Clint Faraday Mysteries Collection B :This Job is Murder Collector's Edition by CD Moulton

Lila offered. “She
doesn’t know which one. It isn’t her spell.”
    “ So. Was it Pablo ... no. She never met
him and he was dead when you went there. It will be one or more of
us. If we can find who we can work it to our advantage,” Clint
said.
    “ You believe in those things?” Mike
asked.
    “ That some of them work? Yes. That
they’re magic, not really.”
    They talked awhile longer, then went to bed.
Clint would stay on watch for two hours, then Matt, then Obilio,
then Mark. Mike said he would take a shift, but Clint said he
wanted him fresh in the morning.
    They got up at dawn – to find Judi and Ann
weren’t in the house. Lila came to report that they were gone. She
woke up and they weren’t there, she woke Cori and ran to the men’s
room. There was no noise to wake her during the night. She hadn’t
gone to sleep until late and had slept soundly. Cori came in,
terrified. She hadn’t heard or seen anything.
    All of them spread out and looked for
anything. Maria had managed to leave the plastic bits. Clint knew
Judi could probably think of something.
    Mike found what looked like blood in several
spots along what seemed to be an animal path toward the ravine. It
wasn’t a lot and was hard to see in the dawn light, but was more
obvious as the sun brightened. He felt he was being watched. It was
eerie. He acted like he didn’t see anything and came back to the
others.
    They went as a group. Obilio looked carefully
at the blood and said it wasn’t human blood. He thought it was
chicken blood because it smelled a little like chicken. Lila had
killed a chicken last night and had it slow-cooking all night. They
bled it into a jar and used the blood as flavoring and for the
minerals in it in the soup when it was almost done.
    “ I think Judi or Ann found a way to
leave a trail,” Clint suggested. “She managed to grab that jar on
the way out and will leave it in small dribbles along the path they
took.
    “ I wonder when and how whoever managed
to get them out while we were watching!”
    “ Very simple,” Obilio answered. “They
used a spell or something in the water or any of many other things
here that would make us sleep. Perhaps the monosleep. The brujas
make it. You will sleep very soundly for perhaps half an hour or
less and will not remember. She makes it because sometimes it is
hard to sleep and we take a very little. When you are asleep you do
not awaken unless there is something. After.”
    “ Wouldn’t the women be asleep, too?”
Mike asked.
    “ Yes. It took two very large men to
carry them. They left little to indicate they were here,” Lila
offered.
    “ No. Judi wasn’t asleep – or Ann.
Someone left that trail. Someone was awake and alert enough to
think of it and act,” Clint pointed out. “I don’t understand why
she didn’t do something to wake us.”
    “ You know, if Pop or one of us was
threatened, they wouldn’t do anything that might get us killed,”
Mike said. “Maybe point a gun at one or all of us and warn that
anything would make them shoot.”
    “ I agree,” Matt said. “Why weren’t they
asleep? The rest of us were.”
    “ Those two were already in the bedroom.
We all had a glass of that corn drink before we went to bed. I
think we can test it somehow and it will have the stuff in it,”
Mark said. “Maybe Judi wasn’t supposed to be awake and it changed
their plans a bit.”
    “ Judi will find subtle ways to slow
them down. We have to follow them fast!” Clint ordered. “They’re
being clever. They might stay close because they don’t think we can
follow.
    “ Mike, you said you felt you were being
watched by the path? Do you feel it now? At all?”
    Mike nodded. “I sort of little nagging
feeling.”
    “ Then you go toward the finca where
Luis keeps the horses with Luis. The watching spell the bruja
mentioned is probably on you. They’ll depend on it to tell them
where all of us are. We can use it to our own advantage. Mark will
stay here at the