Just Deserts (Hetta Coffey Series (Book 4)) Read online

  I groaned. “Coming to a marina near you: The Molecule That Ate My Boat.”

  Russ cackled again, probably because it was my boat, and not his. He patted my shoulder, saying, “But there is some good news. I can get rid of them for you. Unfortunately, though, you’ll have to dry out for at least six weeks.”

  “Hey, I haven’t been drinking that much.”

  “Not you, Hetta,” Smith said, “although that’s not such a bad idea. Your boat has to dry out. As in, out of the water. If Raymond Johnson’s bottom has blisters big enough for Mario to detect underwater, they must be pretty bad.” He picked up Maggie, who had squirmed so wildly in my arms when she spotted a seagull that I’d put her down on the dock. She’d immediately hied after the gull and returned empty- mouthed, seemingly satisfied that she’d driven the offending bird to flight with her fearsome barks. “You gotta haul, pop the blisters and let them drain and dry. Then you grind out and refill holes.”

  I did a quick calculation of my finances. Not good. “Sounds like the expensive microdermabrasion I once had at a snooty San Francisco spa. It hurt like hell and, I have a feeling, so will this.”

  Russ shook his head. “Not so bad if I do the work. Come on, let’s walk over to the boatyard and I’ll show you some boats that are in various states of recovery.”

  He explained what had to be done as we inspected pockmarked victims lined up in what I called the sick bottom ward. Within a few minutes I had the dismal picture.

  “Okay, Russ, once we grind, fill, sand, what then?”

  “You might consider laying on a barrier coat, a film over the fiberglass that adheres to the hull and sometimes helps prevent blisters from recurring.”

  All of this was starting to sound very, very, expensive. “What if I, like, pretend the blisters aren’t there?”

  Russ shrugged. “Worst case? Your hull delaminates.”

  “Delaminates? As in, falls off? Holy crap.”

  “I doubt it’s all that bad. When was the last time you had the bottom painted?”

  I thought about that. “Never.”

  “And you’ve had the boat how long?”

  “Couple of years.”

  “Was there an out-of-the-water survey?”

  I recalled my forty-five foot powerboat, Raymond Johnson, sitting high and dry, with a boat inspector, for some reason called a surveyor, climbing all over, making notes. I worried over every little mark he made on his clipboard, wondering what it meant. In the end, all was well, or so it seemed. Now I have bumps on my hull?

  “Earth to Hetta.”

  “Huh?”

  “Did you finance the boat?”

  “Uh, sort of. The owner is carrying the paper. And there was a survey. Why?”

  “The survey can give us a clue as to how bad the blisters are. If they didn’t find any two years ago, that’s good news. However, if I were you, I’d get this baby out of the water, pronto, and take care of the problem before it becomes a big one. I’d say you were due for a bottom paint job anyway.”

  “How long will she have to dry out?”

  Russ shrugged. “Depends on how deep the blisters are, but probably a minimum of six weeks, max three months. If I were you, I’d start looking for somewhere to live. The boatyard is a tough place to camp in for any length of time. Can’t use your holding tanks because there’s no place to pump out, and getting up in the middle of the night, climbing down a ladder and walking all the way to the marina John can get real old, real soon.”

  Well, fooey. My plan, the one I’d budgeted time and money for, was to wait for Jenks to finish in Kuwait and return to Mexico in a couple of months. Three tops. We’d then cruise up the west coast of Baja and California, take the boat home to Oakland in time for me to get on someone’s payroll before I got tossed into debtor’s prison. I sighed. “Okay, let’s hear the bad news. What do you think I’m looking at, money wise?”

  “Again, depends on the damage. In a way you’re lucky, though.”

  “And that would be how?”

  “In the States this job would run into the thousands. Down here, with me as the worker, much less.”

  “Less than thousands can still be a thou,” I growled. “But what’s gotta be, will be.”

  While Mario cleaned up his dive gear, I asked him what came next if I wanted my boat repaired. “Café, you go to the oficina and talk with Isabel. I will pull out the boat when you are ready.”

  I’d watched boats being hauled out daily by an inventive submersible trailer with six hydraulic arms. Pushed to the boat ramp by a large tractor, a trailer is eased under the floating boat, then mechanical arms are maneuvered, embracing the hull like an octopus around a tasty shellfish. Mario then carefully reverses his tractor, pulling the boat and trailer onto land. From there, the whole dripping shebang jounces down the road to dry storage, or marina seca, a quarter of a mile away. It seemed like such a smooth operation, but now that it would involve my boat, it suddenly looked iffy. The whole thing made me nervous. Does marine insurance cover your boat if it falls off a trailer? Or gets broadsided by a cement truck speeding toward the new house sites on the hill?

  I told the guys I needed to check on a few things and headed for my boat files. And a beer.

  Chapter 2

  “Ja-yun,” I wailed into the phone, Texas-izing Jan’s name. We Texans tend to make any one syllable into two when under stress. “My bottom has blisters and I don’t know how they got there.”

  “Well good grief, Hetta, at the rate you’ve been sucking on a bottle lately, perhaps you’ve developed diaper rash?” my best friend unkindly remarked.

