by K C Ames
“He doesn’t care. He’s afraid that even though he’s lived here for decades that he’s still seen as a foreigner, so he’ll get railroaded for the murder, and he knows the town is gossiping about it, so he needs to get away from it. So he’s going to Holland to visit his daughter and grandkids. But he wanted me to know what was going on, since he knows his leaving now will put the Gossip Brigade into overdrive,” Dana said.
“Do you think he could be the murderer?” Courtney asked.
“No way,” Dana said.
Benny agreed.
They drank their wine and ate their dinner, but the awkwardness of her conversation with Ike made Dana feel a great sense of relief when they were back in Benny’s truck, headed back to Casa Verde.
Twenty-Six
Dana had been checking her phone for a message from Bucky Moreland obsessively. She did so during dinner at Ike’s Oceanview Restaurant the previous night—the checking doubled after her bizarre chat with Ike in his office.
Benny had dropped Dana and Courtney at Casa Verde then headed to his beach house on the other side of town.
Dana and Courtney went to bed soon after. But even after hitting the hay, Dana was awakened a few times, and figured since she was awake, she would check her phone for a message from Bucky, much to the chagrin of Wally, who seemed to be bothered by the blue hue of the phone illuminating the darkness of the bedroom.
The next morning, Dana woke with a headache that she blamed on the wine and banana daiquiris and not on the constant staring into her phone’s screen.
Still nada from Bucky Moreland. She figured it wouldn’t be easy to track someone down from a single fuzzy phone picture taken from a distance.
Courtney came down as Dana was having a bowl of dry cereal and a cup of coffee. “Good morning.”
Courtney grunted and poured herself some coffee. Dana smiled. Ever since they were college roommates, Courtney had never been a morning person.
After showering and getting dressed, Dana headed downstairs to figure out what to do for the day. There had been no word from Bucky or the police about the investigation, which meant her bookstore would be shuttered for another day.
Dana and Courtney decided that today would be about fun. The gloom and doom of Barry Shy’s death and the limbo status of her bookstore was wearing them down, and unless Bucky found something good, there wasn’t much they could do about it anyway.
Dana was trying to convince Courtney to go on a zip line tour of the jungle. It was a blast to be clipped onto a cable as your body glided above the treetops through the jungle.
“I don’t know, sounds like a roller coaster ride without the carts, and you know I don’t like roller coaster rides.”
Before Dana could reply, her phone buzzed. She looked down. “It’s Bucky,” she said excitedly. She held the phone tight in her hand as she read his message. “I need to get on my laptop,” Dana said as she bolted towards the study.
She returned a couple minutes later holding her laptop in the open position in her hands. She was tapping on its keys as she walked to the living room, where she had left Courtney talking about her fear of roller coasters.
“Well? Did Bucky find anything good?” Courtney asked after a minute of silence.
Dana blinked a few times and nodded slowly before finally looking up from her laptop.
“That good, huh?” Courtney asked.
“Oh yeah, Bucky found it all, Chris Smith’s real name, what he does, where he lives.”
“Scary what these google-type guys can dig up about people,” Courtney said.
Dana shrugged. She is right, and they can come in handy when I’m doing the digging.
“So, share,” Courtney said.
Dana sat next to her on the couch. “His name isn’t Chris Smith, it’s Chris Longo. He’s from Detroit, not Chicago. And he’s not in the book business like he claimed. He’s a private investigator with a shady reputation.”
Benny arrived just as Dana was telling Courtney what Bucky had dug up. He sat down on the chair across from the sofa where Dana and Courtney were sitting. Dana repeated the latest about Chris Longo, the private investigator.
Benny didn’t seem as perplexed about the news as Dana and Courtney had been.
“Okay, that is interesting, but it doesn’t mean he’s here for nefarious reasons. He could just be here on vacation,” Benny said.
“Why give me a fake name and the cockamamie story about being a book collector?”
