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

by J. J. Henderson

  “Her rights to the place go to her family, yes?”

  “No, they go to the partners. That was part of it too you see. We never imagined her dying. We hardly even talked about this part of the contract. She was only twenty-seven years old. And now—”

  Her husband finally spoke, in heavily-accented English. “That cabron Ruben Dario and his American partners plan to rip all the trees out and tear the house down and make some big ugly apartments over there, and sell them all. They are planning to start this building sometime in the summer. We get a lot of money that we don’t need and they are going to ruin that land forever. I have lived here always and I have seen what this development brings. Our street will never be the same.”

  “Well Lucy, I guess we’ve got our motive,” Leslie said, her voice tinged with sadness as they trudged back down the road a few moments later. “And I’ve got some more great footage.”

  “Really. That old guy was so soulful—and true. What a sad story,” Lucy said. “Sandra and her friends there had a wonderful plan, and then, conveniently enough for these stinking developers, she dies. You’d think they’d planned it that way, huh? Well, all I can say is the plot is certainly thickening. Into tragedy. But how are we ever going to be able to prove anything? How can we nail these guys?”

  “I think you should get that Tweed character on this. I bet there’s an email trail. These days there’s always an email trail.”

  Back at the internet café, Lucy logged on and discovered that Slope Tweed had sent her an email with a link to his website, seedytweedy@netfarce.com. She went there and had a look. The site offered internet services, no details beyond that. There was a photo of Tweed on the street in the East Village. He looked like Homer Simpson in black hipster clothes. Lucy sent him an email: Hi Slope. Lucy R here. Saw your site. Mickey says you can find things out. The company is Sayulita Development Company, website Sayulitaforsale.com. Any email from anyone there, especially a guy called Ruben Dario but also Wally Townsend, to someone called Judy Leggett, JudyLegs@Yoohoo.com; any email between any of them and SanDar@mns.com. If you could cover the last month that would be great. Do your best. We think these people are guilty of murder. Also PLEASE do what you have to do to make this email completely go away at both ends. Thanks Lucy Ripken.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A SHOWDOWN AND A LETDOWN

  There were plenty of threads to untangle, but chief among them, to Lucy’s thinking, was the mysterious role of Judy Leggett. What was her stake in this deal? Lucy hoped the email trail, should Slope Tweed come up with one, might resolve that, but meanwhile she thought she’d drop in on Bobby’s house and have a look around. With Leslie’s digital mini-cam in one hand, shooting away, she pedaled her fat tire bike up the hard-packed low tide beach, shooting filler material. Now that the X Dames had folded up its tents and faded into the background, dead surf-chick included, Sayulita life had returned to its eccentric norm: as she swooped up the beach, she grabbed footage of castle-building kids, tussling dogs, soccer-playing Mexican teenagers, beer-swilling California surfer dudes, joint-toking Euro-hipsters, and margarita-sipping high rent daytrippers from Puerto Vallarta, vamping on rented lounge chairs. She taped the town’s resident surfing dog—a small, black-and-white mongrel, he rode the nose while his tattooed owner-man carved up a dinky little wave on his longboard—as she passed the point. North of the point the crowd thinned, and she surreptitiously captured pairs of well-groomed Norteamericanos power-walking the sand, their well-groomed lapdogs marching in leashed lockstep. When she reached the house of the big fat moon she parked the bike by the beach steps, went up, and approached cautiously, still shooting.

  When she got closer, she heard cries and moans, not of pain but of pleasure; sexual pleasure. She stopped, uncertain, and then heard clear as day, Bobby Schamberg saying, “Awesome, baby. Keep it going. Oh, yeah.” This definitely required a closer look. She crept up to the window, mini-cam ready, and peered into a large bedroom. On the kingsized bed in the middle of the room, beneath a ceiling mirror, El Pantero the surfing champion lay on his back, naked and fully aroused, fondling himself while he waited for the girls to warm up. Next to him on the bed, naked, intertwined and writhing, Henrietta and Judy worked on each other. They both had gone Brazilian down below, Lucy could not help but notice. Bobby stood a few feet away from the bedside, also naked and aroused, shooting the scene with a video camera. Lucy shot thirty long seconds of footage, then ducked down and scurried away. That clip would probably not make it into the movie. Or maybe it would, if they ended up in the edgier precincts of cable, where hard-ons occasionally slid by the censor, tits and ass were everywhere, and people talked that pottymouth talk and called it hard-boiled dialogue. Who knew?

  What Lucy did know was that she was dealing with a number of people of dubious moral character. But then, she’d already known that. Or maybe she was turning prude. In any case, her reaction to what she’d just seen was not to get aroused, irritated, amused, or intrigued. She felt just slightly disgusted.

  That’s what she told Marcia and Terry when she showed it to them on a computer a bit later in the afternoon, when they met back at the hotel. “God, I can’t believe I slept with that guy,” Marcia said after watching.

  “Hey, you were drunk, kid,” Lucy said.

