It’s time to look at what’s been written for the unfortunate Annalisa, who had been caught up in a situation that is rapidly getting out of her control, not that she had it under control in the first place.  Perhaps it’s time to start reassessing her bad boy phase and think about a new lifestyle. 

Drugs, for her, were fun to begin with, but she kept doing them and now it had got her into this predicament…

…

Annalisa looked at the two men facing her.

Simmo, the boy on the floor, had told her that the shopkeeper would be a pushover, he was an old man who’d just hand over the drugs, rather than cause trouble for himself.

Where Simmo had discovered the shopkeeper’s true vocation, dispensing drugs to the neighbourhood addicts, she didn’t know, but it was not the first place like this they had visited.

She had always known Simmo had a problem, but he had assured her he had it under control.  Until a month ago, when he tried something new.

It had changed him.

The breaking point came earlier that day when seeing how sick he was, she threatened to leave.  It brought out the monster within him, and he threatened to kill her.  Not long after he had changed into a whimpering child pleading with her to stay, that he hadn’t meant anything he’d said before.

All he needed was one more ‘score’ to get his ‘shit’ together, and he would do as she asked, and find help.

She believed him.

He said he knew a place not far from the apartment, a small shop where what he needed was available, and said he had the money.

That should have been the first sign he was not telling the truth because she had been funding his habit until her parents cut off the money supply.  She suspected her father had put a private detective on to find her, had, and reported back, and rather than make a scene, just cut her off so she would have to come home or starve.  Her father was no better than Simmo.

And, as soon as they stepped into the shop, Simmo pulled out the gun,

Instead of the shopkeeper cowering like Simmo said he would, he had laughed at them and told them to get out.  Simmo started ranting and waving the gun around, then all of a sudden collapsed. 

There was a race for the gun which spilled out of Simmo’s hand, and she won. 

That was just before the customer burst into the shop.

It had been shortly before closing time.  Simmo had said there would be no one else around.

Wrong again.

Now she had another problem to deal with, a man who was clearly as scared shitless as she was.

This was worse than any bad hair day, or getting out of the wrong side of bed day, this was, she was convinced, the last day of her life.

She heard a strange sound come from beside her and looked down.  There was a trickle of blood coming out of his mouth and Simmo was making strange sounds like he was choking.

Any other time she might have been concerned, but the hard reality of it was, Simmo was never going to change.  She was only surprised at the fact it took so long for her to realize it.

As for the man standing in front of her, she was safe from the shopkeeper with him around, so he would have to stay.

“No.  Stay.”

Another glance at the shopkeeper told her she had made the right decision, his expression said it all.  Gun or no gun, the moment she was alone with him, he would kill her.

© Charles Heath 2018-2022

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

…

The final treasure hunt

…

Boggs was unusually quiet, but that might be because he wasn’t in charge.  We were at the cave Nadia and I had found shelter from the storm, and he was busy checking the climbing equipment, and making sure he had everything.

Then he set both Nadia and I up with the gear we’d need to follow him.  Neither of us were experienced climbers, but it was simple he said, he’d more or less pull us up once he found the cave.

If there was a cave there.

It was possible the seismic activity had closed it off, and it was gone forever, but he was closing to be positive and believe it would be well hidden until he was right on top of it.

Certainly is not visible from below, it simply looked like any other rockface but with indentations where little shrubs were growing, and it certainly could not be seen from above because of the cliff overhang, nor could it be seen from the side, because it was nit possible to get high enough or near enough.

Boggs said he knew a lot about rock formations, and his preliminary inspection in the late afternoon suggested there might ledge about 10 yards above the sand line.  He had put in a few pegs and climbed to a spot under the overhang where there was a small ledge, and what looked to be a narrow pathway that zig zagged seeming through the rock, but resisting the urge to follow it.

Both Nadia and I kept watch, but nothing else was stirring on that part of the shoreline.  The idea was to go after dark, when it was less likely anyone else would be around.

Now, as darkness fell, he was full of nervous energy, the sort that one had before participating in an event.  This might finally be the end to his, and his father before him, search for the treasure, and even I was caught up in the moment.

I had just one more task before we stepped out the door, to send a prewritten text message to Charlene, just in case everything went pear shaped.  It was possible it might, but right then, it was the last thing I was expecting.

