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

by Jinx Schwartz

  A huge, bright red, panga thundered by, nearly swamping us as a wall of water hit us broadside, then refracted off the bushes and whammed up on the opposite side. Gallons of water poured into our already leaky boat. But being drenched and sinking wasn’t what threw us into shock, it was who we saw in that panga.

  Once Se Vende stopped its violent rocking, Jan and I stared at each other, dumbstruck. I was the first to recover.

  “Am I hallucinating?”

  “If you are, I am too. How on earth…?

  I didn’t bother to answer, as I was busy trying to start our cranky motor. “Jan, start bailing. We got us a panga to catch.”

  Chapter 32

  “Are you absolutely certain, Hetta?” Jan asked as we frantically scooped water out of Se Vende. “What if we’re wrong?”

  “We are not wrong. The question is, are Fabio and Chino under arrest, or are they going to the rescue of we damsels in distress? Judging from those other guys in the boat, namely the gun-toting, uniformed ones, it could go either way. We gotta know, so hang on, we’re on their ass.”

  But we weren’t. Our antiquated panga and motor were no match for the shiny new red job that flew by us in the mangroves. The best we could do was to keep abreast of their wake, and hope we didn’t head-on someone coming around a bend from the other direction.

  Jan held onto the bow cleat with one hand and her mustache with the other. She’d turned her baseball cap around so the bill faced me. When she looked back, I couldn’t help but laugh at the incongruity of the bushy black mustache, blue eyes and blond bangs sticking out from under the cap band.

  Streaking along at full throttle, I was barely in control of our craft. The bow had lifted so that Jan was prone, hanging on to that cleat for dear life. Every wave we hit threatened to throw us from the panga. Something had to change, fast. Even though it went against everything in my very self-protective being, I did what I’d seen the pangueros do; I stood up and put one foot as far forward as I could, throwing my considerable weight onto the front foot.

  Using the throttle extension, which looked to be an old oar tied to the handle with baling wire, I was soon able to take two more shaky shuffles forward. A few stomach-threatening veers later, our panga miraculously leveled out.

  Jan sat up and I, mimicking my fellow pangueros, stood straight while guiding our course with one hand on the extension. I thought I looked quite the part, but Jan, judging from her panic-laced glances over her shoulder, didn’t share in my delusions.

  We didn’t see the oncoming panga until it was just a few yards in front of us. Having no idea which side of the channel to take, I did know we couldn’t chance, at this speed, being cuffed broadside with another wall of water. I jogged us as far to the right as I dared, hoping not to snag mangrove roots, or worse, the bottom.

  Jan put her head between her knees and assumed the crash position touted by the airlines, which probably isn’t to save your life, but your teeth, for later identification purposes.

  Passing starboard to starboard, within ten feet of the other boat, I dipped my head casually to the driver, panguero a panguero. As soon as he passed, I bent my knees for the expected shock of his wake and turned directly into it. To my amazement, not only did we not go airborne, we sliced right through the two-foot comber like a warm knife through butter, baby. I decided right then and there to buy Se Vende if the old scow and I both survived this mess.

  I was heartily congratulating myself for my outstanding panga skills when I spotted the object of our chase had slowed and was just clearing a bend not a quarter mile ahead. I jammed the throttle back too fast, almost launching Jan overboard. As water sloshed over our transom, I killed the engine and turned around to face my friend, who, from the look on her face, was mightily pissed off.

  “Sorry,” I whispered as I began to bail, “they’ve slowed down and I don’t want them to see us behind them.”

  “Give me some warning next time?”

  “Where’s the fun in that? All right, all right, already. I’ll do my best.” I removed the GPS from its waterproofed bag and checked our position. “The good news is, they slowed down. The bad news? They could be heading for Raymond Johnson.”

  “And if they are?”

  “Uh, I guess we need to figure out if they’re friend or foe? I mean, have Chino and Fabio spilled the beans? Or have they convinced the Mexican Navy that we are innocent, and they’re on the way to save us?”

  “Is that what those guys are? Navy?”

