by K C Ames
“So this could take a long time to solve, especially if Picado is commuting from two hours away,” Dana said.
“You think you can figure things out, don’t you?” Courtney asked.
“No, but maybe I can help by just keeping my eyes and ears open. There is a murderer on the loose out there, after all.”
“That’s why Freddy has been in town every day,” Benny said.
“But he’s just hanging around the crime scene, AKA my darn bookstore.”
“I see where you’re going with this… solve this, and you can open your bookstore.”
“Heavens to Betsy, what a great idea, Courtney.”
Benny and Courtney both rolled their eyes and shook their heads.
“Detective Picado just told you to butt out. I think you should butt out,” Benny said.
“You must not know her well enough yet. Anyone tells her she can’t do something and she doubles down,” Courtney said, grinning.
“I do, that’s why I’m worried,” Benny replied.
Twenty
Dana and Benny weren’t seeing eye to eye about trying to find out why Barry Shy was in her bookstore. Finding the answer to that mystery might solve the murder. But Benny saw it as just snooping, since he believed strongly that those were matters that should be left to the police.
She knew he had to be careful over his legal career, even though he insisted his concern was on her meddling into Detective Picado’s investigation. She could be put away for preventive detention for interfering with police matters.
Courtney was downright terrified.
“We go for a drink at the Que Vista and ask the ladies of the Gossip Brigade some questions about what they might have heard or seen about Barry Shy’s case, and that’s it,” Dana said.
“Why do you think that raucous group of canasta-playing old biddies would know anything worth knowing?” Courtney was not a fan of the Gossip Brigade. But the group of widows had grown on Dana. Yes, they were loud and brash and nosey, but the four longtime friends had thirty decades of living experience between them. The youngest of the group, Doña Chilla, was seventy-seven years old. Dana imagined you stopped caring about what people thought about you or holding back your tongue at that age. It was a liberating thought for Dana.
“It’s a small town. A village, really, and those four ladies know everyone in a one-hundred-mile radius. They even knew Detective Picado when he was a child growing up in Liberia. So even that sourpuss shows reverence towards them, and I’ve seen him playing bridge with them. I doubt he does that as a sense of civic duty. He knows where to get information from, and they’re a great source for information about the comings and goings around here.”
Courtney shrugged. Benny added his own shrug, not being as convinced in the investigative powers of the Gossip Brigade.
The three of them walked into the Qué Vista restaurant ten minutes later.
The Gossip Brigade was already there, finishing their breakfast. Perfect timing, Dana thought, since they hadn’t gotten into card mode.
The entire gang was there. The Gossip Brigade was made up of four old ladies that loved to play chess, canasta, and more than anything else, they loved to gossip and were shamelessly nosey, asking questions that would make the person on the receiving end of their queries blush.
Three of the old biddies had been friends since childhood. The newcomer joined the group in the 1960s.
They knew everyone in the province and loved to name-drop whenever they could. Their favorite topic was talking about that incorrigible little rascal back in the old neighborhood that so happened to have grown up to become the president of Costa Rica.
The way they talked about the president, they seemed to think he was still the same snot-nosed kid running around barefoot in the park.
“I didn’t trust him back then, I don’t trust him now,” one would say as the others vehemently nodded in agreement.
If anyone had heard rumors or innuendos as to what happened to Barry Shy, it would be the Gossip Brigade.
Dana, Courtney, and Benny walked in single file. Dana smiled. She could hear the Gossip Brigade bickering all the way out in the parking lot.
“Sit anywhere you’d like,” Jorge, the waiter, said to the group as they walked inside as he balanced two plates of eggs and gallo pinto and a plate of fruit.
“We’re just here for your delicious Bloody Mary so we’ll sit at the bar,” Dana said as Jorge smiled and hurried away with the plates of food.
Dana looked over at the table of the Gossip Brigade who were digesting their breakfast as they prepared for what would be a boisterous game of canasta.
