by K C Ames
She soon found that looking at the security video feeds on her monitor could be just as bad of a time suck as Facebook.
She happened to glance at the monitor to see a large crowd of people walking up from the beach area across Main Street and headed towards Ark Row.
“What the heck?” Dana said out loud at seeing the big crowd. They seemed to be heading towards the bookstore slash cafe.
She got up and walked out to the front. Mindy, Leo, and Amalfi were already looking out the front window at the large crowd of people making their way inside.
“Incoming,” Leo said as he headed back to the kitchen to brace himself for the orders.
It was bizarre. From one moment to the next, things got hectic with a sudden influx of business that seemed to came out of nowhere as customers began pouring in.
“Did a tour bus pull into town?” Amalfi asked.
Mindy and Dana shrugged their shoulders, not knowing the answer. Dana had taken off the owner hat and put on her cashier hat.
“You better help Mindy handle the coffee and food orders, and I’ll man the register,” Dana told Amalfi, who had a relieved look on her face upon getting help to deal with the crowd.
Dana and Mindy couldn’t keep up with the coffee and bagel orders, and it seemed no one wanted just a regular old cup of black coffee, instead choosing the single-pour drip, a latte, or a mocha, all which took time to make.
“What is going on?” Dana asked.
“Not sure. Looks like the rush from one of the sightseeing boat tours or one of the big cruise ships, but the timing is way off,” Mindy replied as she took the order from another customer that seemed to have jumped out of the pages of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition magazine.
That’s when it dawned on Dana that all these customers were young men and women. Many of them looked like models.
“Are you here on a model shoot?” Dana finally asked one of the young beauties with shoulder-length brown hair.
She flashed a perfect set of whitened teeth. It was obvious to Dana that she had taken her question as a compliment.
“Well, not like really, like, I have done some modeling, but like not on a full-time basis yet, but that is like my dream job and like my goal. That’s why I’m on the show. I’m like hoping it’s like my big break,” she said wistfully.
Dana hadn’t heard so many likes peppered into a conversation since she had lived in LA. But she was intrigued because she thought cast and crew would be on the island shooting for at least a month or longer. They had just left for the island a few days ago.
“Oh, I thought you would be on the island, shooting the show for a while,” Dana said.
The castaway frowned and pouted. “Like, that’s where we’re supposed to like be, but the police like shut down the production because like there’s been an accident, like you see, one of the castaways, like she drowned,” she whispered.
“I know what happened to Rose Budd,” Dana said.
The vapid castaway looked at Dana wide-eyed, mouth agape, like she had clairvoyant powers.
“I found the body,” Dana explained before the young woman’s head exploded.
“Oh, I thought you had like supernatural powers or something,” she said, half-suppressing a snorting laugh that didn’t seem to fit the petite beauty queen.
“Come on, Dakota! Can you stop gabbing to your new BFF so the rest of us can order? I need coffee, now,” a shirtless man with what appeared to be twelve-pack abs barked out from the back of the line.
“Yeah, come on, Dakota, hurry up already,” the man next in line griped. But unlike the tanned hunk, he had a cherub-looking bearded face and a slight pouch instead of the chiseled abs. He wore a black T-shirt that had the word CREW on it in a large white font.
And there were at least five more people in line behind him.
Dakota gave him an over-the-shoulder half look and snort, as if to say as if. She turned back to face Dana. “Hold your horses, TJ,” Dakota said dismissively without facing him. She rolled her eyes at Dana and said loud enough for the back of the line to hear, “You have to excuse them. They have no class at all.”
Dana felt guilty for starting the gossipy chitchat, so she stepped up to ensure the line was moving again. She didn’t get far, since Dakota wasn’t done chatting.
“So wow, like you found her. Was she like all gnarly and bent and stuff?” she asked wide-eyed.
Dana took a step back at the crassness.
“Um, well, no, I don’t know, I didn’t stick around. I ran off and called the police.”
“Oh,” Dakota said once again, pouting and looking disappointed.
“Rumor has it that she was like messed up pretty bad, so it might like not had been an accident. My luck. I finally catch a big break on a national television show and this happens to me.”
“Well, at least that’s the only thing that happened to you, unlike poor Rose Budd, who, like, you know, died,” Dana said. She tossed in a like in there for good measure, but it didn’t look like Dakota picked up on her sarcasm. She just rolled her eyes again and said, “Yeah, I guess.”
“Your order will be ready shortly. If you don’t mind waiting over there so I can keep the line moving,” Dana said, pointing to her left.
“Whatever,” Dakota said. She meandered over towards the order pickup area, burying her nose into her smartphone, which was in a pink, faux ruby-encrusted case, as she waited for her skinny caramel macchiato.
“About time,” someone yelled out from the back of the line.
Dana was now waiting on the next customer in line, the one Dakota had so dismissively and rudely called TJ.
“Sorry about the delay, sir, we got very busy all at once.”
“It’s all right. They ordered the entire cast and crew off the island and back to town while the police investigate Rose’s death, so we’re the first boat to arrive. Two more were right behind, so brace yourself. After a few days on that deserted island, everyone will be mad dashing here for some of that great coffee and those delicious bagels and empanadas that you make,” TJ said, looking over at Mindy.
