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

by Jinx Schwartz

  “You shot him.”

  “Not officially. I shot at him, but they never found a body. I’m still pissed that I missed at that range. I’ve been practicing ever since.”

  “So much for remorse. Forget about all that. Water under the keel, as it were. You have Jenks now, a wonderful man who loves you in spite of your, uh, difficult nature. Maybe even because of it. And we are taking that dream voyage down to Cabo and back. Think positive, girl. And don’t forget, you always have me.”

  “I know. I’m grateful.” I raised my glass and dipped my head at my friend who’d seen me through so many challenges. “And, you are absolutely correct. We are taking that trip to Mexico.”

  “Atta girl. That’s thinking positive.”

  Positive isn’t the word for it. Determined, is more like it. I gave her a sweet smile, which, in itself should have alerted her to trouble. “That’s not what I meant, Jan, me girl. We ain’t GRITs for nuthin’, you know.”

  “You are only a pseudo Gal Raised in Texas cuz you’ve spent a lot of the time out of the country. But what does being Texans have to do with anything?”

  “We sprang from pioneer stock, borderers who never paled at new horizons. Our ancestors were trailblazers who knew when to draw the line in the sand.”

  “Yes, and they got stars at the Alamo for it. How bright was that?”

  “Blasphemy! I’m gonna turn you in to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas for heinous sass.”

  Jan gave me her, Ooooh, I’m scared look. “Would you please the hell tell me what being descendents of heroes has to do with our present situation?”

  “We, you and me, are no shrinking violets. Adventure is in our blood. We can take this tub to Mexico and we do not need no stinkin’ Yankee fellas to go with us.”

  Chapter 2

  “Are you out of your effin’ mind, Hetta? We can’t take a forty-five foot boat all the way from San Francisco to Cabo by ourselves.”

  “Yacht.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a yacht, not a boat, Jan. If it has a bathroom and a place to sleep, it’s a yacht.”

  “Yeah, well Miss Smarty Pants Sailor Girl, it’s a head, not a bathroom.”

  “You are ab-so-loot-a-mente correcto. See how boaty we’ve become? Last year I didn’t even know what a head was, and now I have one. And, as you can hear, I’ve been studying Spanish.”

  “Knowing what to call the potty and knowing how to take the damned thing to Mexico, where you only have an inkling of the language, are not one and the same. We can’t do it.”

  “And why not?”

  “Well, for starters, we don’t know what we’re doing.”

  “When has that ever stopped us? Besides, I do know how to handle this boat. Yacht.”

  “I’ll admit you have the skills necessary to bar hop from waterfront dive to waterfront dive along the estuary, but every time you’ve ventured out under the Golden Gate Bridge, Jenks has been on board. I know, I know, you do take Raymond Johnson to Treasure Island by yourself, but that’s completely different. It’s only a few miles away, inside the bay. Cabo San Lucas is at least a thousand miles away. In the Pacific Ocean.”

  “Fourteen hundred, give or take a mile. And we can do it.”

  “Hetta, for over twenty years I have let you rope me into mess after mess, but not this time. Remember the skiing trip? And how about those sailing lessons?”

  “The ski instructor was cute,” I insisted.

  “I broke my arm and you got the guy.”

  “Okay, but you did learn to sail.”

  “With an all-lesbian crew.”

  “Jan, you’re the one who signed us up with the Gay Nineties Sailing Club. I think Dilly was a little sweet on you.”

  We had a good laugh, reminisced about some of our misadventures, but then Jan grew somber. “Oh, how I miss RJ.”

  “I know. What a dawg he was. Sometimes I forget he’s dead. Just the other day, I found myself loading Alpo into my supermarket cart.” I felt the sting of tears for my departed dog. “Wouldn’t he have just loved a trip to Mexico? And in a boat named for him?”

  “We can’t go without Lars and Jenks.”

  “Can too.”

  “Can not.”

  I stubborned up. “Then I just might go alone.”

  “Oh, no you won’t.”

  “How are you gonna stop me?”

  “I’m going to tell your mama.”