“I’ve been a lawyer for over ten years. I can’t count how many times I’ve encountered people using fake names, and that’s just the ones I figured out. Even if he’s up to no good down here, and believe me, Costa Rica attracts foreign shysters like a moth to a flame, it doesn’t mean it has anything to do with you, and certainly not that he had anything to do with Barry’s murder.”
“Gee, Benny, you should go to work for the Costa Rican tourism board,” Dana said, rolling her eyes.
“It’s the truth,” he said.
“Why are all the shady people coming down here to the tropics?” Courtney asked.
“Same reasons the honest people like to come down here: great weather, great people, beautiful country, a change of scenery.” Benny looked at Dana and smiled.
She looked down at her computer and began looking at more of the data she had received. “According to Bucky, this guy does have a shady reputation. He has been arrested for passing bad checks, stalking, and impersonating a police officer.”
“Jeez, how does this creep hold on to his PI license?” Courtney wondered out loud.
“So let’s look at this from the angle that he was here for you. Why would a private investigator from Detroit be interested in you?” Benny asked.
Dana mulled it over for a bit. “I have no idea. I’ve never even been to Detroit, but it’s too much of a coincidence that all of a sudden there is a private investigator snooping around my bookstore. A man that gives me a fake name and tells me he’s in the book business. I mean, come on, what are the odds he’s not here snooping for my books?” Dana asked.
After a moment of silence, Benny, who was seemingly lost in thought, said, “I agree. That would be one heck of a coincidence, especially after discovering those valuable books that were hidden away by your uncle.”
“Weren’t you working with a book expert to figure out the value of those books?” Courtney asked.
“Yes, Greyson Bay, but he’s in New York City, and he has a good reputation in the business. How would he get mixed up with a creepy PI from Detroit, and what would he have to gain anyway?”
“Maybe he hired this guy to steal your books,” Courtney said.
“No, not him, he runs a bookstore, he’s just a book nerd.”
“Or maybe he knows Chris Longo and he told him about it, you know, sort of off the cuff, this woman down in the middle of nowhere, Costa Rica is sitting on a fortune of books, so this crooked PI thinks to himself, interesting, and he books a flight down here to see if he can get his hands on those books,” Benny said.
“I could see that happening,” Dana said.
“Why don’t you ask Greyson if he knows Chris Longo?” Courtney asked.
Benny shifted in his chair like he had been poked with a hot iron.
“Let’s not act too hasty right now. If they are in cahoots, the last thing we need is tipping off Greyson Bay that we know about Chris Longo.”
“And how does Barry Shy fit into this all? The man is practically a hermit living in a cabin without electricity or indoor plumbing, I doubt he would know or be involved with someone like Chris Longo or even Greyson,” Dana said.
“That is true. If Chris Longo really was in town to steal your books, I can’t imagine Barry getting wrapped up in something like that, especially for money, because Barry might have been a lot of things, but no one would say he was a thief. The man loathed money and greed with a passion.”
They were quiet for what seemed to Dana was an hour, but it was just a moment
.
“So what now?” she asked, crossing her arms in frustration.
“Can you ask Bucky to look into Greyson Bay?” Benny asked.
Now it was Dana’s turn to shift in her seat like she had been poked with a hot iron. She liked Greyson Bay. He had been very helpful to her, and she felt it was wrong to snoop in on him. Chris Longo, her loudmouth stalker, was fair game in her book. But Greyson? It seemed he was a line in the sand that she didn’t want to cross.
“I don’t know, that seems a bit ‘backstabby.’”
“First we determine if he really has a good reputation in the book business like you’ve been told, then we can see if there is a connection between him and Chris Longo,” Benny said.
“Jeez, now I’m the one feeling like a sleazy private investigator,” Dana said, picking up her mobile phone to FaceTime Bucky.
