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

by J. J. Henderson

  “There’s no way—I dump all my email every week,” Judy said. “You’re just making this shit up.”

  “You guys are utterly stupid when it comes to email. Anyone with half a brain knows once you write and send an email it remains in your computer, somewhere, unless you proactively delete it. It was a simple matter to dig them all out. And here they are,” she said, waving her stacks of paper. “Your names, email names, your scheme to make sure the contest was down here, your plan to approach Judy with your falsely generous offer to help her buy her house, the deal to get the drugs and get some into Judy’s body on the day of the contest, all of it is right here, on paper.”

  “And now let’s go to the video,” Lucy said. They’d loaded all the footage on to one dvd, and now she slid it into the player so it would run on the big screen. “By the way, people,” she said, “we have two more copies stashed elsewhere, so don’t even think about trying to mess with this dvd. You’ll be wasting your time.” It began with the unedited footage from the breakfast, with Lucy describing the business about the dope in the coffee. Then they cut to contest footage interspersed with a series of stills Lucy had shot from the water, including several that showed Sandra collapsing on her board just before her deadly wipeout. Then they moved to the scene in Bucerias, tracking down Doctor Cardozo, and Teresa’s description of what happened in the office. From here the story shifted to the real estate office, and from there to the scene at Sandra’s house and the house behind it, where Mariela and her father and husband had their say. Finally, just for fun, they ended with thirty seconds of pornography that Lucy had shot the day before.

  “Christ, why is that in there?” Bobby said. “You don’t have to—”

  “Bobby, don’t forget this is going to be a movie of the week.” Terry said. “That part will go away before it hits the little screen. But we thought it would be amusing.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Dario said with a sneer. “You can’t make this into a movie!”

  “Yes, we can, and we can also take it to the police, which we intend to do this very day,” Lucy said.

  “Señoritas,” Dario announced, his tone turning supercilious as he rose to his feet. “You must wait a minute before you begin speaking about the police. Now I personally do not care what you want to show on television up in the United States, except that I hope it has a good audience because I have invested some money in this project. But I will tell you this. One, I don’t know if you are familiar with Mexican laws about internet privacy but you have violated many of them. Therefore everything that you claim you have in those papers there is worthless as evidence, if that is what you think to use it for. Two, there is nothing in that video footage that incriminates anybody. The breakfast tells me nothing. The surfing footage shows somebody falling down. The business with the doctor, Señorita MacDonald here can make this up, and even if it is true, there is no reason that Judy Leggett, who has a documented history of back pain due to many surfing accidents, would not be legally able to obtain these prescriptions. I do not have anything to say about the Caselins and Pastors except that they are angry that they did not charge a higher price for their property, and now they want to blame me and my partners because we will be making so much more money. And finally,” he said, “Do you know the name of the district superintendent of the Mexican Federal Police? He is in Tepic, and he is the man who would be responsible for prosecuting this case, should you actually choose to drag your ridiculous pile of evidence up there and give it to him. At which time he might decide to prosecute you, ladies, because you have stolen private email.

  “I’m sure you do not know him, or his name. But you see I do, because his name is Arturo Augustino Dario, and he is my younger brother.” He stopped. The room fell silent for several long seconds.

  “Shit,” said Marcia.

  Lucy and Teresa exchanged looks. Without saying a word they gathered the papers and the dvd and headed towards the door. Marcia followed them. Leslie and Hector continued filming as they too moved towards the door. There, they all stopped. “See you in court,” Lucy said, but her tone was defeated. Hector lingered in the doorway, shooting reactions. Leslie followed the women across the driveway.

  Hector’s last shot from that sequence was one of Bobby, who muttered, “Good job, amigo,” then raised his voice to announce, Donald Trump-style, “Hector Valdez, you’re fired!” before slamming the door in his face.

  Leslie’s last shot was Lucy and Terry in conversation.

  Lucy: “We’re screwed, aren’t we? There’s no way we can go after them, is there?”

