The Sand Trap (49 page)

“There are things I need to tell you Burt,”
Maria quietly offered.

He leaned over and kissed her forehead.
"Tomorrow, Maria, tomorrow.” She rested her head on his shoulder
and to his surprise she was asleep before she had finished her
drink. “Everyone has their own coping mechanism,” he thought, as he
laid her head gently on the sofa pillow.

He wouldn’t sleep for another hour at least.
With nothing else to do he wandered over to computer and turned it
on and was surprised to see that he had two email messages. With
his new identity he had not had many people sending him messages.
He opened up his mail, put on his reading glasses and saw that one
was from Mary and the other from Richard. He opened Mary’s first.
Mary's was characteristically brief.

“
I think I have found what you were
asking for.
It took a while but all the information you need
to know is in the attachment. Hope you’re in love!!

Love, Mary

For the next hour he read both the
attachment to Mary’s message, and then Richard’s memo. He was
especially transfixed on the details in the attachment Mary sent.
At one point he looked over at Maria and quietly sobbed to himself.
After reading and rereading he took off his glasses and sat down on
the chesterfield beside the sleeping Maria. Just as the sun started
to rise over the sea in front of them, he had worked out his plan
for the next 24 hours and he went back to the computer and sent a
message to Richard and Mary. Then he printed one of the attached
files and used the special disk he kept in the desk drawer to wipe
clean the memory of the computer.

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Marie woke shortly after dawn to find Burt
sitting beside her with a fresh cup of hot coffee. “Good morning,”
he offered as he handed her the coffee. “How are you doing?”

She sat up and took a sip of the coffee.
“Thanks. Now tell me last night was just a nightmare and didn’t
happen at all.” She looked at him. “Did you get some sleep?”

“No. I had some things to do. Some plans to
make. We have lots to talk about, but let’s just get to the
essentials right now.” He pushed the print out of the attachment
towards her on the coffee table. The attachment was a full missing
person file on one Melinda McDougal. It included photos from
Saskatchewan and from Montana as well as from the NCGA championship
in California. There were statements from her father, Rebecca,
Coach and others. There was also a full confession from Henry,
Burt’s caddy describing the details of the assault. Apparently
Rebecca had never given up trying to find Melanie and her most
recent inquiry to the RCMP missing persons branch was only last
month. Maria scanned the file.

“Shit. How did you get this? So you know
everything?”

“Yeah, I thought all along you were a blond.
Can I ask you some questions?”

Maria nodded.

“This was an awful thing to happen, Maria,
but there is nothing I read in here that suggested you should have
been the one to run away. So the obvious question is why you
disappeared? But I’ll leave that for a later discussion. However, I
noticed that in the interviews with your Dad he didn’t seem too
worried. I don’t understand?”

“I let him know I was OK and when some time
had passed I contacted him. We used to get together each year at a
different Mexican tourist resort. One of the other employees at the
estate saw me with him once and started a rumour that I liked older
men,” she added with a chuckle. “But he was the only one who I
contacted. I had few good friends, Rebecca my best friend and
caddy, Coach, a high school teacher. Other than them, after my
Granny died there was just Dad and me. He understood why I did not
want to come back.”

Maria started to cry, and Burt wanted to ask
her why she could not go back, why she thought that somehow all
that happened was her fault and she had something to be ashamed of.
Instead he just put his arm around her and she leaned on his
shoulder. “It’s OK. We can talk more later. For now let’s deal with
the current crisis.” Burt shoved a photo of Jose over the table to
her.

“How do you know this man?”

She looked at the photo and shoved it
back.

“We worked together at the estate. I knew
him when he was a teenager and for a while before I came here I
worked for him managing all the gardens of his estate in Mexico
City.”

“Why is he trying to kill you?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out
myself,” she offered. “I heard what that guy said about him sending
them to get me, but he is the one who got me this job and gave me
the casita to live in.”

“Were you lovers?”

She looked at him, suddenly annoyed. “No. We
were not lovers. I saved his life once.” And she described the
event at the golf course and the killing of the three cartel
members. She left off the adrenalin-fueled sex right after.

Burt thought for a moment. “Isn’t there a
pretty strict vengeance code in the cartels? Like; you kill any of
mine, I’ll kill you and yours sort of thing?”

Maria didn’t say anything.

“So would not some bad people be after this
Jose for the killing?”

“I’m not sure. I know he was into the drug
scene, but he seemed to have some sort of protected status with the
cartels. I don’t know why.”

“I do, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
What I’m trying to figure out is why he is trying to get you, and
do it in a public way so that all, or maybe just one, cartel would
know that he did it?”

Maria suddenly sat up straight on the couch.
“I think I get it," she exclaimed. “You are right about the
vengeance thing. The cartel would never let him get away with
killing some family members, no matter how important he was. So he
had to find a way to get the heat off him. Right after the killings
he arranged for me to go into hiding here. And set me up in that
isolated casita. The bastard. He was not giving me the property at
all. He would get it all back after I'm dead. He probably said I
was the killer, and had disappeared. Then, after a reasonable time
had passed, he could tell them after an exhaustive search that he
found me and he would take care of it. He would send them my head,
literally.”

“That makes sense,” Burt offered. “He would
be clean.”

Maria looked at him. “Burt, I know him. He
won’t give up until I’m dead. He has killed many people.”