What if there was riches beyond avarice awaiting us?  It was now only a matter of time before we knew.

After escaping the sheriff’s office, and saying all the words he wanted to hear, for my mother’s sake, I called Nadia, then went to see her, taking extraordinarily silly means to avoid being followed, because the idea of seeing her after being warned off might cause a reaction.

It was probably the most rebellious thing I’d ever done, and it was secretly thrilling, to the point of that pit in the stomach that was meant to be a warning that something bad was going to happen.

I could now understand the nature of addiction.

And in the semi darkness, she seemed more like an ethereal spectre, albeit a lot more whimsical.

“The Sherriff just warned me that associating with you is putting my life in danger.”

“The Sherriff?”

“My mother is getting him to put pressure on me to stop seeing you.  My mother is firmly of the belief you are tarred with the same brush as the rest of your family.”

“I take it the fact your here now means you don’t agree with either of them.”

“Or I find living life on the edge is more preferable to no life at all.  My mother wants me to be boring and predictable, and live my life like she does.  But, she had a bad boy streak, marrying my father the criminal.  She knew what and who he was long ago, one of Benderby’s henchmen.”

“Do you want to be boring and predictable?”

“I don’t want to be a criminal, even though it has a certain allure, and probably the only other job you could get in this area.”

“Things aren’t that bad,” she said.

“They are.  You know as well as I do, kids who’ve left school only do one of two things.  Leave town for the big smoke, or get a crap job working for either criminal enterprise.  No one wants to work in the factory.”

It was hard to deny the facts.  And those that didn’t do anything, were either dead, or close to it.  I wasn’t exactly enamoured with my job at the warehouse, but it was a legitimate, if not underpaying, job, and I knew I should be grateful.

“Anyway,” I said, “it’s all moot now.  Both Boggs and I agree the treasure, if it’s anywhere is somewhere on that cliff face, he was climbing before he was cut down.”

“So, you’re saying my family tried to kill him?”

“More or less.  You don’t cut a climbers rope unless you mean him harm.”

“I’d prefer to call it a warning.  They probably think he was trying to gain access to the Gove via the beachhead.  I seriously doubt Vince would see it as anything else.  I think we can expect he’ll be keeping an eye on that part of the beach from now on.”

It seemed like something he’d do, so it was going to add another layer of complexity to our incursion.  But I doubted he would be on the beach, but prefer the clifftop, and that could work in our favour.

“Be that as it may, are you in or out?”

“In, of course.  And, just in case you’re thinking I’m working for my father, and all of this has been a charade to gain your confidence, it is not.”

“I’d be a liar if I told you it didn’t cross my mind, but I believe you.”

Did I?  The was a 64,000-dollar question with half a dozen different answers, all of them leading down the path to hell.  I would believe, until she proved otherwise, and I was truly hoping she wouldn’t.  But, blood was thicker than water, as the saying goes, and now she might believe herself she was on our side, but when push came to shove, a lot could happen.

“When?”

“In a hour.  We’re going to get Boggs and his gear, and go to your beach hut, and then to the cave we found.  When darkness falls, that’s when we go up the cliff.”

A clouded expression, then a smile.  “Clever, Sam.  You’re not giving me any opportunity to betray you.”

I had to admit, in that moment, it wasn’t intended, but perhaps sub consciously I had planned it this way.

I shrugged.  “It was all last minute, brought on by being hauled into the sheriff’s office.  By tomorrow we’ll all be under observation, and take away any opportunity for us to do anything.  I assume you’re still in?”

“Of course.  We should have something to eat, so I’ll order up some take out.  Pizzas?”

And, if she wanted to, there was still a dozen ways she could betray us, and I was definitely not going to keep her under observation the whole time.

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you.

John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.

So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?

That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.

What should have been solace after disappointment, turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

He suddenly realizes his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.

The story paints the characters cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice where, in those back streets I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.

All in all a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.

…

Available on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2Xyh1ow

…

I have reworked the first part of the story with a few new elements about the characters and changed a few of the details of how the characters finish up in the shop before the policewoman makes her entrance.

This is part of the new first section is the one that involves the Jack, the girl, and the shopkeeper

 

Jack exchanged a look with the shopkeeper, who in return gave him a slight shrug as if to say he had no idea what this was about.