  “Very amusing. You should know about diaper rash. What do you use on Chino?” I couldn’t resist a barb that obvious, what with Jan’s amour du jour being a dozen years her junior.

  “Play nice, or I’ll hang up.”

  “Okay, okay. Anyhow, it’s not my butt, it’s Raymond Johnson’s bottom.”

  “He always did have an itchy bottom. Remember how he used to scoot it over your loverly peach carpet in your old house?”

  Raymond Johnson, my dog, not my boat, was my much beloved, but dearly departed yellow lab. After his death, I sold my house—the one with those dog poop streaks on the peach carpet—and bought a forty-five-foot motor yacht that I named after RJ. He’d gone to doggy heaven over two years before, but it seemed like only yesterday he was happily harassing mailmen and wreaking general mayhem in my old Oakland, California neighborhood. “If he was still with me down here he’d be in buttdrag overdrive, what with all the jalapenos and refried beans. What magnificent farts he’d have.”

  “Ah, yes. Eau du dawg. So, what’s this crisis of yours all about?”

  I told her about the looming bottom job and how I was about to become homeless. “And trust me, Mexico ain’t no place to be homeless.”

  “Tell me about it. Not that I’m totally homeless, just creature comfort deprived. You can come over here to the Baja and stay with me and Chino if you’re desperate, and if I’m still here.”

  Until a few months back, Jan, a CPA and computer whiz, was involved with my boyfriend’s brother, Lars. Then she helped me bring my boat down to Mexico, met the handsome Doctor Brigido Comacho Yee, whose nickname is Chino, en route, and jumped ship on poor old Lars.

  Now she was beginning to realize that her Latin lover, a world-class expert on whales, might be more devoted to cetaceans than her lovely self.

  I tried to picture myself living, like she was, in a little grass shack on a windswept Baja beach facing the cold Pacific Ocean. “What, Miss Jan, would I do there with you and Chino? Count whales all day? I think I’ll leave that to you two. I prefer living with some simple basics, like running water and ice. How long will you be on the whale count? And what do you mean, if you’re still there? Trouble in paradise?”

  She sighed. “The whales’ll start migrating north in late February, but we’re scheduled to hang around through maybe mid-April. Then Chino wants to go back to the dive boat and
continue the hunt for that sunken galleon he’s convinced is somewhere in Magdelana Bay. As for me, I’m getting a little homesick.”

  “As for me, I’m still waiting for my cut of that treasure. After all, my boat anchor snagged the astrolabe.” Not that I knew what an astrolabe was at the time, but Chino did: a circa 1590 navigational tool used by the Spaniards for their Manila Galleon route. He not only knew what it was, he was certain the ship it came from was the San Carlos, a galleon that sank and stranded his ancestors on the Baja. Valued at a cool million or so, the astrolabe now resided in a Mexican museum.

  “And I’ve told you a hundred times, when Chino finds that galleon, you’ll get credit in the history books.”

  “I want credit at the bank.”

  “Forget it, everything belongs to the Mexican government. So, what are you going to do with yourself for the next several months? Drink yourself silly? Ya know, Hetta, maybe it’s time for you to dry out, right along with your boat. After all, you are pushing fort—"

  “Don’t say that word!” I yelled into the phone. “I’m still in my thirties.”

  “Late thirties. I know you miss Jenks, but every time I’ve talked to you for the last few weeks you had that, well, sound.”

  “What sound?”

  “Like you had a hangover.”

  “Hangovers have sound?”

  “Yours do. After all these long, long, really long years, I know when you’re on a bender, and this one has gone on far too long. Don’t make me come over there.”

  “Jeez, you sound like my Mama.”

  “Let me rephrase that last statement. Don’t make me call your Mama. Matter of fact, maybe you should go home to Texas and stay there until you, and your boat, are rehabilitated.”

  “My parents aren’t even home. They’re out RVing somewhere.”

  “In that case they’d probably be thrilled to have you house sit.”

  “Jan, Aunt Lillian lives a half mile away from them. Without Mother there to intervene between me and her crappy sister, I’d probably off the old broad in no time. Lillian ain’t worth going to jail for.”

  “She is a handful.”

  “She’s a miserable, mean old sot.”

  “So that’s where you get it.”

  “I am neither mean nor old,” I protested, leaving miserable and sot unanswered.

  She let it slide, satisfied, I guess, with a fifty-percent insult. “So, like, what are you gonna do?”

  I sighed. “I thought I could skate by down here on the boat until Jenks gets back, but since that’s no longer an option, I guess I’ll call the Trob.”

  “Atta girl. Think positive. Get a job. Clean up your act. Have your roots touched up.”

  How does Jan know when I need a root job? And for that matter, why doesn’t she ever have dark roots in that blond hair of hers? Life ain’t fair. “Hey, how do you know when I need a root job? You haven’t seen me since Christmas, and now it’s February.”

  “Because I know you, and the way you operate when you’re feeling sorry for yourself. I’ll bet your hair has faded to orange by now, right?”