As the trio approached the group, Dana noticed they were cleaning up the table of all its free condiments packets and bread rolls, which they shoved into their oversized purses. Dana couldn’t help but smile. They lived without shame or filters, and she actually admired that.
“Hello, ladies,” Dana said.
The ladies all turned to look up at Dana with eyes squinting, faces scrunched up, working hard to get their vision into focus. “Oh, hello Dana,” Doña Marta said.
“Who’s your pretty friend?” asked Doña Amada, the short and pudgy leader of the brigade.
Dana opened her mouth to respond, but Doña Chilla interrupted her. “That’s Dana’s friend from San Francisco. She was down here a few months ago.” Dana was impressed with her memory. “Your name is Courtney, right, dear?”
“That’s right,” Courtney said, smiling.
Dana hoped her memory was that sharp when she was in her late seventies.
“You have an amazing memory,” Dana said to Doña Chilla with a grin. “Courtney stayed with me when I first moved down here, but she went back home to San Francisco a few months ago and now she’s back for another visit.”
“How are you holding up, dear? You are going through a lot of awful things since moving to town,” Doña Marta said.
And we’re off and running, Dana thought.
“Oh, I’m fine. Thanks for asking. But I am a bit anxious, since I was supposed to have opened my bookstore already but the police won’t let me.”
“That Juan Picado has always been insufferable,” Doña Amada said as she removed a deck of cards from her purse.
“Ever since we was a little boy he’s been a handful,” Doña Marta added.
“Can’t say I disagree. He has me shut me down, indefinitely.”
“That Picado, always walking around like he has a pebble in his shoe. He thinks he’s Tarzan’s mother and he isn’t even Cheetah’s mom,” said Doña Luz, the comedian of the group, as the rest of the brigade broke out in a boisterous chorus of laughter.
Dana joined them in laughter. Benny and Courtney stood there with thin grins on their faces.
“You’re terrible,” Doña Chilla said. Although she was the youngest one of the group, her hands and face had enough wrinkles to give a Shar-Pei a run for its money. Dana figured a lifetime spent at the family coffee farm under the blazing tropical sun was the likely culprit.
She was the sweet one of the group. A bit on the shy side in comparison to the rest of the brigade.
Time to start pumping the well for information, Dana thought. “So, what have you ladies heard through the grapevine?”
“Why do you think we would know anything about that?” Doña Marta said, sounding insulted. All that was missing was for her to clutch at her pearls.
“Oh, stop your babe in the woods routine, Marta, you’re the biggest gossip of the group,” Doña Amada barked. She had a low, wheezing sound to her voice after sixty years puffing on cigarettes.
Dana, Benny, and Courtney stood there for a few seconds in awkward silence. “I just pay attention to things, that’s all,” Doña Marta replied, focusing her attention on the deck of cards on the table.
“And you get all the best dirt in the village,” Doña Luz said, laughing so hard she started to cough.
“Are you all right, Doña Luz?” Benny asked.
“She needs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from you,” Doña Amada said, cackling.
Benny turned beet red. Dana blushed too, and she looked over at Courtney, who mouthed Wow to her.
“Amada, you are so crude,” Doña Luz snapped angrily.
Dana was relieved when the waiter interrupted and began bussing the table. As soon as he was gone with the stack of dirty dishes, Doña Amada began to set up for their card game.
“Any idea why Barry Shy would have broken into my bookstore?” Dana said, trying to steer the conversation back towards something that might shed more light about what happened.
“Oh, he was a weirdo,” Doña Amada said.
“Nothing he did would surprise me,” Doña Luz added.
“They’ll probably find dead bodies buried out in his land,” Doña Marta added.
“You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” Doña Chilla said, giving herself the sign of the cross.
Dana was having a hard time keeping up.
“Come on, Marta, tell them what you told us yesterday so we can get this game started, ” Doña Amada said, sounding annoyed at Dana’s snooping and giving her a sideways glance before turning her full attention back to setting up for the game.
