A Beach House to Die For

by K C Ames

“Anytime, amiga. See you around. And be careful with that big bad wolf up there,” Big Mike said, pointing towards the footpath leading up to Gustavo Barca’s resort.

  Big Mike drove off in his pickup truck.

  Later that day, Dana was waiting for Benny to arrive at seven o’clock that night. He had been having dinner with Dana and Courtney every night, and sometimes also lunch and breakfast.

  “I’m feeling like a third wheel,” Courtney said, watching Dana get dressed.

  “What are you talking about? He’s my lawyer. It’s like a business dinner.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s why you’re spending all that time getting ready?” Courtney said.

  “The last thing I need right now is to get involved with a man. Especially my lawyer,” Dana said, her voice cracking a bit.

  “Maybe when all this legal stuff is resolved. You deserve to be happy,” Courtney said.

  Dana managed a smile. Maybe, she thought.

  Benny arrived on time as usual. When Dana was researching for information about living in Costa Rica, she noticed a lot of warnings online about tico time—used regarding the tardiness and general lack of being on time that supposedly afflicted the Costa Rican populace, but not Benny. He was as reliable as a Swiss watch.

  He had his laptop bag slung over his shoulder. He seemed to be more in business mode than ever before, having spent the previous day in San José.

  When he saw Dana, though, he smiled warmly. She liked that.

  “What did you two do today? Staying out of trouble, I hope,” Benny said. He had begged Dana not to go out snooping around and stepping on Agent Picado’s toes.

  “We were good, we lay out on the beach and took surfing lessons over at Playa Brava with Big Mike,” Dana said.

  “Nice guy. He’s quite the character. A throwback to the old-school surfer dudes that used to visit Costa Rica back in the seventies and eighties,” Benny said.

  “Yes, he is. We had fun. He said he was pretty friendly with Uncle Blake. Shared some nice stories. He told me that Gustavo Barca offered to buy his property several times,” Dana said.

  Benny nodded. “Your uncle threw out one of Barca’s representatives who kept badgering him to sell. And when your uncle was sick and went back to the States, Barca put up the pressure to get him to sell Casa Verde. Your uncle’s illness was like chum in the water to Barca,” Benny said.

  “What a jerk,” Dana said.

  “Real estate people love the big two Ds,” Benny said.

  “What are those?”

  “Death and divorce. The two Ds are good for business,” Benny said.

  “That’s terrible,” Dana said, realizing how true that statement was. Her divorce led to the sale of the house she and her ex-husband had shared. He then bought a new house for his new wife. The new wife had sold her house to move into their new home.

  Had Dana not inherited Casa Verde, she would have bought her own place. That’s four real estate transactions right there off of one divorce. Toss in the legal fees being racked up over the property dispute with Roy and Skylar, and now she was keeping lawyers fat and happy.

  Benny could see that running the tally in her head.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” he said, jarring Dana out of that thought.

  “Yeah, I hadn’t thought about it that way, but that’s just sad,” Dana said.

  Benny brought steaks he called lomito, thin cuts of beef that he had marinated overnight with onion, garlic, and Salsa Lizano—a Worcestershire-like sauce found in nearly every Costa Rican home, restaurant, and roadside food stand.

  Benny fired up the Weber gas grill that was in the backyard and smiled. “I figured Ramón would make sure the propane tank was filled.”

  Benny grilled the steaks to perfection. They ate the lomito with a side of white rice, a repollo which was a tangy and crunchy salad made of thinly sliced cabbage, diced tomatoes, onions, jalapeño, chopped cilantro, and topped with fresh lime juice from limes picked from the trees on the Casa Verde property, as were the fried yucca fries which had been cut, peeled, and chopped by Ramón from the yucca roots out back.

  “This is so delicious. I didn’t know you could cook,” Dana said.

  “I enjoy it, but don’t get to do much cooking with my busy practice, so I indulge in it when I’m down here, since things aren’t as hectic as when I’m in San José,” Benny explained, smiling.

