X Dames: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 3)

by J. J. Henderson

  “Hey, what’s up?” Lucy went out on her verandah to greet Leslie.

  “Hi, Lucy,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Me? I’m fine.”

  “I mean after your accident yesterday.”

  “Leslie, that was no accident. Trust me on this. But I’m over it regardless. Sit down. You want some coffee?”

  “No, I’m good.” They sat at the patio table. “So what did you want to talk about here? I think we’ve gotten this thing—well, I’m not sure if ‘wrapped’ is the right word, but I’ve got enough footage to make the first episode work, one way or another. I’m looking forward to some cooler weather. Believe it or not I kick ass on a snowboard.”

  “I believe it. Those 25 year olds got nothin’ on you.” She paused. “Listen, Leslie, I’ve seen you casting a skeptical eye Bobby’s way more than once. And I think you know, or at least sense, that something weird happened yesterday.” She waited. So did Leslie. Lucy bit the bullet. “Can I show you something?”

  “Sure.”

  She opened the laptop and ran the unedited footage for her, pausing it here and there to explain what was up with Judy and the coffee, and how those parts had disappeared from the original. Then she told her the plan she and Terry had sold to Bobby.

  “And he’s going for it?” Leslie asked incredulously. “Even though you told him Judy is involved?”

  “Hey, it’s show biz. And this is a real mystery, because we simply can not figure out why they went after me too. I think—I don’t know—that Sandra’s death has something to do with Judy being so tight with Henrietta, that there was something going on with rigging the contest. Not that Bobby knew anything, he’s clueless. But why me?”

  “Just an accident, Lucy. You were sitting next to her, you got coffee at the same time. Assuming that your entire thesis has any basis in reality.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt that it does. But why would Judy let him pour me a cup of coffee, knowing it would knock me out, knowing that I would be obviously drugged and at least indirectly give away their plans? Why didn’t Judy just stop him after he’d poured Sandra’s coffee? It would have been easy to do.”

  She pondered. “Good question. Maybe Judy just doesn’t like your looks. I’ve known her a few years and she’s one of the prettiest cutthroats in Hollywood, I will say. Or maybe they just guessed you were going out there to shoot, knowing what a gung ho girl you’re rumored to be, and they did it just to get you out of the way, either in the water or before you paddled out. Did you mention to anyone that you planned to go out in the waves to shoot stills?”

  “Only Marcia, because I needed to borrow her longboard. And I know she’s not in on this since she’s the one who saved my ass.”

  “Seems like somebody must have figured it out. What do you think?”

  “I just don’t know. Terry’s working on the drug angle, to see if we can trace the barbies. But somewhere down the line we’ll figure out the reasons they came after Judy, and after me. That I will guarantee you. Look, this is all material, right? And you need material. Leslie, you know this is going to be a really hot property if we’ve happened on to a real-life murder.” She gave her best conspiratorial grin. “So I was hoping you’d shoot my part of the investigation with your camcorder, and then we can include it in the episode, or movie, or whatever this turns out to be. And use it for evidence if necessary.”

  Leslie grinned. “I have to say that you and your pal Teresa have come up with one of the more audacious ideas I’ve seen in play of late, and with this ridiculous reality TV boom Hollywood is full of weird shit these days.”

  “Just imagine the ratings if we actually bust somebody and solve a murder on the show.”

  “So let’s roll, baby. I’ve got my camcorder right here in my bag.” She pulled it out, pointed it at Lucy, and turned it on. She narrated. “Here we have Lucy Ripken, book writer turned TV writer turned sleuth, attempting to discover if and how our surfer girl contest entrant Sandra Darwin was murdered. This, friends, is director Leslie Williams, and we are beginning act two of episode one, the X Dames. In act one Marcia Hobgood, a 23-year non-professional from Venice, California, came out of nowhere to win the X Dames surfing contest over several seasoned pros, but during the contest as you know, Sandra Darwin, favored by some to take home the first X Dames prize, died under what Ms. Ripken claims are suspicious circumstances. And how do you propose to solve this mysterious crime, Lucy Ripken?”

