Just Deserts (Hetta Coffey Series, Book 4) (3 page)

Since I figured it would be awhile before I heard back from Wontrobski, I walked to the marina office, made arrangements to haul my boat, then took a hike up a series of stepped terraces leading to the fancy new homes on the hill. Most of the houses were empty, their million dollar views left to lizards lounging on elaborate decks above sparkling infinity pools.

Gasping for air after the one hundred and fiftieth stair—yes, I counted—I semi-jogged downhill via the road, back to the boat. After downing a quart of water, I stretched my aching calf muscles and took a hot shower. Feeling downright virtuous that I might be on the way to losing some of those pesky extra pounds I haul around, I ate a bowl of low sugar oatmeal laced with mango slices before going to town in search of a haircut.

By late afternoon, my hair was both red and perky again, and I sported a French manicure. I fired up a DVD and struggled through all twenty-four forms of Tai Chi while pelicans dove for the bait fish boiling around the boat. They refused to share their catch, so I ate a salad, no wine, popped those two aspirins prescribed by Jan, and slept like a baby, except I didn’t toss and turn, pee in my pants, or cry every two hours.

Early the next morning I scaled the dreaded terraces again, downed more water instead of my usual pot of coffee, ate an egg white omelet, and geared myself to tackle the world’s evils. I started by calling Jan, my parents, and Jenks. Not that they are evil, mind you, but superwomen have to warm up, too.

Jan was delighted I’d taken her advice, and would be leaving Mexico.

Mother and Daddy were relieved I was leaving Mexico.

Jenks was delighted I was leaving Mexico.

Call me perceptive, but I detected a pattern here. Was I the only one on the planet who thought I belonged in Mexico?

Evidently not, for the phone rang shortly after noon. “Cananea.”

“Good day to you, too, Wontrobski. Can I buy a vowel?”

“What?”

Not a Wheel fan, I gather. “Never mind. What about Cananea?”

“A job.”

“You’re sh…kidding me. Cananea? That’s only three hours from here.” Actually, more like five if one does the speed limit, which one never does. I had actually driven through Cananea. Of course, I was kidnapped at the time and therefore slightly preoccupied with the status of my future, but I recall it as a dusty little mining town only a few miles south of the U.S. border. In Mexico. “I’ll take it.”

“The job doesn’t pay like your usual ones. It’s legitimate.”

Drat. “Oh, well, at least I’ll make enough to rent a place and buy a tamale or two, right? I have enough in the bank from the last two projects to pay for my boat repairs.”

“You’ll be fine, so long as you don’t live at the Cananea Four Seasons.”

Wow, was that a joke? “I seriously doubt that’s an option. Best I remember, it’s a pretty small town. What will I be doing?”

“Something you do well. Their whole system is old, brinking on hazardous, and they are taking heat from labor unions, which effectively shut them down three years ago. Now they’ve gotten a legal nod to break with the unions and feel this is the time to modernize in anticipation of a rise in copper prices. All of the old as-built drawings and equipment manuals are in their files. All you gotta do is put together a cost estimate for a fast-track repair or replace schedule, what it will take to get them fixed up and operational. I had a guy lined up to go down there, but his wife got sick and he backed out.”

Double wow. The Trob managed an entire paragraph, but of course, it was work related and that he can talk about.

“Sign me up. Do I have to come to San Fransicko for paperwork and the like?”

“Monday.”

“You want me at your office on Monday?”

“No.”

“You’ll take care of everything on Monday?”

“No, you have to be in Cananea on Monday.”

Yikes. Today was Thursday. I’d have to get the boat hauled, secure her, pack, and drive north, all in record time. “Send me an email with details. I’ll be there.”

And, presto chango, I was off on another adventure, and this time with a regular old, probably boring job where I couldn’t get into any trouble.

I heard wings flapping and a pig flew by.

In whirling dervish mode, I prepared to leave. Only once during the day did a soupçon of self-indulgent pathos creep into my elated attitude.

While packing I mistakenly pulled out one of Jenks’s shirts, caught a whiff of him, felt a sting in the back of my eyes. Right before he boarded his flight in Hermosillo, he’d told me, “Honey, I’ll be back in two or three months. Meanwhile, you really, really need to stay out of trouble, because I’ve had to leave Kuwait, and the project, twice, to fly into Mexico. I can’t keep doing it. It’s not fair to my client, or my brother.” He didn’t add, or me, but it was implied.