  “I think so. Or probably marines, judging by the blue uniforms and brimmed hats. Hell if I know.”

  “Sooo, let me know if this is our plan. We follow, and then if we think they are holding Chino and Fabio against their will, we jump ‘em—all five of ‘em—take away their very large and scary looking guns, save our guys, and sail into the sunset?” Jan said acidly. Jan can get a mite sarcastic when she’s scared. She got it from me. This time, however, her caustic take was right on. Just what could we do against five men with automatic weapons? Five, I might add, marines?

  “We’re screwed.”

  “Probably, but you’re right, we need to find out what they’re up to. No use going to Lopez Mateos now, because Fabio and Chino aren’t there. And we gotta go somewhere, so why not back to Raymond Johnson for some dry clothes? Unless, of course, it’s chockablock with marines.”

  “You know, there was a day when we didn’t think that was a bad thing.”

  The red panga passed right by Raymond Johnson’s hidey hole with nary a glance. As we passed, and even though I knew my boat was there, nothing gave away its presence. Good camo job, Fabio and Chino. We continued our pursuit of the other panga until we were certain they were headed for San Carlos.

  I turned us around and shut down the engine. “I think it’s safe to say that Fabio and Chino will be unavailable for statements at this time.”

  “You don’t think they’re, like, in real danger, do you?”

  “Probably not, but who knows how much clout Lujàn has in this burg. What I would like to know is whether the entrance to the bay is still under surveillance. You up for more time in this panga? We can go out to the entrance, take a look.”

  Jan looked wistfully in the direction of Raymond Johnson. “Can’t we go tomorrow? It’s gonna get dark before too long.”

  She had a point. I scrolled through the waypoints in the GPS.

  Even though we could clearly see the entrance to Mag Bay, distances over water can be very misleading. And from the looks of it, another fog bank lurked outside the bay. We putted back to the boat and, as grateful as we’d been to get away, we were even happier to be back. Home sweet boat.

  Gratefully swathed in dry clothes after a quick dip and a fresh water rinse off, we planned the next day’s maneuvers. We’d ruled out storming the Bastille and liberating the prisoners.

  “So, Hetta, we go out to the entrada, checking all the way to see if, by some wild chance, we can get this tub out of here and head for Cabo. Sounds good to me.”

  “Best I can come up with. I think, since Fabio and Chino haven’t arrived with the cavalry, we can safely assume the bad guys have them. Or that the guys who have them can’t be trusted not to deliver us into the hands of the bad guys.”

  Jan yawned. “I’m bushed. Think we can both sleep, or do we need a watch? Just in case one of our guys cracks under torture or something.”

  “Trust me, if they rat us out, we’re toast. We might as well get some shuteye, we have another long day tomorrow. I’ll sleep up here, though.”

  Jan went below and I checked the batteries. Not good. One more foggy day and they’d be drained. I could always switch on the engine battery bank, make a Satfone phone call, and check our e-mail, but a little voice, Jenks’s, warned, “Don’t even think about it.”

  I grabbed a pillow and blanket and stretched out on the couch.

  After battling that outboard all day, my shoulders ached, as did my thighs. To heck with paying a personal trainer when th
ere’s Panguero Pilates.

  We got an early, chilly, start the next morning before the sun finally burned off the morning marine layer. By the time we cleared the mangroves, we found the bay calm, the air clean.

  “Mr. GPS says it’s about ten miles to the entrada. No wind, no waves. Hang on and we’ll be there in a flash.” And flash we did. We could have made it in thirty minutes, easy, if I hadn’t spotted trouble on the horizon after twenty.

  “Why are you slowing down, Hetta?”

  “There’s a boat up there. A big one.”

  She stood up slightly. “Oh, yeah. Think it’s the Mex navy?”

  “Don’t know. I hope it’s a shrimper, but just in case I’m gonna keep our distance until we can figure it out. Pull your hat down and check that handlebar on your lip for slippage, just in case.”

  I made a wide circle, sticking to the far left side of the channel.