Twenty-Seven
Dana woke up the next morning feeling anxious, so she meditated for twenty minutes. Her phone rang, snapping her out of her meditative trance. Although she usually put her phone in airplane mode when meditating, she wanted to keep the line open in case Bucky called. She excitedly picked up her phone, but it was not a call from Bucky’s 650 area code. It was Detective Gabriela Rojas. Dana tensed up a little. Even though she liked Rojas, it was unnerving to have the police call you during an investigation.
But this time, the detective had good news. She informed Dana that they were finally done working the crime scene, aka her bookstore, and Picado had authorized its release. She had her bookstore back.
Rojas informed Dana that of course Picado—being the way he was—could have released the scene a few days ago, but he refused even though the forensic investigators, the medical examiner, and his supervisor had signed off on it. Rojas had been pushing him to do the right thing, but for whatever reason he was pigheaded until finally relenting a few minutes before she called Dana.
“Why would he do that?” Dana asked Rojas.
“It’s just the way he is. I don’t know what happened to him along the way to make him so gruff. But finally today he knew he couldn’t justify it any longer to our boss. Your lawyer, Benny Campos, was calling every day, putting pressure on him.”
That made Dana smile. She had no idea Benny had been calling the police on her behalf.
“What a jerk,” Dana said with a snort.
“No comment,” Rojas told Dana with a snicker.
She thanked the detective and hung up, then she screamed out for Courtney, who came bolting from her room. “What’s going on?” she asked, worried.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to freak you out, it’s just that I’m so excited. That was Detective Rojas on the phone. They’re done with my bookstore. It’s all mine again.”
They squealed in excitement as they hugged and jumped up and down like tweens at a K-pop concert.
“Let me get my keys. I want to get in there right away,” Dana said.
“I haven’t even showered yet,” Courtney protested.
“Me either, just grab a T-shirt and put on a hat if you’re worried about your hair,” Dana said as she ran up the stairs.
Dana slapped on some light makeup, then she put her hair in a low ponytail. She grabbed her San Francisco Giants baseball hat and put her ponytail through the back opening of the cap. She put on a T-shirt, slipped into khaki shorts and flip-flops, and in less than five minutes she was downstairs, ready and chomping at the bit to go.
“You coming?” she shouted towards the guest room from downstairs. She was standing by the front door, tapping her foot impatiently.
“Just a sec,” Courtney yelled from the other side of the closed door.
Fifteen minutes after hanging up the phone with Detective Rojas, Dana pulled up to Ark Row and parked in front of her store.
It was a surreal experience to be standing there. It was still on the early side of the morning, but the air was already thick and wet from the tropical humidity. She had been living there long enough to know it was going to be another scorcher of a day in the tropics.
As she parked, a nice cooling breeze from the Pacific Ocean blew past them. It felt good to Dana’s skin. Those little bursts of wind from the Pacific felt wonderful on a hot, sticky day.
They got out of the jeep and Dana looked up at her bookstore’s signage that swayed in the wind. Her eyes welled up looking at it—Mariposa Books.
For the first time in a week, there wasn’t yellow crime scene tape everywhere.
Courtney squeezed her hand. “Come on, let’s go check out your bookstore, I’ve been dying to see it… oh, poor choice of words, sorry.”
The looked at each other for a moment and then burst out laughing. “We shouldn’t laugh; it’s a bit macabre. But that was the worst choice of words you could have used.” They burst out laughing again.
Once they regained their composure, they walked up to the front door. Dana unlocked the metal curtain that rolled down to protect the front door from thieves. Little good that did, when they just busted in from the back, Dana thought as she undid the lock and rolled the metal curtain up as it clanked loudly.
She was nervous to go inside for the first time since she found Barry Shy’s lifeless body sprawled out on her floor.
Big Mike popped out of his surf shop in his usual attire of longboard shorts and a white sleeveless T-shirt.
“Hey you two, pura vida,” he shouted as he walked over towards Dana and Courtney.
“Hey, Big Mike. The police finally said it was okay to go inside.”
“Yeah, man, I saw Freddy remove the police tape this morning. He said Picado gave the okay to release the crime scene, then I saw you pull in with Big Red and I was like booya, Dana’s back.”