  “Yeah, but I’m not stupid. I was just—”

  “He’s a total stud, you guys,” said Terry. “There’s no denying that. I mean look at him. You’re a horny 23 year-old girl and that guy has a body to die for. With some serious lumber included. So save the guilt for a more worthy occasion. In any case I’m more interested in that shadowy other body—right there—myself,” she said, freezing the computer screen in the midst of the little orgy as they replayed it. “Look at that.” She pointed. There was a man standing in a doorway, partially visible, whom Lucy hadn’t noticed when she’d poked her camera in the window or even when they watched it the first time. She’d been—distracted. They blew the frame up and manipulated it for a moment, until they were sure: none other than Ruben Dario, enjoying the show.

  “Are you sure Bobby’s not in on this whole scheme?” Lucy said to Terry. “I mean, he’s really in the thick of it, Ter.”

  “He told me this morning he’d talked Henrietta and Judy into doing a movie with that Panther guy,” she said. “I remain convinced he’s not in on the ‘plot,’ whatever it is. Aside from everything else, he doesn’t need the money. I guess I never told you but I suspect Bobby’s true aspiration is to become a porn mogul. He’s been shooting and collecting homemade triple X footage like this for years.”

  “That is so gross,” said Marcia. “I knew this one girl who ended up, you know, out in The Valley doing hardcore. It was so weird, she showed up at this party, the last time I saw her, and she was acting like a real movie star. She calls herself Sheryl Deep, and my friend who’s into porn told me every movie she was ever in her big scene, what they call the money shot, was the one where the guy, or guys, blasted her in the face with their orgasms. It was ugly.”

  “Porn ain’t pretty, that’s for sure,” said Lucy. “And this whole scene is definitely getting seriously sleazy, isn’t it? We verge on Triple X Dames here.” She stopped. “But I still don’t get why Judy stuck her neck out by giving the drugs to Sandra, except maybe she thought her true love Henrietta might win the contest if Sandra wasn’t able to compete.”

  “But everybody knew Henrietta couldn’t surf as well as half the other girls out there, Luce,” said Terry. “There was no way she was going to win unless the bitch poisoned everybody in the contest.”

  “You’re right. So I guess we’d better hope that Mr. Slope’s got something for us. Shall we head down to the café for a look?”

  They did, and there was email from Slope. “Hey Lucy, getting this done was way easy for the seedytweedy. As was making your email disappear into the void, so no worries there. It would take a far smarter crew than this bunch to track me down. These people all had their passwords sitting
right out there practically in the open for me to grab. They’re either stupid or lazy or both. But there’s a lot of junk. I don’t know what you’re looking for so I didn’t dare edit. It’s in six attachments. Each one covers a week’s worth of correspondence between the names you gave me, sorted by date. Good luck, kick butt, hope to meet you sometime since Mickey says you’re way past cool. El Slopo Mexicano.”

  They downloaded the attachments and split them up between the two laptops and the desktop in the café. Marcia stayed at the desktop with her two weeks’ worth, while Lucy and Terry headed back to the hotel to work through the other month of mail.

  Four hours later, bleary-eyed but verging on triumphant, they stopped, reconnoitred, and made a few calls. First, Terry called Bobby and told him to plan a meeting at his house, next morning, 9 am, and to get everybody there including Dario, Townsend, Judy, and Henrietta. Then Lucy called Dario’s office to personally deliver the same message. Violeta claimed he was out of town again. Lucy said, “Fine, but let him know that I know everything about the deal with the Pastor and Caselin families, and I know a certain Dr. Cardozo in Bucerias, and…”

  “Señorita Ripken,” Dario interrupted. “I just walked into the office and Violeta tells me you are on the phone for me. Can I help you with something?” She’d heard him breathing the whole time, listening and breathing, just like when he’d been watching them shoot their sex movie up at Bobby’s house.

  “Tomorrow. 9 am. Bobby’s house. You know, where you were watching Bobby make a movie this afternoon. Hope you got off good. You can help by being there, and bring your partner.” She hung up.

  “Damn, you’re a fierce one, Luce,” Terry said.

  “I think we’d better watch out for that guy,” Lucy said. “He knows we know stuff.”

  “Well, you might say you’re pushing a few of his buttons, Lucy,” Marcia said.

  “And that’s why we love you, Luce,” said Terry drily. “Meanwhile, let’s get Leslie in here to document our email finds. These are major leads.”

  They tracked Leslie down by calling around town, and she showed up soon thereafter. They staged several scenes with each of the women making incriminating email finds. This was reality staged, yes, but the emails weren’t. They were solid bits of cyber-info, undeniable truths even if obtained by dubious means.

  After a run to the liquor store for a bottle of sauza and a stop at El Juicy to print out a couple of dozen pages of emails, the women spent the evening knocking back shooters while weaving their lovely web of accusations. They were done just short of midnight.

  Unwilling to go back to Bobby’s house at this point in the drama, Leslie spent the night on Lucy’s sofa, leaving her matching bed boys on their own for the night. “They’ll be OK by themselves,” she said. “I think they like screwing each other more than they like doing me.” She sighed. “But at least they don’t ask me to make movies of it.”

