Just Add Trouble (Hetta Coffey Mystery Series (Book 3)) (3 page)

“And how about other kinds of eels?”

“Perfectly safe.”

“Even really big morays?”

“Long as you aren’t trying to take a lobster from them. It’s their favorite food.”

“Sooo, that six-foot bugger right behind you? The green one with the blue eyes? Perhaps you should remove your lobster from his line of sight.”

“I don’t have a lob…oh, hell!”

I didn’t realize a body could  climb  an  anchor  chain  so  quickly. As  Jenks practically sailed over the rail, an obviously disappointed monster turned a blue eye his way, still ogling what he hoped was a quick meal.

“Nine and a half,” I declared as Jenks scrambled onto his feet. “Half a point off for form.”

We watched the eel nuzzle the chain, probably hoping for a lingering taste of Jenks. It gave us a snaggletoothed—emphasis on the
toothed
—grin, and began circling the boat. It was then we saw his big brother.

Not only were my skinny dipping days at an end, it wasn’t long before we learned that giant morays weren’t the only sea serpents plying the waters of the Mar de Cortez.

Chapter 2

“Says here that we have a couple of Morena Verdes, or Gymnothorax castaneus,” I read, making phonetic hash of the scientific lingo, “on our hands.”

I took a bite of what is, hands down, the best sandwich ever: Day after Thanksgiving turkey on white bread, slathered with mayo, and sprinkled with tons of ground black pepper. After our feast the day before of roasted bird, Texas cornbread stuffing, and the works, one would think one would be as stuffed as the turkey. Nope, there’s always room for that day-after sammich.

Jenks was in the process of making himself another sandwich. “Moreno Verdes, huh? And here I thought they were only your everyday sea monsters.”

I moved my marine life field guide back into the sun so I could read without my drugstore cheaters, “Panamic Green Morays. According to this, they only grow about four feet long. Obviously these folks,” I wiggled the book, “haven’t seen our guys. Also says they are harmless to humans, and nocturnal.”

“So they try to eat people in broad daylight? I think you need a better handbook,” Jenks grumbled, still a trifle miffed that he’d been driven up the anchor chain in such a hasty and inelegant manner.

The huge eels left after an hour or so that first day, but returned every afternoon, reminding me of the not so distant past when a huge and horny blue whale I named Lonesome dogged my boat in search of romance. We’d finally ditched him off Cabo, where a female of his own species convinced him she was far more appealing than fiberglass. I did worry about her judgment a bit, what with the object of her affections unable to distinguish between a boat and another whale. Talk about dense. Could it be that Lonesome, like Jenks, is Norwegian?

The good news about our orthodontically challenged greenies was that they were on a schedule. If we swam before noonday we were safely back on board before they showed up. We planned lunch around them so we could watch them circle as we ate. After some time we figured they were looking for a handout, but we didn’t want to encourage their begging. It’s not easy being green.

I was no longer intimidated by the garden eels. Heck, in comparison to their big brothers, they were downright charming. They weren’t, however, the only critters hanging out under our boat.

Anchored in such a remote setting, you’d probably expect profound silence, but you’d be dead wrong, especially at night. Our anchor light drew an assemblage of jumping mullet, flying fish, squid, shrimp and you name it, all of them drawn by the glow, thereby attracting the attention of those higher on the food chain. It wasn’t at all unusual to be jolted from a deep sleep by a slashing frenzy of chasers and chased, some of which ran smack into the side of the boat, or even ended up in our panga in an attempt to escape or attack.

First thing every morning we checked out our antiquated skiff
, Se Vende
, for fish and squid bodies. What the heck, we had to bail out the leaky old tender anyway.

Some thought our choice of dinghy comical. However, I became attached to the old tub while using her in Magdalena Bay. Now we dragged her behind us everywhere we went. Recently, in Cabo San Lucas, I replaced her rusty old Johnson outboard with a new sixty-horsepower model, but the beat-up panga trailing along behind
Raymond
Johnson
was still a source of derision by Mexican fishermen and yachties alike. Which, of course, made me even more determined to keep her, as I, too, belong to the sisterhood of less than perfect. Those yachties, with their little rubber dinks, couldn’t hold a candle to
Se Vende’s
speed when I opened up the new Johnson. She’d do forty or fifty, easy.

