by K C Ames
“He looks like Channing Tatum and she looks like Gisele Bündchen. Hard to mistake them, so yes, I’m sure it was them,” Mindy said, laughing.
Dana looked out the window. There was a cloud of dust and dirt left behind as they drove away.
“Oh, honey, you have that Columbo look to you. It’s no big deal, all the beach communities up and down the coast look pretty much the same, so I’m sure they just forgot. It’s quite common with the off the beaten path beach town hopping tourists,” Mindy explained.
“They came for your bagels and cream cheese, so I would think they would remember that,” Dana said.
“Well, I think there is another tourist you should be more worried about,” Mindy said.
“Really, who?” Dana’s eyebrows arched as she put her elbows on the counter and leaned forward to get closer to Mindy.
“Your book-loving loudmouth.”
Dana knew she meant Chris Smith from Chicago.
“So what did he want?”
“He was like Mr. Twenty Questions about you. Made me very uncomfortable.”
“What kind of questions?”
“About your bookstore. When was it going to open. If you come here a lot. And if you lived near here. He tried to disguise the questions as harmless chitchat, but he was getting way too personal and specific about things.”
“Example?”
“Well,” Mindy stopped to think for a moment, “he didn’t come out and ask me where you lived, but he said it must be nice for you to live so close to the bookstore, like he was fishing, so I lied and told him I don’t know where you live. When I asked him why he wanted to know that, he got all sheepish and muttered he was curious, and then he hightailed it out of here. It was weird. Creepy.”
“He has been hanging around for days now trying to get into my bookstore. At first it was just annoying because he’s so pushy and rude, but now, you’re right, it’s darn creepy.”
“You think he’s like obsessed with you and is like one of those stalkers?”
“I don’t know about that. He seems to be obsessed with my books, not me.”
Dana saw by Mindy’s reaction that the same idea had just dinged in her head too.
“Obsessed enough to break into my bookstore, since I wouldn’t let him in.”
Mindy nodded and wrapped her arms around her body, feeling a chill down her spine, and it wasn’t because of the air conditioner blasting away.
“You need to report him to the police,” Mindy said.
Dana nodded in agreement.
Dana thanked Mindy for having her back and made her way down to the beach, where Courtney was waiting for her.
Courtney had set up a nice spot underneath a fallen palm that offered a nice shade. She had set up the two portable lawn chairs she had brought along and a large beach towel next to the chair, where she had put her bags and a big jug of ice water that prevented the towel from being stolen by the wind.
“Hey, you,” Dana said as she sat down on the empty chair next to Courtney, “nice spot.”
“Yeah, this is perfect for the long haul.”
After everything that had been going on, they decided to just chill for a couple hours on the beach.
“You were gone awhile. Mindy’s was busy?”
“Not really, but I talked with her for a bit. Get this…”
Dana told Courtney what Mindy had shared about the loudmouth and the Australian couple that seemed to have lied about having been to Mariposa Beach before.
Courtney didn’t seem too worried about the Australians, but she turned ashen when Dana told her all about the loudmouth asking Mindy about her and trying to fish the location of her home out of her.
“You’re right, creepy as heck,” Courtney said.
Dana nodded in agreement.
“It seems he has been eager to get into my bookstore since day one, and lo and behold, my bookstore is broken into and Barry winds up dead.”
“So you think he was in cahoots with Barry Shy to break into your store?”
“I don’t know what to think about those two, but it seems too much of a coincidence. It’s something we need to follow up on.”
“Excuse me? We? You mean it’s something for the police to follow up with.”
“I guess you’re right. But I don’t even think they’re in town right now.”
“Don’t care. Call them. I’m sure they’ll come down,” Courtney said, sounding worried.
Dana mulled it over.
“Dana?”
“What? I’ll call the police, but I can check up on a couple of things to figure out what’s up with Chris Smith from Chicago.”
Courtney looked at her with an exasperated expression. “That Picado guy will hit the roof if he finds out that this guy has been acting suspicious about your bookstore and you didn’t tell him and you started to snoop around him,” Courtney warned.
“Maybe he has nothing to do with anything and he’s just one of those annoying types of people that roam the earth in spades. They do exist, you know. So I don’t want to jam up anyone with the likes of Picado for no reason.”
“To be honest, girl, that’s the police’s job to figure out if something is important or not.”
Dana shrugged. She knew Courtney was right, but that wasn’t going to stop her from looking a bit closer into the loudmouth to see if he had anything to do with the break-in and murder in her bookstore.
Courtney crossed her arms and sighed. “That shrug you just gave me and your silence speak loudly, you know that, right?”
Dana smiled. “You know me so well.”
Courtney sighed even louder. “Pass me a bagel.”
“Tell you what,” Dana said, passing her the bagel, “I call Detective Rojas and let her know. That way they can look into it and I don’t have to deal with Picado.”
“That’s all I ask that you get the police involved,” Courtney said, unwrapping the bagel and spreading mango cream cheese on it.
“After I call her, we can check on a couple things.”