  Terry, shaking her head: “I don’t think so. I mean I don’t know if he knows what he’s talking about regarding internet privacy. But our case is primarily circumstantial any way you cut it, and if his brother is in charge of the local cops, you know he won’t touch it.” She brightened marginally. “But if Bobby will let us weave it in with the surfing contest, you know it’ll make a great piece of TV, Luce. We’ll call it THE X DAMES: GUILTY AS NOT CHARGED.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  BACK IN THE LAND OF MONEY

  The four women flew back to LA later the same day, upgraded to first class courtesy of Bobby Schamberg. They were uniformly depressed by their lost cause, but they also felt rich: Lucy and Teresa surprised to find themselves on the $2500 a week payroll for another week at least, Marcia holding a Schamberg Productions X Dames Weekly Winner check for twenty-five grand, Leslie on contract and off to Chile as soon as they got the first episode wrapped and in the can. Bobby had instructed Leslie to take all the footage they had and turn it into a ninety-minute movie. He said take no prisoners.

  “So tell me, Marcia,” Lucy said not long before they were due to land at LAX, “What were you and your sister up to the night before we left last week?”

  “Up to? What are you talking about?”

  “Come on, kid. I had to blow a horn in your ear to wake you up. You had a pair of guys in your apartment who looked like major lunatics. You had this weird chemistry set on your counter. You passed out on the plane. Your—”

  “All right, all right,” she said. “We were trying this shit my friend Jack—he was the major lunatic in my bed, and by the way he’s gay so we don’t even have a sexual relationship. Anyways he and his friend Theo smuggled this stuff back from the jungle in South America. It’s called yage, you snort it and it feels like the back of your head’s getting blown off, then you have this awesome visual and physical rush that lasts about half an hour, it’s like a total universal revelation, and then it knocks you on your ass for ten hours. But if you don’t cook and mix it right it’s insanely toxic.”

  “Yage?” said Teresa. “Sounds like a mindfuck to me.”

  “It was that and more,” Marcia said. “The last thing I remember seeing before I passed out was my dad, and he had turned into this giant worm.”

  “I can see that,” Lucy said, then quickly added, “Just kidding,” but Marcia laughed.

  “I know, I know, he’s kind of a sleaze,” she said. “But he’s all right, really. He’s just had it too easy all his life, and then when he started getting old and realized he had gotten exactly nowhere and done pretty much nothing, he dumped my mom and got himself a candy girl. Someone who would be impressed by his bullshit and his bad art, unlike my mom and sister and me. That’s why he looked like a worm to me.”

  “Well, now you can go to art school without hitting on him.”

  “I know. I’m thinking of moving to New York, Lucy,” she announced. “To go to Pratt.”

  “It’s not in Manhattan you know,” Lucy said. “It’s in the depths of Brooklyn.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Marcia replied. “But I couldn’t afford Manhattan anyways. Plus I can get to the waves on Long Island easier from Brooklyn.”

  “You’re right about that,” Lucy said. “With tuition and all, that twenty-five grand’ll buy you a couple of months in Manhattan if you’re cheap. And I hear the Hamptons and the whole south shore get real
ly good in hurricane season. They say even Coney Island’s rideable, and you can get there on the D train. But hey, I’ll be in the same leaky boat if I can’t get my loft back. I’m just a freelancer, kiddo, and I won’t be working this X Dames deal much longer, I’m afraid.”

  “I can’t believe no one knows who moved into your place,” Leslie said. “That’s so bizarre.”

  “Actually I suspect the landlord knows exactly who’s in there,” Lucy said. “I’d be willing to bet he hired someone on the sly to do this, and even if he isn’t behind it, if he’s already met this woman, whoever she is, I’m going to have a hell of a time getting the place back because I’m sure he’ll cut some kind of deal with her, jack the rent up and give her the lease he never gave me. This guy is really a pain. I’ve been in court with him pretty much ever since I moved in. But I’ve got my boyfriend working on getting this mystery impostor out of there, and he’s pretty good at stuff like that.” Except that he was not in New York working on anything. He was in Florida rooting around in the mud after buried treasure.