He could see the girl was not strung out on drugs; if she was it would be a good bet both would be shot or dead by now.  She was just the unfortunate partner of a boy who was on drugs and had found herself in a dangerous position.

Beth, his wife, had told him she didn’t like nor trust the shopkeeper and that her friend in the same apartment block had told her he had been seen selling drugs to youths who hung around just before he closed.  She had warned him it would not be safe, but he had ignored her.

It was a bit late to tell her she was right.

He took a half step towards the door, judging the distance and time it would take to open the door and get out.

Too far, and he would be too slow, his reward for running; a bullet in the back.

Perhaps another half step when she wasn’t looking.

 

The shopkeeper changed his expression to one more placatory, and said quietly to the girl, “Look, this is not this chap’s problem.”  He nodded in the direction of the customer.  “I’m sure he’d rather not be here, and you would glad of one less distraction.”

He could see she was wavering.  She was not holding the gun so steadily, and the longer this dragged on, the more nervous and unpredictable she would become.

And in the longer game, the customer would sing his praises no matter what happened if he could get him out of the shop alive and well.

This could still be a win-win situation.

 

The girl looked at Jack.  The shopkeeper was right.  If he wasn’t here this could be over. 

But there was another problem.  It didn’t look like Simmo was in any shape to getaway.  In fact, this was looking more like a suicide mission.

She waved the gun in his direction.  ‘Get out now, before I change my mind.’

As the gun turned to the shopkeeper, Jack wasn’t going to wait to be asked twice and started sidling towards the door.

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2020

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

…

The sheriff calls

…

It’s not often a patrol car stopped outside your residence without a reason for doing so.

I just happened to be looking out the windows when it pulled up, and I first thought it was the sheriff here to visit my mother.

It was hard to imagine my mother being the object of men’s attention, particularly one the top lawman in the county, and the other, a top criminal.

Both were charming in their own way, but it was the baggage both brought with them that bothered me.  I tried not to think of the ramifications if she married either one.  At worst, I could not see Alex as a brother, nor Charlene as a sister, not after what we had done at the last school summer camp

The pounding on the door interrupted that thought.  I heard my mother’s muffled voice from upstairs telling me to see who it was, and when I opened the door, it was one of the sheriff’s deputies, Anderson, big brother to a school friend, and the most unlikely to become a lawman.  I guess he turned his life around.

“Sam.”

“Joel.”

“The sheriff would like to see you.”

“He could have rung.”

“He likes the personal touch.”

It must be serious if he sent a deputy.  “When?”

“Now.”

“And if I can’t come now?”

He took a pair of handcuffs out of his belt.  “There’s the hard way and there’s the easy way.”

Serious enough then.  “Why?”

“I learned a long time ago to follow orders, not question them.  I don’t know, and I don’t care.  Did you do anything wrong?”

“No.”

I heard my mother coming down the stairs behind me.  “Who is it?”

“Deputy Joel.”

“What can we do for you?” She asked.

“The sheriff would like a word with your son, ma’am.”

“Why?”

Was that a look of exasperation on his face?

“He didn’t confide in me, ma’am, just asked me to escort him down to the station.”

“This’ll be to do with that Nadia,” she muttered.  “I told you she is trouble.”

I shrugged.  “Let’s go.”  Time to escape a lecture.

I had time to think why the sheriff would want to see me, and remembered that I’d spoken to Charlene, and it had to be that she had as I suggested, spoken to her father and it must have something to do with that.

Anyone outside the sheriff’s office seeing Deputy Joel and I arrive might have got the impression I’d just been arrested, except I was not in handcuffs.  There was no doubt Joel had wanted to use them, all the more reason to be co-operative.

We walked through the foyer towards the rear where the sheriff’s office was, and he sat me down on an uncomfortable bench.  At the other end was a girl in a party dress looking hungover.  The foyer was a hive of activity.

The sheriff put his head out the door.  “Sam, come in.”

It was the first time in his office, not the first time in the station.  My father had a few run-ins with the law, in the early years of the current sheriff’s tenure, as part of the alumni group of my mother, father, the sheriff, and Benderby.  It was the fact he was a friend of and worked with Benderby that he found himself under suspicion so often, and my memories of him were when my mother and I came to bail him out.

