X Dames: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 3)

by J. J. Henderson

  “But what the hell,” she went on, as they cranked a right. Ramshackle stalls housing craft vendors and food shops and plastic toys and kitchenware lined the riverbank on their right. “There’s a great swell right now and the surf is way large for Sayu, so the contest should be intense. Fantastic timing for the show.” She looked back at Marcia. “Are you ready, kid?”

  “May I quote you?” said Marcia. “I’m gonna whip your booty.”

  Sandra laughed. “We’ll see about that.” She turned left onto a dusty street lined with parked cars in front of small stores and houses behind foliage-covered walls. She drove two blocks, turned left again, and parked. “Here we are, girls: beautiful downtown Sayulita. The town plaza’s right there.” She pointed straight ahead. “Everybody hangs out there in the evenings. The beach is behind us one block. You’re supposed to meet Ruben Dario, one of the X Dames producers, at El Costeño, the open air restaurant on the beach at the end of the street. I should warn you: some think Ruben’s the big bad wolf in this town, and he knows it. But the waves are right in front so you can check it out. I’ll take your stuff to the VR—it’s down the beach, you can’t miss it—and catch you later.”

  “Cool,” said Lucy, climbing out. “The air’s nice here,” she said.

  “It’s usually eighties by day, high sixties by night, until June. Then it gets stinky hot and sticky. Anyways you’re also scheduled to meet Bobby Schamberg and Judy and that whole gang at Bobby’s rental house, La Casa de la Luna Grande, on the beach at the north end of town, at seven o’clock for dinner. It’s about a half an hour’s walk from the hotel, or you can have them get you a taxi. Your stuff’ll be in your suite. See you then,” Sandra said. She drove off.

  “Well here we are,” said Lucy, taking a look around. “Looks like a sweet little town.” Mexican and American hippies and surfers of all ages, girls in bikinis, sun-baked families, excited kids, barking and scrounging mongrel dogs, and dusty vehicles crowded the streets. Everything moved at a tropical crawl. It smelled of dogshit, fried fish, sunscreen, spilled beer, and the sea.

  “Let’s go check out the waves,” said Marcia. “I gotta see what the surf’s like.”

  They walked down the middle of the dusty street, lined with two- and three-story buildings, ground floor tourist shops selling Mexican art, surfboards, bottled water, beer, clothes, groceries, and, in at least four different storefronts, REAL ESTATE. “She wasn’t kidding about the development, was she?” Lucy said. “It’s realtor hell.”

  “I heard it’s because gringos can buy waterfront now without having a Mexican partner,” Teresa said. “You can get some kind of bank trust. Used to be foreigners couldn’t buy within a thousand meters of the beach. But now—” she shrugged.

  “Holy shit, look at that surf,” Marcia said, speeding up, grogginess magically gone as the waves beckoned. Past a row of craft vendors’ tables set up on the sidewalk at the end of the block, and the beach beyond, they could see the ocean: white water everywhere, waves crashing across the bay, a rocky point with a huge house atop it a quarter of a mile away to the southwest, and a couple of dozen surfers spread out from the crowded beach before them to the outer line-up, maybe two hundred yards off the shoreline. They hit the beach. El Costeño was on the right, its expansive palm thatch roof shading rows of mismatched grubby white wood and plastic tables and chairs sitting in the sand. To the left a large temporary pavilion had been erected atop a framework supported by metal poles buried in the sand, with X DAMES emblazoned in bold blue letters across the four sides of the pyramid-shaped white fabric roof. Parked directly behind it was a four wheel drive truck, its canopied cargo bed loaded with video gear. A bored-looking guard stood by, in the shade of an elevated platform that had been put up for the surfing contest judges and perhaps a cameraman. “I gotta get my board and ride some waves,” Marcia said. “The surf looks awesome. Where did she say the hotel was?”

  “There,” Lucy said, pointing. “It’s that hulking monster.” A quarter of a mile down the beach, where the road curved seawards towards the house on the point, a six-story building rose up in front of a small hill blanketed with white, red-roofed houses buried in flowering foliage and coconut trees. The top story appeared unfinished, all raw concrete, empty windows, and scraggly rebar. Several of the lower floors looked half-done as well. On the hill around it, the smaller buildings blended into the greenery.

