A Beach House to Die For

by K C Ames

  “Who said I was bothering them? I spoke to the valet that parked my car, the waiter, and two staff people, that was it. So who complained? Was there a formal complaint levied against me?”

  Picado’s brow furrowed. She could tell he was taken aback by her aggressive rapid-fire questions and her newfound moxie.

  Picado cleared his throat. “Well, I’m not at liberty—”

  She interrupted him, “So there isn’t an official complaint, you’re not charging me with bothering anyone at the resort, or are you?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Are you any closer to finding out who killed my cousin, or are you too busy with resort business?” Dana said. Don’t go too far, she reminded herself.

  A muffled laugh came from behind the counter as Mindy tried, in vain, to stifle it.

  Picado glared at Mindy.

  “Here’s your order, hon,” Mindy said, breaking the tension.

  Dana turned around to look at Mindy. “Thank you, how much do I owe you?”

  “Today’s breakfast is on the house, darling,” Mindy said, smiling widely.

  “Thank you so much, you’re so sweet,” Dana replied. Both women ignored Picado, who was stewing behind Dana.

  Dana turned to face him with her order in her hands. “I have to go,” she said to Picado.

  “I’m warning you again, stop interfering in my case,” Picado said as he stormed out of the coffee shop.

  Once he left, Dana turned to Mindy, and she felt shaky.

  "I can’t believe I did that."

  “You were great,” Mindy said, reaching over the counter to hug Dana.

  With the anger-fueled adrenaline boost gone, she shivered like she was in Siberia in the winter, not in tropical Costa Rica. But she felt empowered, and ready to get to the bottom of her cousin’s murder and to nip in the bud the property dispute with Skylar once and for all so she could move on with her new life. And her standing up to Picado got her free coffee and bagels to boot.

  A good start to the day, she thought as she walked out towards Big Red feeling ten feet taller. Courtney was still sitting there, looking groggy.

  Twenty-Three

  Benny’s place was about a ten-minute drive from Mindy’s coffee and bagel shop.

  It was the first time she was visiting his beach house, since he always came over to Casa Verde, so she was excited to see what it looked like.

  Dana drove as Courtney struggled to keep the coffee from flying out of its to-go cups with each crater-sized pothole that Big Red encountered.

  Dana told her about her little altercation with Picado.

  “I’m glad you stood up for yourself, but I really think you’re playing with fire with him.”

  “I have done nothing wrong, so I’m not letting him or Barca push me around. I can always write an exposé about those two when I’m done dealing with this,” Dana said.

  Courtney looked at her nervously. She was nervous for her friend and nervous that the next pothole would toss the contents of the three cups of piping-hot coffee on her lap.

  “I get it, they didn’t make cup holders back in the forties, but when your uncle refurbished and modernized this jalopy, why didn’t he put in some cup holders?” Courtney said, changing the subject.

  They both laughed as Dana maneuvered around a pothole as Big Red dipped down to its right side.

  “Oh, sheesh, can you try to miss some of those potholes? You’re like ten for ten,” Courtney said teasingly.

  Dana looked in the rearview mirror and then glanced at the side mirror. “I think that was a sinkhole, not a pothole.”

  They both continued to laugh, driving the wild roads of rural Costa Rica.

  Dana pulled into Benny’s house, which was in the outskirts of town. It was a two-story house, painted white. Benny’s house style and amenities were very similar to Casa Verde, but the house hadn’t been remodeled or touched much since Benny’s father first built it in the early 1980s. Dana thought it was a lovely home, but she appreciated the amount of work that her Uncle Blake had put into modernizing Casa Verde.

  Benny welcomed Dana and Courtney at the door.

  “You dressed the part,” Benny said, smiling. Dana had dressed up in yoga gear.

  “Might as well try to get her to identify with me through yoga.”

  Benny gave Dana and Courtney a quick tour of the three-bedroom house. Dana blushed at lingering too long at his bedroom. She didn’t know why she was so curious to see where he slept, but Courtney noticed and smiled. Dana shook her off with pursed lips.

