Obviously unaccustomed to high teas, Marty Martinez slammed dainty cucumber sandwiches meant for nibbling down his throat, and chased them with copious tiny cups of tea from delicate china not designed for an ex-homicide cop’s hands. To make matters even more amusing for us, at least three high-class hookers approached his table, only to be shooed away with a harsh glower. Making sure all bases were covered, the girls evidently sent in a flagrantly gay young man, just in case. Marty turned a dark purple and growled something that sent the man flitting away in alarm.
When I finally deigned to broach the subject of Cholo’s military service, his shark’s eyes lost any humor, so I surmised that subject was a big taboo. I’m clever that way.
Not one to be put off, however, I changed the question as to why he was in the Mexican military. He lifted his shoulders. “It is a family tradition that we attend university, and then the military academy. Much of my training was with the United States Navy.”
I was surprised he volunteered that much info, which piqued my interest, of course, since Jenks was retired from the Navy. “On ships?”
“Some of the time,” he said.
I poured him more champagne. “I love being on the water. I live on a boat.”
“Yes, I know. Nacho says you and your friend Jan are a menace to Mexican waters.”
I almost snorted champagne out my nose and this made him smile under incredibly long eyelashes, which transformed him into a sort of café au lait George Clooney. I looked closely at him. “Did Jan dye your eyelashes this afternoon?”
He nodded and snorted himself, and our guffaws drew some smiles and a few glares from other tables. The glares were from men seated alone, including Marty Martinez.
“And she shaped and darkened my eyebrows and waxed my face. I have a new respect for women, now that I know what they must endure.”
“Well, you look mahvelous, Dahling. By the way, there are three men in the room who either want to date you or kill you. Two of them are behind you, so pretend you’re taking a picture of me but snap a selfie. I’ll get the other one.”
We pretended to vamp and snap, then compared pics on our phones, all the time flirting and tittering. Finally getting back to what set us off in the first place, I said, “That Nacho has some nerve saying Jan and I are menaces.”
“Yes, he certainly does. To paraphrase Churchill, Nacho is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.”
He startled me with such a scholarly take but I tried not to show it. “He is that. Do you know him well?”
“Churchill?”
I barked a laugh. This Cholo was growing on me by leaps and bounds. “No silly. Ignacio, a.k.a, Nacho, a.k.a. The Shadow.”
He raised his newly tinted and fluffed eyebrows in surprise but didn’t comment on the fact that I knew a great deal about Nacho myself. I detected a hint of eye shadow that lent him that smoky George look. I had to get Jan to do mine like that.
I didn’t share that I’d learned of Nacho’s alter ego when I lifted his wallet—okay, so I stole his off-road pickup in the Baja and his wallet was in it—and found a California driver’s license with his photo, issued to Lamont Cranston. It is only because I am a fan of all things Orson Wells, who did The Shadow’s voice in the 1930 radio shows, that I knew The Shadow’s real name was Lamont Cranston. Evidently whoever issued that driver’s license sure didn’t.
“I have known Ignacio quite long enough,” Cholo said, with a tinge of sarcasm.
That statement cemented our new friendship, and from that moment on I knew he was a lot more than some Mexican sailor sent in to help a kidnapped—if she was—rich Mexican girl.
And I planned to find out how ‘a lot more’ than a regular sailor he was.
“Are you ready to earn your keep, so to speak?” I teased.
He looked at me with those dreamy smokin’ eyes and said quietly, “Hetta, I do not think you would ever have to hire men to accompany you.”
“What a nice thing to say.” And, I thought, how astute of you to see why playing the desperate older woman part didn’t sit so well with me. “Let’s not tell anyone back in Mexico about this little adventure, if that’s alright with you. It’ll tarnish both our reputations, not that mine couldn’t already use some serious polishing.”
Taking my hands in his, he gave me a devilish grin and whispered. “Let’s go shopping.”
Dragging a man into overpriced boutiques was certainly a new experience: Jenks hated shopping, so the only men I ever shopped with were gay.