At the time, I promised to be good, kissed him goodbye, watched his tall lanky form head for the runway, trudged back to my car, and sat in the parking lot, waiting until his plane took to the air. Driving to Walmart for supplies, my spirits plummeted, and by the time I was back on the road to San Carlos, his parting shot had taken on, in my mind at least, less of a request and more of a warning. Maybe even a threat. I do not like being warned or threatened.

Even so, with my crappy track record where men are concerned, the thought of losing the only good guy I’d ever been with was devastating, and when I’m devastated I tend to hole up and drink wine, or worse, hit the bar scene looking for a distraction. Those distractions have brought me a world of hurt in the past, so, on the sunny side, this boat bottom thing came along in the nick of time to save me from my miserable self; the one who’d been replaying Willie Nelson’s soulful version of "Am I Blue" ad nauseam while drinking myself blue in the face.

Being forced back into the work world greatly reduced my odds of messing up with Jenks, but his admonishment, which I took as ominous, set my bleach-enhanced teeth on edge. I despise being in a position of vulnerability, and that’s how I felt: vulnerable. With most sensible people, fragility might instill caution, but in my case it can spin me into a foolhardy spiral that bodes badly for me and everyone around me.

Maybe a case of bleesters is someone’s way of letting me know I need an attitudinal correction?

It only took one night aboard the boat in dry dock to convince me this was no way to live.

Monday morning, after a restless night high and dry, I was more than ready to jump ship. Even though I made two preemptive after-dinner trips to the marina loo, I feared I’d have to trek over during the night, which, of course, made it so.

Not only did I lose sleep, I was exhausted from the drudgery of putting the boat to bed for a prolonged period. I gave all the packaged and perishable food to the gate guards and other boaters, shut the sea cocks on the through-hulls to keep out bugs and critters. Wrote myself notes on everything I’d done that would need undoing when I went back into the water—open all sea cocks, for instance—covered the windows with aluminum foil, removed canvas, tarped what I could.

To ensure my boat didn’t flood on dry land, I arranged for Mario to keep an eye on the batteries so the bilge pumps remained operational during rainstorms. My solar panels keep a trickle charge on the batteries, but one cannot be too cautious. Then there was
Se Vende
, my panga. I had been fortunate to get a small enough slip so as not to share with another boat, leaving ample room for my skiff. Now I had to find a place to put her, as the slip would be rented to someone else. It became apparent that the only thing to do was haul her as well, so now I was paying storage on two boats.

The list went on and on, and so did I, until I was too tired to even go out for dinner. I ate a bag of potato chips instead and skipped the beer in light of the distance to the bathroom, for all the good that did.

By the time I got behind the wheel of my old Volkswagen Fox Monday morning, I was sick to death of my boat and ready to move on. I didn’t look back, not that if I did look back I could see anything; every square inch of the car, with exception of the driver’s seat, was crammed with my stuff. Jed Clampet
et famille
might come to mind, were it not for the fact that my VW Fox was totally restored and therefore quite respectable looking for her age.

While I merrily cruised around in Mexican waters, a dastardly old enemy of mine rudely pushed my Fox into the Oakland Estuary, which should have been it’s demise, but the VW held sentimental value; it had belonged to my dog, RJ. Okay, so he didn’t actually drive it, but in the old days before I bought the boat, I drove a dandy little BMW convertible, and dog slobber upon my leather upholstery was verboten, so I bought the VW for dog outings.

Call me overly schmaltzy, or perhaps a dullard, but when the little station wagon was pulled from the estuary, I coughed up eight grand to a car restorer, and now I had it back, all brand spanking new. Since her restoration, I have dubbed her Holle, after an ancient woman who, depending on whose mythology you choose, is either a Goddess of renewal and transformation, or a mean old crone. Holle has elements of both and can be a cranky starter at times. I guess those automobile outfits can only do so much with a car that’s spent several days under salt water.

All packed and ready for a new adventure, I gave
Raymond Johnson
a fond goodbye pat and wound my way over to San Carlos Bay during the morning so-called rush hour. Hundreds of worker bees in buses, cars, flatbeds, and on foot, headed for myriad construction projects springing up along the beaches and mountains to assuage Gringo baby boomers’ and retirees’ quests to own waterfront  property, even during an economic downturn.

Not even the twin-peaked Tetakawi’s, San Carlos’s famed landmark, were spared the building boom. A new façade marked the entrance to a road cutting between the goat teats, where one can, for a mere million or so bucks, live in what I’ve dubbed the Casas de Cleavage. Or perhaps Domiciles de Décolletage.

