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

  “Hey,” I yelled into the ionosphere, “where’s the love you part?” I stared at the dead phone and my heart died a little with it. All I had to do was call back, agree to wait until he came back, and….

  The phone trilled in my hand. Spirits soaring, I said, “Look, I’m sorry. We can work—”

  A hollow voice silenced me. “Stay away from Mag Bay or you’ll pay.”

  Huh? “What did you say?”

  “Stay away from Mag Bay or you’ll pay,” he repeated, his voice sounding like an echo through a culvert pipe.

  “Did Jan put you up to this? Or Jenks? Well, very damned funny. And by the way, you’re a lousy poet.” I hung up and called Jan.

  “Hello,” she answered, her voice gravelly with sleep.

  “Not amusing, Miz Jan. And it won’t work.”

  “What won’t work?”

  “Whatever clown you put up to calling me. And by the way, thanks loads for ratting me out to Jenks.”

  “I had to tell Lars. He must have told Jenks. But I don’t know what else you’re talking about. What clown?”

  She sounded so sincere that I was caught up short. If she didn’t set this guy on me, who did? If I told her about the call, she’d get spooked. “Oh, nothing. Sorry I woke you up. See you tomorrow? Early? We have tons of stuff to do.”

  “Yeah, okay. See you around eight. ’Night.”

  “’Night.”

  I sat and mulled. Who in the hell was making crank calls to me? The voice seemed to have a slight accent, but not one I could identify. As far as I knew, only a handful of people actually knew why I was going to Mag Bay. I hadn’t shared that info at the yacht club, so it was just me, Jan, Jenks, Lars, Wontrobski and probably his wife Allison. Weird.

  Shrugging, I stood and came eyeball to eyeball with Jenks. Well, his photo. It was taken the day we re-christened my boat with her new name, Raymond Johnson. I know, I know, boats are supposed to have girls’ names, but trust me, Raymond Johnson was a far cry better than the original and embarrassing moniker: Sea Cock. Besides, I named her for the real Raymond Johnson, my dog. RJ died right before I got the boat and we gave him a burial at sea the same day I changed the name in his honor.

  In the burial party snapshot, we were standing on the bow of the boat, just before scattering RJ’s ashes. A friend, who was up on the flying bridge yelled, “Hey you guys, turn around and smile.” We did and she took the shot. Seconds later, I remembered with a chuckle, I opened the urn and a sudden gust of wind blew dog ashes all over us.

  Next to the group photo was another of RJ with a silly doggy smile on his face and a crushed beer can in his mouth. He was soaking wet, and behind him the Pacific Ocean sparkled. A deep, hurtful, sense of loss descended on me, as it always did when I thought of my yellow lab. He had been a grand dog and I missed him.

  I also missed Jenks. Smiling back at me from the christening photo, he had one long arm draped around my shoulder. His hair, blondish gray, was mussed. Blue eyes twinkled in his tanned face. Lean and lanky, towering over me by almost a foot, he was quite a contrast to his well-rounded brother, but they both looked like Viking warriors in blue blazers.

  Yachting attire was the dress code that day, so Jan and I also sported blue blazers and white pants. Wontrobski, however, was wrapped in something from Gothic Haberdashers. At least it was blue. The diminutive Allison Wontrobski, in proper yachting duds, looked positively doll-like next to her graceless hubby. Craigosaurus, resplendent in his Rochester’s Big and Tall getup, stood behind his ex-amour du jour, Raul. Raul’s pretty face and eyelashes were the envy of every woman there. Detective Martinez and his wife completed the picture.

  Before I moved aboard Raymond Johnson, Detective Martinez, of the Oakland Police Department, investigated a series of break-ins at my hilltop home. He was also Johnny-on-the-spot when I discovered my ex-fiancé, Hudson Williams, floating face down in my hot tub.

  Despite Martinez’s initially suspicious nature concerning the shade of my character, we became friends and he had come to my rescue more than once. The last time was when he and Jenks rushed to save me from that Brit, Alex, who was rudely dead set on making me dead. Martinez also helped smooth things over with a myriad of legal agencies that took a dim view of my shooting up Clipper Cove when the Brit didn’t get me first.