“It was actually fun going to all those men’s stores. Jenks would rather eat tofu than darken the doors of one of those overpriced joints. It wasn’t easy finding stuff in his size but I did buy Cholo five cashmere sweaters, same sweater, different colors. And a pile of Armani everything, topped off with a gold Rolex. Of course, as told, we had everything charged and delivered to the yacht. I bought a sweater for Jenks, too, but I’ll tell him it came from Walmart.”
Jan, who knows Jenks so well, smiled.
“So,” I asked, “how did you two make out this afternoon?”
“I’ve never had so much fun in my whole entire life,” Rhonda panted. She was as breathless as a kid who just got off a rollercoaster ride.
I refrained from mentioning that was no surprise to me, given what a boring life she was stuck with until just recently.
“Yep, turns out our Rhonda is quite the flirt, after a glass or two of wine. First place we went was to that beach café where she first saw Rousel, and she came down with a case of nerves, but then our drinks arrived, and after that she was a real trouper.”
Rhonda beamed and picked up the story. “We quickly found ourselves surrounded by,” she made quotation marks with her fingers, “hashtag, hunks. They looked great but we’d already seen through their fakery, and their bogus lasciviousness of young men on the prowl for women of a certain age.”
“And,” Jan said, “guess who was the first faker to arrive on the job, obviously alerted by that waiter we suspect makes a goodly amount of moola above his day job pimping out prospective victims to the wolves?”
“Lemme guess. The one who was with Rousel when he scouted Rhonda last fall, and then hit on us just a few weeks later. What was his name?”
“Étienne. Yep, little SOB’s still out there trying to make a dishonest living. He recognized me from when we met him earlier this year, but didn’t seem to have any recall of Rhonda. Which made it all the better. Gotta give it to him, the guy is persistent. I thought I’d scared him off last time, but nooo.”
“I gather he wasn’t part of Rousel’s little terrorist group, since he’s not keeping the bastard company in Club Fed Français.”
“Nah, I think he’s just a plain old scuzzball. Anyhow, we waved enough bait in front of him that he invited us to—drumroll please—a party on a mega yacht in the harbor this weekend.”
“Which one?” There were several yachts too large to enter the marina anchored offshore.
“He didn’t say, but he hinted it was owned by some Saudi Prince.”
“Does he know we’re staying on a boat owned by a Saudi Prince?”
“Nah, I said we were visiting a friend.”
“You two did good.” I grabbed Po Thang’s face and said, “How about you, Agent Double-O Dawg? How was your day?”
He whined and thumped his tail with pleasure, but then he smelled pâté de foie gras on my breath and gave a low growl.
“You’ll get some later,” I told him as I unbuckled his critter cam harness and handed it to Jan.
She removed the recording device and plugged it into a port on her laptop, hit a few keys and said, “Here we go.”
We crowded around the screen and watched dizzying video coverage as Po Thang whirled to watch me leave Nacho’s cabin, but as soon as I shut the door behind me he reversed toward Nacho’s legs and the hand that held a treat. I was but a dim memory as he chomped on one of the gourmet biscuits I’d given Nacho. My dog’s chewing and head shaking made me close m
y eyes for a moment as my head spun, but then Nacho sat at his computer and Agent Dawg obediently laid his head on the man’s knee and stayed still.
“Good dawg!” I said, giving him an ear rub.
“Wouf.”
I caught a movement and yelled, “Jan, stop the video and back up! What’s Nacho doing?”
She did her thing and cackled. “He’s taking apart his pen. You were right. The SOB doesn’t trust us.”
“How dare him.”
She started the video again and, evidently convinced his pen was untampered with, his fingers moved over the keyboard. We rewound and played the scene one tap at a time, and it was obvious he was a touch-typist. And that he had a Spanish keyboard.
“Crap. Stop and Google a Spanish keyboard. I’ve used them at internet cafés in Mexico, and they’re for sure different from mine, but I can’t remember exactly how.”
Rhonda did the fingerwork on her laptop and said, “The basic letters are the same. Let’s start over.”
“Okay. Left index finger, top row.”
“R.”
“Left pinky, middle row.”
“A.”
“Right index finger, top row.”
“Y? Run it back.”
And so it went, until I said, “I’ve got it: raymondjohnson! That’s my boat.”