  That stopped me. My mother, the velvet hammer, was a force to be reckoned with. Not that she’d yell or anything, she’d just get southern on me. Or worse: Texan.

  “Remember what she said when I bought this boat?” I turned on my best Texas drawl. “‘Hetta, honey, don’t yew know that boating is very bay-ud for your ski-yun?’ “

  Jan chortled. “And then she gave you a case of number bajillion sunblock.”

  Chapter 3

  We were still giggling when someone yelled, “Permission to come aboard, you hussies.”

  “By the sudden dip of the boat, I do believe a Craigosaurus approacheth.”

  With amazing agility, Dr. Craig Washington, veterinarian extraordinaire, maneuvered his three hundred pound bulk along the walkway of the swaying boat. He plopped down next to me and let out a long raspy breath. His blue eyes, made more startling by the contrast with his black skin, were puffy and sad.

  I gave his paw a pat. “Problems, Craig?”

  “Pierre. He forgot our anniversary. And it’s our sixth month.”

  “Men are dawgs. Dump him and come to Mexico with us.”

  “When do we leave?”

  Jan shook her head. “We don’t.”

  “Will so.”

  “Will not.”

  Craig looked back and forth at us and then held up a hand to stop our squabbling. “What’s this all about?”

  “Jenks has dumped me,” I whined.

  Jan waved me off. “That is a bald-faced lie,” she demurred, and then explained what was going on.

  Craig shook his head at me. “And I thought I was the drama queen. Neither of us, it seems, can keep a man. But I agree with Jan, it sounds like you are overreacting. Give Jenks a break. And, for the record, I also think Jan’s right on another level; you cannot take this ship to Cabo San Lucas without a more experienced crew.”

  “This is not a ship. It is a forty-five foot Californian motor yacht. A coastal cruiser, easily capable of making it along the coast to Mexico.”

  “With a real crew,” Jan chimed in.

  Since I was being ganged up on, I pretended to give in. “Oh, maybe you two are right. Besides, Jenks and Lars just might get back in time.”

  Jan narrowed her eyes, not buying my easy acquiescence. Luckily, the phone rang before she could call me a fibber. It was Pierre.

  “Is the great one there?” he asked

  “Yes, and he’s not happy.”

  “He’s not happy? He forgot our anniversary! I’m simply devastated.”

  Men. What is it with them? Gay or straight, they just can’t get this communication thing down. How is it, one wonders, that they run the world?

  After Pierre minced down the dock to collect Craig for their anniversary dinner, I went in search of victuals. My “kitchen” design is what the boating industry calls a galley down. Two wide teak steps down and forward of the main saloon, pronounced salon, as in beauty shop, not saloon as in barroom, was a compact galley equipped with a full-size refrigerator that operated on AC, DC or propane, as well as a three-burner gas stove with oven, and a microwave. A built-in banquette in the corner also served as office space for my printer, fax and other work paraphernalia. I stuck my head in the reefer and came up with Shrimp Louis fixin’s. “You want to stay and have a salad with me, Jan? I got enough for two. Maybe I’ll do some garlic bread.”

  She tilted her head at me. “Salad sounds good, but garlic bread? I have one word for you regarding that.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Pamela.”

  Fooey, she
would have to bring up Pam, my personal torture maven, otherwise known as my personal trainer. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  Jan gave my midsection a pointed look. “Why pay the girl all that money and then not do what you’re paying her to tell you to do?”

  “Gee, I was kinda hoping just hiring a personal trainer would do the trick.”

  She put two fingers on her cheek à la Jack Benny. “Hey, it’s your money. And fanny.”

  After the fanny remark, I forwent the bread but drew the line at not using Louis sauce on a Louis. There are limits, you know.

  We ate at the main dining table after removing our computers. I preferred working there because of the grand view of the marina and estuary not afforded by the galley office, but removing the computer and paperwork always irked me. For the umpteenth time I vowed to build an office setup with a view.

  As we ate, several boats coasted by, their owners enjoying an ideal summer’s eve downwind sail. I toyed with the idea of a twilight cruise myself, but vetoed it. In my mood, I’d probably end up draped over some waterfront dive crying in my beer.

