Just Needs Killin' (Hetta Coffey Series, Book 6) Read online

  Lil, who was still raving when I got back to the boat, pitched a real hissy when I informed her she was headed somewhere for help, but settled down the minute I hinted they'd probably give her Valium to calm her nerves, which she sure as hell wasn't going to get on my boat, as I was running low.

  I also didn't tell her the people taking her into town were voted least likely to stop in a local bar on the way, which I'm sure was at the top of her agenda once she got away from what she called my hell ship.

  As soon as I waved bye-bye, I retrieved my bar stock from Denny, and Po Thang and I spent a blessedly peaceful late afternoon swimming, sunning, reading and napping, free of the witch we'd been saddled with. Every once in awhile, Po Thang or I would let loose a contented sigh, just happy to have each other for company. I mixed a Margarita, but fell asleep reading a novel before finishing it. Po Thang took care of it for me, though. What a pal.

  The phone woke me just as the sun hovered on the western horizon. "Hetta Honey, I'm afraid I have bad news," my mother drawled.

  "Nothing can ruin what has been a delightful afternoon. Lemme have it."

  Silence, then, "Have you done something to your aunt? You sound much too…pleased."

  "As a matter of fact, I have. She is now staying with friends at a, uh, B&B in Loreto until you get here to take her home."

  "What friends? She doesn't know anyone but you down there. What have you done with her?"

  "Mom, honestly, do you think I would send her to stay with anyone wishing her harm?"

  "She stayed with you."

  "And now she is in a safer place. Look, just come get her, and this whole hot mess will be over with, okay?"

  "Well, that's why I called. I forgot to renew my passport and it's expired. Even with expedited service it'll take a couple of days to get the new one."

  "That's okay, no hurry now."

  Another pause. "Hetta, have you been drinking?"

  "Not really."

  "Then why are you sounding so…calm?"

  Because Aunt Lil is probably in a straight jacket by now, being beat up on by nuns? "Mother, you have to trust me. Your sister is being taken care of. She's safe and sound. Oh, and by the way, be sure and raid her checking account for some of her cash so you can spring…uh, pay her rooming bill. She says she's broke."

  I could practically feel my mother's doubts as to Lil's safety singing through ether, but she said, "I will. I'll call when I have my airline reservations confirmed. I have to connect in Los Angeles for the plane to Loreto, and they don't fly down there every day. And, it's over seven hundred dollars."

  "Then take the money from that account she set up for the two of you. Or has she, once again, taken your name off that, and her will?" Everyone in the family had copies of many rescinded wills from Lil, as well as lists of stock certificates and bank accounts she'd put their names on when she wanted something, only to cancel later. I considered it a mark of distinction to be disinherited by her at least once a year.

  "I am still able to withdraw funds. And by the way, Lil put you back in her will, so you should be nicer to her."

  "She did?" Hmmm, I wonder if I could cut a deal with those nuns?

  "Just what are you thinking?"

  Jeez, she can read my mind over the phone? "Uh, Mom, I hear someone coming. Gotta go. Love you."

  I wasn't fibbing to my mother; I really did hear the approaching drone of an outboard, but since Po Thang wasn't raising all kinds of Billy hell, it had to be someone he knew and liked. Sure enough, it was Robert, the Good Samaritan who took Lil off my hands, and he didn't look happy.

  No good deed goes unpunished.

  "Lemme get this straight, Robert. You've lost Lil?" Fighting to maintain a solemn countenance, and pure glee from my tone, I was also mentally calculating how to offer him some kind of reward for him not to find her again.

  "More like she lost us. Gave us the slip when we stopped for gas, and she asked to go to the Ladies'."

  "There is a God," slipped out.

  "You know, Hetta, not to be judgmental here, but your lack of concern over that little old lady is slightly disturbing."

  I barked a scoff. "You think I'm disturbing? You haven't seen little old Lil in action. Look, you guys tried to do something generous for her own good, and like everyone else who tries to help her, she's dumped on you. Whereever the hell she is, I wish her as well as I am capable of doing. But, because my mother is going to kill me for losing her big sister, I guess I have to go look for her. Which gas station?"

