A Dangerous Harbor (4 page)

With the paperwork and bathroom visit done, and marina keys in her pocket, she walked through the boatyard for the gate and her boat. She gave the guard her name, boat name and the slip of paper from the marina office and tramped down the ramp to where a cluster of American boaters parted to let her through to her boat.

Her boat was chained to the dock.

She felt the heat rush up her face.
He's impounded my boat? The bastard!

Ignoring the puzzled questions and offers of assistance, she turned on her heel and stomped back up the ramp and back into the office, where she asked a secretary to make the call. The secretary, a round-faced young woman who looked to be more Indian than Mexican, gave her a sympathetic smile, calmly punched in the number and listened to someone making excuses. A few expletives went with her demand that the inspector call. She hung up, giving Katy a rueful grin. They both knew that it could be any time between now and next Christmas. After all, this was
mañana
land.

Katy spent the next two hours taking out her frustrations on her boat, washing the salt water off the
brightwork
and stainless stanchions, vigorously scrubbing the topsides with a stiff brush and, in honor of Chief Inspector
Vignaroli
, practicing her hangman's knots while she secured her boom to its cradle. She also gave the curious boaters on the dock a truthful, if condensed, version of her encounter with the floater.

 
"I expect to have this chain off tomorrow, latest."

Clucking sympathetically, the crowd finally thinned out, probably because the story was now being transferred via the ham net, aka the "Coconut Telegraph." Guilt or innocence to be decided along with tomorrow's weather report.

Her cabin fan had been on the fritz since San Diego, and since there was still no return call from the inspector, she decided that a trip to replace it would be just the ticket to get away from the curiosity of the other boaters. Gathering her purse, she swept out the gate and took a taxi to a downtown marina store she thought might have one. Surely, replacement boat fans would be a popular item in any marine store. She also expected it would be a high-ticket item.

The inside of the store was cool from a hardworking, if somewhat noisy, air conditioner.
 
It also had the friendly and familiar smell of rope and teak of marine stores everywhere. No one was at the sales counter so she snagged a small, rusted, wobbly-wheeled grocery cart and walked up and down the aisles while she thought.

Why would the chief inspector chain her to the dock if she was free to go? No return call and not available when a fellow police officer wished to speak to him? Obviously his cell number wasn't available to the likes of her. Probably home having a siesta. What was the man up to and what could she do about it? She could take it up with his superior, if he had one. He had the look of the top man, and unless her eyes fooled her, she also knew a handmade Italian suit when she saw it. The man was an egotist to think he could pull this kind of stunt.
Well, we'll see about that, Inspector
Vignaroli
.

Gabe was a complication she certainly didn't expect. While she was cogitating on the whereabouts of Gabe Alexander, she passed up the display for electrical wall fans. Backing up and going down the aisle again, she slowed down and looked on both sides, knowing as she did that Mexicans didn't always stock their parts as Americans would. Teak decking could show up next to toilet paper and her fan just might have taken up residence next to marine toilets. Finally giving up, she found a ship's bell anchored to the counter, and in her frustration she gave the short monkey's knot a hard pull. The clanging bell brought a short, thin Mexican from the back of the store. He signaled for her to wait, then wiping his face with a napkin he scurried down the aisle to take his place behind the counter. Giving her a toothy, gold-filled smile, he wiped his hands on his shirt and asked in broken English if he could help.

"Yes, please," she said, handing him the fan. "I'm looking for one of these. You had them last year when I came in, but I don't see them on the shelves now."

He turned it over, examined it carefully, tugged at the wires hanging out of the back and then handed it back. "Yes, we used to carry these, but no more."

"Really? You can't get them?"

He shrugged. "
No hay
."

"Yeah, yeah, I got that. You don't have any now, but when will you get them again?"

"
Lo
siento
. No hay
."

"I'm sorry too, but look," she said, pointing to his collection of marine parts on the wall behind the counter, "there's one up on your wall."

He turned to admire the fan she was pointing at and said, "We used to have them, but they sell out. We buy again, but too quickly they sell. They do not stay in the store, so we no to buy them anymore."

She started to giggle then stopped herself. The man was serious. This reminded her of the time she and her friends flew into San Carlos. With reservations in one of the top favorite beach hotels, they were shocked to see the place mostly empty. When she asked why no one else was there, they were told that business had been bad lately. Katy then waved a price sheet in front of the desk clerk. "Then why're your prices now twice what we paid?"

The desk clerk answered in a small voice, "Business is bad?"

Incredulous, Katy was unable to throttle back her astonishment. "So the cure is to raise your prices?"

The desk clerk had ducked his head between his ears and quailed at this American woman. "
Sí
?"

Grabbing her broken fan out of the store clerk's hand, she stomped outside and finding a passing ice cream vendor, bought herself a Mexican fruit ice and sat down on a nearby bench. Pulling the paper off the crushed and frozen treat, she bit into the solid and deliciously ripe strawberries and laughed to herself.
 
"Well, some things are still as they should be."

