his hand when Max arrived at the
restaurant. A waiter arrived with a glass of wine for Max.
“These two
are on me. I expect you to pick up the tab for the rest of our meal as payment
for a job well done.”
Max nodded.
This was their normal arrangement—a small
payment for the information Min extracted from the world of computer networks.
“Percival
Smythe Jones is a con man, a thorn in the side of his father, a prominent
politician. Daddy Dearest spends a lot of time and money keeping young Percy
out of the limelight. It started with Percy’s mining venture, the one you
mentioned to me. Good old-fashioned gold mining scam. You spike some
preliminary drill samples with traces of gold, or alter the results of the
sample analyses, generate interest in the market that drives up share prices,
then when followup cores come up empty, share prices plummet. Meanwhile, you’ve
sold your stake and the top of the market and disappeared.”
“I’d guessed
that was the outcome, but there was no fuss from investors or legal
ramifications.”
“That’s
because Daddy Dearest paid off the disgruntled investors and hushed it up.”
“Doesn’t
sound like that gives me a motive for murdering Percy, unless his father did
him in.”
Min ignored
Max’s suggestion. “Next chapters get more interesting. First, he multiplied his
ill-gotten fortune several-fold speculating in bitcoins. Then he started a new
venture.”
“Another
stock scam?”
Min shook his
head. “More diabolical. He started a privately funded investment fund that
promised huge gains for investors willing to bend or break rules to find or
generate sure bets.”
“Sounds
illegal.”
“Very, but
also well hidden. And if anything goes wrong, they can’t go to the police.
They’d be implicating themselves.”
Min tapped
the man-purse slung over his shoulder. “It’s all in here, for your use but not for
public consumption.” He smiled. “My methods are not always strictly legal, and
you’d be implicated.”
“So you’re
giving me a number—”
“—twenty-seven
potential perpetrators, plus Daddy Dearest, who could have orchestrated a hit.”
“Useful, but
it doesn’t solve my case.”
“True, but
don’t despair. After I’ve enjoyed my dinner, the first proper meal I’ve had in
weeks, I’ll provide you with a summary of my findings.”
“But not the
perpetrator,” Max said.
“Verbally as
we leave. You’ll have to prepare your case with admissible evidence before you
make a bust.”
***
The Spot Writers:
Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/
Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com
Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/
Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/