It was probably one of the reasons why I couldn’t understand why she let Benderby in the door.

The room was small and it felt crowded surrounded by files and papers.  His desk was a mess, with two half-drunk mugs of coffee sitting to one side.

He looked like a man under great stress.

He picked up the phone and pressed a number, then said, “Can you join us?”

A minute later Charlene came in and closed the door behind her.  She then sat in the chair next to mine, and rather close.

Was it a form of intimidation?

The sheriff leaned back in his chair and it creaked under his weight.  “Charlene tells me you think young Benderby is involved in what happened to the professor.  How did you come to this conclusion?  You should realize that making accusations such as this against a member of an influential family such as the Benderbys could afford you some unwanted attention, and not only from their lawyers.”

I had considered that but had expected the sheriff would be more proactive in his investigation.  It seemed he was taking a more cautious approach.

“You said you overheard Alex at work,”  Charlene added a nail in the coffin. 

“It seems unlikely that Alex would be that stupid, Sam, so it leads me to believe you either have some other means of identifying him as being involved, or it’s just a petty act of revenge, which, knowing you as I do, is unlikely.  Which is it?  The fact you know about this so-called room where mall cops were located, the location of a safe, and where the combination is, is very specific.”

Was this a version of good cop bad cop?  I hadn’t thought it through, thinking Charlene might want to take a win.  It didn’t take in the possibility the sheriff would be overly cautious in taking on a Benderby.

Except that I forgot it was an election year, and there were a few younger and more qualified candidates in the mix.  Age and experience were not going to cut this year.  He was going to need a win and taking down a Benderby would put him firmly in the public eye.

“You can’t tell me that Rico was responsible for the professor’s death.  He wasn’t killed on that boat, despite the way the body was left.  I was there, that crime scene was staged.”  Time to come out fighting.

“So you’re a crime scene expert now?”

“Keen observation, no indication of blood spatter from the look of the wounds, which to me looked like torture.  I did some research, and the professor apparently had a diary that belonged to the pirate that everyone believes hid the so-called treasure somewhere along this coastline.  Did you think to find out why the professor was here, certainly his last movements, and whether or not Alex Benderby contacted him?”

I’m sure they did, not that they would probably tell me.

Charlene glared at me.  Perhaps insulting her ability put an edge to her tone.  “A timeline of the victim’s last movements was done.”

A reproving look from her father, she should not be discussing case details with the public.

She glared back at him.  “Damn it, I will not be insulted.”

The sheriff gave me a rather curious look.  Perhaps I was not so off the mark, so I said, “He’s been here before, you know when those coins were pulled out if the cove.  He came down to identify them.  I think he had the diary then, which was why he came back.”

“How is it you know so much about this professor?”

“Unlike Boggs, I have an interest in historical detail, perhaps Boggs should not have asked for me to help him, but if I’m going to do something I like to be thorough.”

“Yes, it’s been noticed.  A session at the library, and surprisingly, a stash of documents scooped up from Ormiston.  I know you read his diaries.  Then you hit the newspaper office and looked at back issues of the paper.”

She or one of the deputies had been following me around.  I wondered briefly whether they’d been following Boggs around too.

“And we know you went to the mall with Nadia Cossatino.  So, your information was not gleaned from overhearing conversations, you’ve actually been in that room.”

Guilty as charged, but silence might be the better option here until their objective came clear.

“Knowing you as I do, Sam, I doubt it was your idea to go sneaking about that mall.  Your association, for want of a better word, with Nadia is going to lead you down a dark path, and I know your mother is worried about you.  The Cossatinos and Benderbys are sworn enemies, and you do not want to get caught in the crossfire.  She was obviously motivated by causing trouble for the Benderbys.”

Possible, but unlikely, yet what had she hoped to gain by taking me there?  And it was clear my mother was using the sheriff to get me to stay away from Nadia.

“I’m not interested in charging you with trespass, or lecturing you on the dangers of wandering around a place like that, but there may be something to the allegations.  We managed to get a stay on the demolition for that room, and it’s now an active crime scene.  How long have you known about this.”

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

I’ve been looking at the role of the policewoman, and her interaction with the shop’s participants.

