by K C Ames
He nodded his head slowly, his brown eyes tearing up. “I loved her. And I know it’s hard to believe, but Rose loved me too.”
“I believe you. But why all the cloak and dagger about you two?”
“All of us crewmembers signed NDAs and contracts prohibiting fraternizing with cast members. The cast members had to do the same thing. So we were both in violation of our contracts, so we had to keep it a secret. After Rose’s death, it gutted me. And I drank too much, as you saw that night on the beach. The next morning, Russ called me into his hotel room for a meeting. He asked if it was true that Rose and I had become romantically involved. I told him it was true. He was very upset. Then he asked if I had told anyone outside of the production team. I said yes, to you two guys on the beach. I told him I was drunk. That made him even madder. He was livid. I had heard he had a terrible temper, but I had never witnessed it until that day, and it was scary. He yelled at me and then he threatened me, saying he would sue me for violating my contract and that he would blacklist me so I could never work in the entertainment business again. It terrified me. So he told me the only way to avoid that was to find you and take back what I had told you on the beach. And I felt like such a coward, but I did it.”
“You’re not a coward, you had to do whatever you could to protect your livelihood. It’s understandable, especially since you were grieving.”
“Still felt like I was turning my back on Rose.”
Tears welled up in his eyes and started to trickle down his chubby cheeks and down his scruffy beard.
“Who do you think killed Rose?”
He sniffled a bit and swallowed hard, like he was trying to take back the tears.
“Believe me, I’ve thought about that a lot, but I don’t know. The producers whip up the cast members to have beefs with each other so there were some nasty fights, but you never know if it’s real or just put on for the camera.”
“Who was she beefing with?”
“Robbie Gibbons. You saw that in real time that night at the restaurant when they got into an argument. He’s a jerk and all, but I can’t imagine him hurting her. He’s too much into himself and what the show will do for his modeling and acting career.”
“Who else was she beefing with?”
“Arianna Layton. They were at each other’s throats, much to Russ Donnelly’s delight,” TJ said with contempt. He suddenly had a look like he had an epiphany. “Russ Donnelly,” he said slowly.
“What about him?”
“He could have killed her. He has a nasty temper and a God complex. She had a huge falling-out with him.”
“I thought he was setting her up to be the breakout star of this season?”
“Yes, but she wouldn’t kowtow down to him. Drove him nuts. So one second he’s telling her he was going to make her the star of the show and then the next thing he was putting her down all the time. Telling her she had to lose weight before they started to film, that he should send her packing right away, just being mean and nasty towards her. Then he seemed to gravitate towards Arianna Layton and Dakota Hunter as his breakout star instead of Rose, which is one of the reasons she and Arianna began to hate on each other.”
Dana remembered Dakota from that day in her cafe. It was the day Picado shut down the production of the show and the cast and crew arrived back on shore. TJ had been short with her for being too chatty in line and had seemed irritable, and it made sense to her now why he was lashing out. The woman he loved was dead, murdered, and he was being forced by Russ Donnelly to carry on as if she was just another cast member.
“Has Russ hired a top-notch lawyer to defend you?”
TJ scoffed. “I haven’t seen or heard from Russ at all. It’s like he has washed his hands of me. I’ve been told that the Costa Rican courts will appoint a public defender for me. And that’s about all I know. This is crazy, they want to lock me up for three months of preventive detention. I haven’t even been charged with anything, but they will lock me up and transfer me up to that horrible prison while they investigate, and Russ won’t return my calls. I’m all alone.”
It shocked Dana. She had assumed as Benny had told her that Russ would be hiring a hotshot attorney from the capital to represent TJ.
“What about the US Embassy? Aren’t they helping?”
“They’re useless. I had an embassy official by the name of Adam Mitchell call me after they arrested me,” TJ said.
Dana remembered meeting Adam Mitchell when her cousin was killed, and he was pretty useless, since there wasn’t much the American embassy could do when one of their citizens was arrested. They had to abide by the laws of that country, not the US.
“I met him once,” Dana said.
“Well, he told he would visit me when I transferred up to San Sebastián to make sure I’m doing okay. I told him I was not doing okay, and to get me out of here, but they said their hands are tied. They have to abide by Costa Rican law. It’s like I’m in a Kafkaesque nightmare. Please help me, Dana. I didn’t kill Rose, I loved her.”
The rain was still coming down in sheets as Dana made the mad dash again back to Big Red.
She sat in the car for a few minutes. She didn’t bother drying herself off. She felt terrible for TJ. His mother couldn’t afford to come down for a visit, and Russ Donnelly was ghosting him. He was alone in a foreign country, and she was convinced he had nothing to do with Rose Budd’s murder.
She fired up Big Red and began to drive back down to Mariposa Beach. The rain was coming down so hard that the little wiper blades of the Jeep Willys had a hard time keeping the windshield clear. The water was seeping into the sides of the soft-top cover—a reminder she needed to get a wet-season car with a hard top.
Every mile she drove closer to home, the stronger her resolve to help TJ became.
