Just Add Trouble (Hetta Coffey Mystery Series (Book 3)) (24 page)

I sneered, snatched the Cheetos and slam-dunked them into a duffle bag.

“Okay, you two, let’s go. Single file. Hetta first, then you, Jan. Anyone does anything stupid, Jan gets it in one of her long and lovely legs.”

“Why thank you, Nacho.”

I made a sound that came out like “urk” but they ignored me. Nacho pointed at the door, but I refused to move. Jan gave me a shove, but I stood fast.

“Now what?” Nacho growled.

I walked over and pointed to my laptop case on the desk. “Okay, pack up your computer and we’ll take it.”

I quickly loaded up my Dell, mouse pad and power supply. I also slid a letter opener into the case. Never know when you’ll need to open an envelope. Or someone’s throat. Computer case in hand, I nodded toward the pervert sitting on my settee, then at the door.

“You want him to go with us?” Jan asked.

I shook my head.

“You want him off your boat?”

I gave an emphatic nod.

Nacho shrugged. “Okay, perv, off the broad’s boat,
rapido
.”

Scoady Toad scampered off
Raymond Johnson
as fast as his little fascist feet would travel.

“Now, ladies, can we possibly get a move on?” Nacho asked through clenched teeth.

I shook my head violently, tilted my head and daintily cupped my ear.

Jan’s face lit with delight. “Sounds like?”

Yes! I pointed at the ship’s clock. “Sounds like clock. Dock?”

I turned my head from side to side.

“Sock? You want some socks?”

From the tick of his rigid jaw muscles and crimson cheeks, I ascertained that our Nacho was getting a mite impatient with our antics. Dangerous game, perhaps, but I wanted to see just how far he could be pushed. I found out.

His arm lashed out, encircled Jan’s neck and he jerked her roughly against him. Pointing the gun downward with his other hand, he growled, “I hate Charades. Move, now, or I swear I’ll pop Blondie on one of her gorgeous knees.”

I saw Jan’s eyes widen, but she leaned back into him and gave a little butt wiggle against his groin. Nacho looked flustered, shoved her away, and yelled, “Out! Now.”

Weary of hearing about Jan’s feminine attributes, I considered letting him whack one of them, but obediently did a one-eighty and stomped toward the door. Stopping dead in my tracks though, I  tapped the lock.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. I’ll lock the fuggin’ door. Git!”

I smiled sweetly and mouthed a silent, “Thank you,” but Nacho muttered, as he herded us toward the parking lot,

“Fuggin’ Gringas.”

Yeah, well, Mr. Macho Nacho, this  fuggin’ Gringa’s got a flare pistol in her pocket and she ain’t glad to see you
.

Chapter 30

When we reached the marina parking lot, Nacho was less than thrilled with the Thing. He shook his head in disgust. “You call this a car?”

“Does that qualify as a direct question, or simply rhetorical?” I ventured, testing Nacho’s gag order.

Jan whapped me on the head, and Nacho growled, “Shut the hell up.”

Rhetorical, I surmise. Sometimes I’m clairvoyant that way.

Nacho ordered me to drive, Jan to ride shotgun, and he opted for the back seat, no doubt to better keep my skull in his gun sights. With nothing but an overturned metal bucket to sit on in the back, I was gratified that Nacho would be less than comfortable. Had he been in my good graces I might have offered him a dollop of Prep H, but circumstances being what they were, I said a little thank you to the higher power in charge of butt pain.

Before handing me the keys, he asked, “Do you know the road to Nogales?”

No, but hum a few bars and I’ll pick it up
, I wanted to say, but I only nodded.

“Okay, keep it at, or under, the speed limit, which is about sixty.”

If I hadn’t been gagged, I might have told him the speedometer didn’t work. Or maybe not.

“I figure,” he continued, “we can make the border by dark. In fact, I want to cross after dark. Just take it easy, and no funny stuff. With any luck we’ll all be across, and on our separate ways, in a few hours. How much gas you got?”