“I know all about him Maria.”

She looked puzzled. “Why would you know this
person?”

“I’m supposed to give him a golf lesson this
afternoon,” he explained.

“And then kill him.”

For the next half hour Burt told a shocked
Maria the details of what he really did and who he really was.

“I kill people,” he announced.

“I saw that,” she replied.

“No, not like that. That was the first time
I ever killed someone with that kind of violence. I am trained to
do it, but that is not how I work.” He took her to the kitchen and
pulled out some of his biological and insect weapons and explained
how he used them to make a death appear natural. He explained that
his assignments were Canadian, NATO, and host country approved and
never involved collateral damage like women and children.

She asked if he had ever killed a woman and
he just replied that women are capable of evil as well.

She stood up and walked over to the sliding
glass doors overlooking the patio. “It seems we both have much to
explain about our lives over the past thirty years, if we ever live
long enough to share it with each other.” She looked over and saw
the nine mm on the kitchen counter that Burt had taken from her
assailant at the casita. “What? You’re going to shoot him on the
putting green?”

Burt had forgotten about the gun. “No, that
would not be very subtle would it? And it might make it difficult
for us to get away. Besides, while a gun may be the only way I
could shoot par, it would ruin my student friendly reputation as a
teacher.”

He selected two items from his collection of
herbs and toxins. “This item,” he explained picking up a tee
marker, “is a totally non toxic biological. The name doesn’t matter
to you. This one, he picked up a blue tee that was longer than any
of the others, “is a toxin extract from a South American ant. In
diluted form the Indians commonly use it as an analgesic. In
concentrated form and ingested it will stop your heart in seconds
and it will appear to be a massive heart attack. I’ll use this on
Jose, but since we don’t want old Jose to shuffle off his mortal
coil while we are still around I need a delay mechanism and here is
where the plant extract comes in. When I stew the two together, the
plant extract binds with the insect toxin and renders it harmless,
so you could have as much of this bound together substance in your
body and nothing would happen.”

Maria looked puzzled. “I don’t get it? You
have a poison and you make it harmless?”

“Aha, it seems that the plant extract is
dissolved in the human body before the insect toxin. So the
combined substance gets into the bloodstream and a week to ten days
later, the plant extract dissolves and separates from the toxin and
voila! – a dead body.”

“Are you sure you only studied linguistics?”
Maria asked. “Did you figure this stuff out all by yourself?”

“Pretty much. I have studied biology. But
most of this stuff…” he pointed to the array of materials on the
counter, “I have just figured out by myself.”

“So how are you going to get him to eat this
stuff?

“He doesn’t have to eat it. I just have to
get a few molecules, less than a drop actually, of the concentrated
toxin into his body to work. That’s why I have this." He separated
a plain male wedding band from the paraphernalia. “Take a close
look at this.” He handed her a small magnifying glass.

She scanned the ring with the magnifying
glass. “There’s a small pin on the outside of the ring!”

“Right. I put the combined material on the
wee needle. I put on the ring very carefully and I shake hands with
our friend. He’s a cooked goose. And you and I get the hell away
from here.”

“Have you done this before?” she warily
asked.

“The poison, yes. The escape, not exactly.
I’m usually just by myself and I blend into the crowd. His fixation
on your death, and probably mine now, sort of changes that. None of
the assailants saw my face, but since you and I are somewhat of a
public couple around here it won’t take long for him to figure out
I was the other party at the casita. It should make for an
interesting golf lesson.”

“What do I do?” she asked.

“You start your gardening shift at noon.
Pretend like nothing happened. I doubt that he would try something
in broad daylight with all the staff around. Pack a bag, go to any
very public place, the dining room for example, and meet me at the
bikes at 8 p.m. Maria Jimenez will be leaving Mexico for good.”

“And you?”

“I’ve got some things to do here; my own
packing, make some other arrangements, cook up my stuff. I don’t
teach until two so I may even be able to catch a couple of hours
sleep. If I can I’ll join you in the dining room. But regardless,
bikes at 8 pm. The timing is important. Shower and get dressed here
now if you want and let’s spend the day looking as normal as
possible.”

They gave each other a long hug and a
lingering kiss.

“I know I love one of you,” Maria offered.
“I just don’t know which one.”

After Maria had showered and changed into
some work clothes she kept at Burt’s apartment she went into the
clubhouse and had some breakfast with the cooking staff. She tried
as much as she could to be normal, but she was sure she must have
looked a wreck after the previous night. No one looked at her
strangely or said anything until two bodyguard types walked into
the dining room for their own breakfast and saw her with the staff.
They looked at each other and quickly left the dining room.

“Game on,” Maria thought to herself.

After breakfast she went into San Jose Del
Cabo. Ever since she had been in San Jose she had dealt with one
Notario who had set up her bank accounts, her personal papers and
had made the deed transfer for the casita and the property. She
asked him to write out and witness a simple will. In the case of
death or disappearance for more than six months, fifty-one percent
of the property would be left equally to Doug Hernandez and the six
gardeners she had worked with for two years. The other forty-nine
percent and the casita would be left to a Melanie McDougal from
Bumstead, Saskatchewan, Canada. She gave him the latter’s contact
details. What was left of her cash after he took his fee and the
deed transfer costs would be left to the women’s shelter in San
Jose.