I’m still working on whether she needs more or less of an introduction, but, for the time being, this is what I’m going with:

…

It had been another long day at the office for Officer Margaret O’Donnell, or, out in the streets, coping with people who either didn’t know or didn’t care about the law.

People who couldn’t cross the road where there were crossings and lights to protect them, silly girls shoplifting on a dare, and boys who thought they were men and could walk on water.

The one they scraped of the road would never get to grow up, and his mother, well, she was not doing another call on a family to give them the bad news.

That was her day.

So far.

At the end of the day, she was glad to be getting home, putting her feet up, and forgetting about everything until the next morning when it would start all over again.

Coming around that last corner, the home stretch she called it, she was directly opposite the corner shop, usually closed at this hour of the night.  It was not.  The lights were still on.

She looked at her watch and saw it was ten minutes to midnight, and long past closing time.  She looked through the window, but from the other side of the road, she could only see three heads and little else.

Damn, she thought, I’m going to have to check it out. 

She was aware of the rumors, from her co-residents and also her colleagues down at the station, rumors she hoped were not true.

© Charles Heath 2016-2020

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

…

Charlene after talking to Boggs

…

Charlene was standing in the elevator lobby, with the look of a person who was waiting.

Perhaps she was expecting Boggs to make a run for it, but that was hardly likely since there was a deputy outside the door to his room, a new addition after Charlene had been asked to leave.

“Have you got a few minutes?”  It was a question where the only answer was yes, or else.

I was not going to push the ‘or else’ button.

“Of course.”

She led the way to a room that looked to me like a consulting room for doctors, ushered me through then closed the door.  She sat behind the desk and left me to sit in an uncomfortable patient’s chair.

While she consulted her notebook, I took the time to think back to school days and the motley group that had been in my graduation year, of which Charlene was one.  She too had chosen to stay, despite the lack of post-graduation opportunities, and it was no surprise she ended up in the police, having once had the ambition of becoming an investigative journalist.  It was no surprise then she was now a detective in training.

She left the notebook open on a blank page and gave me her attention.  “So, what have you been doing with yourself since school?”

An odd question to ask, but in her mind, I suspect it was an opening gambit to set the interviewee’s mind at rest, a veritable calm before the storm. 

Odd also because she knew what happened as well as anyone, her father, the Sherriff, Being an occasional visitor at my mother’s house, an obligation he felt after my father passed.

Other than that, we had run into each other from time to time since leaving school but she had never shown any interest on any of those occasions. 

“Relevance?”

“Just curious.”

“I’m sure your father may have mentioned our family circumstances, so if you’re looking for information on Boggs, come out and say so, don’t try to feign interest in my welfare.”

Perhaps that was a little harsh, and certainly not how I wanted it to sound, but she had written an op-ed in the town newspaper reviling her contemporary’s lack of enthusiasm to get a job, and rather become the problem, not the solution to the counties economic woes.

She looked taken aback, not expecting such a response.  Her expression changed, more resolute.  “Boggs is looking at an array of charges.  What was he doing there?  You’re his friend, I’m sure he confides in you.”

“Hoe little you know what bring a friend means, but for the record, we were once, but like he said, my cavorting with Nadia put an end to that.”

“Before that, then.”

“You know as well as I do what the Boggs’s are about, father and son alike.”

“He was looking for fabled treasure.”

“Scaling a rock face?  I hardly think so.  He does rock climbing, caving, and a variety of things I have no interest in.  The Grove shoreline has some of the best rock climbing in the state.  The question you should be asking is how did such an experienced climber finish up half-dead on the beach.”

I wasn’t going to make it easy for her.

“What were you doing on the beach when you discovered him?”

“Cavorting with Nadia.”

It sounded salacious, and I wished on that moment it had been.  It provided the distraction I needed and made me consider her next gambit because I think I knew why we were in that room.

After a moment or two of silence, I added, “No chance of pinning a trespass charge on me then.”

She took a deep breath, a sigh from a person who knew she was not making any headway, or however she thought this conversation was going to go, it had been blown off course.

“Look, I’m not the enemy here.  I’m just trying to do my job and find out what happened.  We have no problem with Boggs’s conducting a treasure hunt, so long as he doesn’t break the law.  Old man Cossatino said Boggs was trespassing, which technically, he was.  Do you know why Boggs would think the treasure is located on The Grove?”