I pointed to the gauge, which read FULL. Jan opened her mouth to comment, thought better of it and slouched down into her seat. I started the Thing and, with a lurch, drove toward the marina exit gate.

Off in the distance, I saw Smith pacing and calling for Maggie. Only Marina, the dock dog, stood by his side while his plaintive calls went unanswered.

I shot Nacho a look of pure disgust, but he only shrugged. “It’s up to you two whether he gets his pup back.”

I couldn’t say anything, but Jan could. “Ya know, Nacho,” she sneered, “it doesn’t take much of a man to threaten two defenseless women and a tiny dog. Your mother must be sooo proud."

Good girl.

The Thing sputtered to a halt just on the other side of Hermosillo, in a desolate stretch of desert.

I knew, from other highway trips in Mexico, that a stalled car was a beacon to good Samaritans. Mexican Samaritans, as a rule. Unlike back home, everyone in Mexico watched out for their neighbors, because most had cars that frequently ended up stranded. No one left home without jumper cables.

Nacho cursed softly, then told us to, “Stay put,” as he slid from his bucket perch. I was gratified to see two grooves in his jeans from the bucket edges, and that he’d developed a major wedgie. He tried to look cool while pulling denim from his butt crack. He no longer had a gun in hand, but he didn’t need one; he waved his cell phone at us. “Remember, one call and Maggie’s history.”

Popping up what served as a hood, he sniffed loudly, came back to my side of the car. “I thought you said we had gas.”

I shrugged and pointed to the gauge, which still read FULL.

Nacho narrowed his eyes. “If I didn’t need…oh, never mind.” He pivoted and stood on the side of the road, intent on waving down help. Gringo cars sped by at twice the legal limit, all headed for home after a rollicking good time south of the border. By the way some drove, they were still partying. After ten minutes, Nacho ordered Jan out of the car.

“Get us some gas, Blondie, or I’ll lift the gag on your friend.”

“Oh, wouldn’t want that.” She gave me an evil smile, hiked her shorts, pulled down the neckline of her tee, and about ten seconds later an SUV pulling a boat trailer skidded to a dusty stop. Four drunken men bailed out, offered us a cold beer, and siphoned five gallons of gas from their boat’s extra gas can into the Thing.

I sat silent as ordered, hoping against hope they’d already added outboard motor oil into the gas can so we wouldn’t get three feet farther. I wanted to scream for help, pass a note, anything, but Maggie’s soulful eyes swam before me. I also really, really wanted one of those beers, but Nacho nixed their offer.

After the helpful fishermen left, I started the car.

Unfortunately, it fired right up, and at the next Pemex station, Nacho topped us off and did a quick calculation. “That should get us to Naco. Anything else I should know about this piece of junk?”

I figured he was being rhetorical again.

Naco? Naco? Where had I read about Naco? And where in the holy hell is it? I wanted to ask a couple of questions, but felt they weren’t really worth getting Jan shot. Back on the boat, when I was studying the road map and trying to come up with a plan to get Jan across the border without a passport, I’d traced Mex 15 from Guaymas to Nogales. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember any place called Naco along the way, but the name rang a bell. Maybe it was the sacred birthplace of guys called Nacho?

I remembered there were tollbooths at Hermosillo, and near a place called Magdalena, but my hopes of getting help at either were dashed when, just south of the first tollbooth, Nacho instructed me to take a right. After driving on back roads through what looked to be vineyards for thirty minutes, we returned to the main highway. We’d bypassed the tollbooth. Not only was Nacho an asshole, he was a cheap asshole.

Fatigue moved in on me. The adrenaline rush, the one fueling fury over our abduction, as well as Maggie’s, suddenly wore off, leaving me incapable of doing anything more than keeping us on the road. I backed my foot off the accelerator and slowed to a speed I thought I could handle safely.

“What are you doing?” Nacho demanded.

There he goes again, asking a question I’m forbidden to answer. And doing charades at forty-five miles an hour is not a great idea. I continued to drive.