  “That’s the Villa Roma,” said Teresa. “I checked the site out on the web last night. And also several other Sayulita sites and blogs. Seems that everybody in town hates that building and its owner, your typical American asshole who thought he could bribe his way into building a high-rise condo tower in a town with a four-story height limit. But they claim to have stopped him with some sort of legal maneuver, and he’s actually taking the top floors down now. Anyways those other little buildings on the hillside are hotel rooms, and they looked really cool on the web.”

  “Whatever,” said Marcia. “I’m going to get my board.” She dashed off down the beach, the eyes of several young Mexican surfdudes following her. Kept company by half a dozen panting mongrel dogs, they lolled on the sand in the shade of the X Dames pavilion, watching the waves, drinking beer, and checking out the girls.

  “Those waves are pretty fockin’ serious, as they say down in Oz,” Lucy said. The bigger outside waves looked about twice the height of the surfers dropping into them. Walls of white water rolled in, one after another, as the surfers paddled, caught waves, rode them or crashed, all the while shouting at each other. The big waves had them cranked up. “Looks like really intense conditions for a contest to me. Hope Bobby has enough sense to keep the ringers out of the water.”

  “How about you, Luce?” said Teresa. “Would you paddle out there?”

  “Paddle out, yes,” Lucy said. “It’ll be great for shooting up close. My camera’s waterproof. And I can paddle pretty well from swimming and working out. But I couldn’t ride those waves. I’ve only surfed like five times and I just don’t know enough.”

  “Excuse me, ladies,” a man interrupted them. They turned. He was forty or so, a handsome tall Mexican in carefully pressed khaki shorts, black leather sandals, and a loose-fitting, well-made sports shirt and sunglasses. “Are you—”

  “Teresa MacDonald.” She held out a hand. “And Lucy Ripken. You must be—”

  “Ruben Dario. From the show. And a local here as well. So nice to meet you. I hope you traveled well. Come join us, please.” He gestured at one of the larger tables at the front edge of El Costeño, which faced out to the surf. Three women sat there, comfortably slouched in tiny bikinis: one Asian and two Mexican. They were uniformly brown, lithe, long-haired, and beautiful in the modern way, physically confident, fierce, fearless, and yet utterly feminine. Powerbabes, soon to rule the world. As she and Terry followed Dario to the table, Lucy thought, any TV show that’s got this trio, plus Marcia, Henrietta, and Sandra, all of them out there in those waves, is going to rock!

  “So where’s the lovely Henrietta?” said Moki Sue Kalahani’I, the 26-year old “surf dominatrix”, after they did the meet and greet, sat down, and ordered beers. On her left sat Martina Casals, a 20-year old Mexican girl famous for a video-taped tube ride she’d grabbed at Puerto Escondido, the renowned Mexican Pipeline, down the coast in Oaxaca. Martina had entirely disappeared inside this ten foot tube for five seconds and then come flying out still on her feet, with a huge smile on her face and the top half of her bathing suit blown off and away by the wind and spray inside the tube. Needless to say that topless tube ride lived on in the land of endless loops on TV and internet, and Martina had become one of the five or six most famous female surfers in the world as a result. At the end of the table lounged Erica Nuñez, over 30 but four times in a row the Mexican women’s surfing champion. She had pretty much the same body as the other two, five and a half foot tall smoothly-muscled girls in impossibly great shape. Neither she nor Martina spoke English very well, so Dario, the only bilingualist
among them, carried the conversation.

  “I have no idea,” said Teresa. “I thought she came down with Bobby and all the TV people.”

  “Yes, I saw her this morning at the house Bobby’s rented,” Dario said. “Don’t worry, Señorita Moki, she’s on it. She wants that money as much as you do.” He smiled. “And have you writer ladies concocted some interesting—narratives—for our girls to pursue?”

  “We sure have,” Terry said. “We wrote the whole damn show on the plane coming down here today.”

  “This is good,” he said, then turned and did some explaining in Spanish. The two Mexican girls laughed.

  “What?” said Lucy, hating her own lack of Spanish. “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, I was just telling them about how much Moki Sue wants to beat Sandra’s butt and everybody else too, but especially Henrietta’s. And they think it is funny that all these gringas are so intent on beating each other that they don’t realize that the Mexican girls are the best surfers here at their home beach.”