  Lucy smiled awkwardly. “At the moment I need to make a couple of phone calls to New York, so you can turn that thing off.”

  “I don’t think so, Lucy,” said Leslie. “I don’t want to miss anything, know what I mean? And you asked for it.”

  “Fine, fine,” Lucy said. She got on the phone, got a dial tone, and punched in Harold’s cell number. It rang about six times and then his voicemail took the call. “Harold here. Spare me all but the details. Later.”

  “Hey Harry, it’s Lucy in Sayulita. How’s your dig doing? Hope you found the mother lode. Meanwhile I’ve gotten myself into another—predicament down here. I need to talk to you. Try my cell, but its spotty. I’m in Suite Five at the Villa Roma Hotel.” She gave him the number and hung up, then looked at the camera. “That was exciting, eh?”

  “You want to say anything about Harold? Like, who is he?”

  “None of your business,” Lucy said.

  “Fine, fine,” Leslie laughed. “Who’s next?”

  “My neighbor, Jane Aronstein, who lives downstairs from me in SoHo, New York. She’s been looking out for my loft while I’m gone. I’m just calling to check on it, OK? You want to turn off your machine?”

  “No way, Lucy,” Leslie said. “You haven’t watched much TV, have you? We need all this backstory—to fill in the blanks—and to fill the time, kiddo. Just pretend I’m not here.”

  Four hours later, Lucy put a lid on her anxiety as they began their meeting. And she had to admit to herself that Leslie was a prescient girl. She’d gotten some undeniably interesting footage of Lucy on the phone with various players, and caught her mood as it spiraled down through disbelief and on into paranoid shock and rage.

  But first came the report from Terry and Marcia, accompanied by a ton of good footage shot by Hector Valdez. Terry did the voice over as they gathered round to watch the dvd on her laptop. “Hector said the nearest pharmacies are in Bucerias, which is about half way back to Puerto Vallarta, on the other side of the hill. So here we are getting in the car, blah blah blah, leaving Sayu, heading through the forest. Enough of this already. Now, Bucerias. There’s the first pharmacia—that big white building with the red cross at the side of the road. So we parked and went in and Hector asked if he could get a bottle of seconal or a bottle of valium or codeine. The pharmacist is saying no, you must have a prescription. Then Hector in Spanish is asking where is the doctor who will give this prescription, and you can see the pharmacist shrug, and say no se, I don’t know.

  “So it’s off, on foot, in search of the pharmacia sleazaria, down the street here. We wandered around a bit—its kind of a shabby but colorful little town—and ended up by the beach, where we found this seafood place that Hector had said was really good. So we had lunch. I know, I know, not part of the story, but wait, it gets better.” They viewed footage of the town and restaurant and the women vamping over some platters of food, then they moved back onto the street and unseen Hector taped from behind as Terry and Marcia spotted another pharmacia on a quieter side street. On screen the two women walked in and approached the woman behind the counter. Marcia in broken Spanish and with mime indicated that she was in very much pain and could they help her. The woman offered Advil, and Marcia said, no gracias, do you have mucho stronger pills please. The woman shook her head, said you need a prescription, speaking in English, and then she said, you must go and see Doctor Luis Cardozo, he is in the clinic two blocks down upstairs on the left side of the road. Muchas gracias etc. They went out, and walked down the street, and soon fou
nd a sign that said Clinica, open 8 am-8pm, Doctor Luis Cardozo. They went in, Hector still shooting from behind, and up a dingy flight of stairs to find a small waiting room. Behind a window, the receptionist was a well-groomed, pretty young thing. This time Terry approached, and asked about a consultation. The woman looked at the camera and slightly frowned but then said, what is the problem? Terry said migrano in mi cabeza, tapping her temple and grimacing, and apparently the woman got it. Speaking broken English and looking at her watch, she said a consultation is twenty-five dollars. Terry asked can I get a prescription? She said no problem. The doctor is in. But you can not take that in, she said, looking at the camera. No problemo, Terry said, sitting down, then getting up to go in to see the doctor.

