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

by Jinx Schwartz

“Is he a Yee, as well?” I had grown fascinated with the genealogy of the Baja. It seemed everyone is related somehow.

  “Oh, no. He is a Comacho, but his great-great-grandfather was married to my great-uncle’s mother. Roberto, that is his name, thinks your dinghy is much too gringo looking. We can more easily pass ourselves off as fishermen in this panga, and reach safety without raising suspicion as soon as we make arrangements. We will take you into Lopez Mateos in broad daylight. Even at this time of year there are many tourists who hire pangas for excursions of fishing and bird watching. Not so many as in whale season, but as you well know, there are still whales to view.”

  “Speaking of, have you seen Lonesome?”

  “No. Not since the storm.”

  “I sorta miss him. I hope he’s all right. So, guys, what’s next? And what’s this about taking us into Lopez Mateos, not that I wouldn’t welcome a change in locale.”

  Chino and Fabio exchanged a glance. “We feel,” Chino said, “that you two must leave.”

  “You mean, leave leave? Leave Raymond Johnson here for good? No way.”

  “You are not safe here. If we can get you to Ensenada, and your federale friend, then perhaps he can make, uh, arrangements to come here and get your boat.”

  “Arrangements?”

  “I have friends there who can help.”

  “Friends in lower places than Lujàn, I assume?”

  Fabio shrugged. “Amigos who do not care for men like Señor Lujàn.”

  “Then any friend of yours is a friend of mine, but you’d better get them on down here, because I am not leaving my boat and that’s that. Next idea?”

  Fabio leaned over and sniffed my hair. “Champoo? Do I smell champoo?”

  “No, silly, Joy. Jan and I took a salt water bath which, I might add, you and Chino could use.”

  “That is a good idea. Then Chino and I will go into Lopez Mateos once again this evening to make the final arrangement, then, at dawn, we will take you to my friends. They will drive you to Ensenada. That is an order.”

  “Well,” I said, “if you insist. You are, after all, the captain.”

  Fabio gave Chino a satisfied nod, but Jan, who knows me sooo well, rolled her eyes.

  “We will,” Fabio added, “take your dinghy so that you may pack your belongings into the panga. We should be back in three or four hours, so be ready to go. You will, of course, need your passports and Mexican entry visas. My friends will try to avoid the military checkpoints between here and Ensenada, but you must then cross the border.”

  “Sure thing,” I said, handing him the Joy.

  As soon as our nice smelling men motored away in my dinghy, Jan asked, “So, what are we really going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet, but if the boat don’t leave, I don’t leave. It’s my home, for crying out loud. We need help and we need it now. Any bright ideas?”

  “Try Martinez again?”

  “It’s worth a try. Screw the batteries.”

  This time he answered his cell phone. It was a crappy connection, but I was elated. “Martinez, where are you?”

  “Ensenada. I got your message? Are you all right? Everyone is worried. We heard—”

  I cut him off in the name of battery power. “We are in deep doo doo, just off Lopez Mateos, hiding in the mangroves. Here are the coordinates.” I read off our lat and long. “Did you get that? Hello. Hello? Crap!”

  “Do you think he heard you?”

  “I have no idea. The batteries and signal look fine.” I redialed and got a message in Spanish, slammed the cell shut and growled, “No chit.”

  “No chit, what?”

  “Our phone is fuera de servicio.”

  “I gather that’s bad?”

  “It means out of service. I think.”

  “Now what?”

  “Maybe Martinez’ll call back. I’m leaving the phone on, no matter what Capítan Fabio says.”

  “Should we pack?”

  “You can pack, but I’ll take my chances with the bad guys.”

  “Hetta, I know you don’t want to hear this, but I think you’re wrong. Fabio is right. We should get to safety and then get Raymond Johnson back. If we stay here we’re at the mercy of, well, almost everyone. Think of others for a change. What if these bad guys find us, feed us to the fish? It will kill our parents.”

  She was right, of course. God knows what would happen to us if either the Mexican Navy, the federales or Lujàn’s goons got us. In Mexico, you ain’t got no stinkin’ rights. Like Chino said, under their Napoleonic Code, one is guilty until proven innocent. We could spend weeks or months in jail, even with no charges filed.” I sighed. “Let’s pack.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  But we weren’t.