  As soon as they landed she turned on her cell phone and discovered that Harold had called three times that very day. She checked the messages. “Hey Luce tried to reach you at the hotel but you were checked out. What’s up? I’ve got news.” “Luce, call me when you get this.” “Where the hell are you, Lucy?”

  She called from the plane as soon as they said it was OK. His was busy. She left him a voicemail. “Harry, I just got back. I’m here in LA. Lots of news. Call my cell.”

  He called while they waited for the baggage. “Hey Luce, how are you? How come you’re back so soon?”

  “I’m fine, treasure man. I mean considering that one of the surfer girls got murdered and I know it but can’t prove it. But enough about me. How’d it go?”

  “Murdered! What the hell are you talking about, Lucy? You got yourself into another situation, didn’t you, you crazy dame!”

  “Kind of. Officially this woman drowned, but there were drugs involved. Look, it’s a complicated tale. I’ll tell you the whole damn story when I see you. But right now I’m fine and I want to know how your deal went.”

  “It went—strangely.”

  “Strangely? What does that mean? Did you find your million, Harry?”

  “No, I mean not exactly, but—”

  “But what. Stop beating around the bush, Ipswich. What happened?”

  “How come you’re back so soon? I thought you were going to be down there for a couple of weeks.”

  “Harry, come on, you’re playing with me. Our bags are coming down the belt and I gotta run.”

  “OK. Here’s my story: me and my crew—Clarence and Harvey, the two Jamaican dudes I told you about—spent like five hours every night digging, and then shoring up the stinking mud with these wooden pallets we kept stealing from the back end of the store above us. The whole operation was an insane and stupid idea, I told myself every five minutes every night, as I was wallowing through the mud wondering if an alligator might decide to move into our burrow and eat one of us for dinner. I should have listened to you. And then eventually we got to where the money was supposed to be according to my calculations. And it wasn’t there.”

  “So you didn’t find it. Well what did I tell you, Harry? Didn’t I—”

  “At that point I should have bailed, but like I said to Clarence and Harvey, I know these guys weren’t bullshitting me. I just know it. Plus I was already into this for around two thousand bucks so I wasn’t quite ready to give up. So they’re like OK, mon, we not have to stop now, which way you want to dig further? They were each making a hundred and fifty dollars a day off me so why would they want to quit? So I closed my eyes and waved my arm around and then, since I had no clue which way to go, I just pointed and said, there. So we all went at it again, did another five feet, and there it was, lo and behold, a black plastic bag.”

  “So you found it?! You found the million dollars? Harry, I’m—”

  “Not exactly. See, the money was actually in five separate smaller bags inside the one big bag. And unfortunately the drug-dealing dolts didn’t seal them very well, so—” he stopped. “Four of the seals had been breached and the money had rotted away or been eaten by bugs, worms, whatever. It was all confetti and dirt. But,” he stopped again, and waited, for dramatic emphasis.

  “But what, Harry—that one’s mine,” she said to Marcia, pointing at a suitcase. “Could you grab it? Thanks.”

  “So I didn’t get a million bucks but we did get the one bag that didn’t leak—and it had two hundred grand in twenties in it.”

  “You got two hundred thousand dollars? Harry, that is amazing. Terry, he found the money!”

  “The doper’s buried million? I don’t—”

  “Most of it was rotten but he got two hundred thousand. Jesus, Harold, that is so amazing. I can’t—”

  “Actually I only have one-fifty because I gave Clarence and Harvey twenty-five thousand each.”

  “Is that what you agreed on?”

  “No, I had told them ten per cent but when we actually got the money, it seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “Cool, Harry. Generosity is always cool.”

  “Yeah. And a hundred fifty grand ain’t bad for a week’s work, is it?”

  “No it isn’t, amigo. But it won’t be enough to buy a loft if I can’t get back into mine, will it?”

  “God, that’s right! Did you figure out who’s in there, Luce?”

  “I was hoping you were on the case, rich guy.”

  “I’m flying back day after tomorrow. I gotta wrap up some other business.”