  Jan announced she had to go clean her digs in Alameda, so I did the dishes, brought my computer back up to the dining table and got down to checking out websites: Mexican. I’d flown to Cabo many a time, but despite my freehanded talk and bravado, the idea of taking my own boat down there was a little daunting.

  Bringing up several websites, I realized why Jenks had planned a departure from San Diego in mid-November: hurricanes. One site had a link to NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and another took me to an historical accounting of every hurricane in the eastern Pacific since the fifties. Traditionally, September and October were the most dangerous months for storms, but early November had its share, especially along the outside of the Baja.

  I was so engrossed in the Internet that I jumped when Jan materialized behind me. “Hetta, what are you looking at?”

  “I thought you went home.”

  “I did, but remembered I left some papers here that I need for my meeting tomorrow. So wha’cha doin’?” She leaned in closer. “Hurricanes?”

  “You ever heard of privacy? If you must know, I’m just doing some research that Jenks asked me to do for our trip,” I lied.

  “Oh. Uh, they have hurricanes in Baja? I thought they were mostly in the Caribbean and East Coast.”

  “If you watch the Weather Channel, that’s the impression you’d get. I’ve been paying attention lately to their coverage and if that’s all you watch you’d think all weather suddenly stops at the Mexican border. I found websites that tell a different story. Baja gets hit quite often and really gets wiped on occasion. Hurricane season can run as late as mid-November. Rarely goes that late, but it has happened. Also, in the eighties, a December storm roared up from somewhere and devastated Cabo. Put a lot of boats on the beach.”

  “Yeah, I remember hearing about that. That was before they built a marina.”

  “Yep. Since then they haven’t had a lot of large boat damage, even when they get a pretty good hit. The way Jenks has it planned, we should be okay if we leave San Diego around November fifteenth.”

  “Sooo, we have lots of time before things get critical. I mean, if we leave San Diego a little later, that’s better than leaving early, right?”

  “Guess so. But the problem is, I’ve got that job starting in mid-January. If we take two weeks to get to Cabo from San Diego, we might arrive as late as December one, then we’d have to leave and head north no later than, say, three weeks later. I wanted at least a month down there. And Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Every New Year’s Eve for ages I’ve longed for a date, and now I have a man, sort of, and by dern and golly, I want that date. In Cabo.”

  “Okay, okay. Chill. You could always commute, you know. Set up a four-day workweek, then fly down to Cabo on Thursday night, back on Sunday. For a while, at least.”

  “I guess so, but the client’s here in the Bay Area, so I didn’t build in travel expenses. I’d have to, God forbid, pay my own airfare every weekend. Wouldn’t be worth it. I guess I could at least get things started that way, but then I couldn’t take the trip back up the coast on the boat until next year. And where would I live during the week? It’s a bit of a problem when your home is in Mexico and you are in San Francisco, you know? When do you have to be back?”

  She checked her mental calendar. “I could start my new project as late as the end of January if I could stay in touch while we’re on the boat. And if we go at all. At any rate, the way things are stacking up, maybe we should consider a reschedule on both our projects.”

  I wisely made no comment, but there was no way in hell I was going to reschedule anything. This tub was going to Cabo and that was that.

  Before I went to bed, I checked my insurance policy and discovered Raymond Johnson was covered year round, all the way to Cabo, but that they required a crew of three once we entered Mexican or international waters. Drat.

  Fatigued by a long day of emotional ups and downs, I retired to my spacious master cabin and my queen-size bed. Two large portholes, three feet above the water line, served as a headboard, and brass lamps flanked both sides of the bed. Carpeted in dark blue like the rest of the boat, with the clean lines of solid teak built-ins that eliminated the need for furniture, the room was compact and cozy, but not confining. My head and shower were on one side of the room, closets, which for some reason are called lockers, and drawers on the other. I crawled into bed and cranked open my alfresco headboard. The soothing lap of water on the hull lulled me into night-night land better’n Valium.