“I thought we were just hanging out at the beach.”
“Hello,” Dana said, waving her hands in the air, “we’re hanging out at the beach.”
“May you get sand in your bagel,” Courtney said, taking a bite of her own bagel as Dana laughed.
“Meany.”
Twenty-Two
After an hour at the beach, Dana and Courtney headed back to Casa Verde, where they plopped on the lounge chairs in the veranda.
Courtney was on her laptop, checking up on work emails. Dana had her notebook laid out in front of her and was writing her thoughts out about Ike, Barry Shy, the Australian couple, and her loudmouth. As she wrote, Wally decided he wanted attention, so he began purring and rubbing up against her, and every time she tried to write on her notebook, Wally would bat at the pen with his right paw like it was a butterfly.
After a minute or two of this, an exasperated Dana would plead for Wally to stop and be a good kitty. He would give her a sideway glance as if to say How dare you speak to me in that tone, and as soon as she put the pen to paper, Wally was on it like white on rice.
Courtney laughed. “I told you that cat was trouble the day he waltzed in here like he owned the place.”
“I know how to distract him,” Dana said. She got up and Wally plopped on Dana’s notebook and stretched out on it. He looked at her as if to say To the victor go the spoils.
Dana went downstairs to the kitchen. She had a plastic container of Wally’s favorite food: a can of Sardimar tuna Dana mixed with leftover rice and ground beef. As soon as she pried the plastic lid off and it made that telltale sound, she heard Wally running downstairs like the veranda was on fire. She could hear Courtney laughing and yelling, “Go, kitty, go!”
“Here you go,” Dana said, putting down his dish. Wally began to stuff his face, having forgotten about her notebook and pen.
Dana went back upstairs and smiled proudly at Courtney.
“No fuss, no m
uss,” she said, wiping her hands together.
“That will teach him. Be a pain, get food,” Courtney said facetiously.
Dana rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders. She knew she was a softy when it came to animals—nothing new there.
“Okay,” Dana said, plopping back down on her chair, “where was I?”
“On your way to preventive detention,” Courtney said.
Dana ignored her.
“I need to find out why the police are looking at Ike. It can’t be just because Barry and Ike didn’t get along or because they had a dispute. Barry had disputes with everyone in town, myself included. So why do they like Ike?”
Courtney chuckled. “I get it, I like Ike,” Dana said, referring to the slogan used during Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower's presidential campaigns in the fifties.
Dana refocused on the notebook. “So what happened between them to spike the police’s interest in Ike?” Dana said. Although she said it out loud, she was mostly speaking to herself. Courtney knew as much, so she continued to tap away on her laptop, letting Dana do her thing.
“We also have my loudmouth, who has been a royal pain about wanting to see my books. So, my first question is, why? He gave me a cockamamie story about being a book lover and collector, but why would he think I would have anything of value when I told him over and over I would be selling used paperback beach reads?”
“Maybe he’s watched too much of American Pickers on the History Channel and thinks you’re unknowingly sitting on a treasure trove of books that he can buy for a buck and sell for a million bucks,” Courtney said, looking up from her laptop.
“There is no way…” Dana said, trailing off, lost in thought.
“No way what?”
“I can’t believe I forgot to tell you, but I was so busy with the store opening, and I didn’t know you were coming, but Benny and I did find a treasure trove of very valuable books hidden inside a secret compartment built into the floor of my den.”
“Books? How valuable could they be?”
“You’d be amazed, but first-edition books are very valuable and sought after, and Uncle Blake had a lot of them in his collection.”
“How valuable?”
“I really don’t know yet. But one of the books alone could be worth ten grand.”
“What?” Courtney said, almost falling from the chair.
“I told you, very valuable. But it’s not verified, so it could be worth nothing more than a dollar. I’ve been doing some preliminary research, talking with a book expert in New York. But we’re far from putting a definitive value to the collection.”
“Are those books in the bookstore?”
“Oh, no way. I have those books separate. Benny actually took them up to the city, where he put them in a climate-controlled storage unit until we can sit down and figure out their worth. But there is no way that Chris Smith could know about them.”
“It’s probably just a coincidence then and he just thinks you might have something of value from a collector’s perspective, which explains why he wants first crack at perusing your inventory,” Courtney said.
“Yes, that makes more sense. How could he know? Only I, Benny, and now you know about those books.”
“What about the book expert in New York?”
“Greyson?” Dana sounded surprised.
“Well, I don’t know his name, but you said you were talking with a book expert in New York. So he knows, right?”
“Yes, Greyson Bay, but he’s never even been to Costa Rica. And he’s standing to make a nice commission if I decide to sell these books, so the last thing he would want is the loudmouth to get his hands on those books.”
“Okay, and how does Barry Shy fit into all this?”
“That’s the big mystery, isn’t it? I can’t see him knowing or caring about first-edition books.”
“Maybe he and Chris Smith teamed up, thinking your pricey books were at the bookstore.”