  “They’ve been invisible all week, Leslie,” Lucy said. “They’re like—pet dogs.”

  “Exactly,” Leslie said. “A fine pair of puppies.”

  After breakfast the four of them headed up to Bobby’s, accompanied by Hector Valdez and his camera. Leslie also had hers, so they could get a couple of different camera angles in what they hoped would be the climactic confrontational scene. The Big Bust. Bring Down the House.

  The usual fleet of SUVs had parked in the driveway. They went in the open front door and found them all sitting in the living room: Bobby Schamberg, Judy Leggett, Ruben Dario, Henrietta Walton, and Wally Townsend. Violeta was there too, in her sexy secretary outfit, with a notepad and a pen, ready to take dictation. The other surfer girls and the surf stud, uninvited, were not on the scene. Leslie’s boys, their “work” done, had gone home on an early flight. “Hi girls,” said Bobby. “How are you today?”

  Terry went to a wall switch and turned all the lights on high. “We’re good, Bobby,” she said. “I hope you’re well, after your strenuous—workout—yesterday afternoon.”

  He smirked. “God, do you guys like, have to know about everything?”

  “Not only know it, Bobby, my man,” Terry said. “We have to document it.”

  “Please,” Dario cut in impatiently. “I have many things to do today. Can you kindly make me to understand why we are here?”

  “Well,” said Lucy, a little nervous now that they had set the stage, and the cameras were rolling. “Nice of you all to show up on time.”

  “Now as you know,” she went on, “Teresa MacDonald and I, X Dames writers, have had our doubts about the stated cause of Sandra Darwin’s death in the surfing contest the other day. These doubts were raised by a number of facts, the central one being that someone drugged me that morning—and though we never had a chance to prove it we believe that the drugs I ingested were in coffee that Sandra also drank.” She was being too formal, she decided. Too stiff. This was performance! The camera was on her. Lighten up, Luce. “So, gang, here’s what we did. We found out about Sandra’s real estate deal, and her partners. We found out where she lived, and how she bought the house. We found out—”

  “Wait a second, Lucy,” Terry interrupted, on cue. “You’re getting ahead of yourself here. All in good time.” She held up a sheaf of papers. “Although we were able to dig this stuff up only after we’d looked into the real estate deal, these emails turned out to be quite revealing about what happened before the surfing contest was even set up. “What we have here, amigos, is a number of emails sent between Ruben Dario’s office and Judy Leggett, and even a few involving you, Señor Townsend, and you, Henrietta. They date back a couple of months, to a period just prior to the decision by Judy and Bobby to stage the surfing contest in Sayulita, and date forward until last week. It seems that Judy knew Ruben Dario from previous surfing trips—and also they both knew Sandra, and knew exactly her living circumstances. You, Ruben Dario, knew Sandra even better than most, for in spite of having a wife and three children living in Santa Barbara, California, you were involved in an affair with Sandra. And following from that information and several of the emails we discovered, it looks to us as if the point of having the contest here, in Sayulita, was to set up a situation that you—Judy and Ruben— might use to your advantage—as in, somehow getting Sandra to buy the Caselins’ property, where she had been living for several years, since as you very well knew she had become friendly with her landlords. You knew they would never sell that property to you, because they did not want that land developed or Sandra’s pretty little house torn down. So the idea was to get her to buy it and then get her rights to it. This was your idea, Ruben, so you were quite quite happy, even eager, to lend Sandra the down payment of fifty grand, seemingly no strings attached.

  “Once Bobby signed on to the Sayulita location for the X Dames show, on Judy’s advice, it became a matter of coming up with a plan to get hold of the property and the easiest and most obvious way to do this, you decided, was to somehow get rid of Sandra. I know you considered bribing her—buying her out for a fat chunk of money—but were not convinced she would take your money to betray her friends, the Pastors and Caselins. Then you lucked out when Judy’s wave tracker reported a major swell was going to show up this week, raising the possibility of a surfing accident, say, during the contest, when the women competitors would be expected to take chances in the waves, to score more points. Of course Judy knew Doctor Cardozo, she’d been down here a few times on surfing trips, so she knew she’d be able to get as much dope as she needed, oxycontin for herself, and seconal for whatever other purposes.

  “Henrietta, aside from bad taste in lovers and friends, your only problem is that you knew what Judy planned to do to Sandra, so you’re guilty of accessory. You figured, I guess, that it might give you an actual shot at winning the contest. Townsend, you’re just a greedy fuck with no heart, happy to come along for the ride and collect your commissions. Bobby, you’re the horndog supreme, incapable of thinking with anything but your dick. We find it hard to believe th
at you weren’t aware of any of this, but I don’t think you were. The rest of you, well, we have evidence in writing, right here, of a fairly solid case for conspiracy to commit murder, since you are all on the deed to Sandra’s property as partners or investors. With Ruben as prestanombre—we know that Sandra’s neighborhood has not yet been regularized so that there was no bank trust involved—you were all set to move forward, turning the fifty grand you paid the Pastor and Caselin family into what, five, six, seven million dollars?” She stopped.