  He told me, I grabbed my backpack, and snagged Po Thang's collar as he made for the door. "Sorry, fur face, not this time. I won't be that long, and I just don't need someone else to watch out for while I'm looking for Aunt Lil."

  Po Thang slinked to a spot by the exit, leaned against the door, and gave me a hangdog look. I don't leave him on the boat often, but he'd just have to learn to live with it when I do. After all, I've certainly learned to do so where Jenks is concerned. I have, however, when Jenks is packing, slinked to the exit door, leaned against it, and given him hangdog looks.

  I patted Po's head, and told him again how sorry I was.

  Leave it to Lil to screw up what had been, for both of us, a great afternoon.

  As is usual in Mexico, no one saw anything at the Pemex station, even though it is one of the busiest places in town. And, there are stores and, unfortunately, bars, within easy walking distance. Robert told me Lil left her purse in the van, but I know she keeps stashed cash, uh, elsewhere. As Lil likes to brag, "No one is going to search an old lady's drawers."

  I did a perimeter search, starting with the bars, but no Lil. It was dark by the time I got back to the pickup and met up with Robert, who was waiting for me after having canvassed a six-block quadrant, asking everyone is sight if they'd seen an old Gringa. Nada.

  "You think we should go to the police?" he asked.

  "Hell, no. She was released to my custody, and the way the law works down here they'd probably throw me in the clink for letting her escape into the general population."

  "Maybe we should check out the pharmacies. She tried to bribe us to stop at a one. Which surprised us, because she also told us she didn't have any money because you took it all. I guess she lied, huh?"

  "Lil lied?" I slapped my cheeks and gasped, "I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you."

  He rolled his eyes and grinned. "Yeah, the old saw, 'how can you tell if an alcoholic is lying?'"

  "Their lips are moving," we chorused. We shared a laugh and admitted defeat for the moment. We'd been outfoxed for now, so I decided to deal with the latest Lillian fiasco after a good night's sleep.

  On the way back to Puerto Escondido we stopped at a taco stand and bought beef tacos as a peace offering for Po Thang. I rarely left him on the boat, and when I did, I almost never locked him inside. Lately, though, he'd taken to jumping off on his own and swimming for shore, and the last thing I wanted this evening was to have to find him in the dark, then give him a bath. One missing person was quite enough for my day.

  It was pitch black by the time I reached Raymond Johnson, and something didn't look right. My anchor light, solar-powered, shone brightly, so at least finding the boat was easy, but I could have sworn I left a light on inside the cabin. Just what I need, low batteries. Well rats, I'd have to start the generator and charge up, when all I wanted was a warm dog, a cold beer, and a taco.

  I tied up Se Vende and cut the motor. Normally Po Thang would be raising Cain, but all was quiet. I hoped he wasn't busy chewing up my carpet or something. So far he'd been good about that, but Katy bar the door if he'd managed to open the fridge. I'd child-proofed the entire cabin after the first time he emptied out that reefer.

  "Hi, honey, I'm home," I yelled.

  Nothing.

  Scared silly something had happened to him, I dug out my keys while running along the deck, but I didn't need them: the door stood wide open. Crap, two escape artists in one day? After I found him I vowed to eat his entire d
amned taco right in front of him.

  Flipping on a switch, I was surprised when the lights sprang to life. Bright lights. Not a low battery problem. But all that light revealed a much more serious problem. Po Thang had totally trashed my boat?

  Then I took a closer look at the mayhem. Since when can a dog, even one as crafty as Po Thang, pull out a drawer and scatter the contents? My heart seized. Po Thang didn't do this, but whoever did must have frightened him off the boat. I grabbed a flashlight and, without much hope, climbed to the flying bridge and turned on my spotlight, figuring if Po saw it, he might swim back.

  Heart pounding, I left the spot on and was scrambling back down to the main deck to take Se Vende ashore on a dog hunt, when I heard the phone ringing inside the cabin. Doubling back, I snatched it up. "Hello?"

  A gravelly voice rumbled into my pounding ear drum. "We have your aunt and your dog. Tell no one. We will know if you do. We will contact you concerning our terms."