  After dinner, they chatted but didn’t talk much about the murder or the legal wrangling, and Dana thought that it was sublime. The day with Big Mike, the nice dinner. This was what she had envisioned when moving down to Blue Butterfly Beach, not dealing with a murder and legal matters.

  “When are you going back to San Francisco?” Benny asked Courtney.

  “I’m supposed to go next week, but I’m not leaving Dana in this chaos and with a killer out there on the loose,” Courtney replied.

  Dana felt relieved to hear Courtney say that, but she also felt selfish and guilty for wanting her to stay for as long as possible. Dana knew that Courtney had a job to go back to with an employer who would not be too keen if she wasn’t back to work on the expected day.

  “You can always tell your boss that you need to stay longer because you’re helping your best friend during a nasty legal dispute with her cousin who was murdered in Costa Rica and she’s a prime suspect. How could they say no to that request?”

  "Don't come back. That's what they would say," Courtney said, laughing.

  Dana was being morbid, but she found that humor was a great way to deal with such unpleasantry.

  Twenty-Seven

  The next morning, Dana lowered Big Red’s soft top down, as usual, and Courtney sat next to her in the passenger seat, as usual.

  They were at the front gate when they saw Ramón hunched over a weed whacker, tinkering with it.

  Dana stopped the jeep and leaned out the driver’s side and she called out in Spanish, “Hi Ramón, is that machine giving you problems?”

  “Not really. It’s just an old machine that jams up a lot. But I can fix it. I always fix it,” he said proudly.

  “We’re going up to Nosara to do some grocery shopping,” Dana said.

  “Ah, the big town,” Ramón said. Dana smiled. Nosara’s population was just under six thousand, so compared to tiny Mariposa Beach, it was the big town. Nosara even had a traffic light.

  Ramón said he needed nothing, so Dana made her way out the front gate and slammed on the accelerator, kicking up dust and gravel as Big Red took off.

  “Oh, jeez, not again. Please slow down, and no more made-up shortcuts through rivers this time!” Courtney demanded as she grabbed the passenger’s side grab handle of the jeep, or as she began to call it, the hold on for your dear life handle.

  Dana drove to the pueblo side of Nosara, where they had spotted Skylar and Barca. They were going to the supermarket where everything was tico-priced, so about half the price of grocery stores in the tourist part of town.

  Supermercado El Rey, which in English translates to Supermarket The King, was the largest grocery town in the Nosara district.

  The locals, who were used to tourists and expats not speaking the language, appreciated Dana’s excellent Spanish.

  Courtney just nodded and smiled, not understanding a word being said between Dana and the stock boy. Courtney took Spanish in high school and thought she could handle it, but in the rapid pace of the native speakers, they might as well have been speaking Chinese or some other language she didn’t understand.

  It impressed her how well Dana could speak it and hold her own.

  “He said these are fresh pineapples from a nearby farm,” Dana said. She carefully placed two pineapple plants into her shopping cart.

  About thirty minutes later, they left the grocery store with a cart full of groceries. A teenager working for the grocery store would not take no for an answer when he began to push the cart with four full grocery bags outside. Dana looked at Courtney and shrugged. The kid put the bags in the back of B
ig Red. He smiled widely at the tip Dana gave him and sauntered back inside.

  Dana took out some money for a kid who told Dana he would keep an “ojo” on the jeep as he pointed to his right eye, meaning he would watch the parked jeep for her while she was inside, shopping.

  “You think that’s really necessary here? We’ve shopped at that sketchy Safeway on Market Street at midnight,” Courtney said with a laugh.

  “It’s not that much money, and I might as well play it safe with Big Red,” Dana said as she smiled at the kid and agreed to his offer.

  “I think you’re falling big for Big Red,” Courtney said with a laugh.

  The kid was there when they came out. He stood next to Big Red, standing proudly as if to say, See, it’s still here and not a scratch on it. Dana gave him his tip. He smiled approvingly at the amount as he ran to the street to stop traffic, then he waved Dana onto the street and waved goodbye as she drove away.

  On the way out of town, Dana pulled over to the side of the dusty road and parked in front of a friendly-looking old man dressed in his campesino garb who sat next to a larger cooler with a sign that read, Agua De Pipa Fría.

