Just Add Water (Hetta Coffey Mystery Series (Book 1))

by Schwartz, Jinx

  It normally gave me a moment’s pride and pleasure when I walked through the front door, but tonight all I could think of was one day coming home to find it empty. No wagging tail, no joyful barks.

  Craig joined us for fettuccini Alfredo à la Jan and the Nieman Marcus takeout deli, then yawned and said he was going to turn in early, but I knew better. He would work at his office into the wee hours to make up for his lost day at U.C. Davis. Jan and I took our wine to the hot tub deck off my third floor bedroom.

  “Thanks for making dinner,” I told Jan, not even giving her a hard time for buying exorbitantly priced pasta at Needless Markup.

  “You are very welcome. Hetta, that Craig is a saint,” Jan said. Steam rose from her shoulders as she pushed herself up from the one hundred three degree water into the cool evening air. We had turned off the jets and were adrift in the hot, still water while taking in the view. The lights of the Golden Gate, Bay, and San Mateo bridges glittered like necklaces spanning the throat, waist and ankle of the Bay. A full moon bathed us in its own pearly light.

  RJ was stretched out on a redwood seat surrounding the tub, his front paws dangling in the water. He extended one leg, testing the waters in more ways than one.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I told him. He looked guilty.

  “How can you read that dog’s mind?” Jan asked, pulling a bottle of chilled wine from its ice bucket.

  “Great minds and all that. One of these days I’m gonna let him come in,” I said. An overwhelming feeling of loss stung my eyes. One of these days, and soon, RJ would be gone.

  “Oh, what the hell. Come on in, boy.”

  RJ’s tail thumped uncertainly once, twice, then he stared at me with the same twitchy anticipation as when he smelled a hidden treasure in my pocket. There was enough light so he could study my face. “Does she mean it?” his eyes seemed to ask.

  Jan slapped the water. “Come on in RJ,” she cooed.

  RJ, not a dog to be asked thrice, launched himself forward in a full body belly flop that sent a tidal wave of hot water into my wine glass.

  7

  A persistent thump on my pillow heralded an après Chardonnay kind of day. The logjam of dog hair in my hot tub dictated my morning’s main activity.

  Jan wisely decided to abandon my place and snitty attitude for her own BDR-less abode.

  RJ watched, with the irksome smugness of a teetotaler, from a safe, splash free distance while I drained, washed, polished, and refilled the tub.

  Adding insult to self-induced injury was my discovery of several loose deck planks, a leaky water pipe under the tub, a suspiciously slow drain in the basement sink, and two hanger-uppers before I could figure out how to use my new caller ID. An epic headache, hairy hot tub, disintegrating house, nuisance caller, and dying dog pushed me to the tottering edge of a severe pity party. After a morning of hard work laced with liberal doses of self-loathing, I gratefully set the tub controls to HEAT, turned on some Pavarotti, and collapsed on the couch with a half liter glass of cold wine. It didn’t taste as good as it had the night before. And I don’t really like opera all that much, but I have a deep affection for anything of value featuring fat people. Sumo wrestling is my all time favorite.

  It was time to whine.

  “Mama,” I blubbered into the phone, “why me?”

  “Hetta Honey, are you intoxicated?” Mother drawled.

  “I’m not drunk, but I’ve been drinking. My ship has not sunk, but it is sinking,” I singsonged, quoting a poem a friend composed one tipsy night at the beach.

  I could picture Mother giving my father her “Hetta’s on the phone and it isn’t good news” look. Although it was midafternoon in Texas, I also knew she was perfectly coifed, she had her “face” on, and her petite form was adorned with something linen by Liz Claiborne. Pressed. I’ve long suspected I was adopted.

  “And I plan to drink more,” I sniveled. “My life is the pits.” I would have said my life was shit, but one does not use the word “shit” when addressing my mother. “Pits” was even pushing it, as it could be construed as referring to a body part.

  “Oh? May-un problems?” Mama asked, trying to sound sympathetic even though she and my father had to be sick of my historically histrionic love life.

  “No, no man this time” I wailed. “I wish it was only that. RJ’s got cancer and he’s gonna die.”

  “Oh, dear. I’m putting your father on.” Mother, like me, doesn’t do well with bad news. That’s Daddy’s job.

  My second sip of wine tasted better. I blew my nose and waited. RJ, upon hearing his name, had put his head in my lap so I could scratch his ears. Mother covered the phone’s mouthpiece with her palm, but I could catch muffled snatches of conversation.

  “Hetta . . . upset.”

  “What . . . another . . . hope . . . real job,” I made out before Daddy took the phone. “Hetta, are you all right?”

  “I am, but RJ’s dying.”

  “What of?”

  “Bone cancer.”

  “Too bad. Can’t they do anything?”

  I explained the options. Daddy was silent for a few moments, then said, “Best dawg I ever had was an ole Red Bone hound with three legs. Lost one to a bobcat when he was just a pup. He got around mighty fine. ‘Course he fell on his nose when he tried to point, but he was still a fine fella.”