  "Hey, you, I—" I realized he'd hung up.

  First fury, then terror, turned my kneecaps to jelly. I wobbled to the settee and crumpled onto the cool leather, suddenly overcome with helplessness and self-recrimination. I knew this was all my fault, no matter who was responsible for the dog-and-aunt snatch. I had something they wanted, and whatever their "terms," they could sure as hell have it their way.

  I had become quite fond of that dog.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  After a half-baked attempt to straighten the trashed main saloon, I experienced an anxiety attack. Throwing cushions back onto the settee, I joined them, and curled into a fetal position. Paranoia jangled my nerve ends. Was someone watching the boat? Most likely. The caller said, "Tell no one," and "We will know if you do," so how else would they know what I'm doing unless they were spying on me?

  A chill lifted the hair on the back of my neck, and made me want to pull a blankie over my head, but it was quickly dispelled by a wave of white hot anger. I think. At barely forty, surely it wasn't a hot flash? Geez, don't you get a grace period?

  Whatever got my blood boiling, it sent me off the couch, and into a frenzy of action. I closed all window shades and began locking hatches and sliders, each one with a little more hostility than the last, as though slamming a door in their lousy faces. Whoever they were. Lame, maybe, but it made me feel more in charge.

  Once the boat was secured, I kissed my bank account a fond farewell, fired my 8KW generator for some serious power, and set what Jan calls the fancy-schmancy onboard security system Jenks installed on Raymond Johnson before I left the States. Feeling empowered, I then activated my bajillion peso-a-minute satellite communications system, which I'd used sparingly except when I had a client who wanted to keep in touch with me enough to pay for it through the wazoo. Ironically that client had been the now-beheaded Ishikawa, and I was certain this was all somehow tied to him.

  Back when Jenks—a security expert—and I first met in the San Francisco Bay area, I was being stalked by some nut job, so Jenks installed an Internet-based security system on my then new-to-me boat. It saved my life once back then, but now I was in Mexico without high-speed Internet, and stuck with a 3G system which was, as a Mexican friend of mine once joked, "Slower than a local funeral procession with only one set of jumper cables." For my own sense of security, I needed every tool I had available. Screw the expense.

  Cocooned in my little floating fortress, protected by alarmed hatches and motion-activated cameras, I stared forlornly at my empty gun safe. Dammit, the one place where I could use a trusty semi-automatic, and Mexico made me leave them in Arizona, even though their constitution does give one the right to keep arms. It's one of those tricky things with the law south of the border; I might be able to keep a gun in a stationary domicile if I jumped through enough legal hoops, but since my domicile moves, the weapon would be deemed as "concealed," and that is a no-no. Anyhow, the penalties for possession are too severe to mess with. Five years in a Mexican jail holds zero appeal, but in this instance even five minutes of helplessness didn't leave me all warm and fuzzy. As my Daddy likes to say, "When seconds count, the cops are only minutes away."

  With a deep sigh, I assessed the chaos.

  My laptop remained on the desk, which was at least one good thing, and signified, even had I not received the call, that no common thief was responsible for the break-in. It was, however, sitting in a jumble of papers and folders that formerly lived in my IN and OUT trays. The contents of my desk drawers littered the carpet.

  All the galley cabinets were open, their stores strewn onto the floor. Ditto the refrigerator. Thawing food oozed onto the laminate. Jeez, where the hell is a perfectly good dog when you really need him?

  Thoughts of Po Thang cramped my stomach. When my last dog, RJ, died, I swore I would never put myself through this type of hurt again, so I used the borrow-a-doggie school of canine fixes; I sometimes keep others' pooches when their owners go on vacation. To be honest, life is so much simpler without dogs that go nuts when you even look at your car keys, but here I was, once again, aching for a furry critter to clean my galley floor, even though, this time, he wasn't the one who emptied the fridge onto it.

  One thing I felt strongly was that Po Thang was alive and hopefully safe for the moment, and I vowed to do everything within my power to get him back.

  Oh, yeah, and Aunt Lil, too.

  I guess.

  It was well past midnight by the time I got the place put back together, and cleaned the galley. I should have been dragging butt, but I was too ticked off to sleep. With nothing else to do, I did what I always do when faced with a crappy situation: make lists.