“I can’t imagine Barry Shy knew the loudmouth, or that he would be in cahoots to rob me of my books. The man lived off the land in a shack without electricity or running water. He couldn’t care less about money.”
Dana was silent for a moment, thinking it over in her head.
“I can just ask the loudmouth if he knew Barry or if he had heard about my first editions.”
“No way, Dana. Don’t tell me you want to confront the loudmouth and ask him that.”
“No.”
“Good,” a relieved Courtney replied.
“That might freak him out. I don’t want to spook him so he runs back to Chicago. I think we need to run into him. By accident.” Dana added air quotes when she said accident.
“I meant good as in you’re not even going to get near this man. I mean, really, you want to run into a possible murderer and start asking him questions about a burglary and murder he might be behind?”
“Well, only in broad daylight with people around. Sure, why not?”
“Why not? Um, death, harm, preventive detention, should I go on?” Courtney said.
She sounded angry, which Dana understood. She was worried about what she might get them into, so she decided not to bounce this stuff off her anymore. But Dana was certain about one thing: it seemed that Chris Smith was always hanging around near the bookstore.
Twenty-Three
Dana and Courtney jumped into Big Red to head back to Mindy’s cafe. Courtney was not happy about it at all, but Dana figured if she wanted to run into the loudmouth, it would be near Ark Row and Mindy’s place.
Besides, she wanted to ask some questions about the loudmouth to Mindy.
“Hey ladies,” Mindy greeted the two warmly as they made their way inside.
They exchanged pleasantries, Dana waved at Mindy’s husband, Leo, who peeked out from the kitchen, and then they chitchatted for a moment.
Dana ordered another latte. Courtney ordered an iced café mocha.
“Cold coffee, yuck,” Dana said, grinning.
“It feels like we’re on the surface of the sun out there,” Courtney said defensively.
“What can I say, I always like my coffee senior citizen hot.”
All three of them shared a laugh.
While they waited for their coffee, Dana got into it.
“Mindy, I was wondering about my loudmouth stalker.”
Mindy visibly tensed up.
“What about him?”
“Have you seen him around town today?”
“No it’s been a quiet day. Are you worried about running into him?”
Courtney guffawed at the question. “She wants to run into him,” Courtney said.
Mindy looked confused as Dana gave Courtney a shush look.
“Oh, honey, you’re not planning on confronting him, are you?” Mindy asked sounding worried.
“I’m just trying to figure out why he’s so darn interested in my bookstore.”
“He told you he’s a book collector,” Courtney said.
“Who just happened to be in town after I found my uncle’s valuable book collection.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Courtney said.
“You think he broke into your bookstore?” Mindy asked, sounding as if it had just dawned on her.
“Timing seems to work.”
“But then that means he was working with Barry Shy, so then that would mean… he killed Barry?”
“I have no idea.”
Leo came from out of the back kitchen. “You need to call the police if you have any type of suspicion about this guy. Do not try to find him yourself or talk to him. For Pete’s sake, this guy could be very dangerous.”
“I agree with Leo, Dana. Let the police deal with this,” Mindy said.
“Thank you,” Courtney said, sounding relieved she wasn’t the only one thinking rationally.
Dana thanked Mindy and Leo for the coffees and their help and advice.
Once outside, Dana and Courtney climbed back into Big Red.
&
nbsp; Dana sat there quietly for a moment, both hands on the steering wheel.
“You want to go up there to the resort to find this Chris Smith, don’t you?”
Dana smiled. “Yep.” She fired up Big Red and took off towards the Tranquil Bay Resort.
It was about a ten-minute drive up to the luxurious jungle-resort.
The resort was the pride and joy of Gustavo Barca, a Venezuelan multimillionaire that was part of the great Venezuela exodus that had migrated to Costa Rica after years of political and economic unrest there.
Dana had loathed Barca since he wanted to buy Casa Verde to tear it down and make her land part of his private posh resort. He had bankrolled her cousin’s legal fees when he contested her uncle’s will.
Barca lost and slithered away in retreat—not that he gave up on his dream of unleashing bulldozers on Casa Verde, though. And he would always have a smug look on his face when she ran into him around the coast, and he always would do the same thing when he saw her: he would grin and rub his thumb and index finger together, giving her the international money gesture, and would follow that with the “call me” finger gesture.
Dana wanted to respond with the one-finger gesture that was also well known internationally, but she always took the high road and would just say nope.
So she avoided the resort like there was an outbreak of bubonic plague within its protective walls and posh interiors.
“Ugh, I hate coming here,” Dana said as she drove up to the front gate.
“Good, make a U-turn and let’s get out of here,” Courtney pleaded.
The uniformed security guard looked at the two of them and he raised the front gate security arm and waved them through.
“Nothing is going to happen in here with all the people staying here and the staff and security guards, don’t worry,” Dana said as she drove up to the front lobby area.
“Welcome, Doña Dana,” the red-shirted valet said, looking at Big Red.
“Hello,” Dana said, handing him the keys. She didn’t remember his name—it was only her third trip up the mountain to the resort—but she did recall how much the valet loved Big Red.