  Jump cut to Terry coming out. She looked right at the camera. “So this is the deal: I went in there and I said I had a migraine—this Doctor Cardozo speaks English perfectly well—and asked could he help me. He said, what would you like? I said, some sort of pain pill. He said I will prescribe Oxycontin, it is very effective. And also, I said, I have had some trouble sleeping because of it, and he said, I can also prescribe valium or ambien if you are willing to pay the consultation fee. I said sure, I was almost laughing at him by now, but he didn’t care. I gave him the money, five hundred pesos, and then said, Oh, by the way, I almost forgot, my friend Judy Leggett up in Sayulita needs a re-fill on her prescription. She’s really sick today and couldn’t make the trip down. He looked at me, then looked in his drawer, and pulled out a scrip pad. He wrote me two prescriptions, then thumbed through the pink second sheets of scrips he’d already written. Then he became all apologetic, and said, I am sorry but I wrote her seconal and oxycontin prescriptions and gave them to Señor Dario only five days ago, and since there were twenty doses in each I can not write another one for her until, let me see…he looked at his calendar…next Wednesday at the very soonest. However, with extenuating circumstances this delay can be circumvented if you are willing to pay double the required consultation fee in advance, as I may write this up as a medical emergency therefore justifying the need for…”

  “God, he’s Doctor Feelgood,” Lucy cut in. Terry paused the dvd.

  “No shit. And we sure as hell know where Judy got her drugs. Oxy for herself, and seconal for you and Sandra. She and Dario didn’t even try to cover their tracks. The arrogant fools.”

  “Did you get copies of those scrips?” Leslie asked. “It might help to have them.”

  “No. I asked, but he wouldn’t do it,” Terry said. “And he wouldn’t let us film him, understandably. I should have been tape recording but I didn’t think to bring one down. But we do have the prescriptions he wrote for me—anybody wants any dope I can get it for them,” she laughed, “which we might be able to use somehow or other. At least to get the good doctor into the story. We thought of sticking around and doing a sneak attack on him with the camcorder when he came out of his office but it seemed cruel. He’s just a hack making money off the bad habits of gringos on vacation. It hardly seems worth it to ruin him. His involvement in this is unwitting I’m sure.”

  “I guess,” said Lucy. “But he’s sure loose with that prescription pad.”

  “There’s a long tradition of that here, Lucy. People have come to Mexico to cop cheap drugs for decades,” Leslie said. “Guys like Cardozo are simply meeting a need.”

  “No shit,” said Marcia. “I have friends who go to Tijuana for Valium, codeine and birth control pills, and my mom gets her Retin A and Ambien down there.”

  “Well, you guys certainly made some serious progress,” Lucy said. “I wish I could say the same.” She sighed. It was her turn now. She had enjoyed the last few minutes, when her mind was on matters other than what was going on in New York.

  “What about you, Lucy? What happened up here with—”

  “It’s a nightmare.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m still in shock. That’s why I let you guys do your thing first. I meant to get down to the real estate office but I got sidetracked. Leslie, you want to run this bummer?”

  “OK, Luce, if it’s all right with you.” She popped out the dvd and put in another. They ran through Lucy’s intro and the first phone call, to Harold’s cell. Then, on screen, Lucy looked at the camera and said, “OK, OK, keep it rolling, Les. Invade my universe, I don’t care. Here’s the story: right now I’m calling my neighbor in New York, Jane Aronstein, to check on my loft. This has nothing to do with our investigation but Leslie insisted on shooting it anyways.” She punched in a bunch of numbers, and waited. Offscreen, Leslie said to Lucy, “I can turn this into a speaker phone. Do you mind?”

  Lucy remembered her first impulse was to say, hell yes I mind but then, instead, she shrugged. “No. Go ahead.”

  They all watched the computer screen, where Lucy now talked on the phone. “Hey Jane, how are you? It’s Lucy.”

  Jane came through muffled but understandable on the speaker phone. “I’m good, Lucy. Hey, how’s the weather in LA?”

  “LA? I don’t—oh, of course. I’m in Mexico, Janey. I came down like two days after I got to LA. We’re working on the show down here.”

  “Mexico? Cool. How’s the weather?”

  “It’s great. So’s everything OK with the loft? Has Lascovich been around?”