  “I’ll probably be out of here tomorrow myself. We’ve got some stuff to take care of, and I have to decide if I want to go to Chile to work on the show again—I’m feeling a little uneasy after what happened in Sayulita, to say the least—but first things first, and I really need to get back there and see about my loft.”

  “You do indeed, or Lascovich will be all over it. If he isn’t already.”

  “He’s been out of town I heard but I think he was due back today.”

  “You’d better get a move on, Luce. Well, listen, I gotta talk to this guy about alligators for my article. A hundred and a half is pretty fat but it ain’t enough to retire on. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

  “Sounds good Harry. Love you.”

  “Love you, Luce. Hey, listen, I’ll call my neighbor Antonio downstairs and tell him to let you into my place if you get there before me and the loft situation is still dicey. He’s in 3C.”

  “Cool, Harry. Tell him elevenish tomorrow night. See you soon.” She shut the phone. “Teresa, Harry found his money! He actually found two hundred thousand dollars buried under a Walmart in the middle of a swamp in Florida!”

  “Wow!” said Teresa. “That is amazing. We’re all getting rich.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” Leslie said.

  “Yeah, what’s this money story?” Marcia chimed in.

  Lucy told the story of Harry’s found dope money en route from LAX to Venice in Leslie’s black Lexus SUV. As she dropped off Teresa, and then Lucy and Marcia, Leslie said she’d have a rough cut of X Dames Episode One ready to show them the next morning, rushed because she was heading down to Chile to start shooting the snowboarding episode in two days. She also said, just before driving off, that she hoped they’d stay on the show in spite of what she called “Bobby’s bad karma.”

  Marcia fetched Claud from her apartment, and after saying goodbye Lucy walked him over to Teresa’s place. They’d planned to hit the beach together to watch the sun go down. The door of Teresa’s bungalow was open when Lucy got there. She went up and called in. “Hey Ter.”

  “I’m quitting,” Teresa said, as Lucy walked in.

  “Quitting what?” Lucy said.

  “The stupid X Dames, Luce.” She looked slightly stunned but immensely happy as she waved a letter of some sort at Lucy. “Pardon my goof-ball grin, Lucy, but I am in a st
ate of simultaneous grace and shock. Luce, I got a McClellan.”

  “A McClellan? That’s great I think, but what are you talking about? What’s a McClellan?”

  “The McClellan Fund. They give these grants in all kinds of different fields. I got one for art criticism. I don’t even know who nominated me. It was probably Paxton, but they’re not allowed to tell me. In any case they’re going to pay me fifty thousand a year for the next five years. I can finish my book and do another one without even having to hustle. I am so made I can’t even believe it.”

  “Jesus, Terry, that is phenomenal! Congratulations. God, is it totally payday or what?” They hugged. “Everybody must get rich, as Bob Dylan might sing it. That’s fantastic! God damn! Plus you just made my decision way easier, kiddo.”

  “What decision is that, Luce?”

  “Terry, you know the only reason I was even considering going on with this X Dames fiasco was you. The vibe was kind of ugly already and with what happened to Sandra I can’t see working anywhere near that Judy, or Dario, again. I can’t believe they’ll even let Bobby keep us on if we don’t quit. And I’d much rather quit than get fired, know what I mean? So: if you’re off the show then I’m off too, so fast Bobby’s not even gonna remember my name.”

  “Ha,” said Terry triumphantly. “Let’s let him pay us another week’s salary, then we bail. Payday should be tomorrow.”

  “Sounds good. So when do you get the free money?”

  “It says the first payment will be in September, twenty-five grand, then twenty-five more every six months for five years. And they pay the taxes.”

  “Amazing. I guess this calls for a celebration, Teresa MacDonald. What’s the most expensive restaurant in LA these days?”

  “I don’t know but I bet Leslie does. Let’s call her. And get Marcia, too. We’ll have a little reunion.”

  Leslie was too busy editing and Marcia didn’t want to go out that night so they moved the party to brunch the next day at Michael’s Restaurant in Santa Monica.