Just Add Salt (Hetta Coffey Mystery Series (Book 2)) Read online

  “Thank you. When will you reach Mag Bay?”

  “You mean you don’t know, what with all this info funneling into you. I mean, hasn’t my boat captain called you, for cryin’ out loud?”

  “Not yet.”

  I gave him an estimated schedule and said good-bye, then I told Jan the baby news. She was as nonplussed as I was, so we spent the next hour trying to conjure up an image of what the child would look like. With any luck, it would get the Trob’s brains, but Allison’s common sense and good looks. We had a field day with possible names, settling on Condaleeza Einsteina Wontrobski, if it was a girl.

  I also told her about the mystery e-mailer being tracked to Ensenada.

  “So, I got an idea,” she said in a whisper.

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “Well, duh. Fabio comes from Ensenada. We get hate e-mail from Ensenada. It ain’t rocket surgery.”

  “Mike Tyson comes from the planet earth, too, but that doesn’t mean we’re related. Come on, Jan, Fabio was on board, at sea, when we got the last two messages. Besides, why would he not want us to take a trip he’s getting paid to make?”

  “I dunno, but I have a really brilliant idea. Maybe like, not having all our plans and everything that happens to us published in the National Enquirer? And, let’s hire Martinez.”

  “To do what?”

  “Go to Ensenada, stake out that Internet café and bust the perp.”

  “The perp? You read too many novels. However, that is a brilliant idea. Not that Martinez can arrest anyone down here, but he can maybe find out who’s messin’ with us.”

  Jan wandered off and, unable to resist, I brought up the mystery e-mail, hit REPLY and sent my own message: “I can lose weight, but you’ll still be ugly.”

  Okay, juvenile, but I felt better for it.

  Martinez arrived by panga shortly after we set the hook in San Quintin Bay. We’d kept in touch via his cell phone when we got within range, so he already had a fishing buddy lined up for the ride out to the anchorage. Retirement seemed to suit the ex- cop. He was tanned and his formerly dour expression appeared relaxed a tad since his days at the Oakland Police Department. Probably something to do with the relief of simply surviving the streets of Oakland for thirty years.

  “Just in time for breakfast, Marty,” I greeted him as he boarded Raymond Johnson. “Did you bring the tortillas? Thought we’d have fish tacos.”

  “I see nothing much has changed. I’m still schlepping groceries for you.” He gave me a peck on the cheek and handed over two bags containing fresh veggies, still warm from the tortillaria corn tortillas, and two bottles of Ron Palmas rum. Jan and I led the way onto the back deck, where Fabio waited.

  “Fabio, come meet my friend, Marty.”

  The men shook hands and sized each other up. Or at least Martinez was sizing. Fabio seemed intent on playing a stereotypical, buffoonish Mexican pistolero straight out of a fifties film. All our captain needed to complete his new persona as a Sierra Madre stand-in were crossed bandoliers on his chest, a rhinestone studded sombrero, and a bottle of Tequila in his non-pistol-brandishing hand.

  If Martinez was amused, it didn’t show. When Fabio swaggered off to “check the engines” we stared after him.

  “What,” Jan asked, “was that all about?”

  “Damned if I know. Maybe he’s afraid of badges.”

  “Badges? I ain’t got no stinkin’ badge,” Martinez drawled. “He’s dirty.”

  I gave him a look. “Oh, come on. How can you know that? You just met him.”

  “Hinky.”

  “What?”

  “When I get hinky, something’s wrong. And he gives me the hinks. Thirty years in law enforcement and you learn to pay attention to the hinks. He’s hiding something.”

  “Aren’t we all? Maybe he just doesn’t like you, Detective Martinez.”

  He shrugged. “Could be.” But he looked doubtful. “I’d handle the money if I were you.”

  I changed the subject. “Speaking of the hinks, how would you like a job?”

  “Wouldn’t. I’m retired.”

  “Bet your wife would enjoy a break from house building. Maybe a nice vacation in Ensenada? All bills paid?”

  “What you got in mind?”

  I told him about the phone calls and e-mail. “Wontrobski narrowed the e-mail to an Internet café in Ensenada. I’ve used those before. They keep a log. With a few pesos greasing a palm, bet you could get a look at it.”