“It’s not.”

Time to diffuse this line of questioning.

“You know this or you’re just guessing?”

“There is no treasure, just the Cossatino’s promoting a myth.  Pirates may have sailed by, but I’m sure this wasn’t the place to leave their booty.  There’s plenty of once uninhabited islands in the Caribbean they could have used.”

“In other words, you really have no idea?”

“I’m a realist, and I’ve told Boggs he should be one too.”

“I hope that will include telling him that trespass is a crime, and if he keeps doing it, we will be forced to arrest and charge him.”

“I’ll tell him anything you want me to.”

“Just that.”

A thought popped into my head, one I probably should have thought of earlier, or perhaps it was because an opportunity presented itself.

The mall, and Alex.

“I have a tip for you, one that might help the case of the dead professor on Rico’s boat.  First of all, Rico didn’t do it.”

“He has form and he’s done something similar before.”

“Kill a professor?”

“Shakedown a mark with violence.  Only this time he went too far.”

I shook my head.  “He didn’t do it.  No, that more in Alex Benderby’s department.”

“Alex.  You must be kidding.  He just acts tough.”

I shrugged.  “Being naive about Alex will get you into trouble.  Alex is anything but harmless, and I can attest to that, school days and beyond. But, here’s some advice you might want to act on before the evidence is destroyed.  There’s a room in the mall on the second level where the mall cops hung out.  Back of the second one along there’s a safe.  At the back of the top desk drawers, there is a post-it note with the combination.  I think that’s where you will find a diary that the professor had before it was taken off him.”

“How do you know about this.”

“I overhead a conversation, remember I work for the Benderby’s and in Alex’s domain, the warehouse.”

“You know what they say about eavesdroppers…”

I shook my head again.  “Did the professor’s autopsy and the analysis of the boat show he was killed there?”

That question was met with a furrowed brow, but there was enough expression change to tell me he wasn’t killed on the boat. 

“You know I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”

“Don’t have to.  You’re going to need to work on your poker face.  I think that Alex lured the professor down here with the pirate’s diary perhaps offering a large sum of money as an incentive to share, and when he wouldn’t play nice, they encouraged him to change his mind.  I suspect they tried too hard, and the old professor had a heart attack.  Alex never was the patient type.”

“It makes a good story.” 

“Well, you can’t say I didn’t try.  I’ll have a go at trying to dissuade Boggs from anything illegal, but you know what the lure of fabulous riches can do.  Is the case of Boggs’s father still open?”

“If you mean, is it a cold case, yes, but there’s very little to go on.  The evening before he disappeared, he proclaimed he’d found the final resting place of the treasure trove, though he didn’t exactly say where.  At the time he was working for Cossatino, making treasure maps for the gullible.  Later, outside the hotel in the car park, he was confronted by one of those gullible people, who demanded his money back, a scuffle then fight broke out.  By the time the fight was broken up by a passing patrol, we believe that Boggs had sustained severe injuries, serious enough that it’s possible he died of them after blacking out or falling to his death.   They dredged the river from the hotel to the sea, but it may have been too late, and he’d been swept of to sea on the tide.  The other guy was charged, held in connection with Boggs’s disappearance, but ultimately released through lack of evidence or a body.  There may never be a resolution, nor Boggs ever being found, a sad state of affairs for the family.”

It was a sad tale, but one with some information I’d not heard before, and I didn’t think Boggs knew, or I’d he did, had failed to tell me.  The fight in the car park, and the fact it could have led to his death.  I guess that didn’t fit well with the treasure hunter myth that Boggs junior had built up about his father.

Being killed by a disgruntled punter was not exactly fit the Boggs ethos.

“Not exactly a fitting end, was it?”

“Defrauding people is not exactly going to make you friends, especially when the maps are fake, and they’re all different, purportedly made by the same pirate.  He knew what he was doing, and ultimately paid for it.”

Cold, but true.

“Then let’s hope Boggs doesn’t follow in his father’s footsteps.  I hope you consider investigating the mall room because I think you’re going to find something there, even if it doesn’t directly point the finger at Alex.”

“I’ll tell the sheriff, it’s ultimately his decision, not mine.”

“Good.  Now, if you have finished, I have a job to go to.”

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022