by K C Ames
“I fell,” Dana said, sounding embarrassed. But she didn’t care about her knee just then. She just looked down at Benny and smiled as his eyes fluttered a bit, and suddenly he was back. He tried to sit too fast, and he winced in pain, holding his head.
“Take it easy,” Dana said. “You got hit in the head pretty bad. You got knocked out, twice.”
“A lot of help I was in protecting you,” Benny said, sitting up. He ran his fingers through his head, finding two big lumps in the back. “Ouch,” he said.
Dana smiled. “It all worked out, so that doesn’t matter now.”
She felt proud, though. Her two protectors, Benny and Ramón, armed with a handgun and a machete, and she ended up saving them all, having started out with just a hiking sick for a weapon.
Epilogue
Two weeks later.
Mariposa Books, the first bookstore in the history of Mariposa Beach, finally opened for business. The grand opening was a few weeks behind schedule, but better late than never, Dana thought as she looked around at her jam-packed open house.
It seemed everyone from town had joined the celebration. The Gossip Brigade ladies were there, whispering and gossiping about who knows what.
Big Mike was perusing the travel section, looking through The Surfer's Guide to Costa Rica as he munched on one of Mindy’s banana walnut muffins.
Mindy was manning the refreshments and treats corner. She refused to accept a dime from Dana. “My treat,” she told her, and Dana insisted on paying for the delicious muffins, tres leches cake, and the coffee and tea she provided to those in attendance.
Detective Gabriela Rojas and Officer Freddy Sanchez were there. Detective Picado was a no-show, which really didn’t surprise Dana, and that was fine with her.
She had actually been surprised on the day that Greyson Bay had been arrested that Picado had grunted half an apology for leaving her to fend a homicidal nut case on her own.
Ramón and Carmen were at the grand opening, smiling and helping Dana out even though she insisted they were there as guests only. Ramón had a scar and bruise on his forehead that served as a visible reminder of Greyson Bay’s dastardly deeds in town on that day, and all just for greed. He wanted the money that Dana’s valuable book collection would have generated.
Their son, Claudio was there, too. He told Dana he was excited to start his new job at the Four Seasons the following week. Gustavo Barca was not happy with the defection, and even threatened to sue over some non-compete clause nonsense. Benny promised to represent him pro bono if Barca dared to proceed with it.
Benny’s hair was shaved off, and he looked like a soldier at boot camp. His head injury from Bay pistol-whipping him required some stitches, so the doctor had to shave a chunk of his back hair to mend him up from Greyson’s brutal assault. Benny decided to shave all his brown hair off versus having an odd-looking mismatch.
“You have the Three Stooges’ Curly haircut,” Dana teased him.
He was standing next to Dana, taking in the excitement of the grand opening with her.
He was still struggling with the symptoms of the concussion, which made Dana feel terrible. But he would remind her, “If it wasn’t for you, I would be six feet under, so thank you. I can deal with the concussion much better than the alternative of having no symptoms because I’m dead and buried.”
“Everything looks so great, babe,” Courtney said.
“Yeah, just awesome,” Bucky added.
“I’m glad you two can be part of this, sort of,” Dana said, talking into her iPad.
“It’s like we’re there,” Courtney said via video chat. Bucky had driven up from Palo Alto and was hanging out with Courtney in San Francisco so they could be part of her big day via video. They all laughed like they were in the same room together instead of being close to four thousand miles apart as Dana walked around with her iPad so her two Bay Area friends could take it all in.
Greyson Bay was taken into custody by the OIJ and charged with the murder of Chris Longo and as an accessory to the murder of Barry Shy, as well as with the attempted murder of Ramón Villalobos, Benny Campos, and Dana Kirkpatrick. He was imprisoned at the notorious San Sebastián prison under preventive detention where prisoners who have yet to be convicted are sent if a judge believes they are a flight risk.
“He better get used to our prison system, because he’s going to be a part of it for many decades,” Rojas had said to Dana.
Dana was just glad it was all over.
“What about that couple you were suspicious about?” Courtney asked.
“I guess I was just being paranoid,” Dana said laughing.
“How are things with Benny?” Courtney asked. Dana could see Bucky smiling wide next to Courtney.
Dana smiled. “It’s good.”
She and Benny had become even closer after what they had gone through.
Benny’s doctor had recommended that he take it easy for a few weeks while he recovered from the serious concussion he had received. “You need to relax and take it easy,” the doctor had told him.
Benny had told Dana that there wasn’t anywhere he felt more relaxed than at his beach house in Mariposa Beach and spending time with her.
She had blushed with a smile. She was sad about the injury but happy he would be spending the next few weeks in town.
It had been a rocky start to her bookstore, but finally she was in business. She looked around proudly. It was her first business, and she couldn’t be happier than running a bookstore in Mariposa Beach.
About This Book
Hollywood comes to the small beach town community of Mariposa Beach in Costa Rica. What could go possibly wrong?
The whole beach town is abuzz with the arrival of the cast and crew of the popular reality television show, The Island.