  It wasn’t that we weren’t ready. We spent the next few hours trying to pack everything we owned into the gym bags Fabio told us we were allowed. Did we need our toothbrushes? Yes. Shorts or long pants? Pants, we decided. Hairdryer? Yep. Then nope. In the end we piled everything on the bed so we didn’t duplicate, then sorted necessities, like deodorant, from wants, like mascara. We dressed in layers, not knowing what to expect, weather wise, between Mag Bay and Ensenada.

  Or, what if we holed up at Martinez’s house in San Quintin? “But, Hetta, he’s in Ensenada, and we don’t have a key. Even if we did know where his house is.”

  Comparing notes of what he’d told us, we came up with a new housing development about ten or so miles south of San Quintin. It would have to do. I remembered he bought a new, yellow, SUV just after he retired. Not much of a clue, but surely one that stood out with the locals in a small town. We’d have our rescuers ask around, then we’d perform a little B&E, hole up until we could reach Martinez. I was feeling more confident by the minute.

  Four hours after Fabio and Chino left, we began to fret. Two more hours, at first light, it was evident things were not going as planned. More attempts to call Martinez ended in frustrating failure.

  Jan glowered out at the morning light. “I think our guys might not be coming back. At least not today. They said the dinghy was too noticeable around here, that’s why they got the panga. And now the panga is here, and they aren’t.”

  “Maybe they came up with a new plan?”

  “Since when did you become Pollyanna, Miss Hetta?”

  “Since I ran out of ideas. What about this for a good thing? The fog cleared, sun is out, the batteries are charging, and maybe we can reach Martinez or someone else today?”

  “The sun was out. The fog is moving in again. Got plan B?”

  I looked at my fading cell phone battery signal. “Get some sleep?”

  Chapter 31

  When Jan and I woke up a little after noon, we were still cocooned in gray, and the guys weren’t back. Not good.

  The house batteries, which had already been going down a little day by day, were dangerously low. Our solar panels were only an auxiliary source for charging and days of not being able to run the generator for fear of someone hearing it were taking their toll. The radio and cell phone, our lifelines to the outside world, weren’t huge draws, but we had another biggie: the bilge pump.

  Since Raymond Johnson was at rest, the seals around the shaft logs had significantly reduced the amount of water leaking into the bilge, but the bilge pump still came on at least once a day. It didn’t pump for long, but any draw on our batteries was now critical. Our other battery bank, the one for our engines, was deemed sacred and not to be tapped for any reason other than starting those engines up. Everything else ran on the slowly dying house batteries. And here we were without AAA for a jump start.

  Fabio had been operating a manual bilge pump to lighten the load on the batteries, but he’d been gone for over twelve hours. When I saw the bilge pump indicator light spring to life, I quickly shut down the pump at the main panel, and prepared to climb down into the dreaded bowels of the ship for a little upper body exercise. Pamela the muscle maven would be ecstatic, for the pump
handle was almost certainly designed by some body builder with maximum exertion in mind. I was giving my screaming biceps a break when, topsides, the Satfone chirped.

  “Hello? Hello? Anyone there?” I heard Jan ask as I scrambled from the mechanical netherworld, hitting my head on several bulkheads in my haste. I arrived just in time to see her slam the phone shut.

  “Who was it? Could you hear anyone?”

  “No, sorry. Do we have caller ID on this system?”

  “Sort of.” I picked up the phone and hit the CALL BACK button. Lots of clicks and hums, but no ring. “That’s it, Jan. We are getting out of here. I can’t stand this crap for one more day.”

  “We’re taking Raymond Johnson out of here?”

  “Can’t. Low tide. But we can saddle up Se Vende and form a posse. Go find Fabio and Chino.”

  Jan gave the dilapidated panga tied alongside a skeptical look.

  “What does Se Vende mean, anyhow?”

  “For Sale.”

  “Why am I not surprised? Might I remind you, we will stand out like flies in buttermilk riding around in that piece of crap?”

  “I think I’ve come up with a way around that.”