“Well…” Doña Marta said, looking around as if to make sure no one was eavesdropping. She crooked her arthritically misshapen index finger to beckon Dana to come closer, which she did.
Doña Marta said, in almost a whisper, “I overheard that pretty policewoman talking on her phone outside of Mindy’s coffee shop, and she was asking whomever she was talking to for information on Ike, since there was some sort of feud between those two.”
“Ike Van de Berg?” Dana asked incredulously.
“That’s the only Ike around here,” Doña Amada butted in.
Ike Van de Berg was a Dutchman who had moved to Costa Rica in the seventies and came to Mariposa Beach in the eighties to open his restaurant. The Oceanview Restaurant was about a ten-minute drive up the mountain from Mariposa Beach. The restaurant was perched on the headland above the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The restaurant was built in a European neo-classical style not commonly seen in Costa Rica, but Ike had explained to Dana that he wanted his restaurant to have the look and feel of ancient Greek architecture.
Dana had learned that he had even named his restaurant Mount Olympus, but after a year he changed it to the more descriptive and marketable Oceanview.
It was the only fine dining restaurant in a fifteen-mile radius from Mariposa Beach where the waiters wore thin black neckties. Ike used to prohibit the use of T-shirts and shorts from his guests, but having a restaurant in midst of beach country, he relented a few years ago, although Dana would imagine eating there in shorts would make you feel out of place.
She and Courtney had dinner there once when she first moved down to Mariposa Beach. The restaurant’s architecture and views were stunning. The service was top-notch. But the food was a bit bland and boring. Ike seemed like an intense man, and he had a reputation for being tough on his restaurant staff, but he was nice to her.
He was a big man with a shaved head. He was in his late sixties. His English and Spanish were excellent, but he couldn’t lose his Dutch accent even after living for decades in Costa Rica.
She could see him losing his top in a road-rage type deal, but she couldn’t imagine he would have killed anyone, Barry Shy included.
Dana, Benny, and Courtney were still standing there when Doña Amada was done setting up for their game of canasta, so she shooed them away with a wave of the hand. “Game time, no more gossip,” she said dismissively, so Dana, Benny, and Courtney made their way to the bar for their Bloody Marys.
The bar was on the other end of the restaurant from where the Gossip Brigade were sitting so they could discuss what they had just learned without having to worry about the ladies eavesdropping, although the group seemed so enthralled with their card game that they probably didn’t care what they were talking about for once.
Jorge was doing double-duty as a waiter and bartender.
“You’re doing it all this morning, Jorge,” Dana said with a smile.
“The bartender doesn’t come until the afternoon,” Jorge said making Dana feel like a lush although she knew he didn’t mean anything by it.
“Three Bloody Marys, extra green olives for me, please,” Dana said.
“And coffee, please,” Courtney added as Jorge began to turn away to make the drinks.
“Coming right up,” he said.
As Jorge prepared the drinks another waiter brought over a black thermal coffee carafe along with three cups, much to the delight of Courtney.
“I need, I need, I need,” she said jokingly as she picked up the carafe and poured herself a cup.
“I can’t imagine Ike Van de Berg would be involved with murder,” Dana said.
“Who is he?” Courtney asked sipping coffee.
“You met him once when we went to his Oceanview Restaurant,” Dana explained.
“Oh, yeah, stocky bald Dutch guy, right?” Courtney asked.
“That’s him.”
“He’s going for that Daddy Warbucks look,” Courtney said.
Dana and Benny laughed at Courtney’s comparison, which wasn’t too far off.
“He’s been living in Costa Rica for over forty years,” Benny said. “And I agree, I can’t imagine he would get mixed up in something like murder.”
“Sounds like they had a feud, though,” Courtney said.
Benny laughed. “If having a feud with Barry Shy makes you a prime suspect, then everyone in Mariposa Beach is a suspect, Dana and myself included.”