  Jan chimed in. “Maybe they’d remember the perp.”

  Martinez curled his upper lip, hitched his pants and tilted his head. “Yeah, then I could sweat him,” he snarled in the Cagney mode.

  “That’s it?”

  “Well, you could off the guy who sent it.”

  Martinez looked rattled. “You’re kidding.”

  “Of course I’m kidding. Just find out who’s sending me crank e-mail and we’ll nail the caller, as well. Then you can off him.”

  “That’s all you want, huh? Knowing you, it’ll probably turn into an international episode of some kind. Probably bring an end to NAFTA. But hey, I’m tired of hammering and painting, so why not? One thing though, no one except you two,” he cocked his head at Jan, “and I, will know what I’m doing. I’m not even going to tell my wife the details. Got that? Not Jenks, not Lars, not Wontrobski, and especially not your so-called boat captain.”

  I locked my lips, turned an imaginary key and crossed my heart.

  “Marty,” Jan said, “give me an e-mail address where we can forward anything we get from this joker. Got Yahoo or Hotmail?”

  “Nope. I got my own domain.”

  “Well, la de dah,” I sang. “You can still reach me at [email protected]. What’s yours?”

  “[email protected]. You’re my first customer.”

  After Martinez left, Fabio came out of hiding and was acting like his old self, whatever that was. I had a sneaking suspicion the real Fabio emerged when he was being a serious boat captain, but since he occasionally morphed into Ricky Ricardo and a cheap imitation of a bandido, it was hard to tell where he was coming from. I sincerely hoped, with his handsome face, brilliant smile and Latin charm, he didn’t have a Ricardo Montalban persona.

  Years ago, Montalban’s sexy commercials were directly responsible for my purchase of an overpriced Chrysler LeBaron convertible. No telling what Montalban could have suckered me into if I’d been stuck on a boat at sea with him.

  “Don’t look at him like that, Hetta,” Jan whispered in my ear while she dragged me to the aft deck.

  “Huh? Who?”

  “You know damned well who, you Jezebel. Remember Jenks?”

  “Jenks who?”

  “Jenks, your fiancé?”

  “Oh, that Jenks. See any ring on my finger?” I asked, waving my naked hand under her nose.

  “No, but you are committed to Jenks. No fooling around with the hired help. Especially one with criminal tendencies.”

  “Oh, come on. So what if Fabio doesn’t like cops? Doesn’t mean he’s a felon, for crying out loud. Relax, I have no intention of snogging the crew.”

  “I hope to hell not, because I am crew and you’d better not snog me, whatever that means.”

  “Brits use it. Cuddling, kissing, whatever. I kind of like how it sounds.”

  “Fine. Just don’t do it.”

  “Okay, I’ll just snog with my eyes. Snog in my heart. Snog—” Jan rolled her eyes and stomped off.

  “Well, snog you!” I yelled at her back.

  Within a few hours of leaving San Quintin, we’d planned to go right back to our routine of rotating watches while plowing toward a refueling stop at Turtle Bay. For the first hour, though, we were all three drawn to the flying bridge, watching a quarter-mile-wide feeding frenzy of diving pelicans, gulls, frigates and leaping dolphins. Fabio diverted our course slightly so his fishing line would drag through the melee, maybe catch whatever was causing such a ruckus.

  “I wonder
how much fuel will set us back at Turtle?” I speculated as we watched the show. “We’ll have been running a steady eight knots for a little over two and a half days, with a half day sitting in San Quintin. Let’s say around fifty hours at eight knots an hour. We burn four gallons an hour, so I figure we should have burned right at…two hundred gallons. Then there’s some generator time at a third of a gallon an hour. We can check the hour meter. Let’s start a pool. Whoever is the closest to the number of gallons it takes to fill us up at Turtle Bay wins.”

  “What do they win?” Jan wanted to know.

  “Uh, I dunno. How about they get to skip half a watch?”

  “That is fair, señoritas. But I warn you, I will win.”

  “How come? It’s my boat and I know just about what she burns.”

  “I will win, as you shall see, Señorita Café.”

  And danged if he didn’t.