“Thanks, TJ,” Mindy said.
Dana didn’t recognize him, but he appeared to be a good customer for Mindy to know him by name. His eyes were puffy and red. Dana figured that a lot of the cast and crew would be saddened by what happened to Rose.
TJ placed his order and joined Dakota in the pickup area.
“A fan,” Dana said to Mindy teasingly.
“What can I say, he really likes my bagels and pineapple empanadas.”
“Wow, so they shut down the filming. That explains the mystery of the sudden business spike,” Dana said.
It stayed busy for the next two hours. Dana and Mindy decided to stay open for an extra hour, since it was the slow season anyway. The ka-ching of the register kept going off over and over.
The actual cash register was connected to an iPad, so it was all modern but boring and sterile looking compared to the old grand cashier registers from the past, so Dana had put in an app so it would make that ringing cash register sound every time a sale was recorded. Mindy’s husband, Leo, really loved it.
“That sound never gets old,” he said, lathering up strawberry cream cheese onto a sesame bagel with a wide grin.
If it were busy like this every day, she would need to hire a few more employees. But Dana, Amalfi, Leo, and Mindy could manage the crowd and orders of the hungry and caffeine-deprived cast and crew of The Island well enough.
They probably could have stayed open even longer, but enough was enough. They were running low on coffee and bagels and had run out of all the other goodies, including the popular pineapple empanadas, much to the disappointment of several customers. Finally, during a brief lull of incoming customers, they closed up.
Leo locked the door, flipping the Open sign to Closed, and he had to wave a few people away. Dana, Leo, Mindy, and Amalfi gathered themselves, exhausted. No one said a word, but they all started laughing at the
crazy end of the day.
Sixteen
Even with the sudden and unexpected surge in business, it didn’t take long to tidy up for the day. Mindy and Leo did a good job of keeping the food-preparation area and the coffee machines clean throughout the day so they wouldn’t get nailed with a monster cleanup job at closing. Leo was fanatical at cleaning up as you went along, and now Dana could appreciate that zeal because it made going home that much quicker.
Dana and Amalfi cleaned up the front while Leo and Mindy cleaned up the kitchen and back area as Carlos Santana’s guitar solo wrapped up the song Evil Ways blasting from the store’s sound system.
When they were finished, Mindy took off her apron, and she looked outside towards Main Street. Dana, Leo, and Amalfi joined her. They all looked exhausted.
“Looks like Qué Vista and the pulpería will be very busy tonight,” Mindy said, looking out as stragglers walked up towards their place only to see the Closed sign, so they turned back, heading in the direction of the pulpería and the restaurant. The pulpería was what ticos called a corner store or a bodega, a small convenience store where people could buy sodas, chips, beer, cigarettes, milk, eggs, and other treats.
Dana agreed, figuring the liquor-serving Qué Vista would get jam-packed with the rambunctious cast and crew of the television show once again.
“The Giggling Dorado is going to be hopping late at night,” Leo said.
The town’s only watering hole, The Giggling Dorado, was about a mile away from Ark Row on the beach and not within eyesight from the bookstore slash cafe.
“If you don’t need me for anything else, Doña Dana, I have to get going. I have my English lesson tonight,” Amalfi said with her purse over her shoulder.
“No, thanks for asking. Have a great lesson. It was a crazy day but a great day for business,” Dana said as she walked over towards Amalfi and gave her a hug. “You were great. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Mindy and Leo were heading out too.
“You’re not leaving?” Mindy asked.
“In a bit. I just need to wrap up some administrative stuff I was working on before the surge, then I’m heading home.”
“Okay, don’t stay too long,” Mindy said as she and Leo walked out the door.
Dana locked the door and yawned, then headed back to the office to finish up with the cash receipts. Credit cards were popular, but cash was still king in these rural parts.
She removed the cash, and she split up the bills into Costa Rican colones and US dollars. She shouldn’t accept the foreign currency—she chuckled how the US dollars were now foreign currency for her—but sometimes dollars were all a tourist had, and there was only one ATM in town. It was a third-party machine outside of Antonio’s pulpería, and each transaction came with hefty international transaction fees on top of whatever the banks overcharged their customers for using an ATM they did not own.
Dana stuffed the cash into two bank deposit envelopes, which she placed into her backpack.
She tapped on her laptop and glanced at the security cameras to make sure no one was loitering out front. It was seven thirty p.m., so it was dark out, and all the other Ark Rows shops had also closed for the day.
Román Garza had set her outdoor video camera with night vision, so she had a good view of the outside from her small back office.
The front camera had a good view of Main Street and of the start of the footpath that led up towards her home and up towards the resort.
She could also see the Qué Vista Restaurant in the distance, so she couldn’t see clearly what was going on there too, but she could tell it was getting busier by the minute.
Maria Rivera would have a good night for business. She just hoped she didn’t have any more shenanigans from the cast and crew like the other night with Rose Budd and Robbie Gibbons.
That made her think of Rose Budd’s body on those rocks, and she shivered. “I’m going home,” she said out loud to herself.