For Dana Kirkpatrick the excitement of it all comes to a screeching halt when she finds a body washed up on the shore.
Dana's discovery pushes the production of the hit reality show and the peace and quiet of Mariposa Beach to the edge as the police investigate the crime and zero in on a suspect.
Dana isn’t so sure that the police are on the right track so she starts sleuthing on her own trying not to incur the wrath of the investigating detective, the smarmy producer of the show, a bevy of self-absorbed Instagram models and the killer!
One
The day that Hollywood came to the tiny beach town of Mariposa Beach in Costa Rica had started out like any other day at the Books, Bagels, and Lattes bookstore cafe.
As usual, the cafe got busy with the early-morning rush-hour crowd of caffeine-deprived and hungry locals and tourists, but by late morning the crowd dissipated until the lunch rush.
On that day, the sound of rumbling engines made the windows of the bookstore cafe rattle, disrupting the quiet. Dana Kirkpatrick and her friend and new business partner, Mindy Salas, looked at each other with wonderment in their eyes as they both rushed to the front window to look outside to see what was causing the noise.
They saw several large buses lumbering into town.
Mindy’s husband, Leo, had also heard the noise, so he had popped his head from the back kitchen. “Oh boy, here we go,” he said ominously.
“They’re here,” Mindy said, saying it like the little girl from the Poltergeist movie did.
Even Wally, Dana’s shorthaired white cat and whom Dana had anointed the official bookstore cat, had jumped up by the windowsill to watch the excitement unfolding outside.
“Wow, those buses are over the top,” Dana said, looking at the large luxury buses pulling into town.
“It’s the same buses that rock stars ride along in,” Mindy said, sounding impressed as Amalfi Soto joined them at the window.
To Dana, they looked like two large, gaudy billboards on wheels. They had wrapped every inch of the buses with an advertisement for the hit reality television show, The Island.
The logo of the show was an island with palm trees and several stickmen in athletic p
oses like Olympians, and they had wrapped each bus entirely with the show’s logo and the headshot of the show’s longtime host, Chris Day. His smiling face covered the entire center panels of the buses from the side flap to the roof—including the windows.
“Oh Lordy, that’s one creepy man right there,” Dana said, chuckling.
“That’s the host of the show, he is so handsome.” Mindy smiled wistfully as she spoke to Dana, but her gaze was on the bus.
“Hey, now,” her husband said, pretending to be jealous.
Amalfi Soto, who worked for Dana, seemed in a trance looking out the window, and Dana didn’t want to know what was going through her young nineteen-year-old mind because it was probably NSFW.
“That bus wrap is over the top, don’t you think?” Dana asked.
“I think it looks cool,” Amalfi said, focused on the scene outside.
“I think it’s supposed to be over the top, silly,” Mindy giggled.
Since they outnumbered Dana, she said nothing more, not wanting to be a Debbie Downer, since Mindy and Amalfi seemed to be fans of the show, Chris Day, and the bus decor.
Leo had already disappeared back into the kitchen.
Regardless of what she thought about the show or the buses, she was excited to have the beach town jam-packed with cast and crewmembers ready to spend money on books, coffee, and bagels.
Especially coming within the month since Dana and Mindy had combined their businesses—Dana’s bookstore, and Mindy’s cafe—under the same roof.
The idea to combine the businesses had come when Mindy’s landlord saw how successful the cafe had become over the years, so he stuck her with a 300 percent rent increase. He figured she wouldn’t want to move. He figured wrong.
Dana had bought her retail property for her bookstore outright versus renting in the heart of Mariposa Beach’s tiny business district, known as Ark Row, across the street from Mindy’s cafe.
One evening when Mindy was stressing out about what she would do about the exorbitant rent increase, Dana had an epiphany. “Move your cafe into my bookstore.”
Dana remembered Mindy looking at her like she was off her rocker.
“I’m serious. I have a lot of room. I try as hard as I can, but my bookstore still looks scarce. And it’s not like they’re lining out the door to buy a book compared to the lines I see forming outside your cafe every day. You can have half of my retail space, which will be larger than what you have now. I’ll even knock off some of your rent, and I promise I’ll never be a pain in the rear landlord, nor would I ever try to gouge you with rent increases. We keep the business receipts separate. What you make from your cafe is all yours and what I make from the bookstore side is mine, so that stays the same, although you would miss out on the very lucrative bookstore business,” Dana said, laughing.
Mindy laughed loudly at that.
“Okay, okay, not that funny,” Dana said teasingly. “Besides, books, bagels, and coffee go together like peanut butter and jelly,” Dana added, finishing her pitch.
After discussing it with her husband, who did most of the baking and managed the kitchen, and after they looked at the space to see if the move would be possible, Mindy and Leo agreed to combine the two businesses. Mariposa Books and Mindy’s Coffee and Bagels became Mariposa Books, Bagels, and Lattes.
The move had gone smoothly, but there were a few days where they had to close, and the moving expenses for the Salas were a tad over budget, so the show coming to town was a boon to the entire local economy during the usual slowness of the wet season in Costa Rica, but it seemed like a lifeline to the new bookstore slash cafe, as Dana liked to refer to the new arrangement.