  “Oh, that sounds good right about now, it’s so hot,” Dana said, pointing at the old man.

  “What’s he selling?” Courtney asked, not understanding the sign.

  “Agua de pipa fría means cold coconut water,” Dana explained.

  Courtney lit up. “Oh, I love coconut water.”

  Dana got out of Big Red as the old man jumped out of his shaded lawn chair. Dana ordered two pipas. He bent down to his cooler and plopped it open. Dana looked down and saw that it was packed full of coconut shells buried in ice.

  “Um, what’s that?” Courtney said.

  “Oh, this isn’t that fancy-schmancy eight-dollar coconut water we get back home in a container. This is one hundred percent the real thing,” Dana said, smiling.

  She laughed watching Courtney’s reaction as the old man removed two unhusked coconut shells from the ice. He placed one shell on the edge of a wooden stump, then he pulled out a machete and whacked at the shell a few times until he had carved a hole in the shell's top so he could put a straw into it, and handed her the chilled coconut shell.

  “Thank you.” Dana took a sip from the straw. “Oh, man, this is so good.”

  The old man did the same thing to Courtney’s shell. Her first sip was hesitant, like a child being forced to eat broccoli, then her eyes widened. “Oh my, this is delicious!”

  Dana paid the old man, and they sat inside Big Red, drinking the delicious coconut water right from the shell, when a vehicle suddenly veered off from the main road and parked right behind them as it kicked up dust and gravel. They were sitting in the jeep with the top down, so the dust engulfed both of them, much to Dana’s annoyance.

  “Who the heck is that?” Courtney asked, looking back at the car.

  “I guess someone really wants some coconut water.” Dana watched the car door open and out stepped Detective Gabriela Rojas.

  Dana tensed up and almost spat out her coconut water, expecting to see Picado exit next, but Rojas was by herself.

  For a moment, Dana envisioned a scene from TV and the movies where the cops swarm out of their cars to arrest someone. She felt that momentary panic that they would arrest her and she would be on a real-life version of the Locked Up Abroad television show.

  “Sorry for kicking up all this dust, I was heading out of town when I saw you from the corner of my eye and I just pulled the wheel. I wanted to talk to you,” Rojas said.

  “What about?” Dana asked nervously.

  “First, relax. I know you didn’t kill your cousin, and Picado holds details of the cases he leads close to the vest even from me, but I’m sure he’s ruled you out, but he wants to leave you off balance, so he won’t officially rule you out,” Rojas said.

  “What’s his problem with me?”

  “Don’t take it so personally. He gets his kicks by making foreigners, especially from the U.S., feel afraid of him. And he said you’re too nosey. Interfering in the investigation, so he believes you need to be taught a lesson.”

  “It’s easier said than done not to take things personally when you’re accused of murder,” Dana said.

  “You haven’t been accused of anything. We were just doing routine background checks on everyone in Roy’s orbit,” Rojas said.

  “You checked me up in the States?”

  Rojas nodded. “FBI and SFPD. It took a few calls, but they were helpful.”

  “You find anything good?” Dana asked. She was genuinely curious.

  Rojas smiled. “Aside from parking tickets and blowing off jury duty, you came back squeaky clean,” Rojas replied.

  Dana blushed. Parking tickets were normal in San Francisco, but ignoring her jury summons made her feel ashamed.

  Courtney said, “I told you ignoring that jury duty summons would come back to haunt you.”

  “I was planning to take care of that, but then I was moving down here…” Dana began to explain, but Rojas interrupted her by laughing.

  “We don’t have juries made up of regular citizens in Costa Rica. If we did, we wouldn’t be able to get any of them to show up for jury duty, even if we threatened them with death,” Rojas said, laughing.

  “I still feel guilty about it.”

  “Don’t worry, we won’t extradite you for that, so you can stay down here in hiding,” Rojas said, teasing.

  “Gee, thanks. How about making it official that I’m no longer a suspect in my cousin’s murder to boot?” Dana asked.