  I was just drifting off when I realized I hadn’t done a single Pilate all weekend and I had a seven a.m. with the dreaded taskmistress, Pamela. Double drat.

  "Squeeze. And squeeze. Harder. Harder. Pull those abs down, right through your backbone. Pump your arms and breathe, two, three, four, five. Out, two, three, four, five. Don’t pooch those abs out, Hetta. Breath out, abdominals in! Back breathe, fill your rib cage. You can do it. Only five more, two, three, four, five.”

  I was pumping, breathing, and contemplating homicide, two, three, four, five.

  Pamela, five feet, ten inches of muscular blonde dominatrix, eyed my abs, then made the fatal error of poking them with her finger. I let everything go, rolled onto my stomach and howled with laughter. When I turned back over, I was met with a scowl. “You know,” Pam pressed, “you are never going to get that fifteen pounds off unless you get serious about this.”

  “Ten. Hey, you’re the one who tickled me.”

  “Fifteen, minimum. And I won’t poke you again. Now, let’s do a quick one-hundred and I’ll let you stretch.”

  “We already did fifty.”

  “Doesn’t count unless you do all one hundred at a time. Hands by your sides, abs down and pump. Breathe, two, three, four, five and….”

  When I stumbled to the fridge for a nice cold beer to wash down all that exercise, I noticed the fax machine light flashing. I pushed the button and out shot a two-page, single spaced THINGS TO DO list from Jenks. Grabbing the fax, I chugged my Tecate and went for a nice hot shower before tackling the rest of my day.

  In truth, all I really wanted to tackle was a nap. My stomach, legs and arms hurt, I was starving, and today was supposed to be my first day on the Atkins diet, which I’d forgotten when I’d downed the beer. I opened the fridge and found leftover pasta and two chocolate chip cookies. About a billion carbs. I’d deal with Doctor Atkins tomorrow.

  A little pasta Alfredo lifted my spirits so I was able to make a few billable business calls to keep refrieds on the table, and then, unable to put it off any longer, I picked up Jenks’s list.

  What looked at first to be a simple two-page list soon grew to six when I pulled out my owner’s manuals for the engines, generator and watermaker. Caterpillar, Onan and Spectra had a red-letter day of sales as my American Express account tickled the ozone and my cell phone ran dangerously close to using up its
freebie minutes. Not only that, I’d learned that some of the spare parts would barely make it to me before our scheduled departure date.

  Stressed, I consoled myself with Fritos, another Tecate and that nap. But not before I took out the garbage, just in case Jan came over and found the empty beer cans and Frito bag. It is my theory that what others don’t see you’ve eaten doesn’t count.

  After my siesta, I descended into the boat’s bowels. I was in the engine room, inventorying fuel filters and hose clamps, when the phone, which I’d stupidly left in the main saloon, began to chime "Yellow Rose of Texas." Banging my head on at least one bulkhead and bouncing off a couple of pieces of very hard machinery, I reached the phone just as the answering machine picked up. I punched the CANCEL button before I had time to check the Caller ID. A mistake.

  It was Pamela. “I have some free time this evening and thought we might take a nice little jog. You should have tons of energy on your high protein regime, so I think its time to turn up the flame, get that fat to burning away with an evening exercise routine. Say five o’clock?”

  “Pam, that is Happy Hour.”

  “Tsk, tsk, Hetta. No alcohol allowed, you know.”

  “I have a headache.”

  “Remember our goal. Ten pounds in one month, three inches off your middle. You can do it. You did start on Atkins today, didn’t you?”

  “Uh, I sort of forgot to go to the store.”

  “I’ll be right over, if my car will start.”

  Dammit, dammit, dammit.

  Unfortunately, her car did start. I watched helplessly as Pamela rummaged through my refrigerator, dumping most of the contents into a garbage bag, even the beer! I was protesting that Tecate was one of the major food groups when Pamela shrieked, “What, in the name of all that’s holy, is this?”

  Dangling from her fingers, as if she were holding a dead rat by the tail, was a package that was clearly marked: Lardo di Colonnata.