  “Hm,” said Teresa. “Sounds like a challenge—and a plotline.”

  “Hey, gang,” Marcia said, breathlessly arriving at the table. “The hotel’s cool.” She wore a dinky bikini bottom and a short sleeved rash-guard top in neo-psychedelic colors, and carried under one arm a short, skinny little board, maybe six and a half feet long. Her sickly pallor had gone away as if by magic in the Mexican sun, and she looked like a red-hot surfer girl, ready to rule some waves.

  Lucy did a quick intro, then Marcia said, “So why aren’t all you big time wave-bombing surf chicks out there now? Too hairy for you? Those waves look awesome!”

  “Because they were better this morning at high tide, Chiquita,” said Moki Sue. “And we’re saving it because we are competing tomorrow and we all surfed for three hours today.” She turned to Teresa. “So why is this girl in the contest? A little t & a bimbo to fill in the background? Or are you a hot surfer, too, little girl?” she sneered.

  “See you in the waves, puta bitch,” Marcia said as she turned and headed towards the water.

  “Ouch! Girl’s got a short temper,” Moki Sue said with a grin. “Can’t take a joke.”

  “It wasn’t funny,” said Lucy. “And she’s a good surfer so don’t take her too lightly.”

  Moki Sue gave Lucy an appraising look. “So what are you going to write about that? How I insulted one of my competitors and—”

  “Personal vendettas and hurt feelings are fodder for the plot,” said Terry, “So keep it up.” She turned to Lucy. “Seems like we already have our villain in place.”

  “Hey,” Moki Sue said. “Don’t typecast me. I’m not your Dragon Lady bad girl. I just want to win, like everybody else. The mind game’s part of the gameplan.”

  Terry glared at her. “Hey, that wasn’t about racial shit, that was—”

  “Excuse me, ladies,” said Dario. “I wanted to ask our writers here—” Lucy and Teresa gave him their attention. “I’m already organizing the next segment after the surf contest. Did Bobby mention our plans? Will you be able to travel to South America from here to work on the snowboarding competition next week? My partner Sophie has been down there scouting locations, and it looks like she has lined up a great mountain with a fully equipped lodge, reliable lifts and excellent powder snow, in the Chilean Andes. The feeling is if we can alternate winter and summer sports it will create a great dynamic for the series, I think to give it that global feeling.”

  “Chile? Next week? Jesus, I don’t know. I’ve got a book to finish. Luce, what do you think?”

  “Hey, look at that,” Lucy said, quickly whipping a small pair of high-powered binoculars out of her bag. “Is that Marcia?” She focused. “Yes. She’s caught a monster wave.” They all watched as the girl stood up on her board at the top of a huge wave, then dropped in. When she hit bottom it was evident the wave’s face was nearly three times her height, at least fifteen feet high. She hit the bottom on her little short board, carved a big, smooth turn, and climbed up the face of the wave at high speed. At the top she whipped a slashing cutback, and her board broke loose of the water, freefalling down the face. Her feet hardly touched the board until it hit water near the wave’s bottom, when she somehow landed perfectly balanced and executed another big turn, this one ending with a lunging kickout over the top as a collapsing section closed the wave out.

  They were quiet for a few seconds, taking it in. Then Moki Sue said “Holy shit! That girl can surf!”

  “Magnifico,” said Dario. “And what a mighty wave!”

  Martina said, “Thees ees I theenk the wave of the day so far. It is like Puerto Es only not so breaking hard as there.”

  “Judy told me the swell’s going to peak tomorrow,” said Teresa. “So it could be even bigger for the contest.”

  “Hey, I’m from Hawaii,” said Moki Sue. “I eat waves like these for lunch.”

  They all looked at her. “Chow down, baby,” said Lucy.

  Next morning Lucy awoke from her usual restless sleep just before sunrise to the rhythmic rising and falling roar of big waves breaking in a steady, swell-driven surge. She knew from the sound that it would be large out there, possibly larger even than the day before. Like every ocean-lover Lucy got an elemental charge from the sight and sound of big surf, but before she would permit herself the thrill of getting out of bed to throw open her curtains for a look at the wave-crazed bay, she forced herself to lie still and recall as distinctly as she could, through the unpleasantness of a minor tequila hangover, the events of last night. For purposes of X Dames plotting, and also to soothe her soul. It had been a long, strange evening.