Chapter Five:

High above the town of Ensenada, Raul
Vignaroli
pushes open the heavy door of his home to the hush of the air conditioner and the faint sound of children laughing. At the drop of his keys onto the entry table, a woman calls,
"
Cena
,
querido
!
"

"Yes, my love, dinner. I'll be right there." But instead, he detours away from the light where children laugh and his wife's voice echoes in his head and stumbles for his bathroom and a shower.

Eventually, with towel wrapped around his waist, he rubs the steam off the mirror and faces the dour face and shadowed eyes. His thick black hair curls wetly around his ears, indicating a much-needed haircut. He rubs a hand over the stubble on his chin, then fingers the shaving cream, considering… and he hears her voice calling again, "Dinner, my love!"

He curses loudly and explodes, tossing the can across the room. Then he lowers his head, smothers his frustration in a cold wet face cloth, and dips down to pick up the can, replacing it back in line with the other toiletries. Turning each label to the front as if they were tin soldiers in the fight against unruly beards and sweaty armpits and a life that extends no farther than the walls of this house.

The ongoing argument with his sister was finally beginning to wear on five years of denial. She'd told him it was madness to remain in this crazy house, and crazier still to keep a grieving, featherless parrot.

"
Cena
querido
!
"

But then, how else would he ever hear their voices again?

After cobbling together a late dinner of tinned food from her dwindling food locker, Katy sat in her cockpit and gazed across the night-time marina.

What a mess,
she thought.
I suppose it would be too much to expect Gabe to read my mind and show up here tonight.
And didn't I tell him to stay away from me
?
Now I
gotta
take it all back. Gabe may be on the lam, but if anyone can find him, it'll be me.

She'd ferret him out of his latest hidey-hole, see what he knew about the girl and her murder. She was sure of it now, it was a murder, and if she wasn't a suspect she certainly was of some interest to the chief inspector, if only because of her association with Gabe. Why oh why couldn't she have kept her mouth shut? She could only hope that the chief inspector didn't have the resources to dig up the history between her and Gabe.

Surely she was being paranoid. It was simply a coincidence and the shock of seeing Gabe again that had stuck her feet to the floor and subsequently given the Mexican chief a possible suspect.

Time changes people.
Look at me. I've changed. Not the same naïve little sweet-on-Gabe Alexander I was in high school, that's for sure.
And Gabe. God knows he'd changed, what with living on his wits all these years, surviving on God-knows-what to live on. Okay, so he'd had it rough, but if anyone deserved a time in purgatory, it was Gabe—after what he did to her.

She would find him, talk him into leaving town immediately—but not back to the States. Then they would both be safe.

Tomorrow, she would make inquiries as to where she might find him. She'd start with the sergeant's cousin, the gate guard. Granted, he'd immediately tell the sergeant and then the chief inspector, but what choice did she have?
 
She had to start somewhere.

And that comment by the sergeant… what was it he said?
 
That the bar was a dangerous place where men could acquire anything they wanted. She wondered if it was the sort of place Gabe frequented. Maybe she should look there. Then again, she didn't have her badge or backup should there be trouble she couldn't handle, and what was it the sergeant said about the place? It wasn't a safe place for a woman,
not if she wanted to go home
—as in alive?

She knew Ensenada was listed as part of the human smuggling corridor. Just as Thailand was a Mecca for pedophiles, there were hot spots running the length of Mexico where men could buy girls of all ages; poor Mexican, South American, and girls from as far away as the Ukraine have been lured with the promise of work as au-pairs. Beaten, drugged, raped and reduced to abject slavery, they would lose their will to resist or escape. With a shudder, she saw his point; that if she went to this place, she might disappear into that dreadful maw of human slavery. Even with her police training in hand-to-hand combat, could she fight off a kidnapping attempt? Fight until she either escaped or died trying?

Reluctant to use the dwindling space in her holding tank, Katy took a walk to the marina bathroom where she showered, washed her hair and smoothed Lily of the Nile lotion over her legs and arms.

Feeling rejuvenated from the shower, she swung her bag over her shoulder as she walked through the dry dock to the marina gates. Seeing the overhead phosphorescent lights had left broad pools to splash through, she smiled and leaped from one to the next. But she found her enthusiasm cooling at the sight of a man leaning on a lamppost near the gate. The guard? No, the stance was different and he was smoking. Gabe? The square, blocky shape was all wrong for Gabe's lanky swimmer's build.

Giving the hulking figure a wide berth, she picked up her pace and opened the gate with her key.

The man stubbed out the cigarette he'd been smoking with the heel of his shoe, pushed off the gate and called her name.

She turned. There was no mistaking the solid frame beneath the weak light. "It's about damn time, Chief Inspector
Vignaroli
."

"
Buenas
noches
to you too,
Señorita
Hunter." The voice was still pitched at that low rumble, but it held none of the authoritarian behavior from earlier. "I had to work late. I just came from my mother's home. She lives not far from here." He patted the rock-hard abdomen of his white shirt with a thickly muscled forearm. "She is a wonderful cook."

All the frustration and anger at her good deed gone wrong came out in a growl. "Why in God's name did you chain my boat to the dock? You can't possibly think I'm a suspect?"