I stopped by Barracuda Bob’s for breakfast, got a sandwich to go. I had a two o’clock appointment in Cananea, and the coffee-swigging regulars at Barracuda Bob’s Table of Knowledge and Wisdom informed me that that last seventy-seven kilometers, a sinuous two-laner on Mex 2 from Imuris to Cananea, could easily eat up two hours.

My handy conversion card revealed that seventy-seven kilometers is only 47.8455 miles, and divided by two hours is a whopping 23.9 miles per hour. I headed northward, knowing that getting stuck behind an overloaded, fume-belching truck on that treacherous piece of road plays hell with one’s driving schedule, unless, like me, you know the Mexican rules of the road.

Creeping truckers traditionally turn on their left-hand turn blinkers, an indication for a following car to stomp the gas and pass, even though the passer can’t see past his front bumper. Overtaking in this manner, usually on a blind curve with a solid stripe, is not for sissies.

Lucky for me, the VW Fox is a peppy little model. Made in Brazil in 1987, she had a four-cylinder fuel-injected engine that for some reason handles like a sports car. When jammed down a gear, and the accelerator stomped to the floorboard, this car is capable of whipping around a truck in time to avoid a head-on with an oncoming semi.

Of course, while I’m doing this, I hope like hell the trucker who gave me the go-ahead blinker really isn’t meaning to turn left. Judging by the number of five-cross curves, many a driver failed to wait for the okay. This little game of turn-signal roulette leads many an unsuspecting Gringo to being T-boned when they foolishly turn on the blinker to indicate an intention to turn left. Silly buggers.

Hoping against all odds that I wouldn’t end up with my own little white cross, I white-knuckled my way northeast, toward horsemeat.

An online search garnered the following on Wikipedia:

Cananea, from the Apache term for “horsemeat,” is a city in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. The population of the town was 30,515 as recorded by the 2000 census. The population of the municipality, which includes rural areas, was 32,061. The total area of the municipality is 4,141.1 square kilometers.

This is the location where the company The Cananea Consolidated Copper Company was founded in 1899 and was the protagonist in the Cananea Strike of 1906 that resulted in the death of 23 people in a fight between strikers and a posse led by Arizona Rangers.

A corrido titled La carcel de Cananea—the Cananea Jail—written in 1917 became famous in Mexico.

Sounds like my kind of town.

Why it was named Horsemeat I never learned, but since the first mining registry in 1760, Cananea has been a lightning rod for conflict. Some say the mining strike there in 1906 fomented the Mexican Revolution of 1910, and as I soon found out, little had changed. Not that anything like a little civil strife stops me from tackling a new project. My entire life I’ve always looked forward to fresh horizons and any new turn in the road promising adventure, usually because of some debacle I’d left in the ditch behind me.

As I wound my way into the mountains, my spirits soared despite a small, dark suspicion that Wontrobski’s first candidate for the job didn’t really have a sick wife. Caught up in the euphoria of tackling a new undertaking, I drove to my date with Destiny. Luckily, Destiny was on a Mexican time clock, for a string of ten-mile an hour trucks that even I couldn’t pass put me behind schedule for my two o’clock meeting.

Lunch, siesta, or both had emptied the mining office. Not a mouse in the house when I arrived at two-twenty, but someone had conveniently left a computer online, so I picked up my email, and then, under the auspices of furthering my Spanish skills, tried, fairly unsuccessfully, reading a few in-house memos, which were as boring as those in any language. I was checking out file names when two men walked in. Caught red-handed behind the desk, I closed out the file and said, “
Buenas tardes
.”

“Do you speak English?” one of them asked. I nodded.

“Oh, good. We have a three o’clock appointment with the director.”

“Yeah, well good freakin’ luck. I had a two o’clock and haven’t seen a soul.”

“Let me guess, you gotta be Hetta Coffey.”

“Guilty as charged. Who are you?”

He produced a card with a logo I knew and loathed: Baxter Brothers Engineering, San Francisco, California.

“Mining and Metals Division, huh? If you guys are here, why am I?”

“Oh, we’re here on another matter, but Mr. Wontrobski asked us to look you up.”

“You mean the Trob wanted you to make sure I showed up sober, right?”