  When he retired, Martinez had pooh-poohed my brilliant suggestion of starting his own private detective agency, Dick Mart. He said when he started taking my advice on anything, that would be the day. Instead, he’d taken his pension and left the area to build a home somewhere in…Mexico!

  I booted up the computer, scrolled to the M’s in my address list. Seconds later, I had it: Marty and Gloria Martinez, APDO 77, San Quintin, BCN, Mexico. No phone number. BCN? I went to Google, typed in BCN and came up with Baja California Norte. Martinez lived in Baja?

  Grabbing a map, I quickly located San Quintin just a couple of hundred miles south of Ensenada. I jotted myself a reminder to call his son the next day, get a phone number and maybe we’d see the perpetually dour ex-cop on the way down. It wouldn’t hurt to have a contact down there. And who knew, perhaps retirement had painted a smile on his face? Nah. It was too bad Martinez wasn’t still in the Bay Area; he could trace the call if my mystery man delivered another rotten rhyme. ‘Stay away from Mag Bay or you’ll pay,’ my ass.

  I yawned and headed for my bed. I was just drifting off when it hit me: Jan, Jenks, Lars, the Trob and Mrs. Trob and a bunch of folks at Tanuki, and probably Baxter Brothers, knew I was headed for Mag Bay. Great, for some unfathomable reason, someone at one of two huge international corporations was probably trying to scare me off what promised to be a seriously bankable project.

  As is my habit when I’ve got something to worry about, I laid awake drumming up suspects until I heard my ship’s clock chime two. Damn, I needed some sleep. I got up and washed down an extra strength PM, thought about it, and slammed down another. I then set my alarm for eight, because I knew these babies would have me out like a light within an hour. The downside was that once I went out, it took a claxon to rouse me before I’d slept at least six straight hours, and I had lots of stuff to do early the next morning.

  Sometime during the wee hours I was partially roused by a clanking sound and a splash, but my friendly PM’s overrode any curiosity. Yes, uncharacteristic for nosy me, but I had lived aboard for quite awhile, and the marina abounded with clanking and splashing. By the time I was jarred awake at eight by my ill- mannered clock, I had forgotten all about the nocturnal noises.

  I was sleepily sucking on a coffee cup when Jan arrived with breakfast, or what she considers breakfast. Myself, I prefer eggs and a nice Jimmy Dean sausage or two, but Miz Jan, distaining my penchant for pork, shoved a bowl of nonfat yogurt and granola at me.

  “Nice start, Jan. What are we really having for breakfast?” I might as well have been talking to a post.

  “So, what’s on our agenda for today?” she asked.

  Sigh. I took a bite of yogurt and pretended to gag. “I think we should shop for provisions. You know, real food for the voyage.”

  “Nice try, Hetta. We have plenty of time for that. What else?”

  Double sigh. I picked up my ever-growing list. “First and foremost we have to find a captain. Or at least knowledgeable crew.”

  “I vote for both.”

  “We don’t need both. Why don’t you get on the Internet and look for brokers who advertise offshore deliveries. According to Dave Dean, there’s lots of ‘em since Californians are looking to bypass the tax man by taking delivery in Ensenada. While you put together a list of brokers to call, I’ll knock off some items from Jenks’s list. Then we can—”

  “Ahoy, Raymond Johnson.” I recognized the voice: Rosemary Dekker, our salty dock master. Dock mistress, I guess, in her case. I get along fine with the feisty Ro, but some yachties, namely men, resented her no-nonsense adherence to the regulations of our rental contracts.

  I stuck my head out the door. “M
ornin’ Ro. What’s up?”

  “You practicin’anchoring?”

  “Huh?”

  “Yer anchor. You ain’t s’posed to leave it in the water. ’Gainst the marina rules.”

  “My anchor?” I stepped out on deck and walked to the bow. Yep, my anchor chain hung straight down into the estuary. I dimly remembered hearing a clanking and a splash through my PM-induced coma, but figured it was coming from another boat. “I guess the brake let loose, because I sure as heck didn’t let it go.”

  “Well, you’d best bring her up. Probably need to hose off the mud. This bottom is fair ugly.” She handed me my hose and turned on the dock spigot. I quickly turned down the pistol sprayer, but not fast enough to save me and Jan from an unscheduled shower. Shaking water from my hair, I handed Jan the hose, went back inside and flipped on the anchor windlass switch.