  After the tour, they sat out on the front patio and ate their bagels and drank the coffee that Courtney had valiantly saved from the jeep-eating potholes.

  Dana had decided not to tell Benny about her confrontation with Detective Picado and pinky-swore Courtney to not say anything about it, either.

  She wasn’t sure why she didn’t want him to know. She just felt that was something she needed to handle on her own without having Benny worry about it or wanting to interfere.

  After eating the bagels and drinking the coffee, they piled into Benny’s Land Cruiser, leaving Big Red at his house, and they headed up to Nosara on Dana’s little mission to talk to the yoga teacher that might have stolen Roy’s heart, much to Skylar’s anger.

  Benny and Courtney thought Dana was being too reckless and that she should stay in Casa Verde under self-imposed house arrest, but doing nothing was like asking Takeru Kobayashi to not eat too many hot dogs.

  “I need to get back to San José for a few days. I need to do some work on your case, and I have two closings for other clients I need to attend,” Benny said, driving.

  Dana blinked a few times, looking out the window. It was as if she had forgotten that she was Benny’s client and that he didn’t live in Mariposa Beach year-round.

  They had spent so much time together since she arrived in town that it felt like their relationship had become more than that. There you go, building things up in your head, Dana chastised herself.

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Tomorrow,” Benny said, sadness in his voice. Or maybe that was just in Dana’s head.

  She nodded.

  “But I’ll be right back as soon as I can. A few days,” Benny added quickly.

  Dana felt her heart skip a beat in excitement.

  She turned and smiled at Benny. “That’s great, you’ve been so kind and helpful,” Dana said, her voice trailing off then quickly adding, “to me and Courtney.”

  Dana glanced over at Courtney, who sat in the backseat quietly with a huge grin on her face.

  Yoga Trópico was on the second floor of a two-story building in Nosara Beach, which was about fifteen minutes from the main town of Nosara—where the airport and El Pueblo were located and where Dana and Courtney had seen Gustavo Barca and Skylar arguing.

  Nosara Beach looked similar to Mariposa Beach—a bit larger, more shops, more people, bigger waves, and a lot of yogis stuff.

  Benny parked in front of the building.

  “We can’t all three go up there to ambush her, it will freak her out. So I’ll go up there to see her,” Dana said.

  Dana could tell by the look on their faces that Benny and Courtney wanted to disagree, but they knew she was right.

  “Be careful. For all we know, you’re going up there to confront Roy’s killer,” Benny said.

  His comment took her aback. She hadn’t thought perhaps she had been the one that killed Roy.

  “She a yoga teacher,” Dana said, sounding incredulous.

  “She’s human. All signs point to her having an affair with Roy. Love triangles make people do crazy things to other people. So just as Skylar is one corner of the triangle that might have snapped into killing Roy, we could say the same about this yoga teacher. I don’t care how enlightened she is. Be careful.”

  The more she mulled it over, the more it made sense to her. She had been on a one-track mind that Skylar killed Roy, but perhaps it was the other woman in the r
elationship that killed him.

  Twenty-Four

  Dana had checked Marisol’s schedule online, so she knew the yoga teacher would be in-between classes for a couple hours.

  She waited for her by the stairs at the bottom floor of the building that housed the yoga studio.

  She could hear yoga mantras coming from upstairs, which meant they were wrapping up.

  Five minutes later, sweaty-looking men and women with rolled-up yoga mats started to come down the stairs in droves. Class must be over, Dana thought.

  Dana recalled what she had learned about the yoga teacher from her website. Marisol Arias was twenty-seven-years-old. She had raven-black hair in a pixie cut. She was a tica from a well-to-do family, as most Western yogis seemed to be. Marisol had grown up in Cartago, which was the third largest city in Costa Rica, located less than twenty miles from the capital of San José.