The Gringo looked genuinely perplexed by my question, or maybe it was that I called Fidel Wontrobski, a Baxter Brothers heavyweight, by a nickname. He was saved from answering by the arrival of a giggly flock of young women in ubiquitous Mexican secretarial uniforms, and two well-dressed men. As I was still ensconced in someone’s chair, I quickly rose and joined the Baxter guys. If anyone took exception to me being behind the desk, they certainly didn’t show it. Or maybe any concern was tempered by what I surmised were tequila fumes.

The short Mexican, only slightly taller than my five four, stepped forward, grabbed a Baxter man’s hand and pumped it as he gave the rest of us a gander at his mouthful of yellow, malposed teeth. “Our apologies for being late. It is Maria’s birthday, so we took the
señoritas
to lunch.” His upper lip twitched as he gave the other men a beady-eyed wink that implied more than lunch was served.

Something about this guy set my own perfectly straight and bleached teeth on edge. Perhaps it was my past experience with some short men who overcompensated their lack of stature with exaggerated swagger, or maybe it was his uncanny resemblance to that little rat-faced president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Whatever it was, he gave me the creeps.

Creep boy didn’t do himself any favors, either, when he totally ignored me while fawning over Baxter boy. Twice, within a three-minute conversation, he managed to intimate he was somehow related to Carlos Slim, the richest man in Mexico, probably the world. The name-dropping further inflamed my already tweaking last nerve almost as much as his discounting the presence of my precious self.

That just will not do.

I took a giant MAY I? step forward, hoping to menace his personal comfort zone at least as much as he was pissing off mine. “Well, golly gee,” I said, grabbing his damp little hand and giving it a wrist-snapping yank, “it’s just too bad I didn’t arrive in time for lunch. I’m a barrel of laughs with a bottle or two of tequila under my belt.”

His smarmy smirk uncurled. “Excuse me, Miss uh….”

“Hetta Coffey,
a su servico
. I guess you’re the big cheese around here?”

Totally discombobulated, he squeaked, “You are
engineer
Coffey?”

“In the flesh.”

“But, you are—"

“Very welcome,” interrupted the other Mexican man, smoothly recovering Shorty’s fumble and running with the ball slicker than Jerry Rice in his heyday. “I am Juan Orozco,” the handsome man said, “and
Señor
Racón here and I have looked forward to your arrival.”

“
Mucho gusto
,
Señor
Orozco. And you too,
Señor
Ratón,” I said with what I hoped was a sincere look on my face while using the Spanish word for mouse. Mouse, rat, what’s the diff?

His eyes narrowed. “It is Racón, not Ratón.”

“Oops, sorry.” I turned back to Juan Orozco, and since I’m a sucker for Julio Igesias types, granted him a million peso smile. “It is
señorita, señor
.
Por favor
, call me Hetta, or if you prefer,
Café
.”

“Oh, I like
café
, very sweet.”

I guffawed. This Mexican I was going to get along with. He flirted fair.

On the other hand, if Rat Boy had to work within a mile of me for the next few weeks he might as well gnaw D-con and get it over with. I continued exchanging pleasantries with Juan Orozco until he excused himself to usher the Baxter types into a meeting room somewhere, leaving me with Racón.

His beady little eyes darted about the room, as though seeking a hole in the wall through which to make his escape from mean old me. I really wanted to bat him around a little longer, but perhaps I had overreacted? Maybe, shocked that I turned out to be a woman, he was simply flustered and just kept stepping into it? So, in the name of working relations, and being the charmer that I am, I gave him a shot at a fresh start. Sort of.

“So, Señor Ratón, looks like we will be working together.”

He sniffed the air. “Engineer Coffey, since you seem to have a problem remembering my mother’s last name, perhaps you would prefer my father’s: Hayat.”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve stayed in his hotels.”

He gave me a pained look. “H-A-Y-A-T. And, I do not work. I hold a position.”

That’s
it
. “Doggy hide the bone?”

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind. What position would that be?”

“I am liaison to the mine.”

“Oh. What do you liaise, exactly?”

“The Hayat family have vast holdings in the mining industry. I am here to watch over our interests.”

“Ah, I get it. Happened to me, once, so I feel your pain. I screwed up so badly the company banished me to Mogadishu. That’s okay, I’ll try to get things running smoothly around here so you can get out of this hell hole, back on the old polo grounds.”

His cheeks bloomed purple and he developed a bad case of guppy mouth. He finally got it; he’d been saddled with Überbitch from Hell. He quickly fobbed me off on Maria and fled.