  Granted, it was the same side of the entrance the large boat was on, but I circled around in order to get to Margarita Island, where we planned to hike up and look for lurkers who were looking for us. This looking and lurking were getting a tad old, in my book.

  About mid-island, where I’d planned to land, we got another surprise in the form of about twenty colorful kayaks pulled up on the beach, and people milling around in bathing suits. I brought the panga to a halt a few yards offshore.

  “Jan, ditch the panguero outfit, I have a new plan.”

  If the kayakers, a women’s group from France, were surprised by two American chicks showing up in a fishing panga in the middle of nowhere, they didn’t show it. Au contraire, they seemed delighted to see us.

  Jan and I dazzled the entourage with out extensive local knowledge. After all, we’d been here a few weeks, so that made us experts. We showed them where to get clams, if the hurricane had left any, and, in return, we were invited to lunch. Never one to say non to a petit four, we said, “Mais oui,” and an hour later, while they set up camp, Jan and I were paddling one of their kayaks toward the large boat we’d spotted.

  “Ya know, Hetta, sometimes I think you’re downright brilliant.”

  “But, of course,” I replied in my best Charles Boyer.

  “I said sometimes. Okay, what now?”

  “Check out that boat, then climb up to the highest point of the island, see if we spot any bad guys. If they aren’t keeping an eye on things, maybe we can sneak Raymond Johnson out of this Popsicle joint.”

  “And leave Fabio and Chino?”

  “We can’t do any good for them by staying here. If we can make it to Cabo, which is not that many hours away, maybe we can get them a lawyer or something.”

  “Or catch a plane, forget we ever knew them?”

  “Or that. Shhh, look French.” I picked up my binoculars and trained them on the boat anchored between us and the entrance, in about the same place where we rode out the hurricane. “Oh, crap.”

  “Oh, crap, what?”

  “It’s the Tanuki Maru.”

  “Isn’t that good? After all, they’re your client.”

  “Jan, doesn’t that name ring a bell with you? Like, as in, canned whale?”

  “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “I want a thirty-dollar credit. And, what do we have here? Dickless Richard himself onboard, jawing with some Japanese dude.”

  “So much for our escape plan. Now what?”

  “Back to French camp. We regroup.”

  “I don’t want to regroup. I want to go home.”

  “Didn’t you read Thomas Wolfe? You can never go home again.”

  Chapter 33

  Back at base camp—I’ve always wanted to say that—we donned Nikes, shorts and conned our French friends out of two bottles of Perrier. Securing Se Vende to terra firma, we set off for the entrance on foot. I figured an hour out, an hour back, then we’d have just enough daylight to hightail it back to Raymond Johnson.

  As usual, I miscalculated. Two hours later, over some really treacherous terrain, we had worked our way back to the Tanuki Maru. Crouching behind a mound of lava rock and scrub, we rested while watching and waiting.

  When someone came out on deck, Jan realized we were visible and scrambled upward toward a large rock with me, literally, right on her tail. When she abruptly stopped, I ran into her bottom with my head. She let out a little, “Eeeek,” threw herself flat, grabbed my arm, and dragged me down with her.

  When I raised my head to spit out sand and a few choice words, I found myself looking down over a cliff. Way down over a cliff. Far below, the blue Pacific pounded boulders.

  “Eeeek is right.”

  “Wow, check out the view.”

  I scraped a couple of rocks from my tongue. “I’ll enjoy it as soon as I can breathe again. Man, that was a close call.”

  We pulled ourselves to seated and surveyed our surroundings. “Wow, ditto. This is some perch. Check it out. I wonder if we can see Raymond Johnson from here?”

  “I hope to hell not. If we can, they can.”

  “Good point.” I opened the binocular case. “I hope Lujàn isn’t back on top of his building checking us out with his telescope.”

  “He’s not.”

  “You’re probably right. He’s most likely peeping into some woman’s bedroom window.”

  “Nope, he and another guy are headed for shore. Right below us.”

  I lowered the binocs to track the shiny red panga leaving the Tanuki Maru. “Oh, crap. You think they saw us?”