“How sweet,” Jan drawled. “He wuvs you.”
“He loves being a shit disturber.”
“See, you’re perfect for each other.”
Rhonda giggled at our repartee. “Gosh, Hetta, seems like you have an awful lot of admirers. I want to be you when I grow up.”
Jan made a rude noise through her lips. “That’s easy to do! Just don’t grow up, never acquire a set of morals, and annoy the hell out of everyone you meet.”
I threw up my hands. “It’s a gift.”
Chapter Fifteen
After we’d hacked Nacho’s password using Agent Dawg’s critter cam info, I asked Jan, “What now?”
“Back to work. If we’re lucky, Agent Dawg got a screen shot of the email address he’s using for this caper. My bet is it’s not the one he uses for personal stuff.”
“Nope, I have that one. Oooh, let’s see if he uses the same password for it.” I grabbed my laptop, typed in Nacho’s regular Yahoo handle, and tried using my boat’s name for the password. “Oh. My. God. We’re in! The idiot reused his password. Everyone knows not to do that! There are scoundrels everywhere.”
“Quick, close it down, you scoundrel. If he’s logged into his email right now, he might somehow be able to see that someone else is. I’m not sure about that, but let’s not take any chances. Dang, wish I could call our little hacker back in California, but like I say, he’s in the devil’s camp.”
“Turn on the bug I put under Nacho’s desk. Maybe we can hear something, like if he is on his computer right now.”
Jan put on her earphones and fired up the snoopery device. “Snoring. Send him an email. Ask him a question or somethin’.”
I did.
“Bingo!” Jan cheered. “His computer dinged an incoming message. What’d you ask him?”
“If he’ll keep le dawg tomorrow while Cholo and I do the town again.”
Jan held up her hand for silence. “The ding didn’t wake him up. Pull up his emails, fast, just copy and save into your thumb drive. We’ll read ‘em later. Thank goodness he doesn’t close down his computer at night.”
“Speaking of closing down, I’m dead tired, and have a gigolo to entertain tomorrow. What’s on your agenda, besides snookering that rapscallion Étienne into revealing the name of that so-called party yacht in the harbor, and also figuring out how we’re gonna get into Nacho’s cabin when he’s not there. That bug’s battery is going to need replacing before long.
“We have a day or two. Maybe we’ll get a break.”
“Amen. I’m hoping like hell we can solve this case, liberate the girl, and get everyone where they want to be for Christmas. I think I’d like to go home to Texas on the way back to the boat. How about you, Jan?”
“Baja for me, I guess. Thank goodness, not at the whale camp, cuz Chino tears himself away from his beloved whale tagging for a whole week between Christmas and New Year’s for a big family reunion in Mag Bay. It’s always lots of fun.”
Rhonda sniffled and big fat tears rolled down her cheeks. “I don’t have anywhere to go. Can’t stand the idea of going back to Mama’s house.”
“You can come with me, Rhonda,” Jan offered. “With that mob Chino’s related to, one more body won’t even be noticed.”
Rhonda perked up. “Oh, I’ve always wanted to go to Mexico. Thank you! Thank you!”
“If we don’t get busy and lucky, we’ll still be stuck here. There’s one person on Nacho’s team we need to get cozy with, and that, Rhonda, will be your job.”
“Fabio?” Rhonda asked hopefully.
“Fuggedabout it. He’s happily married and I’d trust him with my life. Hell, I have.”
“Who then?”
“Chef Roberto. Not only is he the girl’s first cousin, he’s here to find her and is an insider.”
“Right. He’s the closest one to the vic,” Rhonda agreed.
“The vic?” Jan teased.
Rhonda blushed. “I’ve watched a lot of cop shows.”
“So it seems. Hetta’s right. He’s the one who knows the most about his cousin. Like, what was a seventeen-year-old, now eighteen-year-old, doing in France by herself?”
“Good question, Jan. And for the answer, Rhonda, you’ll need to butter up the cook, so to speak.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll do it. He won’t suspect me like he would you two. You guys are way too…notorious.”