She had her own ideas about who she needed to talk to, and by the time she drove into town, she knew she would check things out for herself. And she needed to get started right away because TJ didn’t have much time before the police transferred him to that horrible prison in the city.
Twenty-Six
Dana got home soaking wet and cold. Wally sauntered over towards her, and when he saw her dripping wet, he ran back in the other direction as far away from her as possible.
“Oh, thanks for the support, you brat,” she yelled out to him as he vanished around the corner.
She made her way upstairs, peeling off her wet clothing along the way. By the time she reached her bathroom, she had taken off her wet clothing. She wrapped a towel around her body and began to draw a bath. She turned the faucet in the bathtub on and wiggled her fingers under the stream of water until she had the right temperature flowing.
While the tub filled with hot water, she added Epsom salt and a soothing lavender oil to the water.
She lit a Zen soothing lavender candle that she had bought from the Pancha Sabhai Institute, a yoga retreat near her property on the same footpath that led up to the resort. The candles were handmade, and they were a delightful bliss during a nice, warm bath.
Next up in her bath routine, she put her Kindle e-reader into a plastic food storage bag. She was about to finish the Sue Grafton novel. She had everything set how she liked it. She dropped the towel on the floor and lowered herself gently into the tub.
She couldn’t help but moan out loud as she settled in and relaxed. Once he determined it was safe and that the bath being drawn wasn’t for him, Wally carefully walked into the bathroom, since for whatever reason water to the silly kitty was like exposing a vampire to the sun. He stepped on the towel on the floor and began to knead it like a baker kneading dough, then he circled it about five times before he deemed it was worthwhile for him to lay down on it. Dana never grew tired of watching Wally’s comfort rituals. She laughed and lowered herself further down into the lovely warm water.
She didn’t end up reading her novel or doing much of anything else but just enjoyed the soothing stillness and quietness of her bath. Her mind had been spi
nning like a top thinking about TJ, and if she was right and he was innocent, who had killed Rose Budd and why?
She took a longer than usual bath. She looked at her pruned fingertips and flinched. “Oh, my, I need to get out of this tub,” she said out loud to Wally, who was still snoozing on the towel. She got up from the tub and made her way out, splashing drops of water onto the floor, which sent Wally running out of the bathroom as if she had splashed him with hot oil.
She put on her robe and dried her hair, which was a much easier process after she had made the then frightening decision to cut her shoulder-length hair into a pixie cut a couple months ago.
She had felt sick to her stomach when she made the trip to a top salon in Escazú, but the hairdresser, whose name was Mauricio, made her feel at ease and he had done a marvelous job, and after all that fear and angst leading up to the haircut, she now just loved it. She liked how she looked with it, and it was so much more practical when living in the hot, humid, salty, dusty tropics of the Pacific coast.
After dressing, she made her way to the bookstore slash cafe in time for the noon rush. Although it wasn’t raining as hard, it was still coming down, so business was steady but slower.
After the rush subsided, Mindy peppered her with questions about her visit to TJ in jail. Dana told her about seeing him and how he maintained his innocence and how Russ Donnelly was not helping him.
“The court will assign him a lawyer,” Mindy said.
“Benny told me that. He’s also making some calls to find him a criminal attorney that might do a better job than a public one.”
“TJ is lucky you’re in his corner,” Mindy said.
“Why are you in his corner?” Leo said from the kitchen, startling them both.
“I didn’t know you were eavesdropping,” Mindy said to her husband, who just shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t think he did it, and no one is helping him, so I’ll do what I can to help him out, since what he’s going through almost happened to me just a few months ago.”
Dana spent a quiet evening at home with Wally. She had a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner and a glass of red wine.
She could finally get into the Sue Grafton novel she had been reading without having thoughts of Detective Picado, TJ, and Rose Budd in her head.
At bedtime, she had some lavender tea, which was a perfect relaxing way to ease into sleep after a stressful day.
It worked, because she had a good night’s sleep, waking up in the morning to find that Wally had made the move from the bottom of the bed to the top, where he had curled up into a ball of white fur by her head. She was a light sleeper, but she slept through Wally’s journey from lying by her feet to ending up sharing her pillow. For the first time since she found Rose Budd’s body, she didn’t have any nightmares. And if the howler monkeys went wild that night, she didn’t hear any of it.
She made her way downstairs. She had a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and went through her morning coffee bean-grinding routine that she went through every morning. The coffee maker did its magic, and the house smelled of delicious coffee. She was convinced the coffeemaker was one of the greatest inventions in mankind. Forget the wheel.
The rains usually didn’t start until the late afternoon, so she thought about going on a run.
She wasn’t ready to run back towards the rock where she had found the poor mangled body of Rose Budd. She had other running routes to avoid the rocks. But she decided that it didn’t feel as if she had a run in her that morning. Besides, she wanted to look into who could have killed Rose.
It was not as if TJ had a lot of time to spare before his transfer to the San Sebastián prison.
She called Benny to let him know that Russ Donnelly wasn’t offering any legal help for TJ and he was going to be stuck with a public defender if they didn’t help him.
“Wait a second, how do you know Russ Donnelly isn’t helping him? Did you run into him in town?”