  The gas pier at Turtle Bay is a high, rather rickety looking affair with a rusty set of antiquated pumps and a very long hose. To refuel, you have to drop anchor and back as close as you dare to a bunch of dangerous-looking broken pilings just under the water’s surface. Someone throws a line from above, which you grab after it hits you square on the head, then they slide down the nozzle, which hits you square in the chest. Had the wind been whooping, it probably would have been a bear, but we got lucky. When we were full, the nozzle was pulled back up and replaced with a knuckle-rapping glass jar containing your bill. In goes the money, up goes the jar.

  Neither Jan nor I even came close to winning the fuel pool.

  “I don’t understand it,” I whined after shelling out a small fortune to the lackadaisical man on top of the pier, who sent back a few pesos in change. “I figured we’d burned about two hundred gallons and according to what you told they’re getting down here for a liter of diesel,” I grabbed my calculator and punched in six hundred bucks divided by 3.7, “we just took on three sixty. Do we have a mechanical problem? Or a fuel leak?”

  “No, señorita, you engines are good.”

  “Then where did all the fuel go?”

  “Pemex milagro.”

  “Miracle?”

  “Sí, milagro. In the whole of Mexico, one can always put at least twenty-two litros into a nineteen litro container. A milagro, no?”

  “I’d say so,” Jan agreed with a chuckle.

  I didn’t think it all that funny. “Okay, that would explain about fourteen percent more. What happened to the rest?”

  “You paid in dollars.”

  “So?”

  “Another five por ciento. They have a bad cambio rate.”

  “Okay, crappy exchange rate. That it?” As if that wasn’t enough.

  He shook his head.

  “What more can there be?’

  “Count you money. I think you have got the, how you say it? Cambio chort?”

  Jan burst out laughing. “Hetta got chort-changed?”

  “Sí, chort-changed.”

  I felt my blood pressure soar. If we weren’t already underway, I think I would have climbed up on the pier and strangled the bastard. “How in the hell do we get around these crooks?”

  “You must use pesos and let me count the change.”

  So much for Martinez’s advice about not letting Fabio handle the money.

  Jan patted his shoulder. “Trust me, next time we’ll let you deal with the jerks. So, they only cheat gringos?”

  Fabio shook his head and gave us a toothy smile. “Oh, no, señorita, they cheat us all equally. Mexico is a democracy.”

  Chapter 14

  “You owe me money, Martinez,” I growled when he called that evening after we left Turtle Bay, and the fuel pirates, in our wake. Jan and I were sharing the first half of Fabio’s watch, since the smarty pants won the fuel pool.

  “I owe you money? I just checked into this nice hotel in Ensenada, which is setting you back seventy-five a night and the missus and I are about to go out for a lobster dinner, thanks to your expense account.”

  “Lobster sounds cheap right now.” I told him about the fuel rip-off.

  “Okay, I was wrong on that one,” he said when he recovered from his pleural glee. “Didn’t take us long down here to pay in pesos and count our change. Oh, and another thing, make certain they clear the register before they start pumping.”

  “We were twenty feet from the pump and I don’t think they had no stinkin’ register.”

  “Then add another ten percent.”

  “So, as a rule of thumb I can just automatically add thirty percent to whatever the going rate seems to be?”

  “Not if you learn the game. Then it’s only ten, twenty.”

  “Now I know how those ancestors of mine felt at the Alamo. Did you check out that Internet café in Ensenada yet? Or have you had time, what with lollygagging in a first class hotel and power munching lobster on my tab?”

  He ignored my snide remarks. “Found it, just snooped around, sent a couple of e-mails and over-tipped the guy running the joint for helping me out. I’ll drop in several times a day and make a new best friend. And you were right. They keep a log, so I’m sure my new buddy will be more than happy to let me take a peek after a day or two of buttering him up. Did you get the e-mail I sent you?”

  “Haven’t checked today. If I get anything from our perp, I’ll forward it to you. Gimme your hotel phone number so I can reach you.” I jotted down his number, said my good-byes and hung up.

  Jan, who could only hear my end of the conversation, asked, “So, what was the other way we got took at the fuel dock?”