I laughed. “All too true. Cholo told me, after a glass or two of champagne, that Nacho told him Jan and I are menaces to Mexican waters. Can you imagine?”
Jan harrumphed and yawned. “Well, there’s the pot calling the kettle black if I ever heard it. Let’s pack it in and hit the rack. We have mayhem to wage come the morn.”
Before I fell asleep, I heard a light tap on my door. Po Thang barely moved so I said, “Come on in.”
Rhonda, dressed in black lace designed for a night of debauchery, slipped into my cabin.
“Forget it, Chica, I’m straight.”
Her cheeks flamed vermilion. “Oh, no. I...uh, this was all I had left in my suitcase. Jan made me throw away my onesies.”
“Well, thank goodness for that. No wonder Rousel wasn’t interested in unbuttoning your flap.”
Rhonda looked so stricken, I put my arm around her. “I was just kidding. It’s a good thing you didn’t have anything like this to wear on the boat with him, because he might have been tempted.”
She smiled. “Thanks. But as for me getting chummy with Roberto, I don’t think I know how to butter up anyone.”
“You don’t have to play the temptress, just be his friend. Tell him you want to learn to cook, that’ll get his attention. Now hit the sack and get a good night’s sleep, because if my instincts are right, the next few days are going to be a bumpy ride.”
I set my alarm for five, because I figured Chef Roberto would be in the galley early, and we had to prepare Rhonda for her first move on him.
We removed Po Thang’s critter cam from his collar, put it around Rhonda’s neck, and came to the conclusion that the camera on a chain, without the camouflage of a collar, looked like, well, a camera. And when we put the collar on her, she resembled a fledgling dominatrix, hardly the image we wanted to project.
After some discussion, we decided to sacrifice one of Rhonda’s new, and very expensive, designer scarves by cutting a piece off one end, then notching a hole in the middle and stitching in a flap with a cut just big enough for the camera lens to peak through. We then fastened a mini-mic in her hair with one of Jan’s many jeweled clips, and spritzed our spy with some alluring scent.
“Rhonda, let’s test the camera. Put your cell phone on vibrate so, if necessary, we can buzz
you, hang up, and call again. Take the call. We won’t have to phone unless you paint yourself into a corner and need help with your mission.”
“Shall we synchronize our watches?” she asked, with a perfect touch of sarcasm. I recalled a phrase from English Lit: “Growing pride doth fill the swelling breast.” Our rookie was swelling rapidly.
“Well said. Nope, we’ll skip the watch stuff this time, but I have another idea. Take Agent Dawg with you. He loves galleys; they’re full of food. He’ll also give you an opportunity to talk to us by saying stuff to him. Whisper in his ear or something.”
“And I’ll have his company to calm me down.”
“Kinda like a service dawg? I’ll put it on his resume.”
“Just please,” Jan said, “make sure he leaves us something for breakfast.”
Rhonda left, looking and smelling like a million bucks thanks to Jan’s fashion sense. Skinny pants, tight in all the right places, hair and makeup just perfect, a longish turtleneck to cover those areas where Rhonda’s new bod still needs a little work, and that scarf to camouflage the camera.
“Ya know, Hetta, that outfit would be good for you. You know, to hide your, uh, fluffy parts.”
I shot her my favorite digit.
We watched the incoming video as Rhonda first took Po Thang for a quick walk, making comments to him we could hear as a test, then returned to the yacht and entered the galley area.
“Perfecto. Okay, they’re in.”
Chef Roberto turned from the countertop where he was carving thin slices from an entire Serrano ham hock, said, “Bonjour, Rhonda. And you, as well, mon petit chien.” He leaned over and gave Po Thang a tiny bit of ham which he ingested with a loud gulp.
Petit Chien sniffed Roberto’s hand for more, then lunged for the counter, where he almost succeeded in dragging what looked to be a ten-pound ham leg onto the floor. Roberto grabbed the leg while Rhonda snagged Po Thang’s collar and dragged him away.
“Sorry about that, Roberto. I should have left his leash on.”
“No harm. We’ll just have to keep an eye on him.” He cut a slice of twenty-buck-a-pound ham and gave it to my badly behaved dog.
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