Lucy's Money: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 4)

by J. J. Henderson

  “Hi, Harry,” she said.

  “Hi Lucy.” He sounded down. “So how’s it going?”

  “Good, good, Harry. But I just want you to know that I—I really love you, Harry. I do. You have to believe me.”

  “I just want to see you Lucy. When are you…”

  “I have a little bit more to do. I should be out of here by—say, three days.”

  “Three days? What the—Lucy, what’s going on?”

  “A lot, Harry. A whole lot.” She took a deep breath, and sighed, and then spent fifteen minutes telling him the whole story, but for Krish. With Krish, Lucy decided what Harry didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.

  At the end he said, “You crazy broad. Christ. You didn’t tell me you were going after that maniac’s operation, Lucy! Do you realize how dangerous—”

  “Yes, I know. It was a foolish move. But one I had to make. You know how that is, Harry. And to tell the truth I don’t feel like I’m done. I really, really wish I knew what I could do to finish the bastards off.”

  “Jesus, Lucy, isn’t it obvious?” he said softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You should write it! It’s a story screaming to be told, you’ve got the info and the chops. You can take Douglas down, and those Señors with him. There’s gotta be someone who’ll—look, you know I’m sorta pals with a senior editor at the Voice. I’m sure you can—they don’t do “travel” stories but all this shit with Griffin Douglas and the school and the orphanage and the sex trade is just too good to resist. Plus you’ve got your Sandinista/contra element thrown in. You know that sordid gringo behavior overseas is always popular with the progressive element around here. And you’ve got your Mexican book out and that whole X Dames thing so you’re totally credentialed. I’m sure he’ll—”

  “But Harry, I’ve never written this kind of—I don’t have that much hard evidence to substantiate what’s going on.”

  “You’ve got some photos of the place. You can reach those girls you liberated, right? You write the story, you tell the truth, people will know.”

  He was right! She could do it. “Listen Harry, it’s a great plan. Writing it, I mean. But I need to do some of it here, just in case there are people I need to track down, you know, and—”

  “Three days, Lucy. Then get your ass home. Please.”

  “Four days max. I promise.”

  She got off the phone and turned off the lights and lay in the dark writing in her head. At eight in the morning she had not slept a wink, but in her head she had written and revised a five thousand word story that started with a suitcase full of money and incorporated all of the Stuff that Got Left out of the Guidebook and ended with—who knew? She grabbed the phone and called Manny Sky at home and asked him one last favor, when he came to pick up Esmeralda could he bring her a laptop to use for a couple of days? He said sure no problem I’ll bring a Mercedes and my kitchen sink and six white horses as well, OK? No never mind the car and kitchen sink and six white horses just bring the computer and my one hundred thousand dollars, OK? What hundred thousand dollars, Lucy? He asked, then laughed. Ha ha Manny.

  They had breakfast in bed, and then Manny showed up with the money and the computer, and after she and Lucy had a great big hug Esmeralda went away with him. She would be flying down to the Osa—second time ever on an airplane—that very day.

  Lucy ordered up a large pot of coffee, drew the shades shut and turned up the lights, then set herself up at the room’s writing desk. She opened a new document, sat staring at the blank, gray-white screen for five minutes, seeing in her mind’s eye the shape of the story, knowing it in her hands from beginning to end; and then she began to write it.

  She worked for three days, fourteen hours a day, breaks for food and sleep. At the end of three days she had a strong first draft, four thousand six hundred and seventy one words. She put one copy on a disk and couriered it to Harold in New York. She put another copy on another disk and stuck it in her suitcase which she left in storage at the hotel when she checked out on the fourth morning. She took her purse with all that money in it, and after returning Manny’s computer and booking a ticket home to New York for the next morning, she flew to Liberia, rented another car, and headed up to La Cruz and down to the beach, to Lester Martinez’s Bed and Breakfast on Playa Rajada.

  With Lester she cut a deal: in exchange for the eighty-five thousand dollars in cash he needed to upgrade his plumbing system, plus five thousand more to get his operation back into gear, Lucy asked for two weeks of free vacation time every year for twenty years for half a dozen or so people. Lester countered by offering not two weeks a year for twenty years but two weeks a year for the rest of their lives.