“I’m assuming the pretty policewoman Doña Marta mentioned was Gabriela Rojas,” Dana said. Benny agreed. So you think she’s pretty, Dana thought, feeling a twinge of jealousy. Whoa, don’t go there.
“Maybe there is more to their feud than meets the eye,” Dana said.
Jorge interrupted their brainstorming session with their Bloody Mary drinks.
“We might as well go talk to Ike,” Dana said.
“No way, he might be a murderer and you’re going to let him know we know that or are thinking that? We’ll be next on the chopping block,” Courtney said grabbing a celery stick from her Bloody Mary and snapping it in half for dramatic effect.
“I don’t think for a New York minute that Ike killed Barry,” Benny said.
“Besides, if we heard about it from the Gossip Brigade, that means just about everyone in town has heard it too, including Ike,” Dana said.
“Okay, but still, it’s not wise to kick a hornets’ nest—two hornets’ nests, actually: a possible killer, and Detective Picado if he finds outs we went out there to question one of his possible suspects.”
Dana shrugged.
“Preventive detention,” Courtney said, her voice shaky pointing at Dana with the celery stick. “Three months in jail without having to charge us with anything.”
“Well. Maybe I’ll just run into him. Start up a conversation about Barry Shy and my bookstore. See what Ike has to say,” Dana said.
Benny and Courtney exchanged worried glances.
“CANASTA!” one of the old ladies from the Gossip Brigade shouted as they heard Doña Amada protest the results and accuse Doña Luz of cheating.
Twenty-One
“Hey, hon, the usual?” Mindy asked Dana as soon as she set foot inside the coffee shop before the door even closed behind her.
There was an attractive young couple decked out in swimwear and flip-flops, waiting for their order. They both turned as if to see who was the regular that had just walked in a la Norm Peterson in Cheers. The handsome couple smiled, and Dana blushed.
“I guess I’m getting way too boring and predictable.”
Mindy laughed. “An everything bagel with mango cream cheese and large latte, coming right up.”
Mindy disappeared to the back to work on the orders as Dana chatted with the young couple for about a minute.
/> They were boyfriend and girlfriend from Australia, which made Dana wonder why they would travel halfway across the globe to the Guanacaste Province when they had the Gold Coast in their backyard.
Costa Rica was a beautiful country with breathtaking beaches, and its proximity to the US was a nice perk. But, she thought, I don’t think I would fly over eight thousand miles over the Pacific Ocean to get here if I had the Great Barrier Reef in my home turf. Grass is greener, she figured.
Dana learned that the young couple was actually staying down by Samara, which was about a twenty-minute drive down the coast, but they had heard great things about Mindy’s food, so they drove up in their rental car to check it out.
Mindy re-emerged from the kitchen with the couple’s order.
They said their goodbyes as they left with half a dozen of Mindy’s soft and moist bagels—a mix of sesame and onion bagels—and a pint of her strawberry cream cheese.
Tourists from within a twenty-mile radius would make the trek to Mindy’s Coffee and Bagels. And in the mornings, the lines sometimes snaked out the door.
Big Mike had joked the other day that Mindy’s place was beating out the calm, bright-blue water and white-sand beach as the main tourist draw to Mariposa Beach.
Dana felt a little jealous. No one would make that long of a haul for a used book. Moot point anyway, since her bookstore remained a crime scene.
Big Mike was keen on saying that Mindy got tourists to town, and once they were full and happy, they perused other stores in town.
“Cute couple,” Mindy said to Dana as she watched them go out to the parking lot and get into a Suzuki convertible.
“They have never been to Mariposa Beach. They’re staying in the more popular surfer beach town, but they drove up here just for your bagels and cream cheese. Big Mike was right, you’re like our main tourist attraction,” Dana said, smiling.
Mindy laughed, then added, “Well, I’m not so sure about that. I saw them in town a couple days ago.”
“Are you sure? They said they had never been here before.”