  She had come to Nosara four years ago to take classes to become a yoga teacher and had stayed on because business was good in Nosara for yoga teachers, where American and European tourists came for beach, sun, surf, and yoga.

  Dana’s mind raced as she had an argument with herself: I feel like a stalker. You are a stalker. Lurking down here, waiting for her. I’m not lurking, just waiting.

  Ten minutes later, Marisol Arias came down the stairs. She looked just as pretty in person as she did on the yoga studio’s website. Dana thought there was sadness behind her big, bright green eyes.

  “Hi, Marisol,” Dana said.

  Marisol had no clue who Dana was, but she looked at the Lululemon-clad American and smiled. “Hi, were you at my class?”

  “No. But I was hoping to talk to you for just a moment. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” Dana asked.

  Marisol’s brow furrowed, her face turning from friendly to casting a suspicious look at Dana.

  “What about?”

  “I’m Roy Kirkpatrick’s cousin, Dana Kirkpatrick.”

  Tears welled up in Marisol’s eyes.

  They walked down the block to a small coffee shop that shared space with a bakery. Marisol ordered a green tea and pineapple empanada. Dana ordered a latte and a scone. They sat at a round table for two outside on the sidewalk, facing a street lined with palm trees, and although Dana couldn’t see the ocean from there, she could hear it.

  “So you’re his cousin from San Francisco, the one who inherited Casa Verde,” Marisol said, tearing off a piece of her pastry and putting it in her mouth. She was studying her closely.

  “That’s me. I take it Roy talked to you about me.”

  “Oh, yes,” Marisol said.

  “Probably not all good, huh?”

  “It upset him about the inheritance, but it was mostly resentment that his father cared for you more than him.”

  “I don’t know about that. I don’t think it was that clear-cut,” Dana said.

  “In Roy’s mind, the fact that his father left you that property instead of him meant just that. It was clear-cut to him,” Marisol replied.

  “I have no idea what caused Uncle Blake to do what he did, but that is what he wanted.”

  “It’s not what Roy wanted. But it seemed most everything in Roy’s life was not what he wanted,” Marisol said, tears streaming down her cheeks. She quickly dabbed at them with her yoga hand sleeve.

  “You sound like you talked to him a lot…about personal stuff…more than a regular yoga teacher would have talked to a student,” Dana said, trying to broach on the subject.

  Marisol looked away and took another bite of the empanada, then sipped more tea. She said nothing, so Dana figured the gentle broaching wasn’t working and decided to not beat around the bush. “Were you having an affair with Roy?”

  Marisol almost spit out her tea. “I can tell you’re related to Roy,” she said.

  “We Kirkpatricks are known for being a bit direct and blunt,” Dana said, smiling.

  “It’s a good trait to have. The more you bottle things inside, the more it tears you apart. I’m an expert at that,” Marisol said.

  Dana watched her as she put her cup of tea down and looked around. It was as if she was trying to center herself to gather the strength to speak her true self.

  “I liked that in Roy. I like honesty, which is why it was so hard to have been so dishonest with my true relationship with Roy. The short answer to your question is yes. But it wasn’t something cheap or tawdry. It was not a fling. We had something special. And I know people scoff and are cynical about finding one’s soul mate, but I believe in that, and I had finally found my soul mate in Roy,” Marisol said, more tears trickling down her cheeks. “He was a wonderful gentleman.” Now it was Dana that almost spit out her latte.

  Dana hadn’t seen the good parts of Roy in so long that she forgot they were there, buried deep, and perhaps Marisol was able to bring them back up to the surface. Turn that lump of black charcoal into a bright diamond.

  “We’ve had our issues, but it’s nice to hear that,” Dana said, and she found that she meant it.

  “Now I’ve lost him in this life,” Marisol said, wiping away tears.

  “I’m sorry to upset you,” Dana said.

  Marisol let out a sound that was part cry and laugh. It sounded like relief to Dana. Like she could finally talk about the loss she felt.