  “He said we could come whenever we wanted, until we all dropped,” Lucy said to Harry late the next night, after they’d finally made love for the first time in over a month. “And that goes for all of us, together, in groups of four, six, eight, whatever.”

  “So that’s the investment.”

  “Yeah.”

  He laid quietly for a moment, then hugged her. “Good job, Lucy.”

  Costa Rican Cutthroats, Lucy’s expose of the Four Señors, Griffin Douglas, the sex hotel by Playa Rajada, the Big Fish camp dope-running operation, and the Rancho de la Luna Orphanage and Reform School scam ran in the Village Voice three weeks after she got home. Within a few days of publication, long sections of the story had been picked up by the wire services and various other newspapers and magazines around the country. Soon an investigation was launched and several members of the house of representatives in Washington, D.C., were sent scrambling for their political lives as their initials and phone numbers turned up in print in conjunction with a company in Costa Rica known to finance the sexual exploitation of children as well as drug-running and illegal construction projects in ecologically sensitive areas of Costa Rica, Panama, and Honduras. An adoption agency called AFTA was brought down, the Rancho de la Luna was shut down, the Pescado Grande Fish Camp burned to the ground in a mysterious fire, and a certain golf resort never got built in Guanacaste. An American ex-marine named Griffin Douglas—and his wife— were arrested by Costa Rican authorities and charged with various crimes against the state. Upon their release into the custody of the American ambassador the two of them quietly disappeared into the jungles of Central America.

  Nearly eleven months later, Lucy, Harry, and several of their partners relaxed on a row of lounge chairs arrayed along the edge of Playa Rajada. “So that’s how it all went down,” Lucy said, having just spent fifteen minutes telling the parts that got left out of the article one more time. Now that they were on location, they seemed to think the story needed re-telling.

  “What a tale, Luce,” said Mickey Wolfe. “I still think there’s a book there waiting to be written.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” said Lucy, “But first I’ve got to update Grunwald again. And I’ve already got a contract for that.”

  “Hey, who wants to take a swim?” said Marcia, just back from two days’ surfing at Witches Rock, which she’d ripped, she claimed, like she owned it. “Luce?”

  “Guys, listen,” said Lucy. “Like I said before, there are sea-snakes out there. They won’t bite you if you don’t bother them, but if you do bother one—say, step on it—they might bite your ass, and then you’re dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Just keep your feet off the bottom. But there’s no time to swim anyways, we’re…”

  “Pardon me, Lucy,” said Lester, strolling onto the beach from the hotel path. “The man from the adventure tour company is here to pick you up.”

  “La Cruz Tours? Already? Action time!” She jumped up. “You guys ready to hike Rincon de la Vieja? There’s some amazing shit up there.”

  “Let’s roll,” said Harry. They all got to their feet and headed back to the hotel. Lucy went around the side of the building with Lester to discuss the day’s plan with the tour company guy. There he stood, at the side of the van, Mr. Chr
istopher MacLennan of La Cruz Adventure Tours. His thinning black hair was dyed blonde, and he had a beautiful, long-haired, visibly pregnant blonde at his side.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” Lucy exclaimed. She should have known, with that name.

  “Hey Luce,” he said. “I thought I would surprise you.”

  “That you did, Krish…”

  “Chris, please.”

  “Chris. That you did.”

  “I tried to dig California again, but I could not stay away from Costa Rica. I love this place too much. And so does Jenny, my business partner.” He grinned, pleased as hell with himself. “And my wife.”

  “Hi,” she said, offering Lucy a hand. “Chris has told me all about you,” she said as they shook hands. “And I am very happy to meet at last the fabulous Lucy Ripken.”

  This concludes book four of the Lucy Ripken Mysteries. Book five, Lost in New York will be out in December of 2015.

  To hear as soon as it comes out, like Lucy’s Facebook page here.

  In the meantime, f you’ve missed any of the previous books, you can find them here:

  Murder on Naked Beach

  Mexican Booty

  X-Dames