  “Not checking whether the pump register was cleared before they started to fill us up. Next time, I’ll go ashore and be looking over their shoulders. We’ll be ready for the bastards.”

  “Yeah, that way they can only rob us a little. Kinda being a little bit pregnant.”

  “I think you just used a cuss word. Gimme ten dollars credit.”

  “Pregnant is not a cuss word, although I think it should be. Gee, you just gotta love a country where, if you only get slightly cheated, you feel lucky.”

  “No wonder Tanuki is keeping this thing in Mag Bay quiet. Seems there’s someone looking for a fast buck around every corner. And maybe every stateroom,” I said, cutting my gaze toward Fabio’s quarters.

  “I certainly hope not, Hetta, what with your sordid history of an affinity for consorting with criminals.”

  I gave her a who, me? look, but truth be known, when I looked at Fabio’s closed stateroom door I secretly wondered what he wore to bed.

  My next call from Jenks went a little better than the last; he didn’t call me a harebrain and I didn’t hang up on him. He didn’t say so per se, but I think he was beginning to believe we just might make it to Mag Bay without him, and without sinking Raymond Johnson. I didn’t bother mentioning threatening e-mails, or that I’d hired Martinez to find out who was sending them, and Martinez promised he wouldn't tell Jenks anything about that. I did recount our getting taken at the fuel pump, but all in all, to hear my end of the story, we were practically on a Carnival Cruise.

  I also didn’t mention the pelagic speed bump.

  Pelagic speed bump? Honest, I only nicked that whale, but I have to allow it made for a sphincter puckering moment.

  Fabio, asleep in the forepeak, was flung clean out of his bunk. “¿Que Paso?” a half-naked Fabio yelled as he rushed to the bridge, almost colliding with Jan, also on her way up, after a whale tail whapped Raymond Johnson. At least I learned what my captain wore to bed. Boxers.

  “I was minding my own business when this whale drifted into my lane.”

  “Well, crap, Hetta. Did you get his license number?” Jan giggled.

  Fabio’s brow furrowed handsomely. “He hit us?”

  “Well, he came out of nowhere, so I don’t really know who hit who. Whom. I didn’t see anything on radar until after the jolt, but then he surfaced. I actually saw him before he dove. Look,” I pointed to a blip on the radar about a quarter
mile away, “thar she blows.”

  Fabio cursed, Jan grabbed the binoculars and ran out on deck. I started to follow her, but Fabio grabbed my arm to stop me and ordered, “Turn off the pilot, slow down to engine speed. I will go below to see if there is damage.”

  He rushed off, but not before I yelled, “Hey, nice chorts, Desi. And by the way, what happened to your stinkin’ accent?”

  Jan scanned the horizon while I followed orders.

  “Uh, Hetta,” she croaked, “I think your whale is on his way back.”

  I grabbed the binocs and looked where she pointed.

  “Oh, crap. That is one really, really, big mother and he’s definitely coming our way.” I steered the boat hard to port, hoping I didn’t throw Fabio into some chorts-eating machinery. “Quick, Jan, go get the camera.”

  “Camera, my ass, where do we keep the harpoon?”

  “Oh, come on. He isn’t Moby Dick. Whales do not attack boats in real life.”

  “I am afraid they do, señoritas,” Fabio said from behind us. Unfortunately, he’d pulled on a pair of jeans.

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “You owe me ten bucks,” Jan said primly.

  “Make it twenty. Fuck! He’s coming straight for us. Fabio, do something!”

  But Fabio was gone, and Jan yelled, “Hetta, he just dove!”

  “What a coward. Diving into the cabin like that. Deserting his post. What happened to women and children first?”

  “Not Fabio, you imbecile: Moby Dick. He dove under the water. I don’t know where Fabio went.”

  One tense minute later, the depth sounder started shrieking and the fish finder turned solid red. “Uh, I think you better go find Fabio. Moby is under us and he might have an agenda.”

  “Whales got agendas? Oh, never mind, I’m gone.”

  I sat, mesmerized by the reading on the depth sounder twenty feet under us, where a whale lurked. I shut off the alarm on both the fish finder and the sounder. Why listen to all that clamor when there was nothing to do but wait? Oh, and answer the phone, which I’d brought with me while I was on watch.