Besides, it wasn’t every day that their sleepy little beach town got the Hollywood treatment.
After eleven seasons, the show was a big money earner for the studio, so they kept on cranking it out season after season.
In true Hollywood fashion, the network executives would squeeze every last drop of that moneymaking lemon until they sucked it dry and tossed what remained into the compost bin.
Dana had read that it was dirt cheap to produce reality TV compared to a network drama or sitcom.
The cast was made up of unknowns eager for a shot at fifteen minutes of fame and the one-million-dollar grand prize for the last person left on The Island.
The production company shot the shows on exotic islands in places like Costa Rica, Thailand, The Philippines, Indonesia, and other spots around the globe that were considered dirt cheap to shoot on location compared to the cost of shooting in LA.
It would be the second time they filmed a season in Costa Rica. Although Costa Rica was not an island, the country had several small, sparsely populated, rugged islands off both of its coasts.
The producers had chosen the tiny island of Santa Rita, which was located about twenty miles from the shores of Mariposa Beach, which was nestled right into the Nicoya Peninsula Bay.
The Nicoya Peninsula was the largest peninsula in the country and home to some of the most isolated and beautiful beaches, which made it a popular tourist destination.
Dana figured the fact that they had a pier that had served as the launching point to the island for decades had been a big reason why the producers chose their town to service as their headquarters while they shot the show.
It was a big production, with hundreds of producers and crewmembers arriving in August, which was one of the wettest months of the year, which meant that the jungle would be lush and green but everything would be wet and muddy from the daily rain and blasts of torrential downpours—a plus for the show’s producers.
The tourist industry took a hit during the wet season, which is why it’s considered the off-season for tourism. That also meant that the prices of just about everything went way down, and vacancies at the hotels and Airbnb were plentiful. Dana figured that was another reason the production company liked to film their show in August. Not only did the rainy weather make getting around more challenging, with muddy landslides, choppy waters, and with nonstop wet rain beating down on the cast members, it also made for much more compelling television to watch than blue skies and sunshine.
For the locals, it was a welcomed boost to the economy during its slow season, so they were more than happy to have the production team choose Mariposa Beach as their headquarters. It surprised Dana that the municipal mayor of Nicoya and his cronies weren’t there rolling out the red carpet to welcome the production company.
Dana wasn’t around when the reality show came to town five years earlier, but everyone who had been there told her they would pack her bookstore slash cafe with cast and crewmembers and that she should brace herself.
She had moved to the small, quirky beach town from the bustling and congested San Francisco a few months ago. It was a nice change of pace. It hadn’t been a smooth move to town—far from it.
She had inherited her uncle’s beach house, much to the chagrin of her cousin and his wife. Things got messy, really messy. There was a lawsuit and a murder—town gossip had her pegged as the probable killer. It was not a good introduction to the community.
Everything worked out with the lawsuit squashed, the murder solved, and the beach house known as Casa Verde and the acres of land it was on were all hers.
She had settled in nicely since then and had become a business owner for the first time in her life. And now there was the excitement of the show coming to town.
Mindy had been in business in town for over a decade, so she was here when The Island first came to town, and she had confirmed what Dana had heard from the locals that the production team was like money in the bank.
The town merchants of Ark Row called the production team walking ATMs.
“It will get crazy busy and we will make a lot of money,” Mindy squealed. “But a warning,” she said, her voice going from excited to ominous, “the crew is wonderful, but the cast can be a nightmare. A bunch of prima donna mactors.”
“What the heck is a mactor?�
� Dana asked.
She had lived in LA and thought she knew the entire industry lingo. Mindy smiled and explained, “Model slash actors equals mactors.”
“Oh, brother,” Dana said, rolling her eyes.
“You’ll see for yourself, half of them think they’re the next great actor or actress, like they’re a young Robert DeNiro or Meryl Streep, while the other half fancy themselves as supermodels like Gisele Bündchen or Cindy Crawford.”
Dana laughed at Mindy’s descriptions.
“Did you forget I’m from California? I’m used to dealing with that kind of crazy. And although Northern California is more chill when it comes to Hollywood fakery, I lived for several years in Los Angeles, where dealing with plastic people like that was the norm.”
Dana jostled her brown hair and made duck lips for added emphasis as Mindy and Amalfi cracked up.
As soon as the bus doors parted, open people began to pile out in droves. Most were young… very young.
Dana, Mindy, and Amalfi continued to watch as the chaotic scene outside unfolded when suddenly they saw several of them pointing towards their shop, and a horde of them began to make their way over. “Leo, incoming!” Mindy shouted over her shoulder towards the kitchen.
“Showtime,” he shouted back.
“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille,” Dana said, and she and Mindy started laughing hysterically.
Amalfi looked confused, not getting the reference to the old movie, which made Dana and Mindy laugh even louder, feeling their age.
Two
The Hollywood invaders razed through everything so fast that Mindy and her husband struggled to keep up with the orders. Dana and Amalfi manned the front, dealing with the victual demands of the barbarian hordes.