  She threw her arms skyward. “Oh, Lord, what have I done to deserve this woman?”

  After rummaging through a couple of lockers, I came up with what I considered the perfect solution for bopping around Mag Bay undetected. Left over from our Hasta La Bye-Bye party at the yacht club five weeks—seemed like centuries—ago, we found two large sombreros with coarse black hair stitched to the brims, and luxuriant mustaches to match. Panga fishermen do not wear wide brimmed hats, so we Velcroed the hair to baseball caps. Dressed in jeans and long sleeved plaid shirts, we looked fairly authentic unless one looked closely; I doubt there were many other Pendleton shirts and Ralph Lauren jeans on the bay that day.

  “No sunglasses, Jan. Mexican pescadores don’t wear ‘em.”

  Jan reluctantly tucked her Diors into a pocket and helped me round up charts, a handheld GPS, and a VHF radio. I noted with satisfaction that both the GPS and the radio had a full charge. We also took a cell phone, though we doubted dialing 9-1-1 would get us anywhere if we got in trouble. We stashed our bags under a pile of green fishing nets in the bottom of Se Vende and threw in several gallons of water, a can opener and our last three cans of tuna fish. Now came the fun part.

  Twenty feet long and very narrow, Se Vende was light years from the newer models the lobster guys use to ply the bay and ocean. Judging by her peeling paint and battle scars, she’d seen a lot of fish come over her gunwales. We bailed out the three inches of oily water standing in her bottom, but thirty minutes later, when we were ready to go, two inches were back. I went into a locker and came up with a spare hand pump for expelling water from my dinghy. Bless Jenks once again, for his insistence on spares.

  “Jan, sit up front and look Mexican. I’ll try to get her started.”

  “Uh, you know, there are no oars. Or life jackets.”

  “Pangueros don’t use ‘em.”

  “We aren’t pangueros, you can’t swim, and we’re setting off in a leaky boat.”

  “And your point is? Just joshin’. Grab a couple of PFDs off Raymond Johnson. We’ll hide them under the nets. Not much we can do about the oars.”

  While Jan got the life vests, I studied the outboard motor with a great deal of trepidation, as outboards and I have a long history of incompatibility, if not downright animosity. I know, inanimate objects don’t have emotions, but if they did, outboards would hate me. It was mutual.

  As expected in a Mexican panga, there was no gas tank, just a five gallon plastic bottle with a piece of surgical tubing leading into the motor. A U.S. Coast Guard nightmare. There was a pump bulb in the line, but I decided to venture a couple of pulls on the fraying length of polypropylene line that served as starter cord, rather than take a chance on flooding the carburetor.

  I stood in the tippy boat, bent my knees, got a death grip on the starter cord and gave it a mighty pull. The cord came flying out of the motor, sending me ass over teakettle backwards into the pile of fishing nets. I was on my back, staring dumbly at the cord when Jan returned with our lifejackets.

  “Ya know, Hetta, this probably isn’t a good time for a nap.”

  “Very damned funny. The pull cord came off in my hand.”

  "Can you fix it?”

  “Dunno.” I un-netted myself and took the cowling off the motor, which wasn’t hard, since it was held on with sun-warped duct tape. I sent Jan back into Raymond Johnson for more tape while I painstakingly rewrapped the pull cord onto the motor’s flywheel. Several pulls later, along with a couple of gentle pumps on the gas line and the old Johnson hacked to life. In gear.

  The prop dug in, the engine squalled, and Se Vende jerked wildly when the slack lines holding her to Raymond Johnson twanged taught. I was tossed forward, then back, painfully bruising shins, knees and bum. I somehow managed to crawl aft and push the gearshift into neutral and then cut the throttle.

  Jan, wide-eyed, began giggling and pointing once she realized I was unharmed. Regaining some modicum of dignity, I scolded, “While I admire your jejune ability to find humor in inappropriate situations, I cannot, for the life of me, see what you find sooo amusing right now.”

  She fumbled in her backpack and handed me an open compact. A glance in the mirror and I had to laugh myself. My oversized nylon mustache had somehow attached itself to the brim of my baseball cap, which was jammed low onto my head. It looked as though I had one, very bushy eyebrow. Chuckling, I relocated the mustache to my lip and gave her back her compact. “Get in, I think I’ve got the hang of this now.”