  “None of your bidness,” I growled, but a glance at my reflection in the sundeck window confirmed her suspicions. My normally thick red hair was flat and lifeless with dark roots and orangish tips flaming the lank spikes of my outgrown pixie cut. Add a puffy face and blood-shot eyes, and any sign of the perkiness that usually gets me over with guys is history. Just as well I’d stayed out of the local cantinas, for the lack of male attention, welcome or not, would thrust a coup de grace unto my suffering self-worth.

  The woman’s a freakin’ psychic, I thought as Jan went in for the kill. “I’ll bet you look like crap, and you know what to do about it. Drag out those exercise DVDs, do some Pilates. Yoga. Tai Chi. Something. No more booze. Get your hair done, take two aspirins, and call me in the morning.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Killfun.”

  I hung up and dialed a number in San Francisco. “Yo, Wontrobski, how’s it hanging?” I chirped into the phone, trying to sound more chipper than I felt. Not that the Trob was as attuned to my moods as Jan, but when looking for meaningful employment, one needs to project a modicum of enthusiasm, so I chirped. After all, I was talking to the guy who, by giving me projects, keeps me one bare step ahead of bankruptcy.

  “Hetta, where are you?” He didn’t have to ask who it was because few people have his private number: me, my what-ever-he-is, Jenks, and Allison, his wife. I have the number because Wontrobski and I are friends, and Jenks has it because at the moment he was working on contract for Baxter Brothers, and therefore, The Trob.

  “I’m on the boat, in Mexico.”

  Silence followed on his end, as the Trob is the Ebenezer Scrooge of small talk, so I got right to the point. “You got any jobs that no one else wants?”

  Fidel Wontrobski—his father was a Polish communist, thus the name—didn’t answer, but I heard him tapping the keys of his humongous laptop, an oxymoron unless you have a lap the size of Michael Moore’s.

  When folded closed, his so-called laptop was the size of a large suitcase. It fit well on his massive desk, in his massive penthouse office, atop the massive headquarters of the massive engineering firm, San Francisco’s Baxter Brothers.

  From experience, I knew to shut my massive mouth while the master worked. For all his brilliance, neither multitasking nor sociability is his strong suit.

  With his hooked beak of a nose, black frizzy topknot, stooped posture and dark, baggy clothes that flap as he stalks the halls of his aerie, he closely resembles a turkey vulture. When he somehow captured the heart of my friend, the petite, black, gorgeous, and politically ambitious Allison Cuthbert, you could have knocked me over with one of those black tail feathers. It must be true that there is someone for everyone, but this oil and water combo still had me puzzled.

  While Wontrobski attacked his keyboard at the speed of sound, I jotted down a list of stuff I had to do before leaving the boat. After all, Raymond Johnson is my home, and everything I own, except for some stuff stashed in Jenks’s Oakland apartment, is onboard. I’d load up my old Volkswagen with work clothes, my computer, and all of my—

  “Detroit.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Detroit,” he repeated. “A job there.”

  “Gee, couldn’t you come up with something a tad more fashionable? Like, say, Bangladesh or Darfur?”

  Silence. Sarcasm is lost on the Trob, as is most humor. He flat doesn’t get it, but knows enough to be annoyed that he doesn’t get it. Rather than nettle him further with any clever repartee, I clammed up. As my mentor, the Trob is the one who keeps me out of the poorhouse. We’d remained fast friends although I was rudely dropkicked from the Baxter Brothers’ payroll a few years back after being told by no less than a past Secretary of State that I wasn’t a team player.

  Since then, with the aid of the Trob, I have established a reputation for taking on jobs that might be kindly described as marginally legal. They pay well, but land me in hot water more often than not. My friend Jan, a preteen when Charlie’s Angels was a big TV hit, teases that I am the devil to the Trob’s Charlie.

  If it weren’t for those Wontrobski moneymakers, Hetta Coffey, SI, LLC, would be out of business. The SI is my little phonetic joke for Civil Engineer. As the sole owner, employee, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of my own engineering consulting firm specializing in materials management, I don’t mess with the Bank of Trob, lest he quit tossing those lucrative scraps in my direction.

  So far, even though I’ve been known to occasionally consort with those of questionable character, I have never been jailed, thanks in part to my old friend, Allison Cuthbert Wontrobski, who along with being married to Fidel, is also another best friend and, when required, my lawyer. The two Wontrobskis, to paraphrase Jack Nicholson’s Melvin Udall in As Good as it Gets, sometimes make me wish I was a better gal.

  “Sorry, Wontrobski, I’m a little cranky today. I just fo
und out my boat has to go into dry dock for repairs, so I need a job. If I have to go to Detroit in the dead of winter, so be it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? Does that mean I have to get out my mukluks, or that you’ll look for something else?”

  “Something else.”

  “Great, thanks. My options are running thin down here.”

  “Bye.”

  After I hung up, I realized I hadn’t asked about Allison, who somehow became pregnant. I say somehow, because my mind simply cannot wrap around those two doing IT. The former Allison Cuthbert, a radical black lawyer lady from Houston, married to Fidel Wontrobski, a brilliant engineer and driving force of one of the most conservative firms in the whole world is mystifying enough, but trying to imagine them actually making a baby is downright incomprehensible.

  And to think, I introduced them.

  Chapter 3

  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.