  “Sorry. That’s up to Picado. I think he’s enjoying making you squirm, but I’m going to tell you something because I think you need to know. And I told Picado that you should know, but he disagreed with me and he’s the boss. If he finds out I’m talking to you off the record like this, he’ll have a coronary from a fit of rage, and when they paddle him back to life, he’ll make sure I lose my job. So please, aside from the three of us here, don’t tell anyone about what I’m going to share with you, okay?” Rojas asked.

  “Of course, you can count on it,” Dana said.

  Courtney added, “I won’t say a word.”

  Rojas looked at Dana and said, “Not even to your good-looking lawyer friend.”

  “Benny?” Dana asked, sounding incredulous.

  “Yes, Benny Campos.”

  Dana felt her stomach tighten. She had planned to tell him about running into and talking with Rojas.

  “Okay, but why?” Dana asked.

  “Because I don’t trust him,” Rojas said.

  Dana recoiled at the thought of not being able to trust Benny. He had proved himself to be a good friend and a good lawyer, so what could Rojas have on him that she didn’t trust him?

  “May I ask why you don’t trust him?” Dana asked.

  “For one, he’s a lawyer. I don’t like lawyers. Second, he’s the attorney on record for your property and he’ll make a heck of a lot more money if Skylar successfully contests your uncle’s will and she sells the land to Gustavo Barca. With you he’ll just get nominal fees for paperwork and legal advice here and there. With Skylar and Barca, he’ll rack up huge legal fees.”

  Dana was stunned. She hadn’t thought about that possibility. Rojas must have noticed Dana’s face suddenly turn ashen. “Hey, my job makes me suspicious about everyone’s motives. It doesn’t mean I’m right. I’m just answering your question.”

  “It’s okay. I trust Benny, but you’re right, and I hadn’t thought about that possibility. I will keep what you’re going to tell me just between us three. I won’t tell Benny.”

  Rojas nodded approvingly. “We haven’t found the murder weapon yet, but the forensic team said it was a serrated knife; likely a steak knife. So we checked with the resort, since that’s where your cousin was staying, and the forensics team took some samples back to San José for testing. It took them a couple days, but the medical examiner just confirmed that the wounds on your
cousin’s body match the knives that were taken from the resort for testing. The resort uses a very fancy type of knife from Switzerland that has the resort’s logo carved into the blade which matched the wounds, so now we know where the killer got his or her weapon,” Rojas explained.

  It has to be Skylar, Dana thought.

  “So that’s great news, right? It helps you narrow things down,” Dana asked.

  “It helps, but on the night of the murder, there were close to two hundred guests at the resort, plus a staff of fifty-two. Any of them had access to one of those knives, so that’s a lot of possible suspects, and a defense attorney would have a field day with it. Add to the mix a lot of rich, powerful, VIP tourists and locals that stay at the resort, which puts pressure on us so we have to walk on eggshells when it comes to interviewing any of those VIP guests.”

  “Too bad I’m not VIP so Picado had to walk on eggshells around me.”

  Rojas smiled. “In your favor is that you hadn’t been to the resort, until after the murder, so it would have been more difficult for you, although not impossible, to get one of those distinctive knives to kill your cousin. So that puts Skylar back at the top of the list of suspects. I know you don’t get along or hang out with Skylar, but be very careful and do not let her near you, especially alone. We should have enough evidence to arrest her soon, but Picado really wants to find that knife, so until Skylar is under arrest, I recommend you stay put in Casa Verde.”

  Dana thanked the detective for the warning and left, heading back to town.

  Dana pulled into her driveway as the green gate closed behind her. Courtney looked back to make sure it closed. Dana was having visions of a knife-wielding Skylar coming up the driveway.

  She parked Big Red, and they got out.

  “That’s it. We must stay put now until they arrest that crazy nut job,” Courtney said.

  Dana gave her a noncommittal nod.

  “Dana!”

  Back in the house, Dana went to the book nook while Courtney took a bath. She sat at Blake’s old writing desk. She looked around and sighed. She had began the daunting task of sorting through the thousands of books which she had scattered higgledy-piggledy across the floor. Wally sauntered into the room, checking out the mess. She swore she heard him tsk.