  I smiled. A little homegrown homily goes a long way to boost the spirits of a displaced Texan.

  “What did you call him? And don't give me that old ‘Lucky’ joke.”

  “Tripod.”

  I laughed aloud, then sighed. “Daddy, I wouldn’t mind having a three-legged dog, but taking his leg off won’t buy us anything. And he’d have to go through all the pain. I mean, he’s bound to suffer anyhow, from the cancer, but it doesn’t make sense to cut off his leg and still have him die in six months. I wish I didn’t have a choice. Like with people.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. There’s a few folks woulda put down Grandmaw Stockman if they’da had a chance.”

  I snorted into my wine. My great grandmother had died at one hundred and one, some say of disappointment. After claiming to be fading away from every known disease for fifty years, she finally succumbed to old age. Very mean old age.

  “I guess it’s true, only the good die young. In our family we live long and get meaner with each year. There’s a depressing thought. I’m doomed to feel like this for another fifty someodd years?”

  “Beats the alternative. Wish there was something I could do to help you and RJ.”

  “You already have.”

  “Hell, I didn’t do nothin’.”

  “You were there. I needed to whine and you listened. Thanks. Let me say good-bye to Mama, then I’ll talk to you next week, okay?”

  “Okay. Love you.”

  “Love you, too,” I said, then waited while my mother took the phone.

  “The thing to do is keep busy,” she advised. “It’ll take your mind off RJ’s problems and let you enjoy him while you can.”

  “I will, Mama. Actually, I was thinking of taking sailing lessons.”

  There was a long pause. “Mama?”

  “Use sunblock, Hetta. Boating is very bad for your ski-yun.”

  I hung up and decided to take her advice about keeping busy. And the sunblock. Sitting around, moping all afternoon or getting drunk, wasn’t going to get me anywhere except mopey drunk. I fired up RJ’s car and we went for a drive. Three hours later, I called Jan.

  “How’s you?” I asked.

  “More importantly, how are you? I called twice and when you didn’t answer I thought maybe you’d decided to end it all after I left.”

  “I felt like it when I saw that hot tub. But I’m too much of a coward to kill myself. Death hurts, I’m sure of it. Besides, if I didn’t commit harakiri in Japan when Hudson jilted me, I never will. Stupid, ain’t it, how you think something is so damned tragic you can’t possibly live another day. Now, years later, I’m facing a
real loss and the thing with Hudson doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. Although,” I said, fingering the key hanging around my neck, “I would like to know what happened to the dirty rat bastard.”

  “We’ll probably never know. When was the last time you heard from Interpol?”

  “At least a year. Anyhow, enough of that. RJ and I just got back from the library. You should see all the books I’ve got on sailing. Oh, and I’ve signed us up for a U.S. Coast Guard boating safety class.”

  Jan groaned. “Why can’t you have a hangover, like I do?”

  “Well, I do, but I decided to take RJ to the park and the library was right there and one thing led to another. We start in two weeks.”

  “Start what?”

  “The Coast Guard class.”

  “Hetta, I’m not going. No way. No how. Not a chance. And that’s that.”

  “We can buy real cool sailing gear.”

  “No.”

  “There’ll be men there.”

  “What kind of cool gear?”

  8

  A snowy-bearded man in smart whites waved us to school desks at the front of the room and wrote his name, Russ Madden, on the blackboard. Well, the board was actually green, but I’m a traditionalist.

  The classroom, decorated in a blend of high school rah-rah and “don’t do drugs” signs, flags of the world, maps of the rapidly changing global scene and a wide screen TV, brought back memories of days long past at Richland Springs High, Richland Springs, Texas. Home of the fighting Coyotes. Well, scratch the wide screen. Our one-horse town didn’t even have decent television reception.

  I had a sudden urge to pass a note or throw a spitball. Or buy a pair of straight legged jeans, soak them in a number ten galvanized tub of hot water and starch and then let them dry to a life-threatening fit on my sixteen-year-old body. But I wasn’t sixteen. I was, uh, something more than that. I was making mooneyes at a gray-haired man, for crying out loud. When did I develop this Kenny Rogers syndrome? At what point did I lose my attraction for hardbody cowboys in skintight jeans, and start gawking at old men?

  Kenny, uh, Lieutenant Madden, burst into my thoughts by throwing a stack of booklets on my desk. “Since you’re early, maybe you’d help me by passing these out? Put one on each desk, please.”

  “Will it affect our final grade point?” I vamped. I love a man in uniform.

  He grinned. “You don’t get a grade. You either pass the test or you don’t. If you pay attention, you’ll pass.”

  Jan and I went about our assigned task, then perused the pamphlets while other would-be mariners filtered in. Most of them, my crabwise vision recorded with satisfaction, were men. In fact, by the time the class began, the only other women in the packed room were a Coast Guard Auxiliary volunteer and a sour-faced matron who huffed down into the desk next to me. Her ample derriere had no more than touched the seat when she told me this boat thing wasn’t her idea and if her husband thought this silly toy wasn’t going to cost him big time, he had another think coming. Why, just this morning she’d called her decorator, Dion, for an estimate to get the entire house redone….