  “Don’t be sorry. It feels good to share this with someone else. I’ve never gotten involved with a married man before. But he came to my class and I could tell there was so much bitterness and sadness to Roy and that there was a decent man inside wanting to be let out, but all he had known for most of his adult life was the toxicity from his relationships, the estrangement with his father, an unhappy marriage, countless business failures—that’s what twisted Roy into being hard and mean,” Marisol said, looking at her hands on the table. She then looked up to Dana and laughed. “I must sound like a naïve, crazy fool to you,” she said, looking away.

  Dana shook her head. “Far from it. You make me feel happy. I knew that other Roy before life and Skylar embittered him. It makes me happy to know that you had brought that out in him before he died.”

  “He told me about you. He always liked you—said you two were close when you were growing up but then just drifted apart and stopped having much of a familial relationship.”

  “That’s true. Our relationship in the last decade amounted to a few Facebook likes here and there. Then when his father died and left me Casa Verde, well, he was so angry with me, and I understood why he was mad. And I’d like to believe that we could have resolved this amicably if it wasn’t for Skylar fueling his rage,” Dana said.

  “I think that’s true. There are some people who don’t know how to feel anything inside but anger, outrage, hatred, and so they waste their life going from one dispute to another so it becomes the norm for them. A life without drama to a person like Skylar is like not living.”

  Dana nodded in agreement. “You’re very insightful. I can see why Roy liked you,” Dana said.

  “Loved,” Marisol corrected Dana. "We were only together for two months and we had to keep it secret, but we were in love. And it wasn’t an infatuation, it was a real love," Marisol said, her voice wavering.

  “I’m glad to hear he had found happiness. I’m trying to find out who killed him,” Dana said.

  “I know who killed him. It was that woman,” Marisol said.

  “Skylar?” Dana asked.

  “Yes, HER. You see…” Marisol took a moment and breathed in and out before continuing to speak. “Roy was changing, and she hated it. The good that was in him from the start was coming out. He no longer wanted to hide our love. Neither of us wanted to do that anymore. So he was going to leave Skylar, for good this time. Stay here with me for a while or maybe we would move to San José or to the States. But we wanted to start our life together. And he was going to put the legal dispute with you behind him. He didn’t care about Casa Verde anymore as long as we were together. He knew it would all work out without lawyers fighting like dogs o
ver a bone.”

  Dana found that hard to fathom. She thought back on the last time she saw him when he and Skylar confronted her. He still seemed hurt about his father giving her the property. But he seemed conflicted. It was Skylar that was being the belligerent one. Even if he wanted to change course and be civil, Skylar jumped in to stoke the resentment he had still burning inside of him.

  “He told you this? He said he was leaving Skylar and wanted to settle the property dispute with me?”

  “Yes. He told me that more than once. And then he said he was going to tell Skylar the truth about everything and that he was leaving her that very weekend, but by Sunday night, he was dead.”

  Twenty-Five

  Dana and Marisol spent about a heart-wrenching hour at the coffee shop, talking. Benny had planted the seed that she might be Roy’s killer, but after meeting and talking with her, Dana knew that wasn’t the case.

  Dana walked back to the Land Cruiser, where Benny and Courtney were waiting. She climbed inside. It was chilly inside, since Benny had kept the car running to keep the AC going.

  Dana sighed. “That was sad and happy rolled into one.” She saw Courtney and Benny exchange puzzled looks.

  “How was she?” Courtney asked.

  “She was nice. And she was having an affair with Roy.” Dana said it so nonchalantly.

  “Really? She admitted it?”

  “It was a relief. But it was more than an affair. They were in love. Soul mates, she said.”

  Courtney scoffed. “They just met.”

  “It’s been known to happen that fast,” Benny said.

  Courtney smiled and looked at Dana. Benny blushed.

  “It’s the granizado vendor,” he said, changing the subject.

  "Huh?"

  “Snow cones, the Costa Rica way. Delicious,” Benny said, jumping out of the car and heading towards an old man pushing what looked like to Dana was an ice cream cart.