  After settling into their suite, the three women had chilled out for a short break, then dressed for dinner tres casual, tres chic, short summer dresses and sandals all, and headed out. It took about half an hour to walk from their hotel to La Casa de la Luna Grande, or the House of the Big Fat Moon, as they translated it: first a stroll a few hundred yards down a dirt road that paralleled the curve of Sayulita’s rocky south end beach, then a jog to the right to the town square, where hippie vagabonds sold jeweled tchatchkes, and Mexican kids played soccer between the palm trees while their parents sold tacos, DVDs, toilet brushes, plastic action heroes, and other useful stuff from ramshackle little stands around the plaza’s edges. Clusters of half-drunk, sun-roasted north end gringos noisily roamed in search of the perfect fish taco, while their downscale surfer and hippie brethren loitered on low walls and benches in the plaza, guzzling Pacifico beer from fat liter bottles or margaritas from plastic cups. Music blared out of radios, bars, cars, and restaurants. Everybody looked slightly buzzed and vacantly pleased with themselves. What could be better than a beach vacation in a foreign town where you could stumble down the street somewhat wasted, with little chance of getting insulted, robbed, arrested, run over, or blown to pieces?

  From this festive arena the three women crossed the bridge, and made their way to the beach road. After passing a large soccer pitch and a couple of shabby old two-story hotels, derelict construction sites, and the fenced and gated grounds of the town school, they entered the posh precincts of the North End, where the houses on the beach to the left, and on the hills rising up to the right, took on a more grandiose, even pompous, bearing, and enormous, dusty SUVs rumbled past, bearing gringos downtown. This was monied territory, on both sides of the road. One of the last houses on the beach was La Casa de la Luna Grande. Bobby Schamberg had rented it for two weeks for six grand. Staying with him in the main house were Judy and Henrietta, with Leslie Williams and her pair of executive producer boys ensconced in the guesthouse by the pool Excepting the Mexicans surfer girls and Sandra Darwin, who lived in town, everybody else involved with the show had holed up at the Villa Roma. Ruben Dario, who summered in a beachfront manse in Santa Barbara, had his own hacienda, said to be the biggest house in town, on the hill overlooking the north end and the bay.

  They made their entrance. The house included a huge verandah over
looking the north end beach, where heavy shorebreak surf pounded on the rocks scarcely fifty feet from where the gang sat down to dinner after killing two bottles of tequila in half a cocktail hour. While the waves rattled the crockery they ate gourmet mex surrounded by waiters, fast-moving cameramen, lighting and sound guys, make-up artists, and assorted stylists, all directed by Leslie Williams’ assistant director, a Mexican-American guy called Hector Valdez. Leslie was nowhere to be seen, having retired early to her guesthouse with her pair of boy EPs in tow and “a horny gleam in her eye,” as Bobby smirkingly put it. Turned out Leslie was a rapacious boy-chaser but that was definitely not part of the X Dames narrative. The crew busily shot videotape from every possible direction, planning to plug footage from this intro dinner into the X Dames Episode One.

  Along with the surfer girls Lucy had already met, and Bobby and his posse, there were a couple of local notables on hand: Ruben Dario, of course, for he was a major player in this X Dames game. Also present was Wally Townsend, Dario’s American partner in the realty end of his business interests. Between them they had sold sixteen Sayulita houses over the past winter, and currently had eleven more in escrow. Although they weren’t demonstrably affectionate, judging by what Lucy saw in the course of the well-documented evening, Ruben Dario and the Amazon surf-queen Sandra Darwin possibly had a thing going on.

  The other guest was a man called El Pantero, the panther, a dark-skinned, muscular, and gorgeous Mestizo from Puerto Escondido, famed for surfing Puerto’s heavy, scary tubes with the cunning grace of a large, predatory cat. Hence the name. With his luminous black eyes and his ripped, cat-like body, topped by a ridiculously sexy shock of dyed blonde hair, the panther was hotter than hot, and he knew it.