  I was spared her plot for spousal punishment by means of the dreaded Dion, when Lt. Madden cleared his throat, welcomed the class, and turned out the lights.

  For the next fifteen minutes we were subjected to a video tape reminiscent of a chainsaw flick featuring bigger than life photos of what appeared to be boat and body parts. Nautical disaster leftovers of those whose horsepower exceeded their IQ’s by a factor of four.

  Jan breathed, “Oh, Lord, Hetta, I told you boats were dangerous.”

  Lt. Madden heard her. “Boating can be dangerous, but not to the informed and cautious. Now, let’s get down to learning how you can avoid being a star in my horror movie. It isn’t all that hard if you know the rules of the road, use common sense, operate a well-maintained vessel and keep in mind one important thing. Boats don’t got no brakes.”

  They don’t? This was a worrisome piece of information, but it faded to fast second when we got to the part about navigation. After an hour of hand to hand combat with a protractor, a pair of dividers and a map—nix that, a chart —of the California coast, we tackled the art of dead reckoning. I dead reckoned that, with my skills, we’d end up as flotsam. Or was it jetsam? Whatever, we’d end up beached.

  “Jesus,” Jan grumbled as we left the classroom, “I guess this crap is easy for you. You’re an engineer. And what’s with this ‘north’ thing? How can there be a true north and a magnetic north? Why not a true north and un-true north? Oh, I knew this was going to be a disaster. First time on a boat we’re gonna hit the rocks.”

  “No, we’re not.”

  “Oh, and what is going to prevent it? Your exceptional navigational know-how?”

  “GPS, my dear. A global positioning satellite receiver, that’s what. Clever little buggers bounce a signal right onto a chart or map, telling you within a few feet exactly where you are. We use them to survey these days.”

  “Like the ones in cars? They work on boats, too?”

  “Ab-so-lu-ta-mente.”

  “Cool. Then why are they teaching us to navigate the hard way?”

  “Well, for one thing, just because you know where you are doesn’t mean zip if your don’t know how to read a chart. I suppose there’s also a remote possibility the satellite could fall from the sky when you’re half way to Tahiti. We ain’t going to Tahiti in anything smaller than the QEII, but we gotta learn this merde anyhow so we don’t come off as complete idiots when we take our sailing lessons.”

  “Hetta, I’m not taking sailing lessons. And I don’t want a boat.”

  “Did you see the blonde hunk in the green turtleneck sitting in our row?” I said, directing the conversation toward more positive ground. “Don’t look now, but he’s coming our way. Dammit, I wish we weren’t in RJ’s crappy old car.”

  “Let RJ out. It’s dark and the guy could be a masher.”

  “Masher? Where do you get words like that? Hush, here he comes,” I said as I coaxed a reluctant RJ from his nice warm car. He had a sleepy dog smell that reminded me of freshly baked bread.

  “Nice dog,” the hunk said, patting my vicious guard dog’s head and receiving a grateful lick. He pulled keys from the pocket of his snug Dockers and opened the Mercedes next to us. “Yellow Lab?”

  “Yeah. His name is RJ. Mine’s Hetta. This is Jan. How did you like the class?”

  “It’s okay, but I already know all that stuff. I need a certificate of completion to get a discount on my boat insurance.”

  Jan perked visibly. “You have a boat?”

  “Still shopping. You?”

  “Oh, we’re still looking, too. But we hope to find the right vessel soon,” says Jan, the flexible.

  “Yeah,” I said, suppressing a guffaw, “we’re still looking.”

  With a gleam of white teeth, the man quipped, “I’m thinking a nice fifty-foot gaff rigger that’s spent its life in a little old lady’s garage.”

  “How can you get—” I elbowed Jan before she made her own gaffe.

  “Good one.” I tittered like a teenybopper, trying to think of something clever. From the puzzled look on Jan’s face, I knew I was on my own. “One with sails?” How clever was that?

  Evidently clever enough, for the hunk laughed. “Good one, yourself. Well, see you next week. When I do get something, you guys wanna crew for me one day?” As we nodded like those goofy dogs in the back windows of old ladies’ cars, he drove away, giving us a good gander at his designer license plate: Wetdrems.

  We dissolved into giggles.

  “Oh, we’re still looking,” I mimicked. “What were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t. I guess we’d better do some more boat shopping this weekend so we have a clue,” Jan said, wiping laugh tears from her cheeks. “I still don’t want to take those damned sailing lessons, but if I want to be good crew, I guess I’d better.”

  “Now see, isn’t this more fun than s
itting around waiting for some a-hole to call? Speaking of which, anything heard from BDR?”

  “Nope. Well once, but I told him to take a hike. I didn’t even tell him I’d seen him with the fat broad. I said I wanted someone on my own intellectual level.”

  “You did? Fantastic. What’d he say?”

  “He wanted to know if he could have the Armani jacket.”

  “You’re shittin’ me? Please tell me you’re joking. Even he couldn’t be so shallow. What’d you tell him?”

  “That you gave it to a wino,” she told me with a shrug.