  Grabbing a notepad from my newly reorganized desk, I found a pen and plopped down on the settee. In order to get the complete picture of any story, one needs the five Ws both journalists and police use to get it right: who, what, where, when, and why. I also like to add the H: How?

  I headed the page with that ominous telephone warning, "Tell no one. We will know if you do."

  Who? I left that blank, although I had some strong suspicions.

  What? A filthy dognapper swiped Po Thang, ransacked my boat, and left me a warning not to tell anyone. Oh, yeah, and they took my aunt.

  Where? Where did they take my dog? Who knows?

  When? Not applicable.

  Why? Good question, and I had my suspicions there, as well, but they had mentioned their terms, which indicated the possibility we could settle this matter by reaching some kind of agreement. They obviously didn't know me all that well. I am never agreeable with scumbags.

  How? Now here is the biggie for now. How will they know if I contact someone?

  I tapped the pen tip on the pad. How, indeed? No one can see what I'm doing. All the blinds are closed. Or can they? And if so, how?

  Looking around the cabin, I wondered if they'd planted a spy camera. I know every inch of the inside of my boat, because at one time or other I've either washed, sanded, painted or cleaned it. I got up and started a search.

  An hour later, after going over every bit of the main cabin and finding nothing, I was still at HOW? If they could see me, could they also hear me?

  Back when I first got into a problem in Mexico, I discovered that my nemesis, Dickless Lujàn, had a telescope capable of also picking up conversations from a hundred yards away, but it couldn't see through closed blinds.

  Lujàn? I put the dirty bugger's name in the WHO column, which led me back to WHY and WHAT. Why did he take my dog, and what do I have that he wants?

  Pictures. My camera was in my backpack, still loaded with photos of Ishikawa scattered about his room, Lujàn and his goons loading a body bag into that Lincoln Navigator, and then sitting in the front seat of that same car, and driving away. My best guess is that's what he wanted. Fine, he can have them, but what guarantee did I have that if I gave him the photos, he wouldn't just off me, Jan, and Po Thang? Oh, and Lil.

  I made another list: Good News/Bad News, with a line down the middle dividi
ng the pros from the cons. On the good side I scribbled: Nothing missing that I can tell. Bad news? Po Thang and Lil kidnapped. With an evil grin I circled Lil and drew an arrow to the Good News side and added a smiley face. Okay, juvenile, but everyone needs a stupid smiley face from time to time.

  Good News: Nothing tampered with? Note to self: test all equipment and engines on Raymond Johnson.

  Computer still here, thank God.

  That last notation in the GOOD column sent me to my open laptop, which sprang to life when I jiggled the mouse. If I sent an email to Jan, how would they know? I had to warn her, and also get her to call my mother and tell her some story to keep her from coming down for Lillian. The last thing I wanted was for Mom to get snatched, as well.

  I was about to chance an email to Jan when I noticed my webcam port was open. I always close the little slider to block it when I finish talking on Skype, mainly because I didn't want Jenks calling and catching me looking natural.

  Was someone watching me on my own webcam? Paranoia runs right thick in these veins, and when I see one of those computer hacker warnings on Facebook, I read them. I mean, if it's on Facebook, it must be true, right?

  I remembered the alert said you could be hacked if you inadvertently clicked on a shortened URL on Twitter or the like. Had I done that? Nah. But someone was on my boat, and who knows what they did. If they were using my own webcam to keep tabs on me, how could I find out, and then use it to my advantage? If I closed the port, they might figure I was on to them, and besides, me knowing they were watching gave me an edge.

  I decided to leave the port open, and assume it was their way of keeping tabs on me. Let them think I'm fat, dumb, and scared, instead of fat, on to them, and royally pissed off.

  The Sturm und Drang of the day—hell, several days—finally took their toll, and exhaustion washed through me like a shot of moonshine. I made it to the settee, just out of webcam range, fell onto it, and the next thing I knew, the VHF crackled to life and woke me with a start. Even with the blinds closed I could tell it was daylight out, and my ship's clock confirmed it was eight in the morning.