  Jan gingerly stepped into the panga while I took a few swipes at the blue panga paint marring Raymond Johnson’s gelcoat. Once Jan was settled in, I began toying with the throttle and shifts on the old Johnson. Several pulls later the motor coughed to life and I gave Jan the signal to untie us and push us away from Raymond Johnson. Holding my breath, I eased us into gear and steered into open water without further bodily damage to myself, Raymond Johnson, or Se Vende.

  After several days cooped up on a boat, the joy of being out in open air, even foggy open air, overcame our trepidation of lurking danger. Exhilarated, we gave each other a thumbs-up. Okay, so we had no idea where we were going, but what the hey? We were, for the moment, free.

  Our elation quickly evaporated.

  Heading straight for us, cutting through the wispy, lifting fog, was another panga. Jan gave me a “what now?” hand and shoulder signal. We dared not talk over the motor, as sound carries great distances over water and our clearly American voices would reverberate all over the bay. I shrugged an appropriately Mexican shrug, pulled my baseball cap bill down on my forehead, checked my mustache and held my course.

  For what seemed forever, but was probably only a minute or two, the other panga bore down on us and then, with an airy wave, the fishermen veered off, and disappeared behind a stand of mangroves. I killed the motor and listened with pounding temples to the fading drone of their engine.

  “I think they just wanted to see if they knew us,” I whispered.

  “Let’s drift and figure out where we’re going.”

  “Yeah, having a destination is good. Why didn’t we think of that before we left the boat?”

  “For one thing, we’d probably have talked ourselves out of leaving. Oh, crap. I forgot something.”

  “Bet I know what,” Jan said in a teasing voice. She fished in her pocket and jangled Raymond Johnson’s ignition keys in the air. My heroette.

  “Good girl.”

  “And, I locked her up tight. Fabio has a key to the door, just in case they get by us. But you know, I am more and more worried about those two.”

  “Not much we can do except look for them.” As I talked I dug out the charts and GPS. I punched in the coordinates for Puerto Lopez Mateos and found that, as the crow flies, we were only five miles away. Since we didn’t have any navigat
ional charts for this part of the bay, I checked out an old aerial photo and could see a winding channel, with all kinds of branches to lead us astray. The good news, though, was we could hug the mangroves and duck for cover if we got company. Of course, with the old Johnson’s whine, we probably couldn’t hear anyone coming. Oh, well, in for a peso, in for a pound.

  I handed our sketchy charts to Jan. “You be the navigator, matey. We’ll take it real slow, so if you see the bottom coming up, just raise your arm and I’ll shut down the engine. Hopefully we won’t ding the prop.”

  Two harrowing hours, three dead ends, and several close encounters with other boats later, we adopted a new modus operandi. Lurking under the mangroves, we waited for a panga to pass, then followed at a safe distance until we lost his wake pattern.

  Even with timeouts while awaiting other boats, we found this method much faster than meandering around like ducks lookin’ for thunder in the on-again, off-again fogbank.

  We were lying in wait for another boat when Jan whispered. “Hetta, I just had a thought.”

  “I hope it was a good one.”

  “How do we know we are going the right direction? Maybe the pangas we’ve been following aren’t even going to Lopez Mateos.”

  “Jan, please do not think. It gives me a headache.”

  “I’m serious.”

  I dug out the GPS. We were now only two miles south of our destination. I showed the screen to Jan with a flourish. “Oh, ye of little faith.”

  “Shhh. Here comes a panga.”

  We assumed the position.

  Jan pulled her hat low over her blond hair and hunkered down in the bow, holding onto both gunwales. The drone became a roar as we braced ourselves against what we knew was going to be a mini tsunami when the panga’s bow wave whapped us up against the mangroves, tossing our old skiff around like we were on the inside of a Maytag. It soon became apparent this new panga was headed the opposite way from where we wanted to go and, of course, the sun took that moment to disperse the fog. We managed to pull ourselves out of sight behind some mangroves, but didn’t have time to turn around, point our bow in the right direction.