Even when we weren’t at the center of the nightly aquatic life and death struggle, something in the sea was invariably breathing. From the comfort of my bed, I could differentiate between a sea turtle’s chuff, a dolphin’s huff, and a whale whoosh.

In daylight hours,
Raymond Johnson
was no less a marine refuge, with an ever-changing kaleidoscope under us. I sat for hours watching the show, marine guide in one hand, and binoculars in the other for those times when an exotic looking bird took my attention from my real life aquarium. Parrotfish, sergeant majors, rays, damselfish, pipefish, coronets, and the ubiquitous puffers came and went, but a school of tiny, iridescent blue fish I never identified was always there. Whenever I dogpaddled around, scraping the daily accumulation of green gunk and barnacles from the boat’s waterline, I attracted a cadre of hungry scavengers that gobbled the yummy tidbits. I tried in vain to train them to cut out the middlewoman, go directly for the boat gunk, but they couldn’t grasp the concept.

I was scrubbing away one morning when, to my dismay, I heard the drone of a nearby engine and, despite a vow to brush my fears aside, the old heart skipped a beat. By the time I reached the swim platform, the hum reached a roar and, heading straight for us at mach one, was a fishing panga. From my waterline vantage point, all I could see was white water and hull. I knew I either had to distance myself from
Raymond Johnson’s
hull, steel myself for getting whapped by a wake, or get out of the water, fast. I got out of the water, fast.

I shinnied onto the swim platform and pulled an oversized tee shirt over my bathing suit seconds before two jerks in a panga circled, deliberately throwing a boat-rocking wall of water at us. Then the idiots cut their engine and sidled up alongside, bumping my shiny gelcoat in the process.

Jenks, awakened from a pre-luncheon nap by the violent slewing of
Raymond Johnson
, came outside and grabbed a rail, as I did, for balance. I could tell from the set of his jaw that he was majorly pissed, but a stranger witnessing his bland expression would never guess. Spreading his feet, he let go of the rail, folded his arms and rode out the wake with expert ease.

Alarmed by the overtly rude behavior on the part of the panga guys, I worked myself along handholds until I could get inside for a weapon. With my lousy track record when dealing with thugs in pangas, and the fact that these two fit the hoodlum MO right down to their mirrored sunglasses, I was taking no chances. Real Mexican fishermen are invariably polite when approaching a Gringo yacht, and they don’t wear no stinkin’ sunglasses. My second clue that we were dealing with punks was when one of them yelled, in an exaggerated East LA patois, “Hey, man, you got any gas?”

I wanted to yell back, “Yeah, man, and you ain’t gettin’ none,” but decided I’d let Jenks handle the situation. Historically, my mouth tends to overload my ass, and this situation had all the earmarks of a Hetta overload in the making.

Jenks acted like he didn’t hear the guy. Just stared at him.

“Hey, man, don’ you speak no English?”

This time, Jenks shook his head, put his hands on the rail and leaned down to within four feet above the jerks’ heads. The closest, the one doing all the talking, lost his smirk as he involuntarily scooted back. His compadre, further away, remained expressionless and silent. He looked about my age, and even through my rage and fright, it was hard not to notice his handsomeness. Though both were dressed in logoed T-shirts touting off-road races, shorts, and sporting razor cut hairstyles, the older guy looked for all the world like a Ralph Lauren ad. More evidence against them. Mexican
pangueros
don’t wear shorts, they danged well don’t have fancy haircuts, and the less than haute couture of a real
panguero
would give old Lauren a heart attack. If these guys were posing as fishermen, don’t you think they’d consider getting a couple of nets?

Smirky pointed at me, his raised arm revealing a tattoo. “Hey, you, inside the boat. You speak English?”

Despite a warning frown from Jenks, I stepped out into the sunlight. Following Jenks’s lead, I shrugged.