  “They’re not looking up. Don’t move. If we set rocks a rollin’ they’ll see us for sure, and we ain’t got no place to go.”

  We watched the big panga we’d chased the day before land on the beach. Lujàn and a Japanese man. After pulling their panga up onto a patch of sand, Lujàn reached back into the boat and picked up a long black cylinder. Removing the cap, he unrolled a sheaf of drawings. The two men talked at length, shuffling through bluelines as they did.

  “I’d kill to hear what they’re saying,” I whispered.

  “Hush.”

  The Japanese man re-rolled the drawings and returned them to the cylinder, then the men began to climb.

  “Oh, shit. Oh, dear. Here they come!”

  “You owe me ten bucks, Hetta. Just stay still. They still don’t know we’re here. I hope. If they do come after us, we’ll roll a couple of bolders down on ‘em.”

  Holding our collective breath, we waited. A quarter of the way up the hill, the men turned right and headed toward the entrance, and we exhaled. Soon, the men were out of sight.

  Jan tugged on my shirt. “Let’s go. We can follow this ridge back to French camp.”

  “I want a look at those drawings.”

  “Excuse me? I could have sworn you said you wanted a look at those drawings, as opposed to, say, beating feet back to safety?”

  “Jan, something stinks here.”

  “Oh, that would be your latest brainstorm. Or me. I’m getting in character for being dead and rotting on a godforsaken island in Mexico.”

  “Very funny. We really do need a peep at those drawings. Think about it. Why is Lujàn after us? We didn’t really do anything but insult the bastard, and I refused to sign some document he probably didn’t even need.”

  “The galleon thing?”

  “There is that, but I think it’s more. There must be a great deal at stake, something we don’t know about. Folks just don’t go offing folks over delayed projects.”

  “But that’s the same panga that Chino and Fabio were in yesterday. With navy guys. Could everyone in the bay be in on whatever it is? And would the navy actually harm our guys?”

  “I don’t think the Mexican navy has any reason to harsh up on our crew. Who knows, maybe there’s a panga shortage after we turned two of them into firewood. Maybe it’s the town panga.”

  Jan looked doubtful

  “Okay, then, how about this? I’ll go down there, take a look. You keep watch. If you see them coming, throw a rock at me. I’ll take the low road back, you
take the high road, and we’ll meet at the kayak camp.”

  “I like the part about throwing rocks at you.”

  “See you in a few.”

  I lost a lot of skin, but in minutes I was on the beach, removing the lid from that black cylinder. I took a quick look at the drawings, noted the Tanuki logo at the bottom right, then waved Jan to start for the kayak camp. I did likewise.

  It was dark by the time we got back to Raymond Johnson, but by now we knew how to feel our way with the help of our GPS and starlight.

  “So, what was on the drawings?”

  “I don’t rightly know.”

  “So, we don’t know anymore than we did this morning. Bummer.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” I pulled the drawings from my backpack.

  Jan’s mouth fell open. “Oh, crap. Are you nuts? Dickless is going to know we were there!”

  “How?”

  “Huh?”

  “How will he know it’s us who pilfered his bluelines?”

  Her frown turned to a grin. “He can’t.”

  I unfolded the first drawing, a simple elevation for the desal plant with the description written in Spanish, English and Japanese Kanji in the title block. I recognized the Tanuki logo. “Nothing unusual here. Let’s see what else we have.” I shuffled through the other drawings and spread out a crude sketch.

  Jan, looking over my shoulder, said, “Looks like a fence of some kind.”

  “More like a cattle pen. Had one on my grandfather’s ranch. They’d corral the livestock, run them into a narrow pen, then a dipping vat to kill off ticks and fleas. I used to help with the dipping when I was a kid. Stunk to high heaven.”

  “I’ll bet you did.”

  I slapped her arm. “Probably so, but the sheep dip really stunk. I’ll most likely develop some rare form of brain cancer from those fumes I breathed.”

  “I always wondered what happened to you. I just figured you were dropped on your head.”

  I couldn’t think of a clever retort, so I studied the drawing. The thing that struck me were the dimensions of the pen. “Huge.”