“What’s she doing?” he demanded of Jan.

“Uh, the speed limit?”

That stumped him, but he demanded I pull over. I did, in the first wide spot I found. “Okay, Red, I’m going to let you say one sentence. One, only. Why have you slowed down?

Gee, I can finally talk, and all I can come up with is, “I’m tired.” I slumped over the steering wheel for emphasis.

“That’s it?”

I turned to look at him and raised my eyebrows.

“Okay, another sentence.”

“I’m sick and tired of you, you cowardly, lowlife son of a bitch,” I spat.

Nacho growled a curse word in Spanish I’d never heard before, but I think it is derived from the noun, mother. Jumping from his perch, he un-wedgied himself, and motioned me out of the car.

Jan let out a fearful mewl and asked, “What are you going to do to her?”

“Put her ass on that bucket, that’s what. I’ll drive.”

Why didn’t he just shoot me and get it over with?

When bucket seats come to my mind, this version wasn’t one of them. But wait, if he’s driving, who’s manning the gun? What’s to keep me from stabbing him in the neck with my secreted letter opener?

Jan must have been thinking along the same lines. She surreptitiously winked at me before I climbed into the back seat and tried to find a comfy spot on the sharp edges of the bucket bottom.

Nacho stood outside the Thing’s open door on the driver’s side, punched a number into his cell phone and said, “If you don’t hear from me every fifteen minutes for the next two hours, shoot the mutt.”

So much for removing his brain with a letter opener.

He took off at mach one, which was okay until we hit a town called Imuris and we sped onto Mex 2, which, if memory served, is an east-west major highway and truck route from Baja California to Juarez, across from El Paso, and points east.

Surely what must be the entire trucking fleet of Mexico was headed to Juarez, and Nacho had little patience for trailing behind the twenty-mile-per hour semis. Passing in no passing zones, barely diving in front of horn blowing semis before we had a head-on with another, Nacho rarely slowed down. Jan had her eyes shut, but, somewhat like watching a train wreck, I was mesmerized. If I was going to die on this long and winding road, I’d just as soon see it coming. Besides, it took my attention from my aching butt.

Appropriately enough, it was a Tecate truck that finally called Nacho on his chicken game, and ran us off the road. After what seemed like an eternity of jolts, tips, screeching metal and screams, we came to rest in, miracle of miracles, a turnout.

Several truckers, lounging next to their overheated semis, watched quietly as the dust settled, then began sauntering our way. Nacho, slightly dazed, got out to inspect the damage. Jan sat dumbly before turning to check on me. I was sprawled over the cooler where my overturned bucket dumped me. I pushed myself up and checked for broken ribs.

Nacho waved the would-be rescuers off with a smile and shrug. I managed to clamber out, grab his arm and point to his watch, then his cell. When I grabbed the arm, he made a move toward his gun, but realized I was just giving him a heads-up on his second Maggie call. He flipped open the phone and hit redial. One of the truckers yelled something I didn’t understand, Nacho nodded, then spoke into the phone.

Jan finally joined us, her teeth chattering from fear and the cold. Late afternoon cast shadows into the valley we’d landed in, and a crisp breeze funneling between the mountains added to the chill factor. Although it was probably in the sixties, it felt like low forties. I grabbed a couple of sweat tops from one of the bags and helped her slip one over her head while Nacho inspected the tires. Within twenty minutes, with Nacho patiently trailing the truck parade at a snail’s pace, we skirted the town of Cananea, lost the traffic, and a fast thirty miles later, took a sharp turn onto a secondary road.

A secondary road, by definition, is just that:
not
a primary road. In Mexico, however, a secondary road is one step above gravel. Yes, it was paved, but the pavement was pitted with huge potholes, washouts, and a roller coaster-like surface that put what was left of the Thing’s suspension to the test. Every time we bottomed out, my bottom put a new dent in the bucket. Or vise versa. It is probably just as well I never wanted children.