Confession time. “No. I talked to TJ and he told me.”
“How did you... did you drive up to Nicoya to visit him?”
“Yes, I went there yesterday morning. The poor guy is all alone and terrified that the court will approve the three-month detention and he’ll be transferred to prison.”
“You could have told me you wanted to visit him and we could have gone there together when I was back in town.”
She could hear it in his voice that he wasn’t happy that she had gone up there. And it ticked her off a little. She was used to living in San Francisco and had been to worse places than an OIJ holding cell in Nicoya. She was thirty-five years old. She wasn’t a spring chicken that needed protection like a delicate flower. But she knew he meant well and cared for her, so he worried. His chivalry was sweet and annoying at the same time. Is that possible? she thought. Yes, she answered to herself.
“He doesn’t have that much time, Benny. As soon as the judges approve the preventive detention, they’re transferring him.”
Benny tried to speak, but Dana cut him off. She told him she was fine. That if she could handle interviewing Edmund Kemper, the so-called coed killer, at the state prison in Vacaville, California and dangerous MS13 gangbangers in San Quentin when she was a reporter for the San Francisco Star, that she could handle TJ in a holding cell in Nicoya with her eyes closed.
He backed off, knowing he was beat. The tiff was brief. She figured Benny knew she was right and that TJ needed help. Benny wasn’t all the way on board with team TJ like Dana was, but he had promised her he would help her find a good lawyer for TJ, especially now knowing that Russ Donnelly had left him twisting in the wind and that the US Embassy was in spectator mode.
After her call with Benny and drinking her second cup of coffee, she walked down to her bookstore slash cafe and took her chances with the rain.
She arrived at Books, Bagels, and Lattes at eight thirty a.m. As usual, Amalfi and Mindy were working the front and Leo was in the back kitchen.
There were only a couple people in line, with a few customers sitting on the bookstore side of the cafe where Dana had placed several big, comfy reading chairs and a couch. She opted not to put a communal table for laptop-toting customers. She wanted to create a comfortable spot to read while drinking coffee and eating a bagel purchased from Mindy, but she didn’t want to give the illusion the bookstore was a library. Just a nice air-conditioned spot to enjoy good books, coffee, and great bagels and empanadas. Sales of books shot up after she made the change, so she was happy she did it. Mindy loved it too, since at her old place, the biggest complaint was there wasn’t a place to sit and enjoy the coffee and treats.
As soon as Dana walked into the shop, Mindy went straight for her. “My, oh, my, you’ve been a popular girl this morning,” she whispered.
“I have?”
“Russ Donnelly stopped by looking for you about an hour ago. Very pushy and smarmy, that one.”
“Sounds about right. What did he want?”
“To talk to you. He said it was very important. I told him I didn’t know when you would be in. He asked for your cell phone number and home address. I told him to go fly a kite, twice.”
Dana smiled. They always had each other’s backs. “Thank you.”
“He got all Arnold Schwarzenegger and told me ‘I’ll be back.’”
Dana couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “No, he didn’t say that.”
“Well, not in those words exactly, but the attitude was all Terminator-like.”
“If the Terminator looked like an over-tanned George Hamilton,” Dana nipped. They shared a laugh over that.
“But wait, there’s more,” Mindy said, recovering from the laughter. “Detective Picado was also looking for you about fifteen minutes ago. He seemed more huffy and puffy than usual. I told him what I told Russ Donnelly, so he said he would drive up to your house.”
“I walked down the footpath this morning, so I must have missed him on the main road. Too bad,” Dana said with a smirk.
“So what’s going on, Dana? You seemed to have ticked both of them off.”
“I went to visit TJ Summers yesterday at the jail in Nicoya.”
Mindy took an actual step back. “Why?”
“I don’t think he killed Rose Budd. I think he’s being railroaded and they’re pinning the murder on him.”
Mindy looked at Dana with the same concerned look her mom gave her all the time.
“Dana, Detective Picado is a lot of things that make him a very unpleasant man to be around, but he’s not going to send an innocent man to prison.”
“I’m not saying he would do that on purpose, but he might be being used to do just that. Innocent people end up in prison more than you think.”
“Why would anyone want to do that to TJ?”
“I don’t know, but Russ Donnelly comes to mind.”
“Okay, same question, why would he want to do that?”
“I don’t know, but I will find out.”
Twenty-Seven
Dana was certain about one thing: she needed to talk to the cast members that seemed to be interwound with Rose Budd the most—Arianna Layton, Dakota Hunter, and Robbie Gibbons.
Those were the three cast members whose names kept popping up every time.
The cast members had been keeping a low profile since the production shoot was shut down by Detective Picado.
They were in limbo with nothing but time on their hands.
Aracelly Trejos was an assistant manager at the resort. She was Claudio Villalobos’s girlfriend. Claudio was Ramón and Carmen’s son who had worked at the resort and had been Dana’s eyes and ears inside. But he had recently taken a better job at the Four Season Hotel in the Papagayo Peninsula, which was almost three hours away from Mariposa Beach.
Aracelly also disliked Gustavo Barca and her immediate bosses at the resort, and she really liked Dana.