  Jan turned the nozzle back on high and aimed it at the chain while I tapped the footswitch next to the anchor windlass. I hit it a couple of times to straighten the chain, and saw a red chain link clear the water’s surface. Ten feet of chain was still in the water. Since my slip depth was about twelve feet, the anchor still rested on the yucky bottom.

  “I’m gonna bring it up slowly, Jan, so you can knock off as much salt water and crud as you can on the way up. Otherwise I’ll have to swab the decks. Ready?”

  Jan gave me the go-ahead and I slowly raised the chain while she gave it a liberal rinse. Rosemary watched from a safe distance, probably to make sure no bottom muck dripped onto her precious dock. I was more interested in preventing the anchor, when raised, from swinging into my hull.

  A yellow chain link let me know we had five feet to go. Rosemary moved to the dock in front of the bow. “When you get her up, I’ll watch she’s headin’ right into the chock. But like I said, you’ll get some ugly stuff on the end.”

  “Thanks, Ro. Here she comes.” I hit the foot control again. It was a good thing I only had yogurt for breakfast, for the dock mistress was dead right; there was something really ugly on the anchor. Rosemary, Jan and I screeched in unison.

  The rest of the day was a blur of coasties and cops. All kinds of cops: harbor patrol, sheriff’s department and the OPD. I couldn’t blame the Oakland Police for their obvious suspicion.

  It isn’t every day that one ends up with a body on one’s anchor.

  Chapter 7

  “I already told you,” I told the umpteenth cop for the umpteenth time, “I don’t recognize him and I did hear something last night, but I was too sleepy to check it out.”

  The detective’s phone beeped, he listened for a while, jotting notes. After he hung up, he had a sardonic smile on his face. “Miss Coffey, headquarters tells me you have an interesting file.”

  Crap. Jan, who had been moping on the settee, piped up. “She never did anything really illegal. Right, Hetta?”

  “Of course I haven’t.” I tried to sound confidently indignant, but wondered how much of my past the detective knew about. Jan was right, though, I’d done nothing too illegal.

  Detective Norquist consulted his notes. “A shooting incident?”

  “Which one?” I stupidly blurted.

  He raised his eyebrows. “A few years back.”

  “Oh, that. I did shoot a humongous wharf rat that stowed away in my furniture when I moved back to Oakland from Japan.”

  “Uh-huh. Your dog carjacked a post office jeep?”

  “He was acquitted.”

  “And how about that body in your hot tub?”

  “Some guy killed Hudson, my ex-boyfriend. I had nothing to do with it. Your office has a copy of Alan, the murderer’s, confession. It was recorded on my boat's security camera. He killed Hudson and then tried to kill me. It’s all on record.”

  “And so is Alan’s disappearance, after you shot him.”

  “At him. I was suffering from blood loss, so my aim was off.”

  Norquist shook his head and actually chuckled. “I see you know our Detective Martinez. He left a note or two in your file before he retired.”

  “Hey,” Jan asked, “do you have his phone number in Mexico? We want to call him, maybe see him soon.”

  I shot her a dirty look, but it was too late.

  “You’re planning a little trip south of the border?”

  “Uh, yes,” I told him. “I have a consulting job in Mexico coming up.”

  “I wouldn’t make any reservations just yet, if I were you.”

  “Oh, we aren’t gonna fly. We’re gonna take Hetta’s boat.”

  Was there no way to shut the woman up?

  Norquist gave us both an incredulous look, muttered something like, “Martinez was right,” under his breath, and folded up his pocket notebook. “Ladies, do not take your vessel away from the dock until you hear from me. We’ll have more questions later. After the autopsy. For now, though, where can I find you?”

  “Uh, I live here.”

  “Not for the next twenty-four hours, you don’t. Where can I reach you?”

  Jan gave him her address and phone number. I was officially homeless.

  My homelessness was short-lived. The very next morning, after another interview, the cops removed their yellow tape declaring Raymond Johnson a crime scene, and released my boat back to me. They were very polite and didn’t seem to be exactly accusing me of anything, but, just in case, I called Allison Wontrobski, my lawyer, of sorts.