Mouthy of the Baja 1000 shirt turned to handsome, silent, Baja 500, “Jesus, Nacho, looks like we got us a couple of Europeans or somethin’. Probably Frenchies. Let’s take the pussy’s gas can and get the hell out of here.”

He made a move as if to step into
Se Vende
, but found himself staring at the business end of a sharply honed steel gaff that materialized in Jenks’s hands.

The other guy, who might or might not have been reaching for a weapon, stopped dead when he saw my flare gun leveled at his stomach.

He actually grinned, then straightened slowly and snarled, “Shit, Paco, let’s go. The
bolillo’s
packin’.” He started his outboard.

Paco hesitated—perhaps having a misplaced macho moment—then recognized the wisdom of his buddy’s words, and sat back down in the panga. As they roared away, he shot us his IQ.

We put our arms around each other and stared after them until they disappeared around the end of the island. Soon their engine noise could no longer be heard, and it was then I realized I’d been holding my breath.

“Sheee-it!” I breathed. “What do you figure that was all about?”

“Dopers? Fancy panga, big engine, no fishing gear.”

“That’d be my take. One thing for certain, they sure can throw an insult.”

“Huh?

“The good looking one called me a
bolillo
.”

“Is that bad?’

“Not if you don’t mind being compared to a round, white, dinner roll.”

Jenks burst out laughing, then caught his breath. “Wanna drink lunch?”

“Oh, jes.”

Jenks let me decide what we should do next, and my vote was to get the hell out of Dodge. After all, multiple serpents befouled my oceanic paradise. Rattled by the rude intrusion on our anchorage, I made the call to head north, even though the hoodlums’ panga left in that direction.

We planned to loosely track John Steinbeck’s route when he and his crew explored what was then an obscure sea back in 1938. We didn’t have time to visit all of John’s anchorages, nor were we intent, unlike the crew of the
Western Flyer
, on shooting, catching, and killing every hapless animal and fish in our path.

Using my dog-eared copy of
The Log from the Sea of Cortez
as a guide, I’d charted stops at San Jose Island, due north of us, then San Evaristo, an anchorage on the Baja Peninsula across a channel from San Jose, as well as several other places before returning south. I said a sad farewell to my school of blue darlings as we hauled anchor and set off for Amortajada, our next stop. Far as I could tell from my handy Spanish-English dictionary, Amortajada meant
covered in a shroud
. Charming.

We never found out if the cove was shrouded, but it definitely wasn’t my idea of a vacation spot. The minute we dropped the hook, we were attacked by a cloud of no-seeums. Actually, I was attacked, as Jenks seems impervious to the tiny buggers, or they to him.

Swatting wildly at the biting bugs, I yelled, “Jenks! I’m headed inside. Get this son of a bitch underway.” Slamming the door behind me, I turned on the air conditioner, then emptied an entire can of bug spray into the cabin. Jenks quickly raised the anchor and motored toward San Evaristo while I slammed down two antihistamines, jumped into the shower, then slathered myself with Preparation H. Hey, read the label. Stops itching and reduces swelling.

By sunset, I was running a slight fever as itchy bumps popped out all over my legs and arms. I took more antihistamines, glommed on more Prep H, and finally fell asleep. Next morning, lured by the smell of coffee brewing, I dragged my polka dotted bod out of bed, and joined Jenks on deck. In a blatant ploy to garner sympathy, I pointed out the bites marring tender skin on my ankles and behind my knees. Lucky for him, he wisely refrained from speculating why I suffered no bites on my face.

I was feeling mighty sorry for itchy old me when my best friend, Jan, called on the Satfone. I’d been trying to reach her for two weeks, but her amour du jour’s cell phone service kept repeating the same message,
fuera de servico
, which meant the damned thing wasn’t working. No wonder, what with her living on some godforsaken beach with a guy who spends his life counting whales. Okay, so he’s a world renowned marine biologist with tons of letters after the Brigido Comacho Yee, but he’s still a beachcomber of sorts, just a very handsome one, with a job.