Maria’s English was excellent, and she made it clear she was delighted and fascinated that a mere woman sent Racón scampering for cover.

Now that I was her hero she’d be a wealth of info as to where they kept the skeletons. As always, if you really want to know what’s going on in a company, make friends with the gals who assist.

Maria steered me into a dimly lit back room where faded drawings, manuals, spare parts lists and the like were crammed into wooden file drawers, then gave me a quick rundown on the so-called filing system. I pulled out a folder, and with it a plume of dust. Maria apologized and handed me a tissue. What I needed was a gas mask. Hadn’t these people heard of Valley Fever?

A sneezing fit sent me back into the front office. “What are the chances of getting that place vacuumed?”

She looked doubtful, but said she would try to get something done.

“Also, Maria, I’d like a jobsite tour, get my bearings. Oh, and do I need a pass, or sticker, or something to come and go at the main gate?” I didn’t add,
Just in case the old guard and his dog should regain consciousness.

“I will have the operations manager give you the tour in about an hour, and I shall arrange a pass for your car window. You have a car, yes?”

“Oh, yes,” I beamed. Most folks might not think much of my twenty-year-old VW, but I love her.

“
Bueno
. Now, if you will excuse me, I must take refreshments into the men of your company.”

“Not my company. I own my own consulting firm and contract myself out to Baxter. Oh, before you go, can you give me a key to the office? I tend to work odd hours.”

She looked a little perplexed, but shrugged. “As you wish, but we never lock the door. No need, for everyone must pass through the main gate.”

“Oh, of course. Security.” I hid a grin.

She made to leave, then turned back. “I have made a reservation for a room tonight, but, well, perhaps we should change it?”

“I definitely need a room.”

“Miss Café, Cananea is a working town, with limited accommodations. The good hotels are both full and when I booked your room, I did not know you were…alone.”

“You did not know I was a woman.”

“Well, yes.”

“What, they don’t allow lone women in the hotels here?”

“Yes, of course they do. It’s only that the hotel I was able to put you in is not so…good.”

“So, what do you suggest?”

“Perhaps you would prefer to go to Douglas, or Bisbee, for the night?”

“I’m pretty tired. You don’t think I’ll be safe at the hotel here?”

“Oh, you will be very safe. It is just not the best hotel in town.”

“I’m beat. I’d settle for a couch tonight.”

She smiled uncertainly, then left to get the guys some coffee, which evidently they were incapable of doing themselves. Was I gonna have fun here, or what?

The hotel thing reminded me that unless I’m working in a very large city I don’t blend in. Even if I scored the best room in town I’d still be relegated to a crappy social life. I can’t hang out with the guys without raising eyebrows and it was plainly clear that I wasn’t gonna be bosom buddies with the women working at the mine. I’d need a house and even then I’d be a curiosity not to be trusted with the male population, and inaccessible to the female. Dang, why can’t they build mines in places like downtown Paris?

Sighing at remembrances of past outposts like this one, I ventured once again into that back room and surveyed with dismay what would be my office as soon as the HAZMAT team moved out. Gingerly unrolling a curl of drawings marked PLOT PLAN, I walked outside to orient myself. Off in an azure sky to the north, some kind of blimp glinted white above a mountain range. At least ten or twenty thousand feet high in the deep blue sky, I reckoned.

Sweeping vistas lay in all directions, some marred by old strip mining scars. Didn’t look like much mining going on now, though. On the way into town, I got the definite impression of a fading economy. Maybe the results of my little job here would give the place a much-needed shot in the old pocketbook.

North, under that blimp, mountain ranges flanked a wide valley, itself dissected by a stand of huge leafless trees that I’d bet my bottom dollar were cottonwoods. From a previous project I did back in San Carlos, I remembered the San Pedro River, the only river running north from Mexico into the States. And one of the last free-running rivers in the U.S.

“
Señorita
Café,” a timid voice called out from the office. One of the other secretaries stuck her head out the door.

“Yes?”

“Do you wish for some, uh,
café
?” She giggled at her inadvertent joke.

“No, gracias.” I pointed at the blimp.“What is that?”

Misunderstanding me, she said, “Sierra Vista, Arizona. She is our sister city and,” she got this dreamy look, “they have a mall.”

Ah, the ever-popular shopping mall. The way she said it, she could have been talking about Disneyland. I’d ask someone else about the blimp later. I motioned her outside, walked to the side of the building and pointed south, toward another valley.