“I’m back all right. I just need to figure out when I can open for business.”
“Open up right away. Shut up the naysayers.”
“Naysayers? Who’s naysaying?”
Big Mike cringed like he just told Virginia that there actually wasn’t a Santa Claus.
He hemmed and hawed for a moment, shuffling his Keen sandals, tugging on his T-shirt.
“Mike, I’m a big girl, you can tell me,” Dana said, hands on her hips.
“She was a thick-skinned, nosy reporter for one of the biggest newspapers in California. Gossip bounces off her like a little kid in a bounce house,” Courtney added for good measure.
“It’s dumb, basically that like, you’re cursed or you just have rotten bad luck and people drop dead around you like flies in a zapper.”
“What have you heard about Barry’s death? Any rumors coming from the Gossip Brigade on that?”
“Same old bull, I’m afraid.” He stopped to think about it some more and he smiled. “Oh, there is one more thing that’s new and pretty juicy, I might add,” Big Mike said, grinning ear to ear.
“I’m afraid to ask,” Dana said.
“I’m not. Spill the tea, Big Mike,” Courtney said loudly.
Big Mike leaned closer and whispered into Dana’s ear so close that she could feel his breath in her ear.
She recoiled back and said, “Oh, that’s just disgusting and idiotic.”
“I warned you,” he said as he turned back to walk to his store. “Let me know if you need anything, like borrowing a cup of sugar. I’m your good neighbor,” Big Mike said, laughing at his own joke and going back to his surf shop.
“You’re a good guy, Big Mike,” Dana said as he walked away.
“Don’t leave me hanging. What did he tell you?” Courtney asked.
“That Barry and I had a thing, and one thing led to another and he winds up dead. A lovers’ quarrel, I guess,” Dana said, shaking her head.
“Oh, gross.”
“I wholeheartedly agree. I’m not going to let the town gossip wreck this moment,” Dana said, dangling the keys to the bookstore’s front door in the air.
She put the key into the door’s lock and turned. Click. Unlocked. She had probably heard that sound a million times in her lifetime, but on tha
t day it was music to her ears.
“I don’t want to think about that or the case right now, I just want to step inside my bookstore and get this bad boy ready for show time,” Dana said as she stepped inside.
Twenty-Eight
It was dark inside. Dana and Courtney walked in on their tiptoes. She felt like they were Nancy Drew and Bess Marvin on the trail to solve a mystery.
She turned on the lights and she half expected the place to be coated in thick dust and cobwebs, but that was her mind making things seem worse in her head.
It had been less than a week since she had last been inside her bookstore as she prepared for the big grand opening which had come and gone.
The bookstore was pretty much as she had left it on that day. She was also pleasantly surprised the police hadn’t ransacked the place.
“This looks pretty normal. I thought it would be tossed and covered in that fingerprint powder stuff,” Courtney said, breaking Dana from her thoughts.
“Me too,” Dana said, sounding relieved.
“So… where was… you know… the body.”
Dana realized she had avoided even looking in that direction. “Over there, behind the counter,” she pointed with her chin, shoving her hands deep into her short pockets.
Courtney slowly walked towards the counter. Dana followed her. They hesitantly peered over the counter, which Dana thought was foolish. It’s not like the police would have left Barry’s dead body lying where she had found him.
Courtney glanced at Dana, who shrugged.
“I’ll be honest, and not to get all ghoulish, but I thought maybe there would be blood stains that we would need to clean up.”
Dana looked closer just in case, but the floor looked clean, vacuumed, even, and she wondered if the police actually tidied up after themselves. She shook that thought from her mind. It was time to focus on the store.
Dana and Courtney spent a couple hours at the bookstore doing inventory and cleaning. Not that she thought the police would be stealing ten-dollar paperbacks. And even though Detective Picado had matched all books in her database to make sure none were missing, Dana went through the inventory herself on her laptop and she came to the same conclusion as Picado: every book was accounted for.