  “No. But your friend came by yesterday and got the keys.”

  “My friend? What friend? What are you talking about?” Lucy, on screen, looked shocked and dismayed.

  “Mickey. Your writer friend, the one you said you went to Jamaica with a couple of years ago. I remembered her name since they’re aren’t many girls named Mickey. She said she’d talked to you and you told her it was OK if she stayed there while she was getting a new kitchen put into her apartment on Roosevelt Island. She said you’d called from LA, that the X Dames show was going great, and that you thought you’d be out there staying with your friend Terry for a while. She obviously knew you so I gave her the keys.”

  “Jesus.” Lucy held the phone, her uncertainty emanating from the screen. “Jane, I thought we agreed you weren’t going to give the keys to anyone but me.”

  “I know, I know, you’re worried about Lascovich. But he’s not even around. He and his wife went to Florida. They left the day after you did.”

  “So Mickey’s up there now?”

  “I guess. You want me to go knock on the door?”

  “No. Forget about it. I’ll call her. But I wish you’d checked with me.”

  “Lucy, I tried your cell. It wasn’t working. She was really nice, and said all the right things, so—”

  “OK, OK. I’m not blaming you. I just—oh, never mind. Hey, what did this woman look like?”

  “I don’t know. I mean I was in the middle of something so I wasn’t really paying attention. Let me think. She had long, wavy blonde hair, she was probably in her late thirties or early forties, she wore spectacles, and she was dressed in sort of nouveau hippie clothes but expensively, it seems to me. She seemed fashion-conscious. I remember thinking she was really skinny.”

  “Hmm.” Lucy couldn’t picture anyone she knew. She especially couldn’t picture mouse-haired, wide-bottomed Mickey. “Well, I guess I’ll see you when I see you, Jane.” She hung up. “Damn.” She looked into the camera. “Lascovich is messing with me here, I think.”

  Leslie, offscreen, said, “You want to fill us in?”

  “Not right now. I’ve got to make another call this minute.” She picked up the phone and punched in a bunch of numbers.

  “Hello?” The speaker phone was still on.

  “Hey, Mick, is that you?”

  “Yes, who’s this?”

  “It’s me. Lucy Ripken.”

  “Hey, Luce, sorry I didn’t recognize your voice. This cell phone sucks. I was just thinking about you this very morning. I heard something about—”

  “So you’re not in my loft?”

  “What? Why would I be in your loft?”

  “Yo
u didn’t call my downstairs neighbor Jane, get my new keys, and move into my loft while your kitchen’s being remodeled?”

  “What are you talking about, Lucy? I’m sitting in my apartment on Roosevelt Island, gazing longingly at TV commercials for bad food while eating carrot sticks by the hundreds. I’m down to one hundred thirty eight point six pounds and still on it.”

  “That’s great,” Lucy said into the phone, then looked directly at the camera. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Lucy, what are you talking about?”

  “Mick, here’s the deal: I’m in Mexico working on this TV show and somebody posing as you got the keys to my place and got in. She knew enough about me to convince my neighbor that she was you. That’s all I know. I don’t know who or why or what but I suspect the landlord is up to something.”

  “God damn, that’s pretty weird. Do you want me to go and see what’s up?”

  “No, no, I don’t think you should stick your nose into this.”

  “But if someone gets legal possession you’ll never get back in there.”

  “I know,” Lucy said. “I’m in a total bind. But I heard my landlord’s out of town for a week, so maybe I’ll beat him back and then—we’ll see. Meanwhile, I’m like five thousand miles away. Damn! Ain’t life a bitch. Well, listen I have one other thing I wanted to ask you.”

  “Anything for you, Luce. You want me to go shoot this broad, get the keys back?”

  “Yeah, I’ll pay you five hundred bucks for the hit. No, seriously, once upon a time you told me you knew this guy in the East Village who was like the best computer hacker in the known universe.”

  “Slope Tweed.”

  “Slope Tweed?”

  “That’s his name. He’s still there, on East Ninth. Completely wacko, but yes, he’s the best hacker I’ve ever met, known, or heard of, and he loves me madly so he will do your bidding if I tell him to do so.”