  “Hey girl, what’s up? You in jail?” Allison drawled. She hadn’t lost one bit of her Texas accent since she, Jan and I all migrated to the Bay Area from Houston. Allison—petite, beautiful, black and sassy—was a legal barracuda. My kind of lawyer.

  “Not exactly. I do have this itty bitty problem, though.” I explained the situation and that, even though I had my boat back, I was told not to leave town. And, they wanted to talk to me again, downtown. It was the downtown thing that made me think it a good idea to bring along legal muscle.

  “Shit, Hetta, I was kidding. How do you get yourself into these messes? Oh, never mind. Where and when? I’ll be there. Do you seriously think they are gonna book you for murder? I ain’t no criminal lawyer, you know.”

  “I didn’t murder anyone, so no. But I could use some moral support. Just look criminal lawyerly.”

  “You got it.”

  Norquist and another cop seemed to be having a grand old time at my expense. Jan was allowed into the interview, as was Allison, whom I introduced as my lawyer.

  “So, Miss Coffey, you say you never met,” he shuffled in his notes, “Mr. Lonnie Jones?”

  “Never met him, never heard of him. Is he the, er, victim.”

  “Oh, he's the victim, all right. A victim of advanced organ failure due to substance, probably alcohol, abuse.”

  “You mean he got drunk, fell off the dock and somehow got tangled on my anchor and drowned? It was an accident?”

  “Not exactly. You see, Mr. Jones was embalmed.”

  “Been there myself a couple of times.”

  Norquist and his partner burst out laughing. I wasn’t all that amused with my clever self.

  Allison was a little quicker than Jan and I on the uptake. “You mean,” she asked, “that Mr. Jones, who somehow ended up on Hetta’s anchor, was already dead and had been embalmed?”

  “So it seems. His body was lifted from a local funeral home.”

  I was stunned into silence, not a natural state for me. Jan’s eyes were bigger than usual and I detected a touch of green around her gills. “Someone,” she gasped, “stole a dead person? How awful for his family.”

  Leave it to Jan to worry about others, all I felt was a huge sense of relief. But why my anchor? “Was this some kind of practical joke?” I asked, hoping it was just that. Deep down, though, I suspected this was no joke and that someone, for some weird reason, put that poor man’s body on my anchor. A warning? For what?

  Norquist must have sensed my dismay, for he asked, “Miss Coffey, do you have any reason to think otherwise? Do you suspect Mr. Jon
es was deliberately, uh, placed on your particular anchor?”

  “Certainly not.” I tried to look properly indignant.

  “Well then, I guess you can return to your boat.”

  “You mean I’m off the hook?” I asked, then regretted my unfortunate word choice.

  Jan shot me a horrified look, but Norquist didn’t seem to notice my gaffe. Oops, there I go again.

  “Just let us know when you plan to leave the dock, and how to reach you.”

  “I can go to Mexico?”

  “Whatever floats your boat.”

  I guess two can play the word game.

  Back on Raymond Johnson, I spent the afternoon scrubbing decks and anchor chain. Not that any of Mr. Jones remained, I just felt the need for a physical and mental cleansing.

  By the time I ran out of soap and steam, it was getting dark.

  I closed the front window blinds, blotting out my bow and therefore the scene of the what? Crime?

  I collapsed into a back deck chair and sipped a glass of wine while watching the sun set over Alameda Island and the Estuary. A couple of sailboats ghosted by, their occupants enjoying a late day sail. Everything seemed so normal. But somewhere in Oakland, the family of Mr. Jones was preparing to bury him. According to the obit I pulled up on the computer, he’d been almost ninety, was born in Arizona and was a Shriner. Belonged to a local Lutheran church. Survived by five children, ten grandchildren, sixteen great-grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren. His over consumption of alcohol aside, Mr. Jones would be missed. I just hoped his family didn’t know anything about his extra baptism en route to his funeral.

  I checked the newspapers and found there was some mention of a body found in the estuary, but no details. Thank goodness for that, but you can bet your sweet rear end the yacht club was abuzz with the real story. I gave the club a miss for the evening and fell into an early and uneasy sleep.

  Several times during the night I jerked awake, thinking I heard a splash.