She was about to turn off the monitor when she saw a man that looked like the assistant producer, Henry Robertson running down Main Street. He was running fast at a full sprint.
She figured it was odd to go for a night run, since there were potholes the size of lunar craters out there and it got pitch-dark by six o’clock p.m. There was only one street lamp in town, so walking without a flashlight at night could be ankle-twisting treacherous. Running at that clip was playing with fire.
But to each their own, she was thinking when she saw a black Range Rover speeding in front of the camera. It drove by in just a few seconds, but she recognized the car; it looked like the same one Russ Donnelly had used that day when she met him at the restaurant when he whisked Rose Budd away.
It was strange, but she didn’t make much of it. Main Street was the only street through town anyway, so if anyone was going anywhere around town, they had to go down Main Street regardless if they were in a car, running, walking, biking.
She shrugged it off and powered down the computer and went home.
Dana got home after eight o’clock. Wally meowed his displeasure at her tardy arrival. “Hey, you’re the one who doesn’t like hanging out at the bookstore. Some bookstore cat you’ve turned out to be,” Dana said to the cat.
Benny had been working from home all day, and they planned to have a late dinner at Qué Vista, but after seeing the Hollywood invaders overrun the town again, she wasn’t too keen in experiencing dinner with rowdy and probably drunk-as-skunks cast and crewmembers of the show.
“I’m in the mood for a quiet dinner at home,” Dana said over the phone when Benny called.
“Sounds good to me. I’ll see you in about half an hour,” Benny said.
Seventeen
Benny arrived at Casa Verde at eight thirty p.m., carrying a grocery bag from the Super Fresco Market in town.
“What do you have there?” Dana said as her stomach rumbled from hunger.
“I was able to make it to the market before they closed,” he said as he made his way to the kitchen.
Benny plopped the grocery bag on the kitchen’s center island and began to remove items. He pulled out one of those readymade, warm-and-waiting-to-be-eaten rotisserie chickens. It smelled delicious, and it worried Dana that Benny would hear her stomach rumbling its loud approval.
Next out of the bag, a container of roasted potatoes, then a caprese salad of fresh tomatoes with mozzarella and basil. And for dessert, two slices of tres leches cake.
“Well done, Benny, that looks amazing,” Dana said, eyeing the food.
“I figured it was late, so I wanted to get items ready to chow. I did, however, make that caprese salad at home before I came over,” Benny said proudly.
“Everything looks delicious. Thank you for shopping. Now let’s eat, I’m starving.”
As they ate, they chatted about their day. He was working on a closing he had next week in the city. She told him about how crazy busy the bookstore slash cafe had been from the sudden influx of the cast and crewmembers from the show. They discussed the show getting closed down and the implications that might have for the town and the show.
“I wonder if they will have to delay the season of the show,” Dana wondered.
“I would imagine those shows have contingency plans for stuff like this happening, but who knows what will happen.”
After dinner, they went upstairs and sat out on the veranda. They were sharing the love seat. There was a nice cool breeze coming off the Pacific, and the rain had miraculously held up that day, which meant Mother Nature would make them pay for the break the next day.
“Nice night for a walk,” Dana said. Her head was resting on Benny’s chest. Their fingers were locked together lazily.
“It sure is. Looks like the rain will hold off,” Benny said, looking up to the sky.
“You want to go on a walk?” Dana asked.
“Sure. Which route?” Benny said.
“I was thinking we walk down towards the Qué Vista Restaurant and then head do
wn to the beach and walk by the water.”
“Mmm hmm...” Benny said suspiciously.
“What?”
“You want to snoop around the restaurant to see what’s going with that TV show and the case, don’t you?”
She smiled. “Maybe.” Dana got up. “Aren’t you wondering what’s going on?”
“We know what’s going on. Rose Budd was killed, and Detective Picado is investigating, and you know he has it in for you, so let’s tread lightly in the snooping department.”
“Whatever. I’m not messing with his case. We are just going for a walk. We go out on walks all the time. If we pick up some interesting tidbit, so be it. Besides, I doubt Detective Picado will be hanging out there. It’s almost ten o’clock at night.”
Benny shook his head. “Okay, troublemaker, let’s go check it out.”
Even though it was late at night, the air still had a tinge of warmth and stickiness to it—this was the tropics, but Dana was getting used it.
People assumed that as a Californian, she was used to the heat. She had to correct them. She was from Northern California. The Bay Area. San Francisco. Where Mark Twain was often misquoted as quipping that “the coldest winter ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”
The fog kept San Francisco cool. It was rarely too hot or cold. It was a big contrast compared to the Guanacaste Province, where the weather was tropical 365/24/7.
It was hot and dry during the summer and hot and wet during the winter.
One of the great perks was that it cut down her wardrobe needs substantially since moving to Mariposa Beach. No heavy coats, sweaters, and the likes. It was thin shirts, shorts, and jeans every day, all year-round.
Dana and Benny strolled down the footpath from Casa Verde to town, hand in hand.
For all the reservations Dana had about getting in a romantic relationship, it was the little things like going on a couple’s walk holding hands that she had missed the most.